Interview:IGN February 12th 2015
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IGN February 12th 2015
Date | February 17, 2015 | |
Interviewee | ||
Interviewer | IGN | |
Description | Aonuma comments on some of the changes in Majora's Mask 3D and the teases leading up to its release. | |
Source | ||
IGN: How long have you wanted to talk about Zelda: Majora' [sic] Mask 3D? I feel like, as press, we've been pestering you for a while about it.
Eiji Aonuma: It has been quite a while that I've really wanted to talk about this game, as it turns out. We had tons of questions at Comic-Con about the masks – the little bit of a teaser that was in A Link Between Worlds – and so I knew after that, we needed to get moving quickly.
IGN: Were all the teases intentional? The mask, the hand in the toilet bowl in Skyward Sword, the summer-themed wallpaper with Link in a yukata, holding a fan, and wearing Majora's Mask over his head. Were those all done to that end?
Aonuma: The yukata Link wallpaper was actually something that a person in PR here wanted to put out. It was actually something that thematically fits in well, because people tend to wear yukata at the summer festival in Japan. At the summer festivals, it's also really common to find people selling masks of various popular characters for kids. So we were actually linking those two together in that particular case, just because it worked thematically, not necessarily because there was a really strong intent to remake Majora's Mask just yet, at that point. But I was really interested to see the reaction that people had to it, and that certainly helped me in how I was thinking about the matter.
As for the hand that comes out of the toilet in Skyward Sword, that was certainly something that you saw in Majora's Mask as well, but again, there was no strong intent to link those two together specifically. We mostly viewed that scene as something that would be interesting to happen in the kind of school setting where it did.
As for the hand that comes out of the toilet in Skyward Sword, that was certainly something that you saw in Majora's Mask as well, but again, there was no strong intent to link those two together specifically. We mostly viewed that scene as something that would be interesting to happen in the kind of school setting where it did.
IGN: You've joked that the reason to do Ocarina of Time 3D is because you wanted to see the Water Temple changed. When did Majora's Mask 3D development start, and what were the goals at the start of that project?
Aonuma: The development of the 3DS version of Majora's Mask started right after the 3DS version of Ocarina of Time finished. We had realized if it's possible to create such an easy-to-play version of Ocarina of Time on a handheld like this, then couldn't we do something like that for Majora's Mask as well?
We felt like this was a really good fit for a handheld in particular, because Majora's Mask is the sort of game that requires you to stay focused. If you have to sit in front of your TV the whole time to have that experience, it's kind of difficult and inconvenient. But if you can play it anywhere and take it with you, that's much more compatible with the experience it offers. There were also a lot of UI elements and gameplay-type considerations that we wanted to address in the same sort of way that we did in Ocarina of Time, on a similar level to the kind of changes we were thinking about with the experience of players in the Water Temple.
We felt like this was a really good fit for a handheld in particular, because Majora's Mask is the sort of game that requires you to stay focused. If you have to sit in front of your TV the whole time to have that experience, it's kind of difficult and inconvenient. But if you can play it anywhere and take it with you, that's much more compatible with the experience it offers. There were also a lot of UI elements and gameplay-type considerations that we wanted to address in the same sort of way that we did in Ocarina of Time, on a similar level to the kind of changes we were thinking about with the experience of players in the Water Temple.
IGN: So what are some of those changes?
Aonuma: It's interesting that you bring up the Water Temple, because I feel like dealing with water levels, especially in Zelda games, is really kind of a sticking point for us. It's something that always feels hard when you get to that point and you have to start thinking about it. Similarly, there's a point in Majora's Mask where you take on the form of a Zora and you're exploring this underwater dungeon trying to solve the puzzles there, but it's so difficult to navigate. Underwater levels always have a bit of that problem. I thought I had really thought through all the control issues at the original time of development, but when I came back to it I realized, no, we really do need to change some of this. I feel like what we ended up with is this very comfortable experience compared to the previous iteration, so I hope you do have a chance to try it out.
IGN: Can you put a number on how many changes are in Majora's Mask 3D?
Aonuma: That's a really hard thing to put a number on. If we talked about every single thing that was different in any way, I mean, that would be a tremendously large number. But if we limit it to just really big changes, I think that would probably be around 20 to 30 or so.