With The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom releasing later this week, the upcoming title, which casts Zelda as its protagonist, instead of Link, is the latest game to to be covered as part of Nintendo’s “Ask the Developer” interview series. Across multiple chapters, many questions were asked of Series Producer, Eiji Aonuma, and Directors, Tomomi Sano, and Satoshi Terada.
When talking about Echoes of Wisdom, Aonuma discusses how he always wanted to separate the 2D games from the 3D ones:
Aonuma on Creating a New 2D Zelda with Echoes of Wisdom:
Eiji Aonuma: The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is a brand new top-down The Legend of Zelda game that revolves around Princess Zelda as the main protagonist. Mysterious rifts appear in the kingdom of Hyrule. People, objects, and even the king of Hyrule and Link are swallowed up by the rifts.
The story centres on Princess Zelda who sets out on an adventure with the ethereal creature Tri, creating imitations of various objects to save the people of Hyrule. Zelda can wave a wand, known as the Tri Rod, to create copies of objects such as tables that she can use as platforms to go up to higher places, or copies of monsters to fight for her. We named these imitated creations “echoes” and packed in all sorts of new ways to play using them.
I’ve always wanted to establish a 2D top-down The Legend of Zelda series that’s separate from the 3D entries like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The game style and how it feels are completely different when the world is viewed in 3D from behind the character to when the world is viewed from a top-down perspective. We wanted to cherish that kind of diversity in The Legend of Zelda series.
Amid all this, we felt that the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening on Nintendo Switch, which we developed with Grezzo, had become our new approach in terms of graphics and gameplay feel, as a top-down The Legend of Zelda game for the Nintendo Switch generation.
Grezzo had established an excellent way of reviving the top-down The Legend of Zelda experience for a modern era, so I thought we could develop something completely new that had never been done before.
For the full interview, why not click here to check out Ask the Developer Vol. 13, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – Chapter 1:
Ask the Developer | The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Participating Developers)
- Eiji Aonuma | Senior Officer, Entertainment Planning & Development Division (and Series Producer)
- Tomomi Sano | Entertainment Planning & Development Division, Production Group No.3 (and Director)
- Satoshi Terada | Director, Grezzo
