Now You’re Cooking with Power

Back in 2004, Eiji Aonuma gave a presentation called “The Evolution of a Franchise: The Legend of Zelda” (You can hear it here). Today it serves as an interesting look into the series’ transition at a point in time just before the Legend of Zelda™: Twilight Princess game for the Wii was first announced. I interpreted for him for both the presentation as well as a number of interviews he did afterwards, and one of the themes he mentioned in both the interviews and the presentations was cooking. He talked about making a Zelda game as being similar to cooking stew: both are long processes, both require the combination of multiple different ingredients and seasonings, and when cooked together those ingredients combine to complete the overall flavor, which is enhanced. And he noted then that he was interested in making a game about cooking.

The very first time I played through the Great Plateau, I came across apples and mushrooms fairly early on in my wanderings. Of course, I collected them (I do love mushrooms!), and to a certain degree it seemed fairly straightforward that they would serve as food. But soon I was collecting acorns, herbs, raw meat, and spicy peppers, and when I found the old man at his cabin and started combining ingredients, I remembered Aonuma-san’s presentation and realized he finally achieved his goal of making a game about cooking.



The volume of concept art dedicated to designing all the different ingredients is honestly staggering. Here’s one piece—of a decidedly creepy-looking but very nutritious fish.

By now, anyone who has played the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild game is familiar with the cooking system. As I first started to get familiar with it I just wanted to experiment to see what I could create. It was like a new form of puzzle-solving, trying to think of which ingredients would work well together and what quantities would produce the best results.

At one point in development, electrified steaks were a possibility!

I’m still impressed by the sheer variety of ingredients and the number of potential outcomes, both fortuitous and…dubious. And to this day I still find myself spending a lot of time in front of the hearth cooking up meals whenever I play. But one of the early discoveries in our experimentation was a surprise related to crabs.

You can tell even from this early concept art that this little guy’s going to be a troublemaker…

Nate had made it out to the beach, where he found some crab and a campfire with a pot at sunset. Feeling very pleased with himself, he threw some crab in the pot with some spicy peppers, only to find out crab wasn’t used for food recipes—it was for elixirs! This happened to fit perfectly with my own personal description of crustaceans as being “the insects of the sea,” but as an east coaster who grew up on crab, Nate wasn’t having it. He contacted Fujibayashi-san that night and began passionately explaining to the development team how much people like to eat crab, begging him to add crab dishes to the menu.

And here’s Nate, now living the dream…

So when you throw Goron Spice in with your crab and cook it up in the pot, you can think of Nate. I’ll stick to my mushrooms.

—Bill T.