Echoes of Wisdom Began Development as a Dungeon Maker Game Starring Link

In the newest addition of Nintendo’s Ask the Developer interview series, Zelda Series Producer Eiji Aonuma, along with Grezzo Director Satoshi Terada, and Echoes of Wisdom Game Director Tomomi Sano sat down to discuss the development on the upcoming Zelda title.

According to the developers, once the key foundations for Echoes of Wisdom were set, Grezzo decided to take the game into what they called the “edit dungeon” approach:

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

Satoshi 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.

Eiji 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.

While this portion of the interview does confirm where the concept of the Echoes system came from, it’s then revealed by Sano that development for the game when it was originally dungeon maker-focused lasted a whole year. As to why it took so long for Aonuma to “upend the tea table” on Echoes of Wisdom‘s original idea, he just wanted to see what Grezzo could come up with:

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…

Tomomi 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) But there’s a reason it took a year to upend the tea table.

After all, you can’t really see the potential for ideas to develop into solid gameplay until you can verify features and their feel, so I wanted them to try making it first. I felt that the “edit dungeon” feature they showed me had significant potential to be developed into a new way of playing the Legend of Zelda games if the gameplay was changed to use “echoes” instead. So, I thought it would be good to expand in that direction and could be even more interesting that way. However, there was one concern. Even though game consoles have larger memory capacity nowadays, the more things players can copy and paste, the more game memory is used up. I was really worried that it would crash the game.

According to Aonuma, he was so adamant in seeing how hard they could push the capabilities of what Grezzo could pull off on the Nintendo Switch with the Echoes system. Sano then discusses her initial reaction to being able to create things in this Hyrule, regardless of perspective:

But wasn’t it you, Aonuma-san, despite that concern, who ultimately made the decision to upend the tea table?

Aonuma: It certainly was. (Laughs) But I thought we could make something more interesting if we pushed harder. I wasn’t sure how far we could go, but in the end, it was amazing to see how many echoes it was possible to create in the game. It must have been difficult to manage the game memory.

Sano: I did notice from the very beginning that copying new things is a lot of fun in itself. The “edit dungeon” concept involved copying various things during your adventure out on the game field, then bringing them back to create a dungeon in a dedicated place. When I was on this adventure of collecting things to copy, I noticed that if I pasted something that was only present in the side-view perspective into a location with a top-down perspective, it worked just fine. In 2D games, even if an object looks the same, it’s often made and used completely differently between top-down view and side view. But Grezzo created a single object that would function in both views.

Sano continues her point by giving an example of how a single object like a Thwomp can be used in Echoes of Wisdom for something differently if put into a top-down view:

The same object could be used in multiple points of view?

Sano: Yes, it’s the same object, but it seems to work differently when you look at it from another angle, which is interesting to us. For example, in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, there is an enemy called a Thwomp that falls from above and crushes things below and only appears in the side-view perspective. If you copy that and paste it into the top view, you can drop it from above and crush things below, or conversely, you can ride on the Thwomp and use it to climb upward. I was surprised to see that even though the functions are the same, you can use it in new ways just by changing the viewing angle.

Aonuma: That felt outrageously fun.

Sano: I thought to myself, “Wow, I never knew this was possible.” Of course, creating dungeons was fun, but being able to copy various objects and use them in different places was even more fun.

A short clip is also provided from the original “edit dungeon” concept for Echoes of Wisdom:

 

Continuing on from their discussion about the different perspectives, the developers were then asked if Grezzo was aware of using both points of view during early development on the title. It’s here that Terada reveals how his team had been talking with Nintendo about using the “edit dungeon” concept since production wrapped on the Link’s Awakening remake, even going so far as having a prototype build completed:

Were the developers at Grezzo conscious of combining top-down views and side views even when prototyping the “edit dungeon” gameplay?

Terada: After we finished developing the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, we really liked its world, so we talked with Nintendo about creating the “edit dungeon” concept, which we were prototyping back then, in a similar vein. Since the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening had areas with both top-down and side views, naturally everyone at Grezzo assumed from the start that we would create both top-down and side views in this title. However, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is set on an island with a smaller map size and was a remake, so it was limited in terms of what could be added during development. So, for this new game, we created the prototype with the idea of expanding on what we all wanted to do.

Aonuma: When you encounter a Thwomp in a side-scrolling game, it looks like a thin rectangle, as you can see only the front of it, but when you look at it from a different angle, it looks like a giant rock that makes a loud crash sound when it falls. Its presence as an object is completely altered.

Sano: Even if you use the exact same function, changing your perspective can help you better understand how to use it. A question like, “How high does this object go up and down?” is easier to check with the side view, and “How big is this object?” has a clearer answer with the top-down view. As we progressed through development, we felt that the changes in perspective made it twice as satisfying.

Some Zelda fans have expressed that they’d love to see a dungeon maker game where you can create your own Hyrule of sorts. In December 2023, Eiji Aonuma didn’t deny that something like that would ever happen, but he did feel the Zonai abilities in Tears of the Kingdom would fulfill those creative needs. With that being said, I’m glad Grezzo saw the potential they had with their dungeon maker mode from their work on the Link’s Awakening remake, even if it isn’t exactly what we’re getting with Echoes of Wisdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is set to release on September 26th, 2024.

What do you think about Echoes of Wisdom starting off as a dungeon maker title? Is it something that you believe Nintendo could still pull off? Let us know in the comments below!

Source: Nintendo

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