Hyrule Warriors was planned to be more Zelda-like

According to an interview with Zelda series director Eiji Aonuma and Koei Tecmo's Yosuke Hayashi, Hyrule Warriors was originally more Zelda-orientated, with even more characters drawn from Nintendo's universe planned, before Shigeru Miyamoto got involved with the production and initiated a change of direction.

"Mr. Miyamoto came along and up-ended the tea table, saying, 'No, that should not be the case. What we're doing here is grafting Zelda onto the Dynasty Warriors experience,'" Aonuma revealed. "It was a reversal of the original proposal from Hayashi-san, which was adding elements of Dynasty Warriors onto the Zelda franchise. It ended up being the other way around based on Miyamoto's direction."

Koei Tecmo's Yosuke Hayashi then explained to Nintendo Life that after the change of tact it was then a case of adding in Zelda elements "until we struck a balance that we were happy with."

Hyrule Warriors released in Japan last month, and is set to land on European shores on September 19.