Monolith Soft expands Zelda role as remake rumors swirl

Monolith Soft is no longer just filling gaps in Zelda development. Its team now spans field and dungeon design, enemy battles, NPC conversations, character art and modeling, landscape art, VFX, and cinematic event scenes, a spread that puts the Tokyo studio much closer to the series’ creative center.

That shift came into focus in a set of Monolith Soft interviews published on April 6, 7 and 8, 2026, featuring Nintendo Zelda franchise general manager Daiki Iwamoto and Monolith Soft producer Yasuhiro Fujita. Fujita said the relationship began with support work on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword in 2011, then widened with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, its DLC, and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. He said Monolith Soft joined Breath of the Wild just before the first public footage was shown, after Nintendo had already locked in the game’s direction and art style.

By Tears of the Kingdom, the partnership looked very different. Monolith Soft said its model team came in at the start of development and helped tackle the Fuse system, which had to support 120,000 weapon-and-material combinations. That kind of technical load matters inside Nintendo because it is the sort of problem that can slow a project, strain QA, and force every discipline to coordinate more tightly. Monolith Soft said Nintendo shared tools and know-how to make the system work reliably.

The collaboration also reached into character work. Monolith Soft said it worked closely with Nintendo on enemy designs, including Ganondorf, who was described in the interview as having a mysterious and alluring charm rather than simply reading as strong or evil. That detail is telling for a company that lives and dies by polish. Zelda is not just about shipping content; it is about sustaining a tone, a silhouette and a sense of place across years of development.

Iwamoto’s comment points to the bigger corporate shift. He said he would like Monolith Soft to play a central role as a strong partner in creating a unique Zelda title from scratch, and the studio said its team now works more by “thinking and creating together” with Nintendo than it did during Skyward Sword. For a studio founded on October 1, 1999 and made 100% Nintendo-owned in December 2024, that is a visible change in power and trust.

The remake rumors around Ocarina of Time are still just that, rumors. The more concrete story is that Nintendo is publicly showcasing Monolith Soft as a deeper internal creative engine, one with the capacity to help build future Zelda worlds, not merely support them. That raises the odds that whatever comes next, whether a new sequel or a remake, will have more ambition baked in from the start.