The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild art-style explained

Back in July, I reported on Dark Horse Comics creating a Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild art book, that book is now available to purchase at retailers and reveals some explanation towards the chosen art-style that is ever so apparent in Breath of the Wild.

The artbook has been titled The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Creating a Champion Hero's Edition and gives purchasers a deep dive into the reasoning behind the artistic choices made throughout Breath of the Wild. Found in the artbook is an interview with art director Satoru Takizawa, Takizawa says "I imagine there are a lot of people who have wondered why the visuals for The Legend of Zelda change with each new entry in the series. We look for the best way to express the unique spirit of that particular game and create a world that will be exciting for players to jump into and explore. Often, the results come from trial and error."

Taizawa continues and explains that when designing the art-style for Breath of the Wild "intentional contraction of reality" was purposely implemented into the game, but spliced with elements of comedic value. This was done to make the times when things would usually be boring for the player much more enjoyable, Taizawa gave an example of this "the player is able to toss a bunch of ingredients into a pot and have a dessert pop out. We found that injecting humor into the visual shorthand helps players forgive the break break from reality." If you are a Breath of the Wild fan I'd definitely recommend you picking the Creating a Champion book from Dark Horse Comics, a link to it can be found here. In the entirety of this post you will find the full interview with Taizawa.

Taizawa: "I imagine there are a lot of people who have wondered why the visuals for The Legend of Zelda change with each new entry in the series. We look for the best way to express the unique spirit of that particular game and create a world that will be exciting for players to jump into and explore. Often, the results come from trial and error."

"With Breath of the Wild we spent a lot of time thinking about how to visually represent this massive open world. The theme for this game was "revisiting expectations," which left me at a loss as to how to express that visually [laughs]. At the same time, I felt that it was an ideal opportunity to establish a style that would become the definitive version of The Legend of Zelda's art."

"After a lot of worrying and going back and forth, we created a painterly art style that combined the realism of the game world with its playability. For example, if you cut down a tree in the game, it immediately creates a firewood. That was an intentional contraction of reality that cuts out portions of the game that the player might find boring or makes short waits more fun with comedy. We wanted to create a world that could accommodate the fantastical elements of Hyrule without sacrificing a more realistic art style, and we went about that by crafting a hybrid of the two that would allow the players to suspend their disbelief when certain things happen. That allowed us to include a broad range of ideas from the designers and enabled us to have some crazy stuff happen. For example, the player is able to toss a bunch of ingredients into a pot and have a dessert pop out. We found that injecting humor into the visual shorthand helps players forgive the break break from reality."