Development of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

The beginning
Twilight Princess began when the director, Eiji Aonuma, wanted to make another realistic Zelda after working on The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. He explained that this wasn't his only aim while delving into the project, though, as he also wanted to "shake up the Zelda concept" as well. This was the reason behind suggesting Link's transformation early on in development, which got quite the reaction among the team. "Miyamoto-san really gave me a piece of his mind after that!" said Aonuma, "I remember him telling me: 'It's a lot harder to make a four-legged animal than it is to make a two-legged human, you know!'"

Aonuma continued saying that he never expected the project to grow so large. He explained that the staff on the team, some of which consisted of people who have never worked on a Zelda game, wanted to make this the biggest game in the series. Eiji once even said to himself that the game was getting out of hand, and while he tried to tone it down a bit, but said that "when something has developed naturally to that size, it becomes somewhat difficult to apply the brakes". So the solution was to simply fill in the large spaces with more fun activities to partake in - more puzzles and more NPC's to interact with.