Aonuma on Zelda: Majora’s Mask – reusing character models, bottles tease, why Clocktown’s bank vault isn’t affected by time, and more
Surprise, surprise! Another interview with Eiji Aonuma has appeared. The latest one comes from Game Informer, who spoke with the Zelda producer.
There are actually quite a few interesting questions and answers. Aonuma was asked if Majora’s Mask is all a dream, teased a special event in the 3DS version for finding all of the bottles (plus there’s an extra one in this version), and shared a development nugget about Twilight Princess’ development.
Head past the break for some interview excerpts. The full talk can be found here.
On whether the reuse of character models from Ocarina of Time in Majora’s Mask was a time/money saving decision, or a stylistic choice…
Really, it was a little bit of both, whether it comes down to the decision of saving time in the schedule or it being more of a stylistic decision. I think a lot of it comes down to those character models having the ability to express something that they couldn’t in the setting of Ocarina because we had this very different image for the world where Majora’s Mask takes place. You know we described it as being a nearby land, but in feel, it’s almost like another dimension. Even though these characters have a similar appearance to the version of them that appeared in Ocarina, they express something different in a different world.
On whether he was suprised to learn Majora’s Mask is a divisive Zelda game…
I guess I should start by pointing out that when the Nintendo 64 version of Majora’s Mask came out this was the pre-internet era so we didn’t necessarily have as many opportunities as we do now for the voices of players to reach us directly, but I certainly did have a lot of opportunities to talk to friends and family who played the game and to hear their reactions, and of course I heard some pretty interesting things among those. In fact someone mentioned that they got pretty close to throwing the controller at one point, and that really stuck with me. But we also had the opportunity recently to solicit the memories of Japanese players who had experienced the Nintendo 64 version of Majora’s Mask on our website and it was really interesting to see the kind of things that people would talk about. They also look back with very fond memories on some of these experiences. For example, we saw some comments where people were saying that the game got so hard that they would have to call in their mom or dad to help, but the way they relate it now is with a sort of really fun nostalgic past to it.
At the time of release, if I had heard something like that, I probably would have spent a good bit of time in reflection and sort of thinking about it in a rather regretful ways, but what has come across to me now is that though the game as it was released on Nintendo 64 was very difficult, there was a lot of charm to it and that seems to be what stuck with people. What I’m really happy for now was the opportunity to address some of the things that made the game difficult in the wrong ways in this remake, and that’s been really nice for me.
On the Indiegogo’s play The Ballad of the Wind Fish, which was featured in Link’s Awakening, and how it’s one theory people use to say Majora’s Mask was all a dream…
The reason that this song from Link’s Awakening was used in this game really came down to a decision by the sound team. They were looking for inspiration, something that would fit the theme, and since the previous game was about collecting instruments it made sense that you would want to use this for a band in this case. For us, really, it was just a playful choice that referenced a previous game and nothing more than that.
However, I love that people think about stuff like this, and I think it shows how they feel about the franchise as a whole that they’re interested in these possibilities.
On why bottles are so hard to find in the Zelda universe…
As it turns out, in this remade version of Majora’s Mask, we added one extra bottle. If you happen to collect all of them, you’re going to see a slightly interesting event. It certainly is true that they were hard to find in the original games, and we wanted to address that by giving people more chances to find bottles by adding this extra one.
Regarding the bottles themselves being very valuable? I suppose it’s true since they can hold so many different things it makes it possible for you to do more in the game. They do have a very precious existence, from that perspective. As to why there are so few, I would simply say it has to be that way based on how powerful they are in the game.
On why Clocktown’s bank vault isn’t affected by time…
Part of this is just the most practical answer. The bank needs to maintain your rupees, otherwise you would lose them at the end of every three day cycle, despite the fact that it’s really important to build up enough money to buy things in the game. We needed to find some reason for stuff to stay in the game, and we considered the idea that there would be some kind of markings on Link’s hand that maybe you could only see if you shone a black light on them. This was talked about, the identification of his account and the current balance in it.
This would sort of make sense in that world because every time he goes back to the beginning of that three day cycle, he goes back in time but he stays who he is, he retains everything that is part of his person. We thought that would kind of make sense, because you could just look at your hand and say, “Oh, yes, you were this person, with this account, and this is your balance.” But that still would represent a situation where the amount of money in the vault was changing over time.
On why no one seems to react to Link’s actual transformations…
I should point out that this is something we actually considered during the development of Twilight Princess. We had an early iteration of the wolf transformation where you couldn’t transform when in front of other characters that could see you. We thought this would be an interesting way to address exactly the thing you’re bringing up here, but what we found in practice was that it was simply too troublesome. So for purely practical game reasons we decided to avoid that.
