Monolith Soft tweeted today that the studio is looking to recruit multiple experimented developers to work on a new game part of The Legend of Zelda series.

This technically isn't really surprising as we already knew Monolith Soft is deeply involved in Zelda games since at least Skyward Sword. Back in a 2017 interview, Aonuma also explained how during the development of the last main Zelda game, Breath of The Wild, Monolith Soft's level designers greatly helped to shape the game's open-world, using their expertise from the Xenoblade series especially.

The most interesting things here, however, are the positions Monolith Soft is hiring for. The positions are fully listed on Monolith Soft's recruitment page, and seem to indicate that the company will be even more involved in the future Zelda game:

  • Modeling Artists
  • Animation  Artists
  • Effects Artists
  • Character Control Programmers (For action/battle parts)
  • Tools Programmers
  • Framework Programmers
  • Action part planners
  • Level Designers
  • Quest Planners
  • Main Character Designer
  • Concept Art Designers
  • Character Modelers
  • Map Modelers
  • Ingame animators
  • Event Production Staff
  • Project Managers

Judging by this list, Monolith Soft will be participating in much more than open-world related elements and level designing in a future Zelda game. It's quite surprising to see positions such as Quest Planners or "Main" Character Designer especially, which seems to hint that the game will also have multiple "Sub Character Designers", meaning multiple character design styles, like in Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

In any case, Monolith Soft getting even more involved with The Legend of Zelda makes perfect sense, seeing Breath of The Wild's critical success and the positive reception for Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Both are games whose open-world maps are one of the most praised aspects.

Maybe the next Zelda game will be a bit closer in aspect to future Xenoblade games. In any case, Aonuma also stated back in January 2018 that'd he'd like to keep the feeling of freedom from Breath of the Wild in future Zelda games. Only time will tell how things will go now.