The Legend of Zelda Producer Has Bad News for Tears of the Kingdom Fans

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is the undisputed greatest Zelda game. How do we know this? Because it is -- literally -- the highest-rated game on Metacritic ever released. In 2017, Nintendo came close with the release of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And then it repeated this close attempt with 2023's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Both Breath of the Wild and its sequel have been huge hits for Nintendo, even by the high standards of Zelda. Suffice to say, you wouldn't be surprised if it released another game in this style, but apparently that will not be happening. For Zelda fans who didn't love these last two installments, this is great news. For the many who did love these games that is obviously not the greatest news, though if Nintendo delivers something equally great with the next game these fans probably won't care too much. 

Word about the next game in the series comes the way of Eiji Aonuma -- the producer of the series. According to Aonuma, doing "a sequel to a sequel" would be a "little bit wild." To this end, they feel like they perfected the Breath of the Wild style with Tears of the Kingdom, and are ready to move on to something brand new, rather than just iterate again.

"Well that would be a sequel to a sequel, which is getting a little bit wild when you think about it! But as I've mentioned previously, with Tears of the Kingdom, we were seeking to build on top of the world we created with Breath of the Wild and really exhaust the possibilities of what we could put into that world. I think it is – to use a bit of a term – an apotheosis, or the final form of that version of The Legend of Zelda. In that regard, I don't think that we'll be making a direct sequel to a world such as that that we've created."

When will we see this game? Aonuma obviously doesn't say. That said, if there were six years between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, which were similar, it's safe to assume it could be the 2030s before we see the next mainline Zelda game if it is anywhere as ambitious. 

H/T, Game Informer.