By Jonathon Dornbush

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is built with player freedom and exploration in mind, and to bring this iteration of Hyrule to life, the Nintendo development team looked all the way back to Zelda’s earliest days for inspiration.

Speaking at a GDC 2017 panel, Change and Constant — Breaking Conventions with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, game director Hidemaro Fujibayashi showed that in order to test gameplay ideas and philosophy for the upcoming Zelda game, a 2D prototype was created in the style of the original NES The Legend of Zelda.

“As you can see this is a 2D Zelda, but we used this as a way to experiment,” Fujibayashi said. Specifically, the team was experimenting with what he called multiplicative gameplay, the goal of which was to “make the game so that objects react to the player’s actions and the objects themselves also influence each other.” This idea integrated into an open world, Fujibayashi explained, created an active game that allowed players to find various ways of approaching any given quest or challenge within Hyrule.

“What I wanted to accomplish with this new Zelda was to create a game where the player can truly experience freedom in an expansive playfield,” Fujibayashi said. “And through exploring this field, I wanted the player to be able to experience a new sense of adventure again and again and be able to freely navigate through it as they see fit.

“And when I started to think this way, what came to mind was the original NES Zelda,” he explained, noting that in the original game “every time the screen scrolled, there was a new discovery to be made and a new solution to uncover

That line of thinking led to the above “legitimate prototype of Breath of the Willd,” which Fujibayashi showed off in action. Fujibayashi demonstrated several gameplay experiments in this 2D prototype, such as burning grass or crossing a river using a log, and then compared these clips to the exact same scenarios in the open, 3D world of Breath of the Wild.

The game’s art style wasn’t the only aspect that involved plenty of experimentation. Before deciding on what would become the art style of the game launching on March 3, the Nintendo team tried a number of visual concepts until they settled on Breath of the Wild’s look. Satoru Takizawa, Breath of the Wild’s art director, unveiled earlier visual styles the team tested out, including one dubbed Hyrule Wars, and another alien-themed version called The Legend of Zelda: Invasion. Additionally, he showed off different Link concepts, including one Metroid-esque iteration of the character.

Check out these ideas, along with concept art for what would become Breath of the Wild’s visual style, below:

The final art style came to be described as “refreshing and full-flavored,” according to Takizawa, blending the playability of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker’s colorful art with a more realistic world that would allow players to easily understand how to experiment within the expansive world Fujibayashi had in mind.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild launches for Nintendo Switch and the Wii U on March 3. For more ahead of its launch, check out what two IGN editors thought of Breath of the Wild after several hours with the game.

And for more on Nintendo’s new console, also releasing this Friday, check out our Nintendo Switch review in progress.

Jonathon Dornbush is an Associate Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter counting away the minutes until he can play Zelda @jmdornbush.