Nintendo released developer interviews this week talking about the development of the upcoming Echoes of Wisdom. The interviews are filled with great insight, but one of the most interesting bits of information that came out was Echoes of Wisdom was very nearly a Zelda Dungeon maker game. Today I’m going to have a look at the interviews and see if Nintendo provide any clues to actually giving us this game in the future of the Legend of Zelda series.

Nintendo released a couple of articles this week called ‘Ask the Developer Vol. 13, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’ where they interviewed Eiji Aonuma (Producer of the Legend of Zelda series), Tomomi Sano (Director for Echoes of Wisdom from Nintendo’s side), and Satoshi Terada (Director for Echoes of Wisdom from Grezzo’s side).

They explained that Nintendo camer to Grezzo and asked them to pitch ideas for a new Zelda game, the first new game Grezzo had worked on since their excellent work on remakes, most recently Link’s Awakening on Nintendo Switch.

The interviewer asked about how the gameplay of Echoes of Wisdom came about, and it started with Link copying and pasting items, with the goal of creating dungeon style experiences.

“We were exploring a few different ways to play the game in parallel. In one approach, Link could copy and paste various objects, such as doors and candlesticks, to create original dungeons. During this exploration phase, this idea was called an “edit dungeon” because players could create their own Legend of Zelda gameplay.” Terada explained.

It sounds like Aonuma then came in a thought this would be a good mechanic, not only in Dungeons, but also in the overworld, and this is how the echo mechanic was born.

“They showed it to me and told me to give it a try. As I played, I started thinking that while it’s fun to create your own dungeon and let other people play it, it’s also not so bad to place items that can be copied and pasted in the game field, and create gameplay where they can be used to fight enemies. That was the beginning of gameplay using “echoes.” The gameplay was shifted from creating dungeons up until then to using copied-and-pasted items as tools to further your own adventure.” Aonuma said.

Grezzo had been working on the idea for about a year (which is a long time), then the direction of development was significantly changed, something known as “upending the tea table” – essentially coming in, deciding the direction wasn’t quite right and then changing course. Ideally this would happen early in development.

Aonuma goes onto explain while the Grezzo team were fairly set on a Dungeon creator-style game, he was watching their demos and thinking something completely different.

“Everyone else was developing the game with dungeon creation in mind, but I was right next to them thinking of something different. (Laughs) But there’s a reason it took a year to upend the tea table. After all, you can’t really see the potential for ideas to develop into solid gameplay until you can verify features and their feel, so I wanted them to try making it first.

I felt that the “edit dungeon” feature they showed me had significant potential to be developed into a new way of playing the Legend of Zelda games if the gameplay was changed to use “echoes” instead. So, I thought it would be good to expand in that direction and could be even more interesting that way. However, there was one concern. Even though game consoles have larger memory capacity nowadays, the more things players can copy and paste, the more game memory is used up. I was really worried that it would crash the game.

I thought we could make something more interesting if we pushed harder. I wasn’t sure how far we could go, but in the end, it was amazing to see how many echoes it was possible to create in the game. It must have been difficult to manage the game memory.” said Aonuma.

It sounds like Aonuma, while thinking the ‘Edit Dungeon’ concept was good, what he liked even more was the echo ability and playstyle and changing direction would be the best for the final product.

Tomomi Sano, the Game Director on Nintendo’s side described how fun the echo mecahnic was, plus how the same item could be used in 2D and 3D.

“I did notice from the very beginning that copying new things is a lot of fun in itself. The “edit dungeon” concept involved copying various things during your adventure out on the game field, then bringing them back to create a dungeon in a dedicated place. When I was on this adventure of collecting things to copy, I noticed that if I pasted something that was only present in the side-view perspective into a location with a top-down perspective, it worked just fine. In 2D games, even if an object looks the same, it’s often made and used completely differently between top-down view and side view. But Grezzo created a single object that would function in both views.

For example, in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, there is an enemy called a Thwomp that falls from above and crushes things below and only appears in the side-view perspective. If you copy that and paste it into the top view, you can drop it from above and crush things below, or conversely, you can ride on the Thwomp and use it to climb upward. I was surprised to see that even though the functions are the same, you can use it in new ways just by changing the viewing angle.” Sano said.

Grezzo went onto describe combining the top-down view and side view when developing the “edit dungeon” concept.

“After we finished developing the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, we really liked its world, so we talked with Nintendo about creating the “edit dungeon” concept, which we were prototyping back then, in a similar vein. Since the remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening had areas with both top-down and side views, naturally everyone at Grezzo assumed from the start that we would create both top-down and side views in this title. However, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is set on an island with a smaller map size and was a remake, so it was limited in terms of what could be added during development. So, for this new game, we created the prototype with the idea of expanding on what we all wanted to do.” Terada said

“When you encounter a Thwomp in a side-scrolling game, it looks like a thin rectangle, as you can see only the front of it, but when you look at it from a different angle, it looks like a giant rock that makes a loud crash sound when it falls. Its presence as an object is completely altered.” Aonuma said.

“Even if you use the exact same function, changing your perspective can help you better understand how to use it. A question like, “How high does this object go up and down?” is easier to check with the side view, and “How big is this object?” has a clearer answer with the top-down view. As we progressed through development, we felt that the changes in perspective made it twice as satisfying.” Sano said.

Reading between the lines here, it sounds like Grezzo were very excited about the “edit dungeon” feature, but Nintendo pushed back. From one perspective this makes sense, given the “edit dungeon” idea led to the creation of the echo mechanic. The problem with “edit dungeon” is that you can only use this functionality inside a dungeon, having this an a stand alone echo ability allows the echo mechanic to be a central gameplay feature of the whole game, not just in dungeons.

Quest Master released on Steam earlier this year, I do recommend checking that out if you are interested in a Zelda-style Dungeon maker. However, I would love to see Nintendo revisiting this Zelda Dungeon-maker idea, similar to Super Mario Maker. It’s hard to see how Nintendo could include a narrative element into a Zelda game that’s just a Dungeon-maker, it feels like a stand alone, self contained game where you could create Dungeons and then share them with your friends. Perhaps Grezzo will get another shot at a Dungeon maker down the line, or Nintendo will come back to the idea in the future.

Let me know in the comments what you think.