Celda Was First Tested on Link and Moblins During Development of Wind Waker

Remember when The Wind Waker was first revealed? The backlash of the new art style was brutal. After the epic sensation of Ocarina of Time and the dark direction of Majora’s Mask, some fans weren’t ready for a cel-shaded Zelda game. Although most people now appreciate Nintendo’s choice, one has to wonder what the hell Nintendo was thinking when they thought of The Wind Waker.

In a recent Iwata Asks, the team behind The Wind Waker HD elaborated on the creation of Celda. Take a look at what they had to say!

Iwata: The looks improved, as expected. At Nintendo Space World the year before, in 2000 when we announced the Nintendo GameCube, we showed a demo video of an evolved form of Link from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, so a lot of people were expecting something along those lines.

Aonuma: Yes. But it was difficult for us to imagine ourselves easily coming up with new ideas and expanding on that world if we had chosen that path. Of course, while a game is more than its visuals, it was going to be made mostly by the same people, and the ideas we had within the same team has its limits.

Takizawa: Everyone on the core staff making the game at that time had a sense that proceeding in that direction didn’t feel quite right. Then one day, out of the blue, Haruhana-san hit us with that new Link.

Iwata: Just out of the blue?

Aonuma: Yeah, it sure was.

Takizawa: The instant I saw that drawing, my designer’s spirit came to life and I thought, “With a character like that, we can give him actions that will look and feel good no matter how he moves!”

Aonuma: Soon after you saw that, you drew a picture of a moblin.

Takizawa: Yes. I immediately drew inspiration from Haruhana-san’s sketch and dashed off a Moblin, thinking, “Then the enemy should look like this!”

Aonuma: Then we began thinking about how we could have them fight, and it suddenly got interesting, with ideas coming out at an incredible speed, and I thought, “This’ll work!”

Iwata: Haruhana-san’s sketch was a detonator for the core staff that set off a bunch of ideas.

Takizawa: Animations came along pretty quickly, too. I remember how, when we first had the initial images, Aonuma-san was all cool, like “Oh, this is what you’re thinking… Hmm…” But when he saw the demo, he was like “Whoa! They’re so cute they really have grown on me!”

Everyone: (laughs)

Aonuma: Looking back at the history of Zelda games, that happens a lot. For Ocarina of Time as well, once we had Link and a certain kind of enemy, gameplay started developing rapidly.

Iwata: Making the action structure and the interaction elements become the starting point for everything else. Once those things are done things rapidly starts branching out.

Aonuma: In the case of The Wind Waker, the visuals for Link and the Moblins started everything. Things quickly shaped up around how we would have them fight.

We’re ten years out of the introduction of Celda. Do you love it? Did you hate it before? Sound off in the comments.

Source: Iwata Asks