Ever since 2017’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild took the Zelda franchise in a new direction, it’s become somewhat common for audiences to point to other game franchises’ similar shifts as “Breath of the Wild moments.” Super Mario Odyssey, Sonic Frontiers, Pokemon Legends: Arceus, Elden Ring, and a handful of other games have been described in these terms, and not just because most of them also had large, open fields of grass waving in the wind. And when Kirby and the Forgotten Land was announced as the first fully 3D mainline Kirby game in the franchise’s 30-year history, Breath of the Wild was once again mentioned.
Speaking to Shinya Kumazaki, general director of the Kirby franchise, and HAL Laboratory expert director Tatsuya Kamiyama at the 2023 Game Developers Conference, I asked them if they felt that Kirby and the Forgotten Land was such a moment for the series. After all, as Kirby’s first fully 3D game, it significantly changed the ways in which players move around levels, explore, and fight as Kirby.
In response, Kumazaki clarified that developer HAL Laboratory doesn’t try to develop Kirby titles with the intent of becoming like any other game in any other series. But then he elaborates further:
“If we're talking about what Breath of the Wild perhaps did for the Zelda series in that it was a revolution, revolutionized the series, I think Kirby [and the] Forgotten Land was kind of at a turning point. And I think you can consider it as the first step in our kind of ongoing moving forward challenge of now also creating 3D Kirby games.”
However, Kumazaki clarified further: just because HAL made one 3D Kirby game, that doesn’t mean the entire future of the franchise is going to follow suit.
“Really, it's about the kind of gameplay experience that we can provide to the players, and how best to optimally bring that gameplay experience that really dictates how we kind of express that in the game,” he says. “It's just that now we have this new genre of 3D as another method, another way, another form of providing that optimal gameplay experience through an optimal Kirby gameplay experience.”
In fact, he told me later that HAL Laboratory’s first concern in making a Kirby game is its gameplay experience, and what the core gameplay idea is. From then, they decide whether the best expression of that is 2D or 3D – though he notes that it was only more recently that HAL felt comfortable enough working in 3D to express their ideas fully (seemingly in part due to various quirks of Kirby’s simple, spherical design). It wasn’t until Kirby’s Blowout Blast — a 3DS eShop title that featured basic 3D gameplay — that the team felt confident enough to make the jump.
“With titles like Air Ride, we had the environment to create a 3D [game]...but it's the creative skill and experience that we didn't have as much. And we wanted to really be able to experiment and see if that's something we can bring to the mainline series…We understood the hurdle for creating a 3D Kirby game was going to be high. And really with Kirby's Blowout [Blast] is when I looked into some of the previous challenges that the series have had, and really tapped into the experience that people have gained, the teams have gained while we're developing for that. And we got to a point where we felt like we had the skills, we had the experience. And when we tested out, it started to kind of come together, and that's why we felt like we're able to provide a 3D Kirby experience that's going to be approachable for many people.”
We also spoke to Kumazaki and Kamiyama about whether or not HAL might remake more Kirby games in the future like Kirby’s Return to Dreamland Deluxe, as well as whether or not the final boss of Forgotten Land was too challenging (or not challenging enough) for players given Kirby’s approachable nature - keep an eye on IGN for these stories later today.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
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