Feature: Zelda’s Forgotten Steward

Image: Nintendo Life / NintendoSince his outstanding work on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, director and producer Eiji Aonuma has cemented himself as the driving force behind one of Nintendo’s most celebrated, enduring, and lucrative franchises. For many Zelda fans, he holds just about as much prestige in the ranks of Nintendo as Shigeru Miyamoto, Takashi Tezuka, and the late, great Satoru Iwata.

Yet for as vital as Aonuma has proven himself to be for the growth of The Legend of Zelda, there’s another creator who has arguably taken even more of a crucial role in the franchise’s development in recent years: Hidemaro Fujibayashi. In fact, as of 2023, Fujibayashi holds the most directorial credits for the Zelda franchise, helming Oracle of Ages and Seasons, Four Swords, The Minish Cap, Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom. He also served as story writer and sub-director on Phantom Hourglass.

Fujibayashi has taken more of a backseat while Aonuma serves as the ‘figurehead’ for the Zelda franchise; heck, with The Game Awards implementing a limit of two studio representatives for each award in 2023, it was Aonuma who took to the stage alongside his translator, while Fujibayashi looked on from the stalls as Tears of the Kingdom won Best Action/Adventure Game.

So, just who exactly is Hidemaro Fujibayashi? Even if he isn’t the face of Zelda, and he rarely gives interviews, he is still one of the most important figures in the Zelda franchise.

Big Things Come From Small Beginnings…

Image: Nintendo
Born on October 1st, 1972 in the Kyoto Prefecture, Hidemaro Fujibayashi had reportedly been interested in The Legend of Zelda series right from the start. In a 2001 interview with Japan’s Nintendo Online Magazine (translated by Game Design Gazette), Fujibayashi talked about his love of the franchise, even remembering the day he bought the first game in the series, The Legend of Zelda:

“In the case of the Famicom game, I went straight to the toy store to buy it. I remember running to buy it, fist tight around my New Year’s money.”

When it comes to creating Zelda games, mind, Fujibayashi had three (well, technically four) titles under his belt before he even joined Nintendo: Oracles of Ages/Seasons, Four Swords, and The Minish Cap were all developed by Capcom, with Fujibayashi at the helm of every project.

Image: Capcom
In fact, Fujibayashi’s game development career started with Capcom in 1995, eventually moving on to Production Studio 1 where he directed the Disney-meets-Tetris title Magical Tetris Challenge.

With Zelda, however, Fujibayashi didn’t automatically fall into the director’s chair. His initial work on the Oracles games initially consisted of pooling together ideas before eventually presenting them to none other than Shigeru Miyamoto, a meeting which would initially cause Fujibayashi to have, as he said in the Nintendo Online Magazine interview, “palpitations”:

“I went to the presentation with [Yoshiki] Okamoto, but it was my first time working directly with him, too. And to top it off, he told me we were going to meet a well-known member from another company, so I ended up having palpitations. Miyamoto-san remained silent throughout the entire presentation, too, so I was quite nervous.”

According to Fujibayashi, Miyamoto approved of the project immediately and the rest, of course, is history. The Oracles games remain firm fan favourites to this very day and are currently available via the Nintendo Switch Online service.

It’s not known exactly when or why Fujibayashi was appointed as the director after he met with Miyamoto, but it’s clear that this initial work was enough for Capcom and Nintendo to keep him on board for future games.

You’re With The Big Boys Now
Fujibayashi would go on to direct both Four Swords and The Minish Cap (also available on NSO via the Expansion Pack) at Capcom before making the leap over to Nintendo itself sometime around 2005– although there’s no official confirmation on when he made the move. Surprise surprise, he was assigned to The Legend of Zelda team and would work extensively on The Phantom Hourglass for the DS as its subdirector and writer. Arguably his biggest breakthrough, however, would come with his first console Zelda title, Skyward Sword.

Image: Nintendo Life / Nintendo
In an ‘Iwata Asks’ interview focusing on Skyward Sword, Satoru Iwata would liken Fujibayashi’s move from 2D to 3D Zelda to Miyamoto’s own experience moving on from the Super NES and Game Boy to the N64 with Super Mario 64. Iwata said that the shift was “the best environment for developing a 3D game, and I think you must have experienced the same thing that Miyamoto-san did back then”.

Fujibayashi would then go on to say that much of what he has accomplished can be attributed to what he has learned directly from Miyamoto:

“When I’ve made games, I’ve always thought, “Why is it that Miyamoto-san’s games sell for 10 or 20 years?” What I thought was that Miyamoto-san’s games are about intuition rather than culture. To make an extreme example, the exciting points would be the same for cavemen as it is for us who are in the present. You don’t need linguistic or cultural knowledge.”

This design philosophy can most certainly be felt in Fujibayashi’s next (and some would argue best) game, a title that would pose “an even higher hurdle” in Fujibayashi’s words: Breath of the Wild.

Fujibayashi’s Masterpiece(s)
Development commenced almost immediately after Skyward Sword shipped with the key goal being to rework many of the franchise’s conventions. In an interview with The Verge back in 2017, Fujibayashi stated that he, Aonuma, and Miyamoto had been working closely together on the project from the beginning, and so “when it came to changing Zelda, what we wanted to change and our perspective aligned”:

“…when we tried to explain to [the producers] that we wanted to make this kind of Zelda, one that doesn’t have one set path, I think we all had the same vision of what that would look like when it came to fruition.”

Despite that freedom, Fujibayashi was never concerned about Breath of the Wild being too difficult, telling The Verge that “monitor testing and playtesting” actually reinforced to the team that this was the reight direction to take the franchise in.

Image: Nintendo
In terms of what kind of games directly inspired Fujibayashi during his work on Breath of the Wild, an interview with Edge Magazine (via Nintendo Everything) revealed that he played a lot of Minecraft and Terraria, and could “learn from the sense of adventure, exploration and how it inspired curiosity”. Although it might be tough to make direct comparisons between these titles and Breath of the Wild, you can certainly see what he’s getting at in terms of making discoveries through player agency.

Breath of the Wild launched to critical acclaim across the board and is widely regarded as one of the greatest games of all time – and certainly one of the greatest Zelda games. We think so, at least.

With the eventual sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, Fujibayashi believed that the team would be able to create new gameplay within the same world thanks to their extensive knowledge of Hyrule from Breath of the Wild. According to a 2023 ‘Ask the Developer’ interview, he received no objections when presenting this to his team as a core concept.

One of the biggest changes came with the implementation of vertical gameplay via the Sky Islands and Depths. Given that the same Hyrule was being reused from Breath of the Wild, Fujibayashi “wanted to make a drastic change” (via Wired) in terms of the way you explore, and so the idea of adding more vertical gameplay to counteract the horizontal gameplay found in the previous title was decided upon to achieve this particular goal.

With the addition of verticality, it’s easy to see certain parallels between Tears of the Kingdom and Fujibayashi’s first console title, Skyward Sword. Both feature islands floating in the sky, and diving from one of these islands and landing directly on the surface of the world below is something he had wanted to implement for years before finally achieving his goal in Tears of the Kingdom:

“I’ve wanted to make this happen ever since The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Thinking how satisfying it’d be to dive from the sky and jump directly into the water. In this title, diving is not just about enjoying an exhilarating, seamless means of travel, but it also brings more value as a tool for gathering information about the surface by surveying it from above.”

So, What’s Next?
The folks over at Nintendo seemingly never rest, so chances are Fujibayashi, Aonuma, and the entire Zelda team are already hard at work conceptualising the next major entry in the series. Given that it’s likely several years away at this point, however, it’s not entirely out of the question to ponder Aonuma’s eventual retirement. After all, in a recent interview with Game Informer, he stated that “as I’ve continued at Nintendo, and now in the position and age [60] that I am, I do notice that it’s not as easy to spearhead a massive project”.

We can’t imagine that Aonuma will leave anytime soon, but if he does, we suspect Fujibayashi will remain in place to take charge of the Zelda franchise. After all, in the same interview, Aonuma said the following:

“I am 100 percent confident that if I leave it up to Mr. Fujibayashi, he’s going to make it work”

So, it seems reasonable to assume that, should Fujibayashi not wish to take on Aonuma’s role as producer, then he will at least maintain his current senior role for the foreseeable future.

Regardless of what might happen going forward, it’s clear that Fujibayashi has proven himself an exemplary and vitally important leader within Nintendo. Under his leadership, we’ve gotten cult classics like The Minish Cap and Oracle of Ages/Seasons, while more recent projects have resulted in what many could easily claim to be two of the finest games in the medium with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. It seems that for Fujibayashi, the sky is truly the limit, and we can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

What do you make of Fujibayashi’s significant contributions to the Zelda franchise? Do you want to see more titles from him in the future? Let us know your thoughts with a comment down below.