How Nintendo Almost Killed Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

3. Westernising Hyrule

Speaking of Link's look, Breath of the Wild was also, at one point, aiming for an even more radical redesign than making him become part man, part machine. When conceptualising the title's art design, the initial plan was to go down an even more Westernised route than Twilight Princess, giving Link a "mature" update, which meant adding a beard and taking away one of his arms.

The idea was to not only make the world itself, but the animations and "weight" of the gameplay, more "realistic", while playing around with how Link would function both in and out of combat with only one arm. It's an interesting idea, and a very Western Link for one game could have been a cool experiment, but it was probably better that the eventual design was closer to the previous releases.

While that could have been bad, there was another version of Link toyed with that was even worse. This idea would have essentially turned Link into a late '90s, early 2000s stoner guy, complete with a tracksuit, bobble hat and baggy jeans that seem to constantly threaten to reveal his junk. He looked like he wouldn't have been out of place in the Arctic Monkeys circa 2006, only with a "cool" motorcycle which was recycled into something far better in one of Breath of the Wild's expansion packs.