Aonuma – Reasons for bringing The Wind Waker to HD

A lot of people have been wondering why Nintendo decided to remake The Wind Waker instead of other potential titles. As it turns out, Nintendo did test bringing a few games to the Wii U, each with graphical updates, but Aonuma decided that The Wind Waker most needed the HD retexturing. He also said that in the ten years after the art style was really pushed forward, there’s now a much better fan response to the cel-shaded textures and child version of Link. Hit the jump to read!

From the recent Wired interview with Eiji Aonuma:

Wired: So let’s talk about the Zelda games that are on the table right now. Of all the Zelda games that you could bring back and do an HD version of, why Wind Waker? What is it personally about Wind Waker for you that you wanted to reintroduce it? Because I always liked Wind Waker. I think when it first came out there were a lot of voices that said “I don’t like this directionZelda is going in,” but I think time has shown that it’s a really timeless game.

Aonuma: When we looked at creating a Zelda for Wii U, there were so many possibilities given the HD graphics. But rather than starting from zero, we actually ran a few tests. We tried converting other console games to Wii U. We actually did this with Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. And the result of that was, hmm, those are semi-realistic representations of the Zelda world so we weren’t really surprised with what we got. But with Wind Waker, when we converted that to HD we were really surprised at how great it looked.

We actually started thinking, maybe it was too soon to create that graphic style with the GameCube because of the limitations of the hardware. And we’re finding that we’re able to do what we wanted to do: The vision that we had then was being created thanks to the system specs and the HD graphics. It feels like we’re really able to create the complete Wind Waker experience on Wii U. In addition to the graphics, we’ve also got the GamePad and there’s lots of other pluses that we’re finding in converting to the Wii U system.

When I suggested moving forward with Wind Waker HD, internally there was actually a lot of pushback. The reason for that is, people were saying, “Oh, that Link. People didn’t like that Link.” But in talking to our counterparts in the U.S., that wasn’t actually the case, people didn’t have that negative reaction maybe anymore to that younger Link.

Interesting decisions, and especially interesting that Aonuma’s efforts to move forward with The Wind Waker HD were initially met with pushback. Also intriguing that Aonuma believes the original game for the GameCube wasn’t the full The Wind Waker experience, and with the better hardware and GamePad, The Wind Waker HD will be a complete experience.

Another part of the interview discuses specifically about bigger changes to the game.

Wired: One of the things that I keep hearing about the Wind Waker remake is that there were dungeons that were cut out, and so I’m curious if you’re adding more extra dungeons to the remake.

Aonuma: I know that there have been articles that say we actually had to cut dungeons or remove certain elements, and it is true that I did have to remove certain elements because of scheduling and demands of time. If it was up to me, we’d have added more content: Make the sea even bigger, add islands and puzzles and all these other things, but there’s always the schedule that you need to look out for. If there were sections of the game where you felt that there was supposed to be a dungeon there, or the experience was not what it was meant to be originally it’s probably because we weren’t able to flesh out the architecture; the architecture was not tuned enough. You had traveled this long distance, invested this time, you got somewhere and the experience was very shallow. The reason for that is that tuning was not complete, it’s not that there was a missing dungeon or something was removed. What we’re doing with this version of Wind Waker is, we’re making those adjustments so that the payoff is there. The payoff seems to match your investment.

So this is what really make The Wind Waker HD a full remake. I’m especially curious as to what changes are going to be made for Aonuma to consider the investment matching the payoff.

I’m also curious to see, after The Wind Waker HD is released, whether Aonuma finally thinks the game to be complete, or whether there were still big things that could be done. He already said some plans couldn’t come through because of time restrictions, but whether or not that impacts the game in a big way isn’t certain.

I’m also eager to know what Alex from GenGAME thinks, considering the article he posted about The Wind Waker’s art style. Aonuma does say more about The Wind Waker HD in the full interview, so if you’re curious, head on over to the interview here.

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

Source: Wired