Could someone maybe write up a summary?
Roughly:
- Open world idea came from feedback after Skyward Sword.
- Filling the world with stuff was done in an organic way, going manually through the world instead of looking at a 2D map. He says Miyamoto did the same thing with Zelda 1.
- Previous Zelda games under his supervision featured more hand holding because not knowing what to do is the worst thing that can happen, but with this game they tried to feature a new kind of way of "feeling lost". A positive one. Says the heart of the game is the loop of climbing, looking around, and paragliding.
- Says it's funny because he played Last Guardian and some of the gameplay elements reminded him of things they tried to do in BOTW too.
- Never played Dark Souls.
- Is aware that adding numbers and stats isn't always a good thing and he tried to avoid that in the past, but it was necessary for this game, especially with the loot system and exploration.
- Always argued with Miyamoto what the essence of a Zelda game was. Finally came to the conclusion with BOTW that it was a strong sense of place in a world, and the feeling of growing stronger as you play.
- What delayed the game wasn't creating the physics engine, but tweaking it for it to make sense everywhere. It was hard and required great coordination between teams.
- Lot of external playtests where they would watch where everyone go, and ask why they wanted to go to certain places. Tweaked the game accordingly.
- Monolith only worked on assets with Skyward Sword because their open world philosophy wasn't the same at the time. Now with BOTW they worked on the world too.
- Twilight Princess transitioning from GC to Wii helped them port the game to the Switch. It went a lot smoother.
- All cutscenes have voice acting. Wasn't always going to be like that, but they went for it.
- Has lot of ideas for other games, but always end up using them in Zelda games. Now he has specific ideas he refuses to put in Zelda games because he wants to do them elsewhere, but he's so busy with BOTW that he doesn't know when it'll happen.
Overall I thought it was an excellent interview, a bit different in tone than the usual PR speak.