Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom initially had fall damage, devs talk about why it was removed

According to the developers of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, the game originally had fall damage. However, the team ended up changing that for the final release.

Co-director Tomomi Sano and series producer Eiji Aonuma spoke about this in a Famitsu interview. Sano pointed out how Nintendo and Grezzo wanted players to go for trial and error when it came to the Echoes, and wanted them to do so without restrictions. Aonuma also brought up something mentioned by Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who has spoken about a desire for players to reach the end of Zelda games. That was another factor in keeping fall damage out.

Here’s our translation regarding Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom removing fall damage from the final product:

This time, fall damage has been removed, and you can summon 1 cost monster Echoes repeatedly in battle, so compared to previous games in the series, I feel that the game balance was set to be easier.

Sano: The core essence of Echoes of Wisdom as a game, and the first step to fun, is the room for players to undergo trial and error with the Echoes, so we made sure not to set any restrictions that would hinder this process. We had fall damage at first, but when using Echoes to reach high places, we wanted players to not worry about getting a Game Over from falling off but enjoy the feeling of managing to reach a high place, so we removed it. When falling into water, more often than not you could not swim in the series, so we made it so that you can try swimming.

Aonuma: Princess Zelda is not an action-based character, after all. It becomes a game of utilizing Echoes to turn the tides. Therefore, there was one other thing we had to keep in mind while we were trying all sorts of things, and that was that making players feel exhausted was the scariest thing possible. Especially in the Still World, where places to stand on are limited, the concept is about figuring out how to make it through and reach the goal, so if hearts were lost from falls, the game would become rather harsh.

Removing fall damage was a bold move for the series.

Aonuma: For The Legend of Zelda, Miyamoto has always said that “everyone must be able to reach the finish line”. Having players reach the final stretch, see the ending and feel happiness is what we design towards, so it would be a huge shame if people gave up halfway or lost the motivation to keep going. In that sense, I think this time we finally made a game where everyone can reach the end.

Something else the developers spoke about is how difficult it was to come up with Zelda’s design for the game. We translated those comments here.

Thanks to Famitsu for the excerpt above. Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is now available on Nintendo Switch.

Translation provided by SatsumaFS, Philip Proctor, and Simon Griffin on behalf of Nintendo Everything.