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, Terada, and Aonuma discussed the difficulties the team faced when trying to make the game with Link as the protagonist and why they swapped him out for Princess Zelda:
Echoes of Wisdom Devs on Making Zelda the Protagonist:
Eiji Aonuma: We were initially thinking that Link would be the protagonist. But when we focused on the gameplay using echoes and had Link copying and pasting things into the game field, the sword and shield got in the way. If you have a sword and a shield, you can just fight using those. There’s no need to rely on the monsters’ power, right?
Satoshi Terada: So, we thought, “What if players could use only echoes at first in order to understand the gameplay, and then as the game progresses, they get the sword and shield?”. But even then, we thought that once they got the sword and shield, they would stop using echoes.
Eiji Aonuma: That’s just your typical The Legend of Zelda game. What are we going to do? (Laughs)
Satoshi Terada: Echoes plus a sword and shield… They just didn’t work well together. There is a wide variety of echoes, so to get the most out of the gameplay, we decided to stick with echoes only.
Eiji Aonuma: If that’s the case, it must be someone who doesn’t fight with a sword and shield, right? Who in the series would be a good fit for these powers and bring their insight to them? Well, that would have to be Princess Zelda.
Over the years we’ve been working on The Legend of Zelda series, many people have often asked us, “Will Princess Zelda ever be the protagonist?” and said, “I’d like to play as Princess Zelda”. When asked this question, I’ve always thought, “Of course, as long as it makes sense for the game and does justice to her as a character to be the protagonist”, and answered that way. I had been trying in vain to figure out what would really do justice to her. But when I saw the team struggling to identify the ideal protagonist for this game, I thought, this is exactly the game for her!
For the full interview, why not click here to check out Ask the Developer Vol. 13, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – Chapter 3:
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
