How Nintendo Almost Killed Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

2. Alien Invasions, Beasts Vs. Machines And Space

The mandate going into Breath of the Wild was to shake up what Zelda is. Nothing was off the table, and that led to one concept pitting Link against an invading alien force. Though Breath of the Wild takes place after a devastating Calamity, this version (subtitled "Invasion"), would have thrown Link into a war, with every part of the world being a battlefield. Accentuating the chaos even more, the idea was to navigate huge beasts and machines that would be fighting each other.

Even once the alien concept was dropped, this latter dynamic was kept, transforming into what the team dubbed "Hyrule Wars", with the emphasis on making the sanbox be like a dynamic battlefield The way these giant enemies would have operated sounded a little bit like the Divine Beasts and even partly the Guardians, with the main method of attack being laser beams and slow, strong, sweeping attacks.

The idea of an alien invasion does sound completely mad, but it would have made for a cool backdrop to the adventure. You'd still be the hero, but it would feel like you were part of a far grander ecosystem, a little bit like the way Horizon: Zero Dawn made its creatures act independent to whatever you were doing.

Staying on the space theme, at one point Link was also going to don a space-age outfit as well, with armour that was closer to an astronaut suit than anything else. He'd essentially be a sword-and-shield wielding space marine who'd even have his own little head-crab alien thing as a sidekick.