Kirby developer says Forgotten Land was a Zelda: Breath of the Wild moment for the series
Posted on April 2, 2023 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Change
Con Kirby and the Forgotten Land marking the series’ first true attempt at 3D gaming, some have compared it to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in that it took a new direction for the franchise. Kirby director Shinya Kumazaki has now shared his thoughts on it.
Talk with IGN, Kumazaki said:
“If we talk about what Breath of the Wild may have done for the Zelda series in the sense that it was revolutionary, it revolutionized the series, I think Kirby (and the) Forgotten Land was at one point And I think you can think of this as the first step in our kind of ongoing challenge of also making 3D Kirby games.
Kumazaki went on to say that Kirby won’t be all about 3D in the future. On the contrary, the focus will be on the best possible gaming experience.
“Really, it’s about what kind of gaming experience we can deliver to players and how best to deliver that gaming experience optimally that really dictates how we express it in-game. It’s just that we now have this new kind of 3D as another method, another way, another way to deliver that optimal gaming experience through an optimal Kirby gaming experience.”
Reiterating the importance of play, HAL questions whether 2D or 3D makes sense after considering the experience and central idea of a project. It seems that Kirby’s Blowout Blast on 3DS, which contained quite a bit of 3D, was really the first time the studio felt comfortable enough to continue on Kirby and the Forgotten Land.
According to Kumazaki:
“With titles like Air Ride, we had the environment to make a 3D (game)…but it’s the creative skill and the experience that we didn’t have as much. And we really wanted to be able to experiment and see if that was something we could bring to the main series… We realized that the hurdle of making a 3D Kirby game was going to be high. And really with Kirby’s Blowout (Blast). It was when I looked at some of the previous challenges in the series and really tapped into the experience that people gained, teams gained as we grew for it. And we got to a point where we felt like we had the skills, we had the experience. And when we tried it, it started to click, and that’s why we believe we can deliver a Kirby 3D experience that will be accessible to a lot of people.”