The Legend of Zelda series has been a staple of gaming for decades, and its latest installment, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, is set to debut on 26th September. In a recent Q&A with Nintendo, the game’s director Tomomi Sano, and producer Eiji Aonuma, revealed the surprising origins of the game’s dungeon maker feature.
The game was initially conceived as a Super Mario Maker-style game, but for dungeons. The team at Grezzo, the game’s developer, was asked to pitch ideas for a new game, and one of the ideas that stood out was a focus on copy-and-paste gameplay and gameplay that combines top-down view and side view.
The team explored various ways to play the game, including an “edit dungeon” concept, where players could create their own dungeons using copied and pasted objects. Aonuma tried out the concept and found it to be “fun to create your own dungeon and let other people play it.” However, he also thought that the idea could be improved.
The team shifted the gameplay from creating dungeons to using copied and pasted items as tools to further the player’s own adventure. This is how the Echo mechanic began. According to Sano, it took about a year to develop the Echo mechanic and integrate it into the game.
What to Expect from The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom
The game is set to debut later this week, and our hands-on preview notes that it “manages to still feel like a proper Zelda game.” With its unique dungeon maker feature and Echo mechanic, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is shaping up to be an exciting new installment in the series.
Key Features of the Game