Multiplayer in Zelda is a high hurdle

Towards the end of Wired’s interview with Eiji Aonuma, they questioned him about the potential for multiplayer in upcoming Zelda titles. We’ve only seen multiplayer twice in the franchise, with Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures, both of which used a similar mechanic for that multiplayer experience.

Aonuma did say he’s thought about it since the release of Four Swords, but the actual implementation is something that’s plagued him for some time. Hit the jump for more!

Wired: It seems like a lot of Nintendo’s games are going in a multiplayer direction right now. I was surprised to see the Tokyo team, instead of doing something like Super Mario Galaxy 3, do a 4-playerMario game. I’m wondering if something like Zelda: Four Swords might get revisited on Wii U.

Aonuma: Actually, multi-play has been a high hurdle for me, something that’s plagued me for a long time. We did come out with Four Swords but I don’t think that offered a whole lot of surprises for the user. I still believe there’s one Link; the one-Link philosophy works for Zelda. But there are other ways to incorporate kind of a multiplayer experience. One of those ways is the Tingle bottle that we announced. It uses Miiverse. In Wind Waker there’s this vast kind of sea world that you’re traveling in, and there are lots of Links exploring this space. Through the Tingle bottle, that’s where that communication happens with those other Links. They may not physically appear in that space, but you know of their presence through the messages that they leave. They share their experiences, things that they’ve discovered through their explorations, and so again you can feel their presence without their physically being there. That’s a kind of multiplayer, if you think about it. With the new Wii U Zelda, we’re coming up with new ideas that still allow the one-Link idea but are the same type of multiplayer.

So we’re probably not going to see anything like Four Swords again soon. With Zelda, Nintendo doesn’t exactly have as much liberty when experimenting with ideas like this because, as Aonuma said, “I still believe there’s one Link; the one-Link philosophy works for Zelda.”

And a multi-Link game either wouldn’t make sense or would be awkward to make fit in Zelda. Perhaps in the future, a single-Link multiplayer game can be made, but from what Aonuma said here, that might be pretty far off.

Of course, you can read the rest of the interview at Wired here.

What did you think? Let us know in the comments!

Source: Wired