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 their involvement with Echoes of Wisdom, it was heavily discussed how involved Grezzo was in coming up with new ideas for a new kind of Zelda game:
Echoes of Wisdom Devs on Coming Up with New Ideas for a New Game:
Eiji Aonuma: To mention a major change, at the start of development, we asked Grezzo employees to pitch internally their ideas for this new The Legend of Zelda game. More specifically, we asked Grezzo, “If you were to make the next new game, what kind of game would you like it to be?”. We had the opportunity to hear ideas from members of Grezzo, which they came up with freely and proposed.
Satoshi Terada: It was a big event for Grezzo. After all the remakes we had been working on, this was the first time we were challenged with a new game project from the conceptual stage. There was even a time when every single one of Grezzo’s employees was thinking about ideas. (Laughs)
Thanks to this, we came up with so many ideas that it took us three days just to go over and review them. Since it was a Legend of Zelda project, everyone worked hard on proposals and presented them in front of Aonuma-san with pounding hearts. (Laughs)
Eiji Aonuma: I’ve worked with Grezzo for a long time, though… (Laughs) But when we were working on remakes, we didn’t really get the chance to hear everyone’s ideas. This time, we asked everyone, not only the project planners for the game, but also the designers and programmers, to come up with lots of ideas.
Tomomi Sano: Dozens of people participated, and even though they didn’t brainstorm together or anything like that, surprisingly a number of similar ideas were proposed. But that’s not a bad thing at all. I think everyone had a common idea of something they wanted to do in a game, and it just perfectly suited the world of The Legend of Zelda.
Satoshi Terada: So, we went through the ideas that came out of the pitch and picked out a variety that looked good. From there, we decided to move forward with a focus on copy-and-paste gameplay and gameplay that combines top-down view and side view.
Eiji Aonuma: These were the two basic elements, and from there, I asked them to think of ways to add some freedom. Having worked on games in The Legend of Zelda series over the years, we started to feel that fans may not continue playing this franchise unless they can think independently and try various things freely on their own, rather than following a set path.
Even when it comes to solving puzzles – in a game in The Legend of Zelda series, having the excitement of solving puzzles in your own unique way makes the game “Legend of Zelda-like”. Hence, we need to increase the degree of freedom to achieve that. With this in mind, I asked Grezzo to use those two elements as a foundation for the gameplay and add freedom on top of it.
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
