Ask the Developer Vol. 13, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – Chapter 3
24/09/2024
Some of the images and videos shown in text were created during development.
This article has been translated from the original Japanese content.
Chapter 3: Princess Zelda is on her own adventure
An important element of this game is that – for the first time in The Legend of Zelda series – Princess Zelda is the protagonist of her own adventure.
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?
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.
Aonuma:
That's just your typical The Legend of Zelda game. What are we going to do? (Laughs)
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.
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.
But didn't it take a lot of courage to make Princess Zelda the protagonist for the first time in this series, given its long history?
Aonuma:
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!
I see. So you finally had an opportunity to answer this long-debated question.
Aonuma:
That being said, we had a lot of trouble deciding on Princess Zelda's outfit, for example. Since she is going on an adventure, we did consider giving her some more typical adventure clothing. Yet we wondered if it'd look strange to have such an outfit ready, as if it was already known that she'd be leaving from the get-go.
We tried looking for a suitable outfit for Princess Zelda from previous games as well. But I couldn't find anything that really clicked...
I see you eventually landed on a hood.
Terada:
That's the hood that Link wears at the beginning of the game, and it's there to represent Link, who has become strong after many adventures.
Aonuma:
So, when I was shown Link's new outfit for this title, it occurred to me, "Princess Zelda goes on a journey secretly, so wouldn't it make sense if she wears a hood as well?".
Ah! So it's not like you thought of putting a hood on Link because Princess Zelda will be wearing one later on, but rather, Link was initially designed with the hood.
Sano:
Correct. Also, we thought it'd be touching if Princess Zelda inherited the hood that Link wore.
Aonuma:
One of the themes for Princess Zelda this time was to find Link, so we thought that her wearing his hood would be a good reminder of her purpose to find him. By the way, I mentioned earlier how the sword and shield got in the way of the echoes gameplay, but we still wanted to implement gameplay that used a sword and shield. So we thought it would make sense if Zelda imitated Link's abilities using echoes, and that's how the swordfighter form came about.
I see. A lot of things have come out of the relationship between Link and Zelda. Since it seems like there are a lot of things to consider with Princess Zelda as the main character, what went into the story's development?
Aonuma:
Well, first it was difficult to find a motive to send Princess Zelda on an adventure. In Link's case, he is destined to be a hero, so if there are monsters, he sets out on a journey to defeat them, and that makes sense. But in the case of Princess Zelda, as she is royalty, we needed to carefully craft the setting of why she really needs to leave her castle when there are people around her who can fight.
Terada:
But the more we thought about it, the harder it was to come up with a convincing enough reason for Princess Zelda to leave for an adventure. (Laughs)
Aonuma:
Just having monsters roaming around Hyrule wouldn't be enough to motivate Princess Zelda to directly fight them. We tried brainstorming all sorts of ideas for what kind of situation would necessitate that the princess take matters into her own hands.
Terada:
One staff member, as if Princess Zelda were his own child, said, "We can't send the princess on an adventure yet. I'd go instead under these circumstances!". (Laughs)
Aonuma:
So we eventually decided that the setting of this game would involve lots of large, mysterious rifts appearing in Hyrule. We had to come up with something that wasn't a monster but something that would make a princess think, "This is bad! I have to do something!".
A princess is a daughter of the rulers of a country. So I thought that the motivation to fight is that the world of Hyrule is being destroyed and changed.
Sano:
Even after we decided to make rifts a part of the game's setting, the design was still a challenge. The story is that inside the rifts lies the Still World, where people and things go when they're swallowed up. No one has ever seen a place like that.
It's easy to say, "The ground cracked, and below that is a world of void". But the designers from Grezzo who had to develop those ideas into visuals were scratching their heads with questions like, “How does the rift expand?”, “How deep does it go?” and, “How do we show the transition between the game field and the world of void?”. (Laughs)
Terada:
And, since they appear in various places around Hyrule, they need to be able to be placed anywhere, including on the ground, on top of buildings, on water, or in lava, etc. We had to keep in mind that the placements of rifts could change based on level design or that the rifts could appear or disappear at any time at different points in the story. It was extremely difficult to create something visually new under such restrictions.
There's a mysterious space inside the rifts that's different from the regular world.
Aonuma:
I didn't want to depict anything too cruel in a world where the main protagonist isn't a fighter per se, but I still needed to deliver a sense of danger approaching Hyrule. It was quite challenging to create that.
Sano:
We also had a hard time developing the scene in which the king is swallowed by a rift, which is one of Princess Zelda's biggest motivations for setting out on her journey.
Terada:
Though creating the initial world setting was difficult, we also thought about what role Link would play in the game. What would happen to the sword if the gameplay focused on echoes? Can this character even exist in this game? The Legend of Zelda series has a grand historical lineage. How should I put it? How far should we delve into the lore of The Legend of Zelda?
There is certainly a history of Hyrule that ties the entire series together. If you take too many liberties, you have to be careful whether it's still "Legend of Zelda-like".
Aonuma:
Right, it's very difficult to balance how much to add or change. At first, we were intentionally leaving any parts that might delve into Hyrule's history vague, but partway through, we just couldn't find a way forward that way... So, around last summer, we decided to hold a boot camp and work out the story there.
Terada:
It truly was a boot camp, indeed.
Aonuma:
Even there, Grezzo didn't offer any in-depth suggestions about the story at first. So, I went back to the hotel, quickly wrote a script that would work, and brought it with me the next day. Then, we all contributed various elements that often occur in The Legend of Zelda series to the script. Using this method, we eventually completed the game's story.
Sano:
Over a few sessions, we spent nine days at the boot camps in total, working from morning until night. (Laughs)
Aonuma:
These days, even for us, it's not easy to touch on the lore of The Legend of Zelda series. When you address the history of The Legend of Zelda, you naturally have to be conscious of how things have been expressed previously in the series. But when we think about a new game, we need to think about new developments while being mindful of the past games in the series, so the scope of what you can do becomes increasingly narrow if you think in the same way every time.
On top of that, because the series has been running for a long time, players are interested in its history and lore. So, when we've adopted a game plot that was not in line with the other games in the series because we prioritised the gameplay, we've been told by our fans that it didn't make sense. We realised that even if the developers didn't intend to make nonsensical changes, players could interpret otherwise.
I see. So the developers need to take those kinds of player reactions into consideration when creating a story.
Aonuma:
Even with this title, we had no intention of establishing any new theories in the series' lore. Link goes on an adventure every time and experiences many things. But Princess Zelda has always had to take a step back in The Legend of Zelda series.
But this time, Princess Zelda is on her own adventure, so the story takes on a different perspective than before. I think that's why we were able to create something new in terms of the story as well.
Continue to Chapter 4: That authentic "Legend of Zelda-like" feeling
