After the critical and commercial success of last year’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it appears that Nintendo is already planning what’s next for The Legend of Zelda franchise. Earlier today, Nintendo posted two new job listings for the franchise on the company’s official Japanese website. The job listings were first discovered and shared on ResetEra by the user guru-guru. The two positions the company is seeking are for a 3DCG designer and a level designer.
The 3DCG designer is tasked with the topographical design, the design of the world, of whatever the project may be. The listing states that the company wants someone with “strong interest and willingness” for the topographical aspects of the series, and who has a history of working on action games. The level designer will be tasked with the planning of enemies, dungeons, fields, and in-game events. The company is specifically looking for someone who has “experience in producing consumer games.”
While these listings don’t imply much of what this project will be, there are a few takeaways from them. The major point would be the level designer’s job of planning in-game events. While not explicitly explained as to what these events could be, it may be a hint at an online multiplayer aspect that many online-focused games have today. A new multiplayer entry in the franchise wouldn’t come as too big of a surprise. In an interview with IGN at E3 2016, longtime series producer Eiji Aonuma stated, “I would like to take what I learned from Breath of the Wild and see if we can somehow fuse those learning points into another multiplayer Zelda.”
However, these listings could be for anything related to the series. The project could be the long rumored Nintendo 3DS remake of the series’ 1993 Game Boy entry The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. It was also recently reported on Twitter that, during the latest earnings meeting, company president Shuntaro Furukawa wants more “DLCs and other contents for big titles that are already out,” so it could be more DLC for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. However, this does contradict with reports from last year that no more new content would come to the game. We will continue to update you as more information comes out about the project in the future.