Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom Features Series’ First Female Director, Started Out With “Edit Dungeon” Concept

Nintendo has published an Ask The Developer interview with the team behind The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom, providing some behind-the-scenes insight into the development of the game.

The interview features Eiji Aonuma, the producer of The Legend Of Zelda series, Tomomi Sano the Director of Echoes Of Wisdom from Nintendo’s side, and Satoshi Terada, the game’s Director from Grezzo’s side. Notably, Sano is the first female director for a Legend Of Zelda game, which is fitting since the title features Princess Zelda as the main character.

In the interview, the team discuss Sano’s status as the series’ first female director, Grezzo’s role in continuing the 2D Zelda line of games, as well as how Echoes Of Wisdom began as a “Dungeon Editor” type of game before transitioning into its current state.

You can check out the full interview here, or read some snippets below:

By the way, Sano-san is the first female director of the Legend of Zelda series. What other titles have you worked on in the past?

Sano: Prior to this project, my main role was to support the director. As for the remakes that Grezzo worked on, I was involved in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D (5) and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. I was also involved in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (6), as well as some of the titles in the Mario & Luigi series (7) released prior to Mario & Luigi™: Brothership, which will be released in November this year.

Aonuma: I almost always ask her to be engaged in the Legend of Zelda remakes that Grezzo works on.

 

You used the phrase “a brand-new top-down Legend of Zelda game.” What led to the development of a new game this time?

Aonuma: Actually, I’ve always wanted to establish a 2D top-down 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 Legend of Zelda game for the Nintendo Switch generation. Grezzo had established an excellent way of reviving the top-down Legend of Zelda experience for a modern era, so I thought we could develop something completely new that had never been done before.

 

So, after the large-scale pitch for ideas, two foundations were set. What kind of gameplay did that translate to?

Terada: We were exploring a few different ways to play the game in parallel. In one approach, Link could copy and paste various objects, such as doors and candlesticks, to create original dungeons. During this exploration phase, this idea was called an “edit dungeon” because players could create their own Legend of Zelda gameplay.

Aonuma: They showed it to me and told me to give it a try. As I played, I started thinking that while it’s fun to create your own dungeon and let other people play it, it’s also not so bad to place items that can be copied and pasted in the game field, and create gameplay where they can be used to fight enemies. That was the beginning of gameplay using “echoes.” The gameplay was shifted from creating dungeons up until then to using copied-and-pasted items as tools to further your own adventure.

 

I see, so that’s how the idea of using “echoes” was developed. Did you make this change in gameplay early on in development?

Aonuma: Umm…

Sano: It’d been about a year since we’d started prototyping with the “edit dungeon” idea.

Terada: …It’d been that long.

Sano: Upending the tea table after a year. (Laughs)

Aonuma: Everyone else was developing the game with dungeon creation in mind, but I was right next to them thinking of something different. (Laughs)

The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom launches on September 26th 2024 for Switch.

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