Aonuma on keeping Wind Waker’s art style a secret from Miyamoto, visuals’ origins, GameCube Island, more
The interviews with Eiji Aonuma continue to pour in. MTV Multiplayer has also just put up a piece with Aonuma covering Zelda: Wind Waker HD and plenty of other topics. Among the items discussed include keeping Wind Waker’s art style a secret from Miyamoto, origins of the cel-shaded visuals, concept design for GameCube Island, Tingle Tuner, and Link’s appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.
You can find a number of interview excerpts below. For even more talk, check out MTV Multiplayer’s full piece.
Aonuma on Wind Waker’s art style and keeping it a secret from Miyamoto…
“When we were first working on the toon shaded Link, and that graphic representation of the Hyrule world, because it was such a drastic change, we actually kept it a secret from Mr. Miyamoto in the beginning. We had actually recently shown an example of what the next Zelda might look like, based on the ‘Ocarina of Time’ graphic style, and because this direction was so different, we knew that Mr. Miyamoto wouldn’t approve it as it. So, I worked with my team to at least get it to a point where a battle sequence between Link and a Moblin would actually work in this world, and then that was the first time that we brought it to Mr. Miyamoto. That was only time we felt comfortable bringing it to Mr. Miyamoto.
“It’s not as though we were consciously keeping it a secret, but when Mr. Miyamoto would say, ‘Hey, you got anything to show me?’ I would kind of just push him off, and buy time as much as I could. But, at the same time, I think Mr. Miyamoto also understood that we were working on creating something, and just weren’t ready to show it to him yet. Honestly, I don’t know how well we kept it a secret anyway.”
On the origins of Wind Waker’s cel-shaded visuals…
At the time, when the GameCube came out, within the computer graphics world, within the industry, “toon shading” was kind of a buzzword. There was a lot of chatter about it, but no one had really explored it in games yet, at the time. The staff that I work with was curious, so we challenged it. We tried it. We said, ‘why don’t we try it on a game, and if it works, maybe we can move forward.'”
Aonuma on the concept art for GameCube Island that appeared in “Hyrule Historia”…
“That is a concept design. It’s something that our designers created, and when we looked at it, we were like it just doesn’t fit in this world, so it was not included. But, in Phantom Hourglass, there is a DS Island, so, I’m thinking there was some staff that just wanted to put something like that in there.”
On changing the Tingle Tuner to Miiverse integration…
“We thought about using the GamePad as a Tingle Tuner, but the way the GamePad’s screen functions in ‘Wind Waker HD’ is that it’s supposed to help the player. It’s supposed to help them select items. It’s supposed to function as the map for the game, and if all of a sudden Tingle appears on the GamePad screen, it just felt a little bit off. The function of the Tingle Tuner was for assist-play, and because the GamePad is supposed to be so integral to the game player’s experience, it just didn’t quite work right. But, we still wanted to have an assist-play type experience in ‘Wind Waker HD,’ just to give players that feeling of experiencing the world with someone else, or maybe even getting hints when you get stuck. That’s why we decided to incorporate the Miiverse functionality, and kind of give that assist-play like experience, incorporate that into ‘Wind Waker HD.'”
On Toon Link/Link in Smash Bros. Brawl…
“I’m really happy to see the characters that I’ve created in Mr. Sakurai’s game. I’m more curious to see what he does with these characters that I’ve created. He’s successfully taken ‘Twilight Princess’ and Toon Link and made them appear in this very different world, and have very distinctive qualities, so I’m very happy to see what he’s able to do with the characters that I’ve created.”
