Legend Of Zelda producer blames himself for Breath Of The Wild's delay

The Legend Of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma has taken responsibility for Wii U and Nintendo NX title Breath Of The Wild's delay. The open-world adventure game will be released in 2017, possibly in March alongside Nintendo's mysterious NX console.

In an interview with Edge magazine (via Nintendo Life), Aonuma revealed the delay wasn't due to support of the NX version, but rather communications at milestones during the game's lengthy development.

"At one of the milestones, the game was fantastic. There were so many great elements. But at the next milestone, that was all gone," he said.

"I'd made a lot of comments about what they needed to add, but I never told them what I thought was good about the game at that milestone.

"So they added stuff that I'd recommended, but they also added some other elements they thought would work well – and that ended up breaking all the good parts of the previous build."

It was an important lesson for Aonuma, who has since made sure to provide position feedback to his team."If I'd managed that well, maybe development wouldn't have extended quite so much," he said.

The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is a huge departure for the 30-year-old series, introducing a host of new survival mechanics and an enormous version of Hyrule in which to explore. It was Nintendo's showpiece at the E3 trade show in June, with hours of gameplay delving into the new features.

Nintendo revealed a first look at the game at E3 2014, with little information released between then and this year's show. Initially targeting a 2015 release, the game slipped to 2016 and then again to 2017. Another delay until 2018 is unlikely.

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