Aonuma wasn’t a fan of Zelda’s GameCube tech demo, says remakes need to have a meaning, more
IGN has gone live with a new piece filled with quotes from Eiji Aonuma regarding The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD. There are quite a few interesting comments, including his thoughts on the original Zelda tech demo shown for GameCube, how he’s approaching remakes, and more.
You can find all of Aonuma’s quotes below. Also be sure to check out IGN’s full piece here.
On the original Zelda tech demo for GameCube…
“I saw that movie and I thought, ‘No, this isn’t Zelda. This isn’t Zelda at all.’ I felt like this wasn’t what I imagined Zelda to be. It wasn’t the Zelda I wanted to make. That video clip didn’t actually contain any big surprises. There wasn’t any kind of revelation going on. It was more like a continuation of the previous version.”
“…Yeah That’s right. I wasn’t interested in it at all.”
On the initial skepticism following Wind Waker’s reveal…
“I believe that we got that kind of feedback from the users because we’d changed a lot of things style-wise, compared to Ocarina of Time. Usually, when there’s a big change to be made, the fans will be a bit nervous or hesitate to get into it. But I think that change was actually a good turning point. One of the reasons why we got such good feedback about the HD remake is because, probably, the users are more used to that art style now, after it was used in some of the original DS titles.”
On Wind Waker’s missing dungeons…
“I’m aware that lots of users wanted those two missing dungeons to be implemented in Wind Waker HD. But to be honest, we’ve already used those two dungeons for other titles after Wind Waker already. So right now, technically, they don’t really exist anymore…”
“We didn’t exactly use them as-is and implement them into another game. We’d add some [of their] features to other dungeons. So they’re in different dungeons now.”
On how the memories we cherish in our heads are much better than the actual game that forged them…
“The memories that users have in their heads aren’t just about the gameplay of the game, not just about the experience in the game, but it’s more like… Their memories are about their lives mixed in with those memories. So it’s really difficult for us to re-create that whole situation, that whole memory, because it depends on the players.
“What we have to be careful about, when it comes to the remake, is that we’d like to create something that can be better than the image inside the players’ minds, but still retains the atmosphere of the original. When it comes to the Wind Waker HD version, we think that we’ve managed to create a game that doesn’t ruin that [nostalgic] image, but sticks with the original atmosphere as well. What’s most important is to stick with the original – we don’t want to make any huge changes, even though we’re creating something new.”
On whether the staff were nervous about revisiting older Zelda games for remakes and intruding on players’ memories…
“The staff were really nervous about it, but I was completely fine. I said, ‘Come on, let’s just make changes.’ I asked the staff to be more free. because we had to create something that’s not exactly like the original game. We had to bring some additional fun to it. So I told the staff to be more creative, to not be afraid of making something new.”
On how Nintendo decides on going ahead with remakes…
“We don’t go out to just make a remake. There should be some kind of meaning to it. For example, the reason why we released the 3DS version of Ocarina of Time, is that we wanted users to enjoy the stereoscopic 3D version. Now that HD is possible with the Wii U, for the same reason, we wanted users to enjoy an HD version [of Wind Waker] and to be able to use the GamePad, so they could see a difference there. So it’s not just making a remake that’s the important thing. We wanted to have a particular reason to do it. If there’s a meaning behind doing a remake, then of course we’ll consider it.”
Aonuma on his favorite Zelda…
“My favourite would be the world of Wind Waker, because it’s so unique. It’s a world that doesn’t exist anywhere else,” he says.
