Removing Gameplay Restrictions and “Being Mischievous” Drove Echoes of Wisdom’s Development
Posted on September 26 2024 by Nicole Scott
In another installment of Nintendo’s Ask the Developer interview covering The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Zelda Series Producer Eiji Aonuma, Grezzo Director Satoshi Terada, and Game Director Tomomi Sano discussed the joyful yet mischievous nature of the game’s quintessential Echoes. Millions of fans have watched the trailers in awe of the game’s seemingly endless sandbox qualities. The diversity of Echoes alone could create countless solutions to any number of puzzles; combined with Zelda’s Bind ability, they create even more opportunities.
Terada discussed how the game’s creation was a constant balancing act of making the game work cohesively without incorporating anything unintentionally game-breaking:
With not only Echoes, but also the Bind feature, it must have taken a lot of effort to make all of this work and realize the number of possibilities without breaking the gameplay.
Terada: It did. At the beginning of the game’s development, we were thinking a lot about restrictions on gameplay, assuming that certain things would definitely break the game mechanics or stop the game from working properly. We had ideas like being limited to using only 20 echoes in a dungeon. Lots of ideas like these made it so you couldn’t do things you had previously done. But it would have been frustrating for players if they couldn’t use a solution that worked in a previous situation. So one day, we decided to scrap that approach and not impose any restrictions.
Aonuma added to Terada’s sentiments, reaffirming the video game design ideals he holds close about freedom, which inspired the expansiveness of the Era of the Wild.
Aonuma: … When you’re actually playing, it can be more fun not having the restrictions in the first place. And so we asked ourselves, “What do we want to do about this one?”, “Shall we remove it?”, and then gradually began removing those restrictions. Over time, most of the restrictions we thought were necessary at the start of development were no longer needed… It’s strange, isn’t it? It’s almost as if introducing some freedom attracted even more freedom.
Then, Terada revealed that the development team coined a “key phrase” the more the game’s restrictions dissolved — “being mischievous.”
Aonuma: We came up with this key phrase because we wanted to do some things that were really out there. For example, if you roll something like a spike roller along the ground, that’s a lot of work, because it can hit all kinds of things, but if we didn’t allow for this possibility, it wouldn’t be fun. (Laughs) The development team called these kinds of ideas “being mischievous.”
Sano: We created a document explaining what “being mischievous” meant so that everyone could return to this concept if they weren’t sure how to proceed.
Terada: There were three rules: “Be able to paste things however, wherever, and whenever you like.” “Make it possible to complete puzzles using things that aren’t there.”
Sano: And third, “Being able to find uses for Echoes that are so ingenious it almost feels like cheating should be part of what makes this game fun.”
The crew reminisced on a shining example of where this mentality might have crept into a game without their awareness. The Myahm Agana Shrine in Breath of the Wild required players to use the gyro controls to guide a ball through a short maze. However, players discovered a quick exploit: quickly flip the maze over to the flat edge, and you can skip any frustrations altogether.
Aonuma: It’s like finding a secret trick in the game, just like the old days… If this kind of solution isn’t allowed, then it’s not fun. Also, when developing The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, we talked about how the player can kind of “cheat” in many places. I’m always really happy when I manage to solve something in an unexpected way, doing something where I’m not sure if it’s even OK to do it like that. I guess it ties in with the idea of “being mischievous.”
It’s refreshing to hear the development team encourage creative thinking, especially in a puzzle-heavy series. Knowing there is no one right way to do something in Echoes of Wisdom could make each playthrough one-of-a-kind.
Read the expanded interview here!
What do you think about these insider thoughts into the game? We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!
Source: Nintendo
Nicole Scott is writer for Zelda Dungeon from suburban Appalachia. She loves drinking espresso, seeing live music, building LEGO sets, being a completionist, and snuggling her two probably-alien cats, Tizo and Alarielle.
