"The two-player functionality of Hyrule Warriors is actually something that has traditionally been done in the Dynasty Warriors series, but they’ve changed because of the hardware and the second screen on your GamePad. Instead of having a splitscreen on the television, you have one-player playing on the television and one on the GamePad. When I was talking back about making Zelda more than just a single-player experience? That’s something you will see in the future, maybe next year" - Eiji Aonuma
Utilizing the game pad is very smart move, one that Nintendo has already used for some of their other titles and can add a lot of new features to whats being described as an "open world" Zelda title.. It will be interesting to see what kind of role will be added with the possible multi-player experience. Feel free to read the rest of Aonuma's interview with Game Informer here.