Monolith Soft, the acclaimed developer behind the Xenoblade Chronicles series, is also known to have collaborated with Nintendo on a number of first-party games, including Mario Kart World, Splatoon 3, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
It's also worked closely with Nintendo on the Zelda series, starting with Skyward Sword in 2011. Now, the company has released a new interview to celebrate its work on Zelda so far. Participants include Yasuhiro Fujita from Monolith Soft and Daiki Iwamoto from Nintendo, with the pair discussing how Monolith came to be involved with the likes of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
The interview is only available in Japanese for the time being, but machine translation has at least been able to provide some idea of which subjects were up for discussion. One highlight includes how the team at Monolith felt a degree of anxiety at working on a Nintendo title with Skyward Sword, with both parties gaining more and more confidence with each successful project.
With Tears of the Kingdom, Monolith became involved from the early stages of development, with team members from Nintendo visiting the studio frequently to discuss ideas.
Needless to say, it's clear that Monolith Soft has become an integral part of Nintendo's development structure. The team will no doubt continue to produce new entries in the Xenoblade Chronicles series going forward, but it'll be interesting to see just how involved it will be in new Zelda titles, too.
Iwamoto-san specifically states "I would like Monolith Soft to play a central role as a strong partner in creating the Zelda series from scratch" at the end of the interview.
Could we possibly see a Zelda title developed solely by Monolith in the future..? Gosh, that's an exciting prospect.