Breath of the Wild Producer Talks Possibility of Gender-Swapped Link, Nintendo Switch, and More

Eiji Aonuma has been with Nintendo ever since graduating in 1988, and has worked on the Zelda franchise from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time through to today.

Waypoint recently spoke with Aonuma about his work as producer on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, about everything from the fan-base, Switch battery life, and the size of the world, to the possibility of seeing a female Link in a future game in the franchise.

"The opinions that resonate most with me, I definitely take them into account when the time comes to create the next Zelda," Aonuma said to the question of how much attention the Zelda team pays to fan expectations. "If you listen to them all, you'll end up with… Well, I've no idea what kind of game you'd end up with, but it probably wouldn't be a very good one. So we have to follow our own vision, really, and not pay too much mind to speculation."

What, then about the oft-rumored idea of a female Link? "…on the Wii U there's already Hyrule Warriors. In that you've got Princess Zelda herself as a playable character, and a real assortment of playable characters including numerous female ones," Aonuma said. "So, that title exists already. But in the future, regarding doing that sort of thing again, and changing what you expect from Zelda characters, I'd say yes, it's a possibility." This is somewhat counter to comments the Aonuma made in a previous interview with GameSpot during E3 2016, in which he said that while it was considered, the team "thought it best to come back to this [original] makeup."

Nintendo confirmed during its Nintendo Switch Presentation that while running Breath of the Wild, the Switch's battery would last for around three hours. To that point, Aonuma confirmed that the game's autosave system is frequent enough that players "shouldn't lose too much progress. You'd only go back a short distance."

To read the full interview, head over to Waypoint.

In other Breath of the Wild news, a list of differences between the Switch and WiiU versions has been confirmed, Aonuma confirmed in another interview that it's possible we'll see a second Legend of Zelda game on the Switch, and check out a battle with a Guardian.