Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild Takes Home A Major Game Of The Year Award

Nintendo's Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was one of the most critically acclaimed and best-selling games of the year across any platform. Eiji Aonuma and the rest of the more than 300-head crew at Nintendo were able to celebrate a recent win for the ultimate GOTY voted on by the gamers in the U.K., as part of the Golden Joystick Awards.

Nintendo posted the video of the head designers on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild thanking fans via the Nintendo UK YouTube channel, where executive producer Eiji Aonuma was joined by art director, Satoru Takizawa; technical director, Takuhiro Dohta; and sound director, Hajime Wakai, to accept and thank fans for the U.K's Golden Joystick Award for the ultimate Game of the Year.

Each of the team members talked about their specific role in helping to shape the look and feel of the game. This included Takizawa-san explaining how Nintendo goes back to the drawing board for every single Legend of Zelda title and creates all new artful experiences for gamers to indulge in with every new entry in the long-running series. The newest game combines the cel-shaded look of Wind Waker with the slightly more mature look from Skyward Sword, giving gamers a unique looking experience for Breath of the Wild.

Dohta-san, the technical director, explained that the team also pushed the gameplay for the series forward by utilizing the open-air design, which centered around encouraging players to explore and adventure throughout the vast lands of Hyrule. The concept was highly praised by both critics and gamers alike since there was so much to discover and the large world had a lot of little secrets tucked away and plenty of specialties to uncover along the way.

Aonuma notes that game director Mr. Fujibayashi was unable to join the others to thank the fans in the video since he was busy working on the second major DLC pack for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild called The Champions' Ballad. The expansion will release before 2017 is out and it delves deeper into the backstory for Zelda and the other four Divine Beast champions who were tasked with guarding Hyrule against Calamity Ganon's forces.

The first DLC pack for the game was well received and it stands to reason that gamers will likely enjoy the second major DLC pack, which will feature all new content to explore, new dungeons to crawl, new items to acquire, and new gear to loot.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild didn't have an easy go of it, though. The game was matched up against heavy hitters like Super Mario Odyssey, Horizon: Zero Dawn, Destiny 2, Assassin's Creed; Origins and Persona 5 to name but a few. All of those games have sold quite well and reviewed exceptionally well, too. Nevertheless, gamers felt as if Nintendo's Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was the game that deserved to come out on top.