Miyamoto talks all about Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Earlier today, Kotaku published a massive article covering The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Shigeru Miyamoto was brought in to discuss the game’s development, and touched on subjects such as initially wanting to make it first-person, the turning points of introducing Epona and young/adult Link, and more.

We’ve picked out a few select quotes below. You can find Kotaku’s full feature here.

On how Miyamoto initially wanted Zelda to be in first-person…

“There were lots of challenges in trying to show the game from a third person perspective. We had also experimented with moments where the battles were in 3D but parts of the game were on rails. We looked at the idea of taking a Mario 64 approach where you have a Mario 64-style castle, the equivalent of that being Hyrule castle, and you explore and encounter the gameplay through that central area.”

On how early Ocarina of Time prototypes were the end results of Miyamoto and his team exploring what the N64 could do…

“We really wanted to create a very distinctive world of Hyrule, with changes in weather and things like that. We eventually found what the N64 was able to do. It was a system that felt really well designed to bring Hyrule to life.”

On how Epona was a big turning point…

“The horse was a turning point. The moment that we saw you could ride around on a horse in 3D, we instantly realised that we needed a giant field that people could ride through.”

On how having young/adult Link was also a big turning point…

“The other turning point was Link himself. It was perfect. It was the exact same amount of time. We started off creating the more grown up model of Link. After creating that model we then asked, ‘well, what if we were to create a younger Link?’ Then we asked, ‘which one should we go with?’ When we created the younger Link, that’s when we realised we could use both versions of Link and have him grow from being a child to being a grown up.”

“I wanted to make sure we had something that felt a little bit simpler in terms of the differences between the world that Link experiences as a child, and the world he experiences as an adult. For example you would see how his relationship to the girls in the game would change from when he was a boy and he was an adult. When you were a child certain characters might have been scary. Or the adults who seemed stupid, how did you see them when you were a child? It was about portraying the differences between those two to tell the story of a boy growing up.”

On how it took a long time to complete the game’s development…

“We wondered if the game was ever going to get finished, but everyone was having a lot of fun. We had to ensure those random events happened at points where it didn’t cause inconsistencies in the game.”

On how Miyamoto upended the tea table and requested more Ocarina songs to be added…

“I decided we had to double them. It resulted in a big change in gameplay! The team was confused initially, but in the end it was good!”

On the Water Temples difficulty…

“It remains a regret for Eiji Aonuma to this day, mainly because he continually hears from everyone about how difficult the dungeon was! But he continues to insist that the dungeon wasn’t hard, it was just a pain because you had to keep taking the boots off and then put them back on He says it wasn’t hard, just inconvenient!”

On how Miyamoto’s daughter was in the middle grades when the game was finally released…

“It was the first game that my daughter sat down and played a lot of, and as a result of that she became a really big Zelda fan. I remember Ocarina of Time as the game that allowed my daughter and I to start having a lot of conversations about video games.”