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Wyrdness on 03 April 2019
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Jumpin said:
Wyrdness said:

The number is relevant as people are saying around 60% of Monolith when it's barely nothing compared to the total of people Nintendo have under them the Zelda team alone are bigger than Monolith having double checked the 5000 plus includes EPD although the statistics number posted by Nintendo is different to what you say here, also looking at the 300 figure you cited nowhere does it cite that Monolith were included in that figure as Aonuma said the team had 300 people Monolith maybe the extra 60 or so people as Monoliths' 200 employee figure now is after a recruitment drive 2 years after BOTW release, they were around 120 people when BOTW started and finished. During SS' development Monolith were even smaller and were around 90 or so people.

Those 12 only focused on open world design the rest had to do everything else that goes with it yeah they helped with a key part of the game but then the was still so much more to do hence why even though Xenoblade X and BOTW's map have similar designs the applications are very different, much like Intelligent Systems now 1-up are utilized to handle programming Monolith are utilized for map design with in Nintendo it doesn't however mean they can do a full on Zelda on their own because 60% of their team helped develop the map assets.

Double checked what source?

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/corporate/en/outline/index.html

Nintendo's own website gives a figure of 5869 employees globally, including 2,271 employees at Nintendo Co. LTD 

Even if the team was 300 + 57 from Monolithsoft (16% of the total, with 50% of the design staff) is NOT a "drop in the ocean" as you say. Especially when Monolithsoft's portion, the world map, is the starring attraction of the game.

Monoliths employee count during development of SS and BOTW:

https://nintendoeverything.com/a-rough-estimate-of-monolith-softs-staff-count-over-the-years/

During SS they had around 80 people and they were working on XBC at the time so I don't see more than 20 people working on Zelda back then, when BOTW started they had 108 people and were around 120 when it completed so that's around 60 people, 20-60 people compared to the remaining 2,211 people going by your number is a drop in the ocean for Nintendo as Monolith are still one of the smallest teams an example of this is Retro who had more employees than Monolith at their peak but their absence has barely affected Nintendo's performance and they've been replace as the fan favourite studio (who were hyped up by people to be a Naughty Dog) by the latter due to Nintendo pushing the latter more, the same can easily happen to Monolith as well their work is appreciated but doesn't mean they're now the foundations holding it all together don't get carried away.

The star attraction for BOTW isn't the map it's the game's use and application of the map, many games have good open world maps but don't use them as well, Monolith map a good map yes but the Zelda team's application of it is why it stands out among open worlds.