Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom Devs Discuss Fan Reception, Criticisms, And Future Top-Down Entries

Earlier this year, Nintendo released The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, a new top-down entry in the series featuring Princess Zelda as the main playable heroine.

In an interview with BBC Newsbeat, series producer Eiji Aonuma along with game directors Tomomi Sano and Satoshi Terada spoke a bit about how the game was received by fans. Their comments include their thoughts following the game’s initial announcement, addressing criticisms of the frame rate and menu scrolling, as well as the potential for future top-down entries in the series.

You can read a summary of the key points below, or check out the full interview here.

The Game’s Initial Reception

• The team was more concerned about fans’ reception to the game’s echoes mechanic, rather than having Princess Zelda as the main playable character.
• Terada: “Whether or not the Zelda fans would accept these new elements was something I was watching over nervously,”
• Sano:  “[I was] relieved to see that it was being accepted positively, and was really watching closely over my smartphone to see people’s reactions the following day as well”.

Response to Criticisms

• The game runs at a variable frame rate, which fans criticized for negatively affecting the gameplay experience. Sano says that they felt it was “the best option available”.
• Fans criticized the game for having long scrolling menus, a complaint carried over from Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom. The team believes that this format encourages creativity among players, as they might see options they might have otherwise overlooked by going straight to their desired item or echo.
  • Terada: “One of the essences of this game is being able to figure out different ways of using each of these echoes. And so in that sense we wanted players to fall upon and see the echoes that they may not have noticed or have been using while they’re sorting through all the echoes that they have.”

The Future of Top-Down Zelda

Aonuma: “I think through this game we were able to satisfy a lot of players, and so this game made me realise that there’s still a lot of possibility for these top-down Zelda games as well. And so we will also have those dynamic 3D Zeldas as well, but in addition to that, we’re also hoping that we can continue with these 2D top-down Zeldas.”

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.