Zelda: Skyward Sword details from the latest Iwata Asks

The seventh volume of the Iwata Asks interviews featuring Zelda: Skyward Sword has gone live. This time, the speakers are comprised of the game’s female staff. The information comes from Hanako Hisada, Tomori Marunami, Tomomi Iwasaki, Akiko Hirono, Asira Hosaka, and Satoru Iwata.

– Hirono tried making characters that made them feel familiar and look cute even if they were weird
– Hirono believes cuteness is a good hook
– Hirono designed the characters so they would have an instantly memorable impact
– Hirono received rough descriptions of characters, but she was able to make them all with rich personalities
– When she was thinking about Zelda’s outfit, she knew that the setting was the sky and thought, “Red is good to set against the blue sky”
– Other ideas came to her; since there’s bird riding, she though “Flowing cloaks would be cool” and “The climate must be cool” since Skyloft is high up in the air
– Hirono talked with people in charge of landforms; the designer leader said, “”All right, let’s make it the kind of world where people wear these kinds of clothes,” and made the characters that way
– Hirono: In thinking about the characters, I prepare a wide variety of illustrations, and sometimes others come up with ideas based on those, and we narrow them down for a few models, for which the planners and scriptwriters come up with distinctive dialogue, and the sound staff add in actual voices, so in the end ideas and material from all kinds of people get tightly packed into a single character.
– Hirono was only given a few details about Ghirahim
– Everyone threw out ideas about him and his image was solidified
– Ghirahim features a lot of diamond shapes because there was an opinion that if there is a shape to serve as a symbol of a character, the character will make a stronger impression
– The people in charge of cinematics/script added many ideas
– Someone in charge of enemies wanted Ghirahim to slither out his tongue in order to emphasize his creepiness
– Staff had to include his tongue in his bone structure
– Ghirahim resulted from everyone’s efforts and made him an intense character
– Some of the staff call Ghirahim Lord Ghira; he’s loved among the staff
– Ghirahim appears numerous times and his dialogue is distinctive
– For the second quest of the volcano, Hosaka thought about how there was a place where every now and then a rock would fall down and lots of scary opponents would rush to attack, and Link would wade in alone
– Hosaka thought about Link getting help from characters who would appear in the dungeon
– The team put in something where Link uses an item to play with the Mogma
– The Mogma cheer for Link quite a bit
– If you fight and beat a strong enemy, they’re like, “Ooh! Well done!”
– Hosaka made it so Link can’t use his items during one area toward the end of the game even though, at that point, he has collected all of the items
– You can use all the items on your way to the field, but then you can’t
– This includes the sword as well
– You will be forced to run from enemies you could easily defeat before
– Hosaka wanted to put in gameplay similar to The Wind Waker when you’re unarmed at the beginning of the game
– The Mogmas will cheer you on for this section
– In terms of items, Iwasaki had to think about where they were made before anything else
– An item from Skyloft was designed/made by the people who live there
– Iwasaki then thought about the environment (example: Skyloft is pretty simple, so they would probably favor simple patterns/designs and would use motifs drawn from things familiar to them such as clouds/birds)
– This is why the first shield that Link gets on Skyloft has a mark like the footprint of a bid
– Items made by the goddess/ancient civilization: thought about having the items made of mysterious metal or mysterious material that is oddly smooth
– Iwasaki made items with the land, where it was made, and the culture behind it
– This way each item takes on distinct characteristics
– Hisada worked on the Skyloft landforms; had to consider whether it was made of wood or brick, etc. in making a single house
– Hisada thought things through from a number of aspects that never explicitly appear in the game so the designs feel natural
– Hisada wanted to make an atmosphere that would be easy for people like her, who aren’t that good at video games, to get into
– The staff tried to make an impression that would be bright/colorful
– Also brighter because they paid a lot of attention to making it easy to see
– Objects/characters don’t get lost in the background
– Team was worried about taking it too far and making objects stand out too much
– Early on, the backgrounds, enemies and objects were all in watercolor style
– Everything blended into the background and you couldn’t pick out your goal
– Then they used half-toon rendering (similar to cel-shading) to represent characters and others to make them stand out
– When they did this, it didn’t look flat like with cel-shading, but a little airy and soft
– Problems still arose with some things standing out too much and some fading into the background
– Constant checks were made, finely adjusting the colors, brightness, watercolor of the backgrounds, lighting, etc.
– Everything was adjusted with precision
– The Bomb is light blue, but it was darker at first, and you couldn’t see it in a dark underground stage
– Objects were made bigger than ever before in the series (example: Rupees)
– This was done so that players would definitely get Rupees when they could jingling out
– The slightly accentuated graphics made it possible to make them bigger to increase visibility without having them seem out of place
– Heart Flowers put into the game because there is lots of gameplay in the game fields, not just in the dungeons
– Putting jars all over the place wouldn’t seem right
– Team was unsure how to design the Stamina Fruits at first
– Lots of subevents are included
– If you target residents in Skyloft, Fi will talk about them

Read the latest Iwata Asks here.