Ocarina of Time is regarded as not only one of the best Zelda games in the series, but one of the best games of all time. This was the first foray into 3D for the Legend of Zelda, and it was widely regarded as a success. Today I’d like to take a closer look at the development secrets behind one of the best games of all time, and peek behind the curtain of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Design goals

Before development began the Nintendo team agreed they wanted Ocarina of Time to be unique, and not comparable to any other game. They wrote down ideas on bits of paper, wrote down what they wanted to do in 3D and the bits of paper were stuck on the wall. The directors of the game would then browse the ideas and pick out the ones they thought were the best, and would represent The Legend of Zelda best in 3D. They were drawn to ideas that seemed impossible at the time, knowing that at that time no other developer had done something similar.

Seamless transitions

One of the main goals was to transition seamlessly from combat into exploration using the targetting system. Eiji Aonuma explained this was the key feature and without it, the game was much less likely to succeed. Given there wasn’t anything else out there like Ocarina of Time, developers had to rely on their recent experience developing Super Mario 64 and Starfox 64.

First-person

Shigeru Miyamoto proposed the game should be in first-person rather than 3rd person, which we had seen in the previous 4 games across the NES, SNES and Gameboy. Miyamoto had a few reasons for this; he wanted the player to enjoy and be immersed in the environment, plus more resources could be focused on the enemies, dungeons and environments. One of the main drawback of first-person in Ocarina of Time came down to the story, with Link traveling through time. If you could only see through Link’s eyes, it would be difficult to tell if Link was a child or older, so ultimately Nintendo settled on the traditional 3rd person view for Link.

Format

Development started in late 1994 while Nintendo was developing Super Mario 64. The public got it’s first look at the game at Space World December 1995, however, the game looked very different from what we know today. Nintendo finally released the game on the N64 via cartridge, but originally it was planned to release on the Nintendo 64 Disk Drive, or N64DD system. After it released, Nintendo confirmed it was the biggest game they had ever released on a cartridge regarding megabytes.

Name change

During development the game was simply called Zelda 64. The game looked very different to the final version, the environments weren’t very detailed, the characters lacked personality, but this is to be expected from a game in development, and would be in development for 3 more years.

Z-Targeting

The z-targeting combat system was completely new for Ocarina of Time. The team built on their experience in Super Mario 64, where it was harder to jump on enemies in a 3D environment, compared to 2D Super Mario games. The targeting system was born out of the need to focus on an enemy and circle them, planning for an attack, and the z-targeting system was born and became central to the combat system in the game.

Targeting is done by pressing the Z trigger on the N64 controller. This allows Link to lock onto an enemy, character, or object in the game world. This is massively helpful feature given if this didn’t exist you’d have to position Link and the camera facing your target, which constantly moves in a 3D space. With z-targeting you can keep focus on your target while move with Link, which allows for much more engaging combat. This was invented by Yoshiaki Koizumi of Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy fame.

Here’s Miyamoto talking about the combat in the game from a 1999 developer interview

The sword combat in Ocarina didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped, unfortunately. I’m pretty bad at action games myself, so I wanted Ocarina to have a system with depth, something you could steadily improve at the more you played—though it didn’t need to be as complex as Tekken, of course. (laughs)

At the same time, however, part of me wanted the action to be easier than Mario 64. There were people who had told us “I couldn’t get past the later stages in Mario 64”, and I felt we needed to make sure Ocarina could be finished by them, otherwise it wouldn’t be a proper Zelda game. About a year into the development, I realized that if we lean too heavily into the sword combat, it will definitely end up being more difficult than Mario 64, so we pulled back and eased into the simpler system we have today.

3D Challenges

The move from 2D to 3D wasn’t simple, as new challenges appear such as perspective and constructing environments. In 2D games the distance of an object is very clear, however, in early 3D titles this sense of perspective was lost. This was one of the toughest challenges the Ocarina of Time team had to overcome early in development. Another difficult challenge in 3D is creating environments like Dunegons, Forests, Lakes, and Deserts.

Dungeon designer Eiji Onozuka described the challenges related to creating dungeons, because Link would clip through walls due to his move-set. Link had some great new moves including little hops to the left and right, also the backflip when he was locked onto enemies. Link would often clip through walls with the hookshot, and it would be a team of mappers job to prevent Link from losing his place in the environment. The character designers would come up with something new for Link and the mappers would have to redo their work.

Time-travel cause and effect

Eiji Aonuma wanted time travel included so they could do something as child Link, and then feel the effects as adult Link. Nintendo felt this was a very interesting gameplay mechanic, plus it revisits an idea from the original Legend of Zelda, but they were restricted by hardware limits. Now the hardware was getting more sophisticated, so could the gameplay mechanics.

Ocarina

The Ocarina and other music instruments had been included in previous Zelda games, however, Ocarina of Time was the first time players could play the instrument with the buttons on the controller, and this idea was spearheaded by Miyamoto. The developers knew they wanted to make music central to the game, so the team decided to do this through the Ocarina. The Ocarina is a multi-faceted item, so you can play a song and different things happen based on the songs – for example, you can interact with the Royal Family crest, or change the weather, or shine light in dark places. Eiji Aonuma said that it was a challenge for the composer Koji Kondo to come up with 5 note songs.

Day and night cycle challenge

One of MIyamoto’s design goals was to wow players when they exited Kokiri Forest for the first time, seeing the large expanse of Hyrule field before them. Aonuma always says this is his favourite part of the game, seeing Hyrule field and hearing the soaring music, you know your adventure has begun.

At the start Hyrule field was very “terribly uninteresting”. There wasn’t much to do, so the designers added wind and temperature. The time of day is also much more apparent when you are in Hyrule field. Getting the sun to rise, then set and followed by the moon rising was a tough challenge for the developers. A new feature on the N64 was the ability to create fog, so Nintendo took advantage of that to create a more atmospheric experience. The morning has the most fog, and then it gets removed as the day goes on.

Link

The adult and child versions of Link were programmes with the same animations. The team would observe real-life sword battles at Uzumasa movie studio in Japan to help them with their animation taks. Link has around 1000 different animations.

3 years to open a chest

Miyamoto described how the team debated for 3 years on the chest opening animation. Miyamoto himself came to work one day with an actual chest, sword and shield and the team finally decided upon the “kick” to open the chest. The idea of using motion capture did come up with the team, however many at Nintendo were against it, even though eventually they needed to use some motion capture to achieve their goals.

Epona

Eiji Aonuma and Eiji Onozuka both said they included the horse in the game because Miyamoto really liked horses, and wanted to include one for Link. At the time there weren’t many other games where the main hero could ride a horse, so it was an idea that stood out to Miyamoto. Originally, Miyamoto debated whether to use the Pegasus boots from A Link To The Past as transport, but ultimately it was decided the horse would be much better, given it was new, and would add a new dimension of interactivity and fun to the game.

Miyamoto would go to riding clubs and they would give him pictures of horses, and he’d bring them back to the team so they could accurately reflect the horse in Ocarina of Time. Creating Epona in-game was a huge challenge for the developers, and often Epona would run into trees on Hyrule field, therefore many of them were taken out to avoid this issue, which is what we see on Hyrule field today.

How does Miyamoto feel about Navi?

Here’s Miyamoto talking about Navi from a Japanese strategy guide in 1999.

I think the way we give hints is still a little too unfriendly. Speaking plainly, I can now confess to you: I think the whole system with Navi giving you advice is the biggest weakpoint of Ocarina of Time. It’s incredibly difficult to design a system that gives proper advice, advice that’s tailored to the player’s situation. To do it right, you’d have to spend the same amount of time as you would developing an entire game, and I was very worried we’d be digging ourselves into a hole, if we pursued perfection there…

If you read Navi’s text, she says the same things over and over. I know it makes it sound bad, but we purposely left her at a kind of “stupid” level. I think if we’d tried to make Navi’s hints more sophisticated, that “stupidity” would have actually stood out even more. The truth is I wanted to remove the entire system, but that would have been even more unfriendly to players. You can think of Navi as being there for players who stop playing for a month or so, who then pick the game back up and want to remember what they were supposed to do. It’s a brazen excuse, I know. (laughs)

Otherwise, we tried to make the hints friendly for players, but I heard many people saying how they couldn’t solve them without a strategy guide. When we took a closer look, though, we’ve found that the sections people need hints for vary from person-to-person. There’s no consistency. That can’t be helped, though, in a game like Zelda which combines action and puzzle solving.

Let me know what you think in the comments.