Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom reportedly started out as Link to the Past sequel

A report that went under the radar seems to indicate that The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom was originally planned to be a sequel to A Link to the Past.

Prior to the launch of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, some fans have pointed out that the game’s map was very reminiscent of the map from A Link to the Past. It turns out there’s apparently a reason for that. Before Nintendo and Grezzo settled on things like the Echoes and having Zelda take the starring role, the game was imagined as a sequel to the SNES classic. That changed once the project entered full development.

Co-director Tomomi Sano also had this to say about bringing back familiar races, including some not seen in quite some time:

“First, we made decisions about gameplay and specific locations. Once we had those, and we had locations related to water and forest, for example, we chose specific races – River Zora and Sea Zora in water locations, and Deku Scrubs in forest. Grezzo also worked on the Majora’s Mask remake, which featured those races. We wanted to introduce them in a way that made sense to our game.”

Despite the map similarities, Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom stands on its own. However, it definitely seems as though the team considered a number of different options before settling on the final plan. We previously heard that Echoes of Wisdom originally let players make their own dungeons. Link also came close to speaking in the game.

Nintendo also recently revealed the placement for Echoes of Wisdom in the official Zelda timeline. You can read about that here.

Thanks to naEKRANIE for the news above and Ninty27 for the tip.