 Hyrule Warrior's Age of Calamity is filled with diverse, unique characters, but the one that gave the developers at Koei Tecmo the most trouble by far was none other than Princess Zelda. When asked about which character was the most difficult to design, Age of Calamity director, Ryutomatsushita, said, I think it's Princess Zelda. While she also serves as the most important representation of the Zelda series as a Her character always has to have a sense of delicacy in all her scenes. It was a difficult challenge for us to figure out a way to get that character to do warrior's style action sequences. While Breath of the Wild's incarnation of Zelda is intelligent, capable and resourceful, she's not much of a natural born warrior. She's a lover, not a fighter. Indeed, when considering characters for Super Smash Bros Ultimate, Masahiro Sakurai rejected Breath of the Wild Zelda. He said, With the legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild, I borrowed an early version of the game for two days, ran around all the areas, saw the ending, and realised for the first time, hmm, I guess we can't really have Breath of the Wild's Princess Zelda as a fighter. So why then, if Zelda caused so many headaches for the developers of Age of Calamity, did they work so hard to find a way to make her playable? Musou games like the Hyrule Warriors series are built around having a diverse range of characters for players to try out, but with Age of Calamity, the game's setting made it clear to the team that Zelda and Link needed to be central to the story. Matsushita says that when he first heard Nintendo's plan for the game, he thought to himself, I'm in trouble, finding a way to tell this story seemed daunting, said Matsushita. In the story leading up to the battle to counter the Calamity, it is important to meet the four heroes, that Link, Zelda and Impa are firmly in the story, even on the way up to that point. Of course, there was a big problem with putting Link at the heart of a story-rich, character-driven game. Said Matsushita, Link doesn't have lines. With one main character who never speaks, Zelda has to take centre stage in all the conversations in the game. The team recognised the importance of giving her appropriate representation in the team's character, but what kind of character should she be? How would an academic fight in the middle of a war? Matsushita says that, quote, it took a lot of trial and error to find an appropriate way for Zelda to participate in fights. The solution was to treat her as a fairly standard Musou game archetype, a magic user, albeit using Shika technology instead of traditional magic. Matsushita said that giving Zelda this role helped her to fit into one of the common default character types that Koei Tecmo often use in their games. To balance of the action game, there is an orthodox swordsman, Link, in the early stage, and Zelda, who fights like a wizard. Thus, by giving Zelda a role as a magic user, Koei Tecmo managed to give her a move set that suits her studious personality. The moral of the story is that just because something's hard, it doesn't mean it's impossible. Developers of Age of Calamity had to be creative to find the perfect approach to making Zelda playable, but with experimentation, they were able to find an approach that works.