Aonuma On Some Interesting Legend of Zelda Wii U Details
At E3 2014, Nintendo wowed many fans with the new Legend of Zelda Wii U trailer. The trailer looks absolutely fantastic and gave us a good glimpse at the art style and an even smaller view into how the game might play when it releases next year. With such a small view into the upcoming Legend of Zelda game for Wii U many questions are raised. Fortunately, Eiji Aonuma has not been shy about answering some of these questions and even hinting at some details for the upcoming Nintendo blockbuster.
A complaint from fans regarding many recent Zelda titles is that they have began to hold a player’s hand a little too much. Many gamers cite Skyward Sword as a very recent example of the extensive amount of tutorials found in recent Legend of Zelda games. In a recent interview with Kotaku, Aonuma states that they are trying to fix this and give players a chance to do more exploring and figure it out for themselves.
Kotaku: So in Skyward Sword, a few years ago, I think that a lot of people loved that game—I enjoyed that game quite a bit—but one of the biggest criticisms or complaints was that it took a very long time to actually jump into the gameplay because there were a lot of tutorials and a lot of introduction and cut-scenes in the beginning. Then Link Between Worlds came along and you just jumped in right away. So I wonder, when planning for future games, are you going to go more towards that Link Between Worlds approach or Skyward Sword, or something in between? How do you feel about intros and tutorials these days?
Aonuma: Yes. When we created Skyward Sword, I really felt the need to make sure that everyone playing the game understood it. But I also understand now, in hindsight, that when you go out and buy a game, you buy the game because you want to play it, and you don’t want to have any obstacles in the way. And I guess it was received as a bit of an obstacle. In a game, it’s when you get stuck, when you want that help. And I kinda frontloaded all that in Skyward Sword, and it doesn’t really help to get that information when you don’t know what to do with it. So that was a real learning experience for me. So I’m going to be careful not to do that.
In another interview with Aonuma, this time with Game Informer, he teases fans a bit by hinting that the new Legend of Zelda game for Wii U will include more than just the standard single player experience. Aonuma also state that we could possibly see more multiplayer Zelda experiences as soon as next year.
Game Informer: In a previous Nintendo Direct presentation, you outlined a few pillars of the Zelda series you wanted to rethink. One was taking dungeons out of order, which saw fruition in Link Between Worlds, and the other pillar you mentioned wanting to rethink was playing Zelda by yourself. Is Hyrule Warriors a step in that direction? Are we going to have to multiplayer in the next Zelda?
Aonuma: The two-player functionality of Hyrule Warriors is actually something that has traditionally been done in the Dynasty Warriors series, but they’ve changed because of the hardware and the second screen on your GamePad. Instead of having a splitscreen on the television, you have one-player playing on the television and one on the GamePad. When I was talking back about making Zelda more than just a single-player experience? That’s something you will see in the future, maybe next year.