- Pronouns
- He/Him
There's a lot of simplification over that sure, and it is annoying. 'Six years of development!' ignores DLC development for Breath of the Wild lasting until late 2017, pre-production and concept testing for TotK, or the fact the game was 'complete' (content complete?) in March 2022, as well as the obvious disruption the pandemic would've caused. Mentally I've assumed there was probably a roughly four year 'full production' cycle beginning early in 2018 and ending early in 2022, with time before that going on BotW DLC and some concept testing, while we know the year before release was used for 'polishing'.
We do know that development must've been ramping up in early 2019, given the formation of Monolith Soft's second production group that year and the public announcement of development in June 2019. We also know from that early teaser and from development interviews and talks that the game's concepts were seemingly settled at a fairly early stage. Look how close the 2019 teaser is to the actual opening of the game. Compare that with Twilight Princess's different trailers, were the game's overworld, enemies, dungeons and more undergo fairly noticeable changes between the 2004 and 2005 trailers and the eventual 2006 release, with enemies and environments either cut or radically altered for the final release. That also checks out with the public knowledge we have about the game, where the original director left and was replaced by Aonuma stepping back in to the director's seat, and Miyamoto's "upending the tea table." Despite the pandemic and the length of the development, Tears' final build seems to be a close realisation of the initial ideas.
That being said, people are absolutely justified to ask if the development team had the right focus for Tears of the Kingdom. Personally the reuse of the world never once bothered me, but for others it didn't work.
