Tag: Open World

In a recent E3 interview, Eiji Aonuma gave hints and details regarding the open world in the next Zelda entry for the Wii U. He also discussed exploration rewards and how players will set goals and overcome obstacles in this new open setting, giving players a small idea of how Zelda Wii U’s open world will be like. Hit the jump to hear what Aonuma said!

Eiji Aonuma supposedly pays very close attention to the desires fans put out there for the future of the series. While he obviously won’t tell what areas of the web he pays attention to, the fact remains that he is aware of widespread desires for certain aspects of the series. In this example, he is aware people really desire Zelda to be more open-world minded.

Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker were very open worlds, while Skyward Sword was very closed. Is there a chance we’ll see that openness again?

Aonuma: I think the most open-world Zelda we’ve had so far has been Wind Waker, just because you were able to sail the ocean and go all over the islands. When creating a game, we look at what is the core, kernel gameplay. You try to construct the game around that, and making that core mechanic the easiest to access. For Skyward Sword, that kind of narrowed, focused world helped us with that, but at the same time it meant you didn’t have that wide-open world to explore. We’ve heard the complaint about lack of openness from a lot of fans. As we’re deciding what the core gameplay mechanic was, we have that open-world desire at the forefront of our minds, and we’re trying to figure out how to incorporate that as well.

What could this mean? Find my thoughts after the jump!

It’s unquestionable that Ocarina of Time was a revolution for Zelda, Nintendo, and the entire video game industry. While its foundation was instantly recognizable as the standard Zelda formula, it raised the bar for 3D action games and set precedents that are still followed to this day. While one radical opinion is that Zelda games haven’t changed since the release of the original title, a much more common one (an opinion I still disagree with) is that there haven’t been…