“Once in a game like Ocarina of Time, when you make the next game it becomes expected that all of that is there,” he said. “You end up spending a lot of time creating all these elements of the game just to meet expectations.”

“A number of people working on Zelda now are people that grew up playing Zelda,” Aonuma explained. “From their perspective, they’re looking at it as, ‘What are some of the things that failed to be helpful in getting through the game?’ They’re stripping that out and streamlining.

“We’ve made so many games now that we can’t help but think about how those games connect to one another. However, that consideration comes late in the development process. When we create a new game, we don’t start with a preset notion of what the story is going to be or how it’s going to flow. We start by focusing in on what the core gameplay element is going to be and then develop from that.

“There is a document on my computer that has a stamp on it that says ‘Top Secret.’ I actually haven’t even shown it to many of the staff members. One of the special privileges of being the producer of the series is that I have the right as we’re finalizing the game’s story to then decide what fits in.

“People start to focus in on the storyline and gapes in the timeline. This is a backward way of creating a game.”