'Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild' News: Director on Shrines, Dungeons, and Timelines

In a recent interview, "Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and the game's producer Eiji Aonuma explained why there was a lack of dungeons and why the shrines were kept short. Furthermore, the pair discussed the timeline of the "Zelda" franchise.

According to reports, a lot of decisions were made regarding the shrines and dungeons of "Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild," which happens to be the franchise's attempt at introducing a more open world format. Fujibayashi revealed that the lack of dungeons was the result of their efforts to maximize the ratio of finding shrines and players exploring "Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild." Although the original plan was to keep the shrines long, the development team worried that the players might spend too much time exploring the dungeon and as such, decided to keep it at approximately ten minutes each.

The developers also apparently considered that fans of the game title would be disappointed with that duration, which resulted in the making of bigger dungeons that were limited in number. Aonuma also revealed that the shrines double as warp points, which explains why more focus was given to these areas than on developing more dungeons. Aside from addressing the fans' concern, Fujibayashi and Aonuma also talked about where "Breath of the Wild" fits in the "Zelda" timeline.

"I wouldn't say that we're not concerned with the timeline," Fujibayashi said, as reported by My Nintendo News. "It's obviously something that we know is very important to people, and they do a lot of research on. But I think at this point, we're not really at the stage where we want to talk about where Breath of the Wild is in the timeline. I think, as with the pixelated food it's something that at this point we want to leave up to people's imaginations."

"Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" is now available for Nintendo Switch and Wii U.