rec.games.video.nintendo.wii
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.nintendo.wiirec.games.video.nintendo.wii@googlegroups.com
Today's topics:
* IGN: Wii's Next Zelda Game - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.nintendo.wii/browse_thread/thread/454fc3f0ece95c85
* Massive Zelda article from 2007: Eiji Aonuma's GDC 2007 Presentation - Full
text of "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Reflections in the Hourglass" talk (
find out what happened to Wind Waker 2 and how "Realistic" Zelda (TP) came
about) - 1 messages, 1 author
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.nintendo.wii/browse_thread/thread/25a3fb3fc3b73057
==============================================================================
TOPIC: IGN: Wii's Next Zelda Game
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.nintendo.wii/browse_thread/thread/454fc3f0ece95c85
==============================================================================
== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Thurs 16 Oct 2008 21:16
From: NV55
http://wii.ign.com/articles/920/920705p1.html
Wii's Next Zelda Game
Miyamoto says the franchise needs some big new ideas. What might the
successor to Twilight Princess play and look like?
by Matt Casamassina
October 16, 2008 - When Nintendo unveiled The Legend of Zelda:
Twilight Princess at the Electronic Entertainment Expo 2004 to a
packed auditorium of journalists and fans, the crowd went wild, and
some people in attendance actually cried. Yes -- real, genuine tears,
induced by the very sight of a reborn Link, no longer a cel-shaded boy
but a teenage warrior surrounded by a realistic world. Decades after
the classic game released, few franchises in the history of the
industry share the same powerful hold over players as Zelda, and yet
Shigeru Miyamoto's series about a Hyrulian hero and a kidnapped
princess has stayed stubbornly true to its roots through the years, a
fact that some critics held against Twilight Princess when it shipped
two years ago. These criticisms haven't fallen on deaf ears, for
Miyamoto himself commented in an IGN interview that Zelda is "... a
franchise that does need some big new unique ideas."
Miyamoto offered those words at E3 2008, where he also confirmed that
a new Wii Legend of Zelda game is in development by key members of the
Twilight Princess and Phantom Hourglass teams. This new title is
poised to be fundamentally different from its predecessors for a
couple key reasons. First, Nintendo is obviously aware that the series
needs a new hook or two -- even if Twilight Princess remains, in our
humble opinion, one of the best adventure games of the generation, it
lacks a certain freshness, largely because it adheres to the age-old
Zelda formula. And second, whereas Twilight Princess began its life as
a GameCube title and was later ported to Wii, this new Zelda project
will be designed from the ground up to take advantage of Nintendo's
little white box. It's with all of this in mind that we explore the
the potential dos and the don'ts and focus our eyes keenly on the
future of the Zelda franchise. Here are just a few possibilities:
A Compelling New Tale
Nintendo prides itself on creating games that simply play
exceptionally well, but seldom do its titles, even those grand
adventures, feature rich and compelling stories, particularly by
today's standards. Although Link's journey to save princess Zelda has
seen several unique variations over the years, it is usually still the
same quest with new bells and whistles and it is partially because of
this that titles like Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time feel so
similar, whereas an all-new tale might have created a greater divide
between the games. Case in point, you won't see any comparisons to
director Eiji Aonuma's first N64 Zelda, Majora's Mask, for that dark
and difficult title included an original storyline set outside of the
traditional save-the-princess theme.
"I would love to see a Zelda title that really takes story to the next
level. Twilight Princess did a great job with storytelling -- more so
than any other Zelda, I believe. I'd just like to see that taken a few
steps further," says Kevin Cassidy, who operates the Nintendo website
Go Nintendo. "We know that there are people on the Zelda team that
would love to create a deep, rich story, but Miyamoto doesn't seem too
fond of it. I think it's time to take the franchise in a more
narrative direction. I think gamers can handle a Zelda with complex
emotions, rather than on-the-surface responses."
We loved the wolf mechanic in Twilight Princess. We also loved Midna.
What can Nintendo come up with next?
The narrative in Twilight Princess called upon the same methods that
worked for Ocarina of Time a decade before it -- namely, a combination
of game-engine cut-scenes, text bubbles and character grunts to drive
story. No pre-rendered cinematics and no voice work, the latter of
which has remained a pet-peeve of ours. Cassidy, though, stands atop
the other side of the chasm.
__
"I don't ever want to see a Zelda game with voice acting. I know that
most AAA titles of today feature voice acting, but I just don't think
that works for the Zelda series. I have no trouble reading a story,
and listening to grunts and sighs to accompany the text. I think that
a speaking role for Link would really ruin the experience. Just
because it can be done doesn't always mean that it's the right thing
to do," he says, adding, "Do you really want line after line of Tingle
dialog?"
Actually, we don't. And we would prefer to avoid Tingle altogether,
thank you very much. But we still contend that quality voice acting
would enhance and not detract from the storyline in the next Zelda
game. Link will forever be the silent warrior, but the characters he
encounters might better come to life with rich, well-acted dialog, a
technique designed by developers to immerse players into the
experience. Text bubbles are, if nothing else, a constant reminder
that you are playing a game, a presentational faux pas in today's
industry, where software houses strive to make games void of graphical
heads-up displays, let alone text-based character interactions. There
is also the point that if Nintendo never tries, how can we ever really
know? Long ago, Nintendo fans might have leveled the same skepticism
at the company's attempts to drag the always-2D Mario games into the
third-dimension with Super Mario 64. Looking back, nobody's
complaining. Finally, Nintendo could take a cue from companies like
BioWare, which are creating dialog trees for character interactions,
offering players a level of flexibility that could actually have an
impact on the storyline as they go.
Regardless of how Nintendo chooses to present Zelda's storyline,
though, most would agree that a fresh new tale would benefit the
franchise. We have, over the years, come to appreciate Majora's Masks'
interesting yarn set to the backdrop of an eerie moon threatening to
fall on and crush the planet where Link finds himself stranded.
Nothing, save for tradition, is keeping the developer glued to the
damsel in distress lure and we hope that Miyamoto will consider
upending the tea table, so to speak, when it comes time to pen Link's
newest travels. We would stand up and cheer for a deep, complex and
unpredictable story that reveals more about the Zelda characters than
we've learned previously, and we would likewise like to see the
franchise taken into altogether fresh directions. Whether that means
new playable characters, the return of some fan favorites like Deity
Link, some unexpected twists, or even the possibility that some major
players could bite the dust, well, we'll leave the details up to
Nintendo. Our one hope is that the storyline in Wii's next Zelda will
continuously surprise us.
No More Mr. Nice Guy
The original Legend of Zelda was ridiculously epic and challenging for
its time and some of franchise sequels have proven equally taxing.
Majora's Mask again comes to mind. But few would argue that The Legend
of Zelda: Wind Waker or Twilight Princess after it were overly
challenging games. In fact, hardcore fans have expressed
disappointment at how easily completed both titles were. That being
true, we think it's time for Nintendo to turn up the heat with Wii's
next Zelda game and provide the original fan base with an adventure
worthy of Link's time. As seasoned Zelda fans, we long for the day
when taking damage from an enemy resulted in the loss of more than one
health heart and not just a fraction of a one heart, for example. An
easy setting to tweak and if the developer so desires, it could
provide multiple difficulty settings, still appeasing the casual user
base -- a demographic, by the way, that we're still not convinced
cares to play Zelda regardless of its difficulty setting. Directly
relating to this is the challenge associated with fighting boss
characters. Although formidable in size, few of the bosses in Twilight
Princess presented notable hurdles to overcome, a disappointment given
that the franchise helped establish boss fights with some truly
intense and taxing battles. For the next game, we hope that Nintendo
will not be afraid to create some hard fights -- situations where Link
might actually perish and where players will need to use strategy and
reflexes combined to emerge victorious.
"Without the threat of doom, the beeping heart noise getting your
adrenaline up, beating a boss just doesn't feel the same. Think about
it, didn't you just hate Metroid Prime (the final boss)? Didn't you
sink back in your chair after beating it with a true sense of
accomplishment? A Zelda game that tries to cater to everyone will
never be able to do this," says IGN's publisher, Peer Schneider, a
longtime Zelda devotee and author of our Hyrule Times articles.
__
Revolutionary New Controls with Wii MotionPlus
Zelda traditionalists may argue that Nintendo needn't fix what isn't
broken and that mucking around with MotionPlus controls could
ultimately damage a perfectly fine configuration. Take, for example,
Wired's Chris Kohler, who would rather the developer play it safe and
remain cautious of dragging more motion work to the franchise.
"I'd absolutely hate for the next big Zelda game to be a Wii
MotionPlus game that's centered around 1:1 sword fighting, or
something similar that throws the baby out with the bath water," he
says
Cassidy disagrees. "I can't stop thinking about the possibilities of
MotionPlus. I would be extremely shocked and disappointed if the next
Zelda title didn't use the device. The types of gameplay and movement
that the MotionPlus makes possible would work perfectly into a Zelda
game. It might be the best way to move the series forward, while
still keeping things familiar. Everything from sword fighting to
boomerangs would become a lot more engaging," he explains.
With respect to Kohler, we tend to side with Cassidy on this one, but
we definitely understand the point of keeping an eye on the dangers of
overuse in regard to MotionPlus. Having waggle just for the sake of
waggle is unnecessary and could even feel contrived or broken. Were,
for example, the next Zelda to ditch the adventuring altogether for a
MotionPlus-enhanced sword fighting game, we would not be able to
contain our disappointment. Link's Crossbow Training is a fun
diversion, but completely ignoring the fundamentals of the franchise
in a major new release would be unfortunate for all the fans, us
included, who have grown up exploring the open world of Hyrule in all
of its glory and solving countless environmental puzzles.
We didn't immediately love Wind Waker's style, but looking back, it
was both gorgeous and extremely effective.
We envision smart, gameplay-changing integration of MotionPlus in a
manner that would complement today's Z-target lock-on. Imagine if Link
could freely maneuver through a non-linear world in typical Zelda
fashion, but as soon as he locked onto an enemy, players would be able
to control his sword-carrying hand with perfect precision using the
Wii remote. Players could still jump, strafe and even dodge with the
nunchuk, but they could also deliver accurate, fast slices and dices
with the remote. With this kind of pinpoint control, Link might even
be able to block incoming projectiles -- arrows, fireballs, etc. --
with his sword, but of course he wouldn't be reliant upon doing so,
for holding down B-trigger would cue his shield. And when the lock-on
is broken, normal controls would resume.
"I would love to see the combat camera moving behind Link's shoulder,
with Wii MotionPlus giving us unprecedented control over his sword,
shield, hammer, hookshot, bow and arrow, and so on. It shouldn't just
be mindless waggling, though. I want the game to use accurate
swordplay as a unique mechanism and tool the enemies' behavior and
weak points around this," Schneider. "Let me swipe up to knock a
helmet of a Bokoblin and expose his noggin. Let me stab forward to hit
a gap in the back of the shell of an Amos Knight. Let me pull back
with the remote to block or parry a blow from a powerful enemy."
__
Naturally, Wii MotionPlus controls wouldn't be limited to swordplay,
as Schneider suggests. Nintendo could cleverly devise a series of new
weapons that might make intuitive use of the control add-on. For
instance, a spiked ball and chain that would allow players to
accurately swing the Wii remote around to gain momentum, releasing the
attack at precisely the right moment to inflict damage. Or, the
ability to curve Link's boomerang using the same technique that works
for frisbee in Wii Sports Resort. And what about finally being to hurl
a bomb farther based on the power of motion, as measured by Nintendo's
add-on? But one item above all else seems the perfect fit for
MotionPlus and that is, of course, the Wind Waker, the magical baton
that could literally conduct the wind in the hit GameCube title. Using
MotionPlus, players could make subtle gestures that would be read and
translated on-screen. Think of Wii Music's maestro mini-game taken to
the next logical level, except as a legitimate hardcore gameplay
mechanic.
Don't Forget the Pointer
Wii's next Zelda needn't embrace MotionPlus at the expense of the Wii
pointer, which has thus far been every bit as effective as a gameplay
tool as waggle. Twilight Princess, in fact, successfully used the
pointer for the hookshot and for the bow and arrow and we think
there's room for further integration. Schneider referenced Metroid
Prime's boss battles, but we can also look to that game for pointer
inspiration. Not only did it employ fast and smooth pointer-based
shooter mechanics, but it transformed the Wii remote into a virtual
welder, enabling Samus to burn together cracks in walls in order to
proceed. The mechanic was a lot of fun and we've always wondered why
more developers haven't put the controller to use for similar results.
If any developer can one-up Retro Studios, it's Nintendo. Hopefully
the studio can develop some new tools for Link in his next adventure
so that gamers might have fresh reasons to grip the company's
revolutionary remote. We don't think anybody would be offended if the
Miyamoto and crew looked to a title like Okami, with its on-screen
drawing mechanic, and aspired for something similar.
The Question of Style
Here's something you probably didn't know: Twilight Princess, for all
of its hype, sold worse than The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. Well,
kind of, anyway. Wind Waker outsold the Wii version of Twilight
Princess by about 30,000 units, believe it or not, but of course that
doesn't account for all of the gamers who bought TP on GameCube, some
900,000, if you're counting. Nintendo's Tokyo unveiling of Wind Waker,
with its cel-shaded graphics and tiny warrior, may have resulted in a
decidedly different brand of tears than those shed for Twilight
Princess -- purportedly, Shigeru Miyamoto turned NOA employees and
asked why the American press wasn't clapping -- but in hindsight, the
super-stylized game had a lot going for it.
The Twilight Princess team wanted to enhance the graphics for Wii, but
ran out of time.
"What surprises me is, I keep finding myself going back to Wind Waker
as my favorite 3D Zelda," notes Cassidy. "It has its flaws, but the
story, design, graphics and humor are all very unique when looking at
the franchise as a whole. Twilight Princess was a textbook Zelda
game, which is a very good thing, but it undoubtedly lacked that fresh
feeling."
__
Wind Waker, by comparison, brought to the table a brand new visual
style which suited the Zelda series so well that it was used again in
a DS sequel, Phantom Hourglass. The cel-shaded presentation powering
Wind Waker is one that flows just a little better from a technical
standpoint within the limitations of the Wii hardware. Compared to
today's cutting-edge high-definition-ready consoles, the most
difficult visual hurdle for developers making Wii games is that of
creating realistic, gritty visuals. It is much easier and oftentimes
more fruitful to go with a highly stylized graphic makeup like that in
Wind Waker, with its colorful worlds and beautifully animated cartoon
characters. That all being said, we'd wager that the majority of die-
hard Zelda fans would still prefer that the next Zelda retain the
visual style established by Twilight Princess, even if it is easier to
spot graphic blemishes in an ultra-realistic game world.
"I like that Twilight Princess and Phantom Hourglass seem to have
resolved the question of what do we do with these two totally
different, but completely viable, graphics styles: Cel-shading, which
looks really nice on DS and helps smooth out that platform's lack of
graphical power, goes to the portable; "realism" (such as it is) on
the console. I think that's a solid solution that I'd like them to
continue on with," says Kohler.
It's important to remember that the development team making Twilight
Princess wanted to enhance the visuals for the Wii version, but that
Miyamoto declined because it would delay the release of the game,
which had already missed its ship date, even further. So we're
confident that that given the time to work exclusively on a Wii Zelda,
the team will be able to improve the look considerably. And yet, at
the same time, we find ourselves surprisingly accepting of the
prospect of another cel-shaded game -- again, simply because the style
works so well. We're not suggesting that we would want to return to
child Link form, but what if an adult Link could be brought to this
cel-shaded design complete with an aged-up presentation to suit him?
We think there's a lot of potential with something like that.
Imagine the swordplay in Wii's next Zelda, now with MotionPlus
controls.
And Just to be Clear, a Recap
Nintendo can absolutely afford to rest on its laurels. Twilight
Princess introduced a fun wolf mechanic and the ability to drop
between two dimensions, but by and large it played like every 3D Zelda
before it. And it was still amazing. So we're not going to lie --
sure, Nintendo could do exactly the same thing all over again and the
end result would probably still be fantastic. Yet, as Zelda fans, we
want to see the franchise taken into a bold new direction -- one that
doesn't just follow the bar, but raises it. We would be disappointed
if Nintendo diluted the power of the franchise with another spin-off
like Link's Crossbow Training, an excuse to forgo a long development
cycle. It would be unfortunate if the company didn't up Zelda's
production values -- injecting the experience with a deeper storyline,
multi-faceted characters, orchestral music, voice-acting and well-
choreographed cinematics. And it would be a missed opportunity if the
next game didn't fully utilize the Wii remote's pointer and Wii
MotionPlus for a better gaming experience than ever before.
The Zelda team has been reunited for a long time and we know that
something major is beginning to take shape back in Japan. Here's
hoping the game exceeds our wildest expectations when Nintendo finally
unveils it.
==============================================================================
TOPIC: Massive Zelda article from 2007: Eiji Aonuma's GDC 2007 Presentation -
Full text of "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Reflections in the Hourglass" talk
(find out what happened to Wind Waker 2 and how "Realistic" Zelda (TP) came
about)
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.games.video.nintendo.wii/browse_thread/thread/25a3fb3fc3b73057
==============================================================================
== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Sun 19 Oct 2008 17:01
From: NV55
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/specialArt.cfm?artid=13085
Eiji Aonuma's GDC 2007 Presentation
Introduction and gamer drift
March 11, 2007
Full text of "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Reflections in the
Hourglass" talk, including video.
Eiji Aonuma, director of the recent Zelda games, gave a talk at GDC
2007 entitled "The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Reflections in the
Hourglass." As the title suggests, Aonuma describes the development
process behind both Twilight Princess and Phantom Hourglass as well as
other recent Zelda games. He also reflects on the changing markets and
design of innovative ideas and intuitive control schemes and how they
even touched his own family. The presentation was given in Japanese
with live English and Korean translations made available through
headsets.
NOA translator Bill Trinen introduced Aonuma and mentioned that he was
the dungeon designer for Ocarina of Time and designed the Water
Temple, which elicited cheers. He was promoted to director for
Majora's Mask in 2000 and is now manager/producer of Nintendo EAD
Software Development Group No. 3. While the translator did an amazing
job with the translation, please note that since the translation was
provided live during the talk, it may contain slight errors. The full
text of the hour talk is found below.
The game industry has undergone a dramatic shift over the past few
years. This transformation has significantly affected the Zelda
franchise. It started in 2002, just as I completed work on The Wind
Waker, and I'd like to speak to you about how this shift affected the
work that we were doing.
We completed work on the Japanese version of Wind Waker at the end of
2002, and at E3 2003, we announced that the North American version,
which was released at the beginning of the same year, had sold up to a
million copies. But the truth of the matter was that the game did not
fare as well in Japan. I won't go into exact numbers, but it was
enough to show us the difference in the degree of enthusiasm between
the Japanese and North American markets.
It had become clear that the Japanese market was moving away from
games, in what we have come to call "gamer drift." The upper
management at Nintendo knew that it had to come up with a solution to
this phenomenon. This gave birth to the Nintendo DS, introduced in
2004 and was intimately tied to Nintendo's Touch Generations
initiative, which specifically targets those who have never played
games before. I am sure you are all familiar with it. At this time, I
had still not experienced this first-hand. For this reason, I was
still convinced the reason the Wind Waker did not perform well was
because of its toon-shaded graphics style. It was something that you
either loved or hated, and there was nothing that we could have done
about it.
I was thinking about what was happening to the market and what it
could potentially mean. We hadn't been able to add and truly new ideas
to the core Zelda gameplay since the series made the jump to 3-D. This
resulted in some seasoned gamers growing tired of the formula. In
contrast, those who had never played a Zelda game were intimidated
because they felt these games were too complicated. These, Miyamoto
felt, were the real reasons that the game did not sell well, so we
started on a project that utilized Wind Waker assets and was based on
the theme of creating a new style of gameplay. We called this project
Wind Waker 2, and it was eventually reborn as Twilight Princess, but I
will explain that in more detail later.
Connectivity: failure in innovation
First, allow me to speak on the theme of innovation in gameplay. The
need to innovate gameplay was not only limited to Zelda. Nintendo
recognized the problem of gamer drift, and our philosophy was that a
new style of gameplay was needed into order to breathe new life into
the market, and our answer to this was the invention of a certain
system. As you are all aware, the system we called "connectivity,"
linked the Game Boy Advance to the GameCube, allowing the Game Boy
Advance to be used as a controller with its own screen. We implemented
this system of connectivity in The Wind Waker as the Tingle Tuner, and
several other titles took advantage of connectivity as well. However,
there wasn't any one title that used connectivity as a central game
mechanic, and Miyamoto that no one had conveyed to gamers just how
much fun connectivity could be.
We began working again on a multiplayer Zelda game that used
connectivity as its main gameplay system, and I was made producer of
this title. This project which was released as Four Swords Adventures,
was based on Four Swords, a game developed for the Game Boy Advance as
the very first multiplayer Zelda game. Adventures took place in a 3-D
world where four players run around the field on a main monitor, but
when players enter dungeons or rooms play field shifts to the players'
own Game Boy Advance screens. There they can play in an environment
where their opponents cannot see them or what they are doing.
Ultimately, this game introduced a completely new style of play.
At E3 2003, the response to this game from attendees was very
positive, and I was very hopeful for the game's release at the
beginning of 2004, but the results were not very good and I felt very
disappointed by the outcome. I believe this result stemmed from the
need for each player to have a Game Boy Advance and the need for each
player to also have a cable to connect that Game Boy Advance to a
GameCube. I thought that requirements like these prevented it from
doing as well as we hoped, but there was another problem. I think you
might have noticed this as I was explaining the game, but it suffered
from seeming too complicated. It was too difficult to convince the
consumer that they wanted to play the game. Simply put, it was a
challenge to give users incentive to play because it was difficult to
show how much fun the game was even through television commercials and
other advertisements. Based on the negative result we got with
connectivity, Nintendo learned that no matter how innovative the
gameplay is, unless we have something that we can convey directly and
intuitively, people will not be interested in it.
The fate of Wind Waker 2
Let me backtrack a little. As I was busy working on the connectivity
project, it wasn't as though the Wind Waker 2 project that I spoke of
earlier came to a halt. Not at all. As some of you know, at E3 2004,
we unveiled the game that would become Twilight Princess, the
realistic Zelda game, and we announced that it was developed by the
team that had been developing Wind Waker 2. Actually, there was a
reason that that decision was made at the time. At one point, I had
heard that even Wind Waker, which had reached the million mark in
sales, had become sluggish in North America, where the market was much
healthier than in Japan. I asked NOA why this was. What I was told was
that the toon-shading technique was, in fact, giving the impression
that this Zelda was for a younger audience and that, for this reason,
it alienated the upper teen audience that had represented the typical
Zelda player. Having heard that, I began to worry about whether Wind
Waker 2, which used a similar presentation, was something that would
actually sell. In addition, because we knew how difficult it would be
to create an innovative way of playing using existing GameCube
hardware, we knew what a challenge it would be to develop something
that would do well in the Japanese market, where gamer drift was
happening.
That's when I decided that if we didn't have an effective and
immediate solution, the only thing we could do was to give the healthy
North American market the Zelda that they wanted. So, at the end of
2003, I went to Miyamoto and said, "I want to make a realistic Zelda."
Miyamoto was skeptical at first. I was so focused on changing the look
of the game as being the solution we were looking for without coming
up with a breakthrough game idea, and he advised me that "If you
really want to make a realistic Zelda, you should start by doing what
you couldn't in the Ocarina of Time. Make it so that Link can attack
enemies while riding on his horse using the Wind Waker engine, and
make your decision based on how that feels." This is something that
went against everything that the staff had been working on and I
expected to come as quite a shock to the team. Surprisingly, my entire
staff was enthusiastic about this change, and the project on which
progress had slowed was given a much-needed jumpstart.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/media/12727/1/9.jpg
Four months later, development had progressed to a point where Link
could swing his sword in battle against enemies while riding on his
horse in a realistic looking environment. When it was announced as a
surprise trailer at the 2004 E3, it received a standing ovation by the
media audience. This was a very exciting moment for us, but we were
still very much in the early stages of converting the game into
something more realistic. We knew that we had to create a Zelda game
that would live up to expectations of fans in North America, and that
if we didn't, it could mean the end of the franchise. But I also
trusted the ability of the team, which was able to bring the game so
far in just four short months, and Miyamoto and I announced that this
Zelda would be released in the fall of 2005.
Zelda DS prototype
The 2004 E3 was a bit of a turning point for the Zelda franchise. It
was also a very important show for Nintendo as it was the year that
the Nintendo DS was introduced. As I mentioned earlier with
connectivity, we learned that even if we come up with an innovated
type of gameplay, unless we can convey that experience clearly, people
will not be interested in it. The DS, with its direct control, touch-
screen operation, and two screens, immediately intrigued people. They
were asking, "What's that? What does it do?" It was clear from your
response that developers were also excited about the possibilities
with this new hardware. The change in the gaming environment that
brought about the creation of the DS hardware was not clearly evident
at the time of the 2004 show.
I was so deeply involved with the realistic Zelda project, that I
still hadn't realized how important it was for a DS Zelda to be
developed. However, Nintendo was already moving in that direction and
Miyamoto felt that it was time for Zelda to move in that direction as
well. The team that had developed Four Swords Adventures, had already
begun work on DS Zelda. Upon returning from E3, I heard from my staff
that the DS was hardware was capable of supporting toon-shading. I
immediately asked my staff to implement cel-shading on the DS because
I was disappointed that the cel-shaded Zelda was not received as well
as I had hoped. In a short amount of time, they were able to show me 2-
D Link moving in a 3-D world on the top screen, and on the lower
screen, a Link shown on a map that was controlled entirely by touch. I
talked about this with a member of my staff the other day, and we dug
up the prototype version. Here's a movie from it:
While I was surprised to see the toon-shaded Link from the GameCube
version moving around on the DS screen, the controls were not
intuitive. I asked my staff to display the 3-D world on the bottom
screen and change it so that players would control Link by touching
him directly. The style of playing where the player touches the screen
directly, connects perfectly with the gameplay in Zelda, where the
player is encouraged to interact with various objects in the
environment. When I thought about what the overriding theme of the
Zelda DS game that took advantage of that would be, I knew that we had
to make it so that standard control would have the player touching
Link and his surroundings to interact with them.
At first my staff was bewildered. Once they understood that the
traditional controls were replaced by something more direct, new
playstyles emerged. Players lock onto enemies and attack them by
tapping, draw the path a boomerang would take, and make notes on a
map. The stylus made all these interactions possible. Based on this,
we were able to create the first major innovation to Zelda's gameplay
in 3-D since the Nintendo 64. In addition, we felt that although past
versions of Zelda may have intimidated new uses with their complicated
controls, the direct control of the stylus meant that it would be easy
to entice new users even in a market experiencing gamer drift. In
order to ensure that the game would appeal to seasoned Zelda players
as well as new players, we added the online battle feature using Wi-
Fi, a first for the Zelda franchise. Direct control functioned well on
that level as well, and I will speak more about that later.
A lupine direction and Minish Cap
At the same time that we were working on taking Zelda DS in a new
direction, we had to make a decision about the direction of the
realistic Zelda game. We knew what a challenge it would be to
innovative gameplay on the GameCube, so we had to come up with
something new from another direction. Try though we did, we couldn't
come up with any good ideas. We were afraid that the game was no
longer selling as it once did in Japan, Zelda's basic gameplay had
been received well by many users in the past. If we changed it just to
change it, we worried that longtime Zelda gamers might not appreciate
the new direction, and rather than draw new users, we thought that we
would end up alienating everyone. I think that this is something that
all developers working on a long-running series confront. It certainly
wasn't easy for me to come up with a viable solution. This went on and
2005 was quickly approaching.
Knowing that I had raised the expectations of end-users by promising
that a realistic Zelda was on the way, I knew that I had to come up
with something brilliant, something that would take advantage of the
look of the game. My staff suggested that changing the environment
would change the gameplay and looking to past Zelda games which use
the contrast between two different worlds, dark and light, past and
future, we thought to incorporate this idea again. This is when the
idea that Link would transform into a wolf was proposed. The idea of
Link's transformation into a wolf came from The Legend of Zelda: A
Link to the Past, in which Link transformed into a rabbit in the Dark
World. We wanted to change Link's environment, but we also wanted to
make a completely different skill set available to him in this new
environment and thus create a completely different style of gameplay.
We wanted him to become an animal, combining the ideas of both the
wild and heroic into one. That's how we came up with the idea of the
wolf. I was also scolded by Miyamoto who said, "It's hard enough to
get a two-legged Link to move around in a 3-D world convincingly. To
consider a four-legged wolf is something an amateur would do." I knew
that what he was saying was right and would eventually regret having
even tried it, but even if it was a challenge at the time, I thought
that this kind of disruptive breakthrough was just what the staff
needed to change their way of thinking.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/media/12727/1/10.jpg
I had no doubt that this was the right direction to pursue, but having
set the framework of this new direction, my work was required on
another project. I left the realistic Zelda team to work details and
began work as director of The Minish Cap for the Game Boy Advance,
which Capcom developed. Even in the weakening Japanese market, the
Game Boy Advance install-base continued to grow. The market seemed to
have stabilized and as one of the titles that would help sustain it,
Minish Cap was very important to the franchise. Also, because this
game involved Link moving freely between the normal world and the
microscopic world of the Minish, which was very close to the idea that
we were shooting for with the realistic Zelda, I was very passionate
about my work on this title. I felt certain that the way the gameplay
changed as the environment changed in Minish Cap would have a positive
effect on the development of the realistic Zelda. In hindsight, by
immersing myself in the Minish Cap project, I gave myself a way to
escape from not being able to find a breakthrough on the realistic
Zelda project. I regret that I might have been too selfish, thinking
that I could just leave my staff to come up with the solution, but my
mistake in thinking caught up with me.
E3 2005 and 120% Zelda
Having released Minish Cap without a hitch, I started to think about
what content to include on the E3 2005 playable version of the
realistic Zelda. However, development on the project that I hadn't
been able to support was struggling. Although there were various small
sections of gameplay that would create the framework for the game,
there wasn't one single distinctive model of play or a timeline that
would connect each of the events. I really didn't think that at that
rate, we would create that would generate positive buzz on the E3 show
floor. What concerned me most was at this stage of development, as a
result of having put priority on the idea of the two worlds and the
wolf, there was still nothing special about the most important aspect
of the game; there was nothing special about the movement of the
realistic Link.
In addition to this, after the 2004 E3 announcement, Miyamoto heard
the response from end-users about the realistic Zelda. Miyamoto gave
us a mission: our goal must be that if we were going to do it, it had
to be 120% Zelda, and that meant making a Zelda that exceeded the
Ocarina of Time. But where we were at the time did not exceed Ocarina,
and regardless of the result, I knew that we had to focus on a new
play feeling and also on creating alluring Link actions in preparation
for E3. Once we got past E3, only then could we really work toward
Miyamoto's mission. From that point on, I worked not as a producer,
but as the game's director.
At E3 2005, though the presentation might have had something to do
with it, response was huge. Some attendees waited up to three hours in
a long line to play the playable version of the realistic Zelda called
Twilight Princess. Ultimately, we were able to deliver something that
lived up to their expectations. However, I knew that what we had at
that point, thought the art style was new and its own appeal, still
didn't have the innovation in gameplay that DS Zelda had, and that was
something we had to overcome. Could we provide Twilight Princess with
a feeling of something that DS Zelda had? As though he could see
through my concerns upon returning from E3, Miyamoto approached me and
said, "It's as though the Revolution pointer was designed specifically
for the arrow control in Zelda. Why don't you consider making a Zelda
that uses this?"
A Revolutionary idea
Control that you experience though direct pointing device and motion
sensor: Upon its conception, I was curious to see the Revolution,
Nintendo's new platform announced at E3 2005, would innovate Zelda's
gameplay. I was eager to try it, but I thought that that could happen
only after we completed work on Twilight Princess. I was surprised at
first to hear Miyamoto's suggestion that we try it right away, and I
didn't know how it would impact the Zelda that at that time was still
missing a key ingredient. But we had to start by testing what Miyamoto
had suggested and that was getting the pointer to work as the control
for the bow and arrow. Though the pointer control that we developed as
a trial still needed tweaking, and as imperfect as it was, the feeling
of being able to aim directly at the target on the screen was, as with
the DS version, exactly what was needed to give Zelda a completely new
feel. Having experienced it, I was convinced that that was the only
direction we could take. "This direct control is exactly what Twilight
Princess needs in order to penetrate a market experiencing gamer
drift." Miyamoto knew that this would be my response, and he himself
felt strongly about it.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/media/12727/1/11.jpg
However, if we put Twilight Princess on the Revolution, we ran the
risk of those looking forward to playing it on the GameCube. For this
reason, we knew that we had to release it for the GameCube as well.
But doing so meant developing two versions, a GameCube version and
Revolution version, and we knew that it was impossible to create both
before the 2005 release as promised. Miyamoto negotiated with the
higher-ups, and in the end, while it would disappoint those users who
were looking forward to the 2005 release, if we really were able to
create a 120% Zelda game that could be played both on the GameCube and
on the Revolution, then even if we did release at the time of the
launch of the Revolution in 2006, we could make even those users
happy. This was Iwata's response and the decision to create Twilight
Princess for both the Revolution and the GameCube.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/media/12727/1/12.jpg
Creating a Zelda title for launch was a first in the history of the
Zelda franchise. This was the first launch title that I had worked on,
and I had no way of knowing how much of a challenge it was going to
be. In addition, because we were making the GameCube and Wii versions
(I'll be calling it Wii from now on), we had to be particularly
careful about the schedule, and being inexperienced, I had no idea how
long it should all take. Thankfully, the Wii hardware supports
compatibility with the GameCube, so I heard that transferring data
that we had developed for the GameCube to the Wii wasn't that much of
a challenge in terms of coding. I decided that once the game content
had proven to be stable enough to run on the GameCube, we would work
on the Wii-compatible version. I set our first goal of having the
GameCube version complete through the middle while parallel to this
work, Miyamoto and I began thinking about what controls would be
changed in the Wii version, deciding what to do first about the
pointing.
The first attempt at Wii control
As I mentioned earlier, after the pointing experiment, I thought the
feeling of aiming at the screen with the bow and arrow was convincing,
so we started polishing this control. What Miyamoto wanted to
accomplish first of all with this control was to eliminate the 3-D
stick as the camera control in the GameCube version and make it into
something simpler where the camera could be moved using only the
pointer. I think those of you who have worked on an FPS will
understand, but it was a reoccurring issue with existing camera
controls where there are two styles of control. There was the joystick
style, where tilting the stick forward would move the camera down, and
tilting it back would move the camera up, and cursor controls, where
the camera would move in the same direction that the stick was tilted.
Neither control style was really acceptable. It was our goal to create
a solution for this and to this problem.
Please watch this movie where the boomerang is being used. When the
boomerang is being held, in the center you can see a circular mask
appears. If the pointer is moved within this area, the camera will not
move, but if the pointer is moved outside of that area, then the
camera will move in that direction. A camera that rotates in the
pointer's direction is unlike anything that had been used before and
took some time to get used to. But because we were able to point in
the direction that we wanted to look and cause the camera to move, we
felt that this was a very direct and effective control style.
Next, the motion sensor. I had been thinking about direct controls
like swinging a remote to have Link swing his sword and wanted to push
the experience of playing even further. When we tried changing the
camera perspective from one that normally is in third person to one
that switches to Link's first-person perspective in battle. Please
watch this movie. For this prototype, all we did was change this
perspective to the first-person view we currently had. We haven't
tweaked things like the spacing between Link and enemies, so it's
really awkward, but having played this version in first person, we
didn't think this was the most effective way of presenting battles.
Link normally has a variety of movements, but when he enters into
battle with his enemies, which has come to be known as core scene in
Zelda, if that variety is lost, it feels very strange.
So, we brought the camera back to the third-person view and swung the
Wii remote like a sword. This time we saw problems that we hadn't
noticed when the camera was in the first-person perspective, and we
made the decision to abandon using the motion sensor to swing the
sword. The reason for this is that the player character of Link is
left handed. You see, when a player had the Wii remote in his right
hand and swung it, it felt strange because on the screen Link would
swing the sword that was in his left hand, and this was something that
couldn't be avoided. This might seem trivial, but the act of shaking
the remote is a control that the player physically experiences, and if
it doesn't match up with what is happening on the screen, then it
becomes something that has no effect at all, and ultimately this
becomes something that is considered extraneous control.
Because the sword control was the most direct in Zelda, it was the one
that we most wanted to implement, so we were very disappointed that we
could not use it. We settled upon the assigning sword swinging to the
B trigger played in the past. In addition, because there are no X or Y
buttons on the Wii, which were used as the item buttons on the
GameCube, though it takes a little time to get used to, we assigned
left, right, and down on the plus control pad above the A button for
this. Consequently, we added one more button than in the GameCube
version, and by making decisions like this, we were confident that we
had created something that was not inferior to the GameCube version
for the Wii. Feeling that the structure of the Wii version was
finalized, we put a playable version on display at E3 2006 and awaited
the response in Japan.
E3 2006 lesson
In daily reports that I received from various staff members who were
at E3, there were things like, "Feedback on the Wii has been very
positive, but there is evidence that people think the control is too
hard." I was concerned, but this was made even clearer after Miyamoto
returned to Japan. Many said that the plus control pad item controls
were too easily confused. A number of people said that the camera
would move around on its own in the first-person item view, making it
confusing, and people were left not knowing what they were supposed to
do.
So, including the extension to develop the Wii version, we had only
four months left and there was still so much of the game data that we
had to come up with. Now, to receive negative feedback like this, what
would you do in my shoes? "Maybe it's because on the show floor, there
isn't enough time to get used to the Wii controls and that's why we're
getting this response. Or, it's been switched over from the GameCube
version and people are used to the GameCube controls, so of course
they're going to have a hard time with it." These were the kind of
thoughts that were running through my head as I was trying to get away
from having to revisit the controls. I had to come up with a response
to the negative reactions, and so while playing the other E3 playable
launch titles for reference, I discovered that the number one thing
missing from Zelda at the time.
The controls we as developers had decided to implement in Zelda were
ones that we had forced into the game in order to take advantage of
the Wii controls. I had realized that I hadn't worried about making it
easy to understand and intuitive and making people want to play the
game; all those things relate. The feeling that I had that people
would have to get used to the controls when working on switching
controls over to the Wii was evidence of this, and I realized that I
was forcing these controls onto the user. It wasn't a Zelda that would
have been received well by the end user. I felt as though Zelda had
been left behind by the other launch titles, and having hit rock-
bottom, Miyamoto and I began rethinking the Wii controls completely.
If you analyze all the negative feedback from E3, it all seemed to
point to the same thing. It wasn't something that could be controlled
with ease. When a person tries something new, they are simply looking
for something that feels comfortable, and when it doesn't, they start
to feel like they need to get used to it. But for users who aren't
able to get used to it, it just becomes something complicated and
difficult. I thought that making the controls direct was the answer to
the game being too difficult, but ultimately, it was the complete
opposite. That's when I was forced to realize that in order to resolve
the issue, the most important thing to do was to provide the user with
a sense of comfort and ease.
Camera and item controls
First, we looked at the one thing that received the most negative
feedback, and that was the movement of the camera with the point
control. We tried fine tuning the rotation speed and the sensor area,
but we weren't able to get it to a point where anyone was simply able
to pick up the game and control it comfortably. In addition, the
fundamentals of the gameplay is such that the player does not actively
have to think about pointing. Pointing is key when the player is
choosing an item. So if when that transition happens, the pointer is
in a camera rotation area, the camera would rotate all of the sudden,
and we couldn't avoid confusing the user in this way. Please watch
this movie of the pointer control after we changed it. I think you can
see the icons marking the right and left movement of the control
stick. The result was that we decided to just kept the vertical camera
control using the pointer because it doesn't rotate and returning
lateral movement to the control stick. When we switched to this mode,
we decided to add text that told the player when the pointer was
outside the detectable range, making it so that the player does not
perform any action until the pointer is back in range. In the end, we
were not able to fulfill Miyamoto's wish for uniform camera control
completely because a game like Zelda involves switching between first-
person and third-person camera perspectives and so it's something that
we cannot get around. But for our traditional FPS, which primarily
uses the first-person view, it should be more intuitive for the user.
He would be ecstatic if developers creating games like that would
adopt Miyamoto's vision.
Next, we addressed the plus control pad item controls. As many of the
item controls in Zelda require that the player hold and release, we
thought that while a player was pressing and holding in one direction,
they would inevitably press another, causing a faulty button press.
This problem of key assignment and control was one that we had a
really hard time resolving, but we knew the only way we could have
players swap items was to use the plus control pad. If we were to
change the press-and-hold item control to a switch, it would
negatively affect the gameplay and make the game less fun. We felt
like we were stuck. Have you ever experienced anything like this? We
could have made the decision to give up one thing or another, but we
decided to separate the controls to alleviate the problem. In other
words, I assigned the hold function to the B trigger button, and used
the plus control pad as a place where players could queue up other
items and swap that item out with the one assigned to the B button
just by pressing the corresponding direction. These changes minimized
the mis-entered data and made it easy and comfortable for users to
point while holding down the B trigger button to control the item.
Sword controls
Key assignment doesn't seem like a big deal if you look at it
objectively, but it was a great challenge to assign the same number of
functions with significantly fewer keys to work with, and once we
assigned one, we had to reassign another. That thing happened when we
decided to assign items to the B trigger button. Until then, we had
been using the B trigger button for the sword control, but actually,
ever since we started reconsidering the key assignment for the sword
at E3, we already decided that we had to go with another control, the
control that users wanted to perform. I'm talking about the motion
sensor swing. When we were developing the E3 version, we knew that it
felt strange for Link to be left-handed, so we removed that, but if we
still wanted to implement that control, we would have to make him
right-handed. However, in order to do this, we would have had to redo
Link's character in the game, which, with only four months left in
development, would have been impossible.
It was at that time that we thought if we flipped the entire world
laterally, so that left and right were reversed, Link would be right-
handed, and that decision to use this bold solution was made. Some of
the staff members criticized the idea, saying that it wasn't the final
course layout that they designed and that the composition would be
thrown off. They had a hard time with it at first, but after
personally playing the game, the feeling of strangeness was gone after
only a week, and in contrast, the original GameCube version started to
feel strange. I knew that end users would feel the same way and I
convinced my staff of this as well. Of course, the effect of these
changes was immense, and giving the player the ability to swing the
remote to make Link swing his sword was imperative to this game.
In the beginning, we thought about making it so that the player could
swing the remote vertically to have Link swing his sword vertically,
and horizontally to have Link swing his sword horizontally. But in the
end, we decided to make it so that no matter which way the remote was
swung, Link would swing his sword. If the sensor is made to detect
direction, the response is inevitably effective. We made our decision
because whenever a player is immersed in a game, they really aren't
thinking about whether they are moving the remote vertically or
horizontally and really wasn't a benefit to the experience unless they
are making a conscious effort to think about what they were doing. But
rather than adding that distinction, we decided to make ease and
comfort our priority so that players knew when they swung their
remote, Link would swing his sword. In order to test this new version
and see how playable it really was, we held an internal playtest. When
I saw some of our female employees defeating a giant boss, I was
confident that as with the DS Zelda, the realistic Zelda had been
reborn.
Suffering and success
Initially, I was quite bitter about the negative response that we
received at E3, but in the end, I believe that it was critical for us
to get that feedback at the time that we did. In many ways, creating
is about suffering. "You must learn from your pain. Those who do not
will never become what they are truly meant to be." This is something
that Miyamoto has been saying a lot lately, and though I have been
making games for a long time, for someone like me to struggle to
create something true without some amount of suffering is near
impossible. There have been many occasions where in the final stages
of development, Miyamoto has said to me, "You aren't thinking about
the end user," what's come to be known as "upending the tea-table,"
and I felt that Twilight Princess had officially been christened. For
those of you who are curious, please feel free to check the Zelda
section of "Iwata Asks" on the Nintendo homepage to read more about
the anguish I experienced after being reprimanded by Miyamoto.
The Twilight Princess was completed as Miyamoto and I had envisioned,
and having heard that in North America and Europe, the majority of
users who bought the Wii also purchased a copy of Twilight Princess, I
thought that all of our hardship and hard work had paid off. However,
in comparison, sales figures were not what I had been hoping for in
Japan, and so I believe that many users still have the impression that
Zelda was too complicated and therefore too hard to play. Based on
this and realizing that Zelda needed to change even more, I was well
aware that getting more people interested in the title was going to be
difficult. DS Zelda, which we are planning to release this year, is
full of concessions that we made based on this understanding, and I am
looking forward to seeing what kind of results our efforts bring
about.
Zelda DS Wi-Fi multiplayer
I mentioned earlier that in the new DS Zelda, we undertook something
totally new to the franchise, a Wi-Fi enabled battle mode. I will
explain exactly what that will be like here. The name battle mode
probably conjures up images to some of you of multiple Links appearing
on the screen and swinging their swords, but this battle mode has a
nickname, "Wi-Fi hide and go seek," and it's a completely new way of
playing. The number of players is simple: it's a one-on-one game. Both
players on the same field taking turns as the offense, whose goal it
is to take items to their base, and the defense. On offense, one
player plays as Link and the other, the defense, move three, what we
are calling "Phantoms," whose job it is to stop Link. How will one
player control three characters? Well, this is what's key to playing
this game, and it's the same control that in DS Zelda, the player can
use to control Link. Please take a look at some footage of actual
gameplay. Now here, I am playing as the red Link against my opponent,
the blue Link, who just happens to be the planner who designed this
battle mode. I certainly hope that you'll cut the red Link some slack
for playing so poorly.
First please focus on the red Link who is playing on offense. I'm
going to stop here for a second. The top screen: this game is a battle
so normally you would check to see the enemy, but not on this map. On
this map, all you see is Link. Now you can see the icons of the three
Phantoms that I mentioned earlier. This is because red Link has picked
up an item, a Force Gem. You can see the Phantoms while carrying
these. The red Link switches between carrying and lifting the Force
Gem because even though I have the advantage of seeing where the
Phantoms are while I'm carrying them, they also slow me down, so if I
carry a Force Gem for too long, it increases the risk of the Phantoms
catching up to me. This is how the game is meant to be played, and not
just because I am bad at it. The red Link just placed the Force Gem in
his base and earned a point. You might not have noticed the red Link's
speed drop that much while he was carrying a Force Gem, but the bigger
the Force Gem, the more it will slow Link down. However, while the
risk is higher, the points that the player can earn are also bigger
with these Force Gems, and that's a strategic decision that the player
must make. The red Link was attacked by a Phantom. In this game,
though Link cannot attack the Phantoms, the Phantoms will
automatically attack Link if he comes near one of them. When a Phantom
comes near Link, he must run without a moment's delay, but with my
reflexes, I was unable to escape that attack. With this, the players
switch sides, and the player controlling the red Link will now play
defense and control the Phantoms.
Let's take a look at that same game, this time from the perspective on
defense. I think you can see the difference from when the red Link was
being controlled. Lines are being drawn in order to control the
Phantoms and the map is being displayed on the lower screen. Also,
with red Link, you start the game without being able to see the
Phantoms, but the Phantoms can always see where Link is. Link has
disappeared from the map screen. Do you see the light blue areas on
screen? If Link enters these spaces, he cannot be seen by the
Phantoms. Also, Phantoms cannot enter these spaces, so these serve as
safe zones for Link. Link has reappeared on the screen. Red Link was
in a safe zone for a while, but then the player controlling the blue
Link predicted my movements and placed the Phantoms around the safe
zone. It was too dangerous for me to leave it. It's obvious that the
blue Link is clearly the better player. Link has disappeared again.
Link will also disappear when he is on his base; now this is a safe
zone too.
…And the red Link is down again. The red Link is surrounded by the
Phantoms, and this happens quite often, especially when Link cannot
see where the Phantoms are. Because of this, the player controlling
Link must check the location of the Phantoms while carrying a Force
Gem and predict where they will go next and move Link accordingly.
That's the key to playing this game. In this way, each player takes
turns trying to get as many items to their base in the given amount of
time without being attacked by a Phantom. After the set number of
turns is taken, the winner is determined. Each game is short, the
longest possible being twelve minutes, but with games where you are
forced to try to read your opponents next move, the more you play, the
better you get at reading their habits, and so this game is very
addictive. You will understand this game as soon as you experience it,
so I certainly hope that you will head to the Nintendo
booth and try the game out for yourself.
A personal story
As an example of this, and in conclusion, I would like to tell you
about something that recently happened very close to me. At home, I
have a little boy who will soon turn 5 and my wife, who is about the
same age as I am. I'll tell you more about my son in a little bit. But
my wife, who has lived with me, her husband, who works at Nintendo for
over 15 years, has absolutely no interest in games and takes the
stance that they are not necessary at all. In that way, I suppose my
wife is kind of similar to Miyamoto's. And because she feels this way,
she treats me like the happy-go-lucky who plays the games that he
loves every day at work without understanding my day-to-day hardships
at all. I feel like I'm saying "at all" too much; I'll change that to
"very much."
Back to my home life: I had never even considered taking a game
console into a household with a small child and wife like that until,
one day, my son said, "I want a Wii Remote." I think he probably saw
one in a TV commercial one day. What really struck me was he didn't
say "I want a Wii." He said he wanted a Wii Remote. To his eyes, that
remote looked interesting, and he really wanted to hold it. He had no
idea at all that it was connected to a game machine. It was such a
surprise to me. Next, after placating my wife's concerns that five
years old was too early to start playing games, I brought a Wii
console home along with Wii Sports because they were first-time
gamers, and although I thought it might be too much, Twilight
Princess.
I started by having my son play Wii Sports. I don't mean to praise my
own company's product, but even my five year-old son was able to play
Wii Sports. Take boxing for example: without understanding the rules,
he knew that all he had to do was move the Wii Remotes relative to the
character on the screen, and it looked like he was having a great time
doing it. I thought that this would be the case, so I wasn't all that
surprised. Then, when he saw the copy of Twilight Princess on the
table and asked, "What's this? I want to try this too." I thought it
would be too much for him, but because he asked, I started the game up
and handed him the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. Because the controls aren't
as simple as with Wii Sports, my son was a little lost in the
beginning. After I showed him how the controls work, he was able to
fish and call the hawk in Ordon village at the beginning of the game.
He slowly got used to the controls, and was finally able to point and
shoot targets accurately with the slingshot. After my wife made him
stop, saying that playing games too long was bad for his eyes, he
asked, "Can I play Zelda again tomorrow?" A five year-old was able to
play Zelda; this was a huge surprise.
A shocking scene and the Phantom Hourglass trailer
The next day, I came across a more shocking scene. I got home earlier
than usual, and in our living room was my wife, fighting a monster in
one of the dungeons, and next to her, as though he was cheering her
on, sat my son shaking his arms in front of him in small movements. I
asked my wife what was going on, and she said, "He was playing Zelda
and got to a part in the game where a bunch of monsters come out.
Because he got so scared, he couldn't make it any further. At first I
was just playing to get him further along, but as we were playing, he
started giving me advice, and we were having so much fun playing
together. He just gets so sad when he sees that big "Game Over," so I
can't help but keep playing to make sure that that doesn't happen."
That's how she explained it, and ever since, I've been getting one
question after another about, "What's going on here? Am I supposed to
do this here?"
When I see the two of them getting so excited about it, I can't help
but think that I should have introduced my wife to Zelda games sooner.
To that, my wife said, "Old games, if I was watching someone play, I
never felt like I wanted to try it myself, but with the Wii, after
seeing our son play it, I wanted to try it too." Upon hearing that,
well, I knew that the fact that our now having a son also played a
part in it, but that feeling that she had of seeing someone play and
wanting to play herself reminded me of when I first played Mario on
the Famicom. I realized that the Wii, which was reviving this feeling
in the end user, was reminding us as developers of what is important
to a game.
Watching my son, who refuses to leave Ordon village because he is
scared of monsters and he spends every day collecting Rupees and
getting excited screaming, "Hey, I found a new place," it reminds me
of noticing even small details. But for now, as a followup to Twilight
Princess and in hopes that many of you will try the DS Zelda, Phantom
Hourglass, which will be released later this year as the latest
evolution of the Zelda franchise. Please enjoy this movie as I
conclude my presentation.
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