zelda

It’s long been agreed by the world’s consortium of top game designers that all that glitters is not gold. For some of these twenty-first century wizards, it may be the pearly smile of a computer generated goddess armed with state of the art weaponry, adoring fans at a convention, or a million-selling title. But the greatest treasure, more precious than any on earth that designers would sell their children for? Genuine emotion, real tears from gamers, baby. That’s exactly what Shigeru Miyamoto got at E3 2004’s Nintendo press conference when the teaser trailer for the new The Legend of Zelda game for the Nintendo GameCube exploded onto the screen. Tentatively titled “The Legend of Zelda” the sixty seconds of game play shimmered with saturated colors, mature overtones, and a new-fangled horseback fighting sequence that nimbly stole the oxygen from the room. There were few dry eyes when the lights when up. If you wanted to see grown gamers cry, this was the place.

After eighteen years, Link has grown into a young man.

To clue the press in on what to expect in Link’s latest adventure, and explain his dramatic maturation, Shigeru Miyamoto and Legend of Zelda producer, Eiji Aonuma, conducted a roundtable discussion at the expo Wednesday evening.

“Link has changed because there were many, many people who wanted Link to change,” Miyamoto contended. “But there’s also another reason. In developing Wind Waker we knew that we’d be developing a game where Link was a young boy and in trying to choose the best graphical style for portraying a young boy we decided the “tooned”, cell shaded approach was the best choice. And we also wanted to create a very unique world on the Nintendo GameCube.

“But since then, it left us with a very big question: What are we going to do when we decide to make Link a teen again? We made several different models, various versions of Link, and we decided that the best style for expressing Link at that age was something closer to the production design of ‘Ocarnia of Time’.”

“I’m sure all of you saw the video at this point,” said Aonuma, “and one thing I want to point out is that it’s not CG. It’s all running on real time, it’s all running on the game engine, and the video was made by someone playing a version of the game, taping it and editing the sequences together to create the video.”

After the video’s first screening, chatter erupted about Link’s new equestrian prowess. This is a first for the franchise, one that punctuates Link’s growth into a young adulthood. “Since Ocarina of Time, Mr. Miyamoto talked about how he’d like to be able to fight on horseback so we could have mounted battle scenes with Link swinging his sword. Unfortunately we weren’t able to do that on the N64 titles.”

Questions and Answers

How is the game coming along? How long has the game been in development?

Miyamoto: By E3 next year you can play the demo. As for how far? The game is running. It’s now just a matter of putting in the finishing touches.

What will be the game’s storyline?

Aonuma: Well generally you know we like to present the main theme to you when we present the entire game in a format you can play. You’ll be happy to know we have a strong theme. One thing I can say is that in the past we’ve focused on a young Link growing into a more mature Link. This time we’re going to be focusing heavily on the more mature, grown-up Link and with that in mind we’re going to be looking into ways to express him as an older individual by implementing certain features into the game.

Will the game play be the same as Wind Waker?

Aonuma: To show Link in his grown-up role, the question is going to be what kind of control scheme should we implement that reflects Link’s maturity.

Miyamoto: One of the things I’ve wanted to see in the eighteen years of the franchise is more puzzle-solving and so I’ve asked Mr. Aonuma to go with that in the game’s development.

Is this game about Link returning to Hyrule and is this the true sequel to “Ocarina”?

Aonuma: Unfortunately I can’t reveal that at this time. Wait a little longer.

Will there be cut scenes and voice talent this time?

Aonuma: I don’t want Link to talk very much. Maybe I’ll record my own voice and that will be Link’s voice! [laughs] I’ll have to learn how to speak English, of course.

Bron: Nintendo.com

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