Famitsu has just published a massive interview with The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom producer Eiji Aonuma and director Hidemaro Fujibayashi, and although it’s strictly in Japanese and mostly focused on crafting the world in Tears of the Kingdom and how the studio built the sequel following on from Breath of the Wild, one question and answer toward the end has given us a pretty clear indication of whether this year’s hugely-successful Zelda game will wind up receiving any kind of DLC expansion like its predecessor did.
In the interview, Famitsu asks the pair about what’s next for them, pointing out that there’s still plenty of potential in the setting, to Aonuma responds (machine translated via Google):
“There are no plans to release additional content this time, but that’s because I feel like we’ve done everything we can to create fun in that world. In the first place, the reason I decided to make this a sequel to the previous work was because I thought there was value in having a new experience in Hyrule. If that’s the case, if a new reason arises, we might return to the same world again. Whether it’s a sequel or a new work, I think it will be a completely new game, so I hope you’ll look forward to it.”
What we can infer from this is essentially, there aren’t any strict plans for more content within Tears of the Kingdom, but Aonuma isn’t ruling our returning to the world in some form if “a new reason arises” to do so.
Of course, Tears of the Kingdom already has a ton of content to get through as is, and it’s continued to sell by the millions with no signs of slowing. We scored the game a massive 10/10 in our review, saying “The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom builds upon Breath of the Wild’s robust systems to offer an experience that eclipses the original in practically every way. Not only that, but it works incredibly hard to restore some of the things lapsed players might’ve missed from the traditional Zelda experience, and it pays off in droves. While the novelty of its design will never be as impactful as Breath of the Wild’s debut, Tears of the Kingdom is one of the best Zelda experiences you’ll ever have.”
