Aonuma on Zelda conventions, Hyrule Warriors, and Zelda U.

Aonuma goes and does it again. Thanks to some recent comments made by Eiji Aonuma, we are allowed to see a whole new light on the development of Hyrule Warriors, and are given a hint on Zelda U.

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Giant Bomb just recently covered an article on some quips by longtime Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma. These quotes are some of the most interesting of the bunch given. This first one discusses how Hyrule Warriors came into being.

“I happened to be playing another Warriors game at that time,” said Aonuma. “As I was playing it, I was imagining what it might look like if it took place in the Zelda universe. The timing couldn’t have been better! When I approached Mr. Miyamoto about the idea of moving forward with a project like this, he approved it.”

However, in a company with such a long history like Nintendo, it’s easy to find your share of traditionalists who would be opposed to change:

“One interesting thing that’s happened is that when we talk to Nintendo and ask them about ideas and say ‘hey, what about doing this?’ They’re generally fairly positive. ‘Yeah, try new things!’ They’ll give us ideas. ‘Hey, why don’t you try this out?’ It’s an open discussion and very creative. But when we bring them back and discuss those ideas with the Zelda fans internally, they come back and say ‘no, that’s not Zelda, you can’t do that!’ [laughs] They are the ones who are really strict about what you can and can’t do.”

It can be tough to deal with fans of a game, especially those who are in your own company. Aonuma has shown himself to be a shrewd talker when it comes to the development of his titles, such as when he argued with his staff on tough to solve puzzles in A Link Between Worlds. Seeing how that game came out, I have great confidence in Aonuma’s ability to find a good balance between tradition and new.

Finally; Anomua drops a little tidbit on what Hyrule Warriors means for the development of Zelda U, and what lessons he took from this game:

“You have this map and there are battle areas all across this expansive battlefield. Things are happening, regardless of whether or not you’re in this particular space. How you approach reclaiming these different areas on the map really changes how you progress through the game. So it’s really, really dynamic, it’s really, really expansive. It also increases replay value because if you change your strategy, your process will also change. Having worked on a game that has this kind of expansive battlefield style has really opened my eyes to new discoveries, and my thought and approach to gameplay has really deepened. I see many, many possibilities now that I’ve worked on this project with Tecmo Koei.”

This quote in particular fascinates me. Aonuma talks about a dynamic world where things happen regardless of where you are. This sort of system reminds me of Majora’s Mask, how time always kept moving and things would happen regardless of where you are.

If you take this quote in conjunction with Aonuma’s former statement about roaming boss battles, it paints a very ambitious future for Zelda U. Back in the old days, it would have been a technological nightmare to have dynamic events happening outside of MMOs or games on timers. It’s a fairly uncommon feature in Japanese action adventure games especially. However, Aonuma has always been the sort of man to look at games outside the ones he produces, even if they don’t directly influence his final products. So you can guarantee that he has a varied library of ideas to fall back on.

What do you think of these new developments? Be sure to give your opinion in the comments section below.

Source: Giant Bomb