Hyrule Warriors was Originally More Zelda than Dynasty Warriors

While Hyrule Warriors plays much like Dynasty Warriors with The Legend of Zelda as its main theme, it was originally intended to play even more like a traditional Link adventure.

In an interview with Nintendo Life, Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma and Koei Tecmo developmental producer Yosuke Hayashi mentioned a lot of the changes that were implemented throughout Hyrule Warriors' development. In partuclar, Hyrule Warriors was originally intended to be a lot closer to its dungeon-crawling source material, featuring a mash-up of previous Zelda characters. Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of The Legend of Zelda and just about every other noteworthy franchise Nintendo has to offer, said he wanted things to be different and much more inline with the Dynasty Warriors experience, so he asked for the game to be changed.

"It was a reversal of the original proposal from Hayashi-san, which was adding elements of Dynasty Warriors onto the Zelda franchise," Aonuma said. "It ended up being the other way around based on Miyamoto’s direction."

"It was really trying to strike that balance of making a game that Zelda fans will enjoy that is different from a typical Zelda game, that has enough elements that people will enjoy but also not losing Zelda fans," Hayashi added. "We ourselves are Zelda fans as well, so we had to ask ourselves the question of what is it that makes a Zelda game, and how many of those elements do we need to include. Up until the very end, we kept adding different elements to the game until we struck a balance that we were happy with."

Whether or not it plays more like Dynasty Warriors or The Legend of Zelda, Hyrule Warriors launches on Sept. 26 exclusively on the Wii U.

Say what you want about changing the Zelda formula, but it better start with Link sleeping in.