You do realize that none of Aonuma's quotes points to troubled development or the game being half finished, right? He was only talking about how they were rethinking traditional Zelda conventions. Also the game didn't go dark for years after reveal. It was showed off every year at least once after reveal, such as at TGA
Yes, and lootboxes are for player choice, and respecting star wars canon. Looking for the exact words you are looking for is foolish, and obviously purposefully such. No one is going to come straight out and state a huge highly anticipated game that is going to be coming out in the near future was having development problems, so this is a really really disingenious point you are trying to make, effectively willfull obtusity. Remember nintendo bragging about how much trouble metroid prime had during development right before its release? Oh, no? Those interviews being more candid didn't happen until years after the game became a phenomenon? Eh, just a coincidence right?
Here is what he states
1. We never created a zelda game like this, we didnt know where to start.
2 then "but we had this team that worked on creating a lot of critically acclaimed huge worlds.
3. Our Zelda team stepped aside so they could show us what they know how to do.
4. they told us our traditions dont make sense and a lot of people basically hate what they have been doing to the series since oot.
5. I looked at these traditions one by one, burned them down, and changed everything.
Now you can look at this and say, herr blur blur, he never said those specific words, even though the context makes it pretty clear, but you would be being purposefully obtuse. The game started out one way, by one team, who was making yet another dull traditional zelda, and then the monolith soft team was introduced, and turned everything on its head in the best way possible. It is not a coincidence breath of the wild traversal is designed EXACTLY like a monolithsoft openworld game is (Lots of landmarks, landmarks become teleport locations, player visually finds where they want to go by seeing something interesting and heading for it, as opposed to following dot on map), and pretty much NOTHING like a modern 3d zelda.
Its also pretty obvious something happened, when the original "This is in engine" reveal looked like a very well into production game, but never scrolled or followed link into new locations, the camera merely panned, and then the scene cut, like every time. Very unlike a xeno engine game with its fantastic streaming open world tech. But very much like the traditional zelda engine that loads individual areas. And then the next gameplay reveal looked nothing like it, almost like they just switched engines and scraped together enough assets to make something barely presentable, but nothing like what was shown before.... Before going dark for a year+ where no media was shown at all, and re-revealing as breath of the wild as we know it today.
Its almost like if you line that up with what aunoma was talking about, you get a match. Its almost like doing what breath of the wild did is not a simple thing that takes no effort, no opportunity cost, and doesn't effect other things you would have normally done if you didn't have to completely change everything and make a huge from scratch effort you basically havent done since the series went 3d... such as not being able to make proper dungeons, because you literally spent all your time reinventing the wheel into plane instead, and instead sprinkling all the ideas and puzzles you had for dungeons that never materialized into shrines spread across the map.
But not really, because completely changing the stagnanting oot path, into a completely different path that better represents what the series was always meant to be is nothing and takes no time or effort, nor would remotely affect any other aspect of development.... And the director of the franchise stating otherwise means nothing, because he didn't say the word 'trouble' specifically.
