Aonuma Remade Every Boss Fight in MM3D; Didn’t Want Players to Rely on Random Chance

Among the various subjects upon which Aonuma touched in his Iwata Asks discussion was that of the boss fights in Majora’s Mask 3D. As many have noticed from pre-release videos and, now that the game is out, from their own experiences, the fights have been changed rather drastically from their original iterations in the Nintendo 64 version. These alterations were even more drastic that we realized, and with good reason: Aonuma built them up from scratch. His reasoning behind it includes a hope to guide the players to find the bosses’ weaknesses more easily, or at least enable them to do so without relying on random chance.

The relevant part of the discussion is below:

Yamamura: So, instead of giving out or forcing the answers onto the players, we focused our energy on how well we can communicate the meanings of the missions to the players. By doing this, I think we were able to make the challenges more comprehendible while keeping the same level of challenge as the Nintendo 64 version.

Aonuma: A great example for this are the boss battles.

Ooiwa: That’s right; Aonuma-san said that he wanted to change all of the boss battles.

Aonuma: I’ve been saying that all of the boss battles are weird. All of them. When you first face a boss, it is natural to start looking for its weakness so you can figure out where to attack it. However, in the Nintendo 64 version of this game, you couldn’t see the weaknesses at all.

Iwata: This is because you created this game as a challenge for the users to figure it out themselves, right?

Aonuma: This would be all right if the users understood this while they were fighting. However, this turned into a game where players won by randomly attacking the boss, without really figuring out what was its weakness.

Ooiwa: I personally wanted to fix this too. After I found out we had the same concerns, we reconstructed the battles by focusing on making the objective easier to understand, ensuring that there is the “a-ha” moment for the players, and the strategic elements that are needed to take them down wherever possible.

Iwata: So, you’ve remade every single boss fight?

Aonuma: Every single one of them. However, their models are virtually the same as the Nintendo 64 version.

Yamamura: However, the bosses’ movements and strategies to take them down have all changed, so it took about the same effort as creating the stages from scratch.

While I certainly understand wanting to make this game less frustrating for players, it does seem a shame to ease up on an aspect that could be said to add to the unique difficulty of this title. Nevertheless, it is extraordinarily impressive that Aonuma and his team went to such lengths to improve the experience. Additionally, if you’re lost on how Termina has changed since you’ve been away, be sure to take a drop by our comprehensive walkthrough for some tips. Are you enjoying these and other changes made in this remake?

Source: Iwata Asks