 Hyrule Warriors, Age of Calamity brings together the Legend of Zelda and Dynasty Warriors yet again, as Nintendo collaborates with Koei Tecmo to create a prequel to Breath of the Wild. Unlike the previous Hyrule Warriors titles, this is intended as an extension of the classic Zelda experience, with Nintendo and Koei Tecmo working together closely. This kind of close collaboration, and the chance to make a proper Zelda experience, is exactly what the developers at Koei Tecmo wanted all along. It seems that they had to prove themselves worthy to Nintendo before they were given this chance. Koei Tecmo are known for doing one thing extremely well. They single-handedly rule the Musou genre of games, which pits the player against waves of hundreds, if not thousands, of easily defeatable enemies. While this formula is most famously applied to the studio's Dynasty Warriors series, they've also made many other games in various franchises using the same gameplay concept. Several have been released for Nintendo consoles, so the two companies have a healthy relationship. As successful as these Musou games might be, a team at Koei Tecmo, led by Yosuke Hayashi, wanted to do more than stick to the traditional formula. They wanted to make a Zelda game. They put together a pitch, with many of the standard Zelda tropes, dungeons, puzzles, and large, spectacle-filled boss fights. But, because it's what they do best, they also wanted the game to feature plenty of their famous Musou gameplay. Yosuke presented this to overseer of the Zelda brand, Aji Arnuma, saying, Let's rethink our preconceived ideas of what we can do with a Zelda game. In truth, Aji didn't have much experience with Dynasty Warriors games, but he was playing one of Koei Tecmo's other Musou titles at the time, One Piece, Pirate Warrior. He started thinking of the game's core mechanics, of epic battles and base management, and began pondering how they could fit into Zelda. He said, This is not something that had been in previous Zelda games, and so it was a very exciting idea for me to connect with. Development progressed well for a while. The plan was to allow Koei Tecmo to create a more or less traditional Zelda game, infused with some of the gameplay elements from their own series. Then Shigeru Miyamoto caught wind of the project, and stepped in to intervene. This is something of a theme this week. According to Aji Arnuma, Shigeru upended the tea table, objecting to the game playing so much like an ordinary Zelda title. He said, No, that should not be the case. What we're doing here is grafting Zelda onto the Dynasty Warrior's experience. And so the project changed directions. A lot of Koei Tecmo's work on traditional Zelda dungeon gameplay was scrapped, with the team giving a larger focus to the Dynasty Warrior's style battles. The resulting game was a fun exploration of the world of Zelda, but it wasn't beholden to any specific canon, and a lot of new ideas came from Koei Tecmo rather than Nintendo. While it might have been nice to see the originally planned version of Hyrule Warriors, the finished game certainly proved popular, and everyone at Koei Tecmo and Nintendo were pleased with their work. From here, Koei Tecmo moved on to work on various other crossovers, flexing their development skills, and proving that they could handle more than the Dynasty Warrior's gameplay. For example, when the team-built Persona 5 Scramble, their collaboration partners at Atlas wanted the opposite approach to Hyrule Warriors. Koei Tecmo were told, if you want to make it an IP based on the Persona series, you want to bring out the Persona quality more than usual. Atlas pushed for a lot of RPG elements from the Persona series to be included in the game, so that it was more than just a hack and slash. While working on the sequel to Breath of the Wild, Ajiya Numa approached Koei Tecmo again. For Age of Calamity, he envisaged something that felt more like an extension of the seminal Zelda title, a game which used the Musou gameplay to show huge battles that were only hinted at in Breath of the Wild. Thus, Koei Tecmo were able to make something a lot more like the Zelda game they'd always wanted to make, working closely with Nintendo to create a fitting prequel to Breath of the Wild. The moral of the story is that sometimes it can take time to convince people to trust your creative vision. Koei Tecmo needed to prove themselves to Nintendo before they were given the chance to make the kind of Zelda game they'd wanted to. Trust yourself and try your best. With time, others will recognise your talents.