Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom – to be this good takes ages (pic: Nintendo)

Nintendo has revealed that Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom was already complete before its final delay and all that time was used for polish.

There’s often little to no explanation for why video games are delayed, just a vague reference to wanting to make it the best it can be and adding ‘polish’, i.e. trying to make sure it has no bugs or glitches.

For most games this doesn’t work, as so many recent titles have launched half broken and requiring multiple patches. Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom didn’t but that wasn’t because of Nintendo magic it was because of 12 months of hard graft.

According to producer Eiji Aonuma, when the game was delayed in March 2022 it was actually already complete and Nintendo spent a whole year making sure ‘that everything in the game was 100% to our standards.’

It’s a simple example of why Nintendo games turn out the way they do, with the publisher willing to do something that no other company would dream of, just to make sure the game is up to scratch and work properly at launch.

It worked too, as while there are, inevitability, a few small glitches here and there the whole game is almost bug free at launch. With the most infamous so far being a duplication glitch that most fans view as a positive.

Eiji Aonuma said when he announced in March 2022 a delay for Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, the game was pretty much complete.

The last year was spent on polish, making sure the wild physics of the game just work. https://t.co/jb2qlonWsO

— Gene Park (@GenePark) May 21, 2023

Aonuma’s comments were relayed by the journalist behind a new Washington Post interview. Oddly, they don’t appear in the article itself, but he revealed the information on Twitter, stating that the final 12 months were spent making sure the complex physics worked.

There’s not much new in the article itself, although it does illustrate how, at 60, Aonuma is starting to worry about his age, and how the 10 minute gameplay video was a direct reaction to what Nintendo thought was a lack of buzz about the game – because they had been too secretive about it up until that point.

Whether other publishers will look at the success and acclaim of Tears Of The Kingdom and change their plans remains to be seen, but even with both negative examples (in the form of Cyberpunk 2077 et al.) and positive ones like Zelda the industry never seems to learn.

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MORE : Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom is only sixth game ever to get perfect Edge and Famitsu review scores

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MORE : Playable Zelda hasn’t happened yet because Nintendo values gameplay over story

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Nintendo has revealed that Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom was already complete before its final delay and all that time was used for polish.