After The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, it seemed almost inevitable that we'd see a new Hyrule Warriors title. According to a new interview with 4Gamer (thanks, Nintendo Everything), the folks over at both Nintendo and Koei Tecmo thought the same thing, and so it didn't take long for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment to get the green light.
Nintendo veteran Eiji Aonuma seemed especially confident in Koei Tecmo's interest in the project, stating to TOTK director Hidemaro Fujibayashi that they shouldn't make the first move and instead wait for Koei Tecmo to reach out. As expected, it did so almost immediately after TOTK's release.
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As for producer Yosuke Hayashi, it only took a weekend of playing TOTK to realise that a game set during the Imprisoning War would be worthwhile. He states that TOTK was "sending us a message" to create a new title, and so he pitched the idea to Ryoyta Matsushita who, coincidentally, had already begun to put a plan together.
Here's a snippet from the interview with Hayashi and Matsushita from Koei Tecmo, and Eiji Aonuma from Nintendo:
Hayashi: We all eagerly awaited the release of Tears of the Kingdom – I personally played the weekend immediately following its release. I felt like the game was sending us a message of something like “Make a Warriors game set in the time of the Imprisoning War!” After the weekend I spoke to Matsushita saying, “Let’s make it!” and we drew up a plan.
Matsushita: In truth, I had also actually been putting a plan together before he spoke to me (laughs). I felt like the ‘seeds’ of a Warriors game were scattered all over the place.
Aonuma: On the Nintendo side, during Tears of the Kingdom’s development, Fujibayashi established in detail exactly what the Imprisoning War was. And after it was finished, he said to me, “Maybe we could ask Koei Tecmo this time too?”, but I responded with “No, let’s wait to hear from Koei Tecmo first” (laughs). It was almost immediately after that that they contacted us.
Age of Imprisonment turned out to be a roaring success, earning a score of 9/10 in our review. We said that "Lessons have been learned from both Hyrule Warriors and Age of Calamity, resulting in a game that balances big-time story with top-notch combat that's got proper depth to it".