Zelda U Is Being Designed Around “Today’s Lifestyle”

YouTube star iJustine recently posted an interview on her channel that she conducted with Shigeru Miyamoto and Bill Trinen from Nintendo. She covered several topics but, of course, the new Zelda game came up eventually. Check out what Miyamoto had to say, courtesy of Bill Trinen’s translating:

“iJustine: Do you see (Zelda U) as one of those games that you can go to complete a certain mission and end up doing fifty things along the way?
Miyamoto: …there may even be times when you forget what your goal is because you’re doing other things on the side… What we’re trying to do is design it in a way that you don’t necessarily have to sit down and play it for a super long time, but kind of more matched to today’s lifestyle where you can think for a little bit and say ‘oh, I just wanna play for a little bit today’ and do this one thing, and get that done and then take a break.”

What I gather from this is that there will likely be a plethora of side quests to perform in this massive world, enough so that you could easily be distracted by them on the way to your main objective. They also seem to be designed in such a way that there are clear benchmarks and shorter side quests so that you can easily play in short sessions when you don’t, say, have the time for an entire dungeon.

I’m pretty excited about this idea. It sounds to me like it will help breathe life into a giant world that some are worried will be too empty, and it brings to mind the Bomber’s Notebook quests from Majora’s Mask. You could easily get lost performing side quests in that game, completely ignoring the main objective for hours at a time if you wished. If they can bring us something that engaging and high-quality throughout a much larger world, I am all for it.

But what do you think? Are you excited for having lots of side quests to do, and being able to play in short bursts if you don’t have the time for longer sessions? Or would you prefer something different?