Zelda: Tri Force Heroes – more talk of experimenting with 4 players, cut 2-player idea, totem inspiration
The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes features three players rather than four. We’ve heard from the development team a few times now that they did experiment with the latter number, but three Links was ultimately the path that was chosen.
Zelda: Tri Force Heroes director Hiromasa Shikata commented on this once again in an interview with IGN, in which he stated:
“When we tried four player, we definitely wanted to incorporate the totem mechanic, but what happened is that when you totem, the middle two players have nothing to do.”
“When it was four players, the players split up into two and two and each of them would do their own thing. So we thought that three players was the best number to have.”
Shikata also touched on a multiplayer idea that didn’t make it into the final game. Had it been implemented, two players could fuse together.
“[The fused heroes] could only go in one direction if both players wanted to go in that direction. Unfortunately, that made the gameplay very hard, so we had to take that mechanic out.”
Finally, Shikata discussed where the inspiration from the totem mechanic originated from.
“One of my teammates brought a picture of a circus act where people were stacked on top of each other. Looking at that picture, I thought that was a good way to use the 3D feature on the 3DS.”
