Topic: INTERVIEWS: GDC 2007: The Eiji Aonuma Interview

[WindyMan]

This is the talkback thread for our Eiji Aonuma GDC 2007 interview.  Leave your comments here.

[that Baby guy]

It's good to know there will be more multiplayer Zelda, I hope there's another pure four swords, with some kind of Wifi, on the DS.

On the other note, I don't think he really gets the different perceptions amongst gamers in regards to graphics, or at least not completely.  I can see from this interview and his speech that he's starting to figure out why Wind Waker got less reception than Ocarina of Time, but he didn't realize it initially.
I suppose the real deal is that the media, for the most part, have made their judgments based on playing the game, along with all the people who played Wind Waker, and most of them have liked it.  The rest of the people basically refuse to play it because of how it looks.  If they were to give it a try, they'd probably like it, especially if they liked other Zelda games.  Or at least that's how it seems to me, and how people treat Wario Ware until I basically force them to try it.

[Djunknown]

Since he didn't mention any future downloadable content for TP, I guess it won't happen...

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. It's always necessary for us to balance giving players incentive to collect these items, but also giving them the choice to take the item.

I dunno, in TP, by the time you got all the bugs and all the Poes, you don't need really their rewards.. More specifically the Poes.

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Because Fado is always on the ranch, he doesn't want to reveal too much about his private life.

Downloadable content Idea: The secret Fado level! What would you put in it?

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Moving forward, there will be many other multiplayer games.

Can we safely assume that the next console iteration of Zelda will have a multiplayer portion of some kind? This could start another forum war...

[Bill Aurion]

 No...

There will be another Four Swords Adventures game, which is desperately needed!

[KDR_11k]

So the difficulty was supposed to be in the optional sidequests? Only the cave of ordeals? I don't know about others but I don't play Zelda to kill room after room of monsters, the COO may have been difficult but it was also really uninteresting and repetitive to play and AFAIK the reward you get for it is worthless. Players want challenge not in some isolated part of the game that lacks about 75% of what makes the game fun, they want the challenge in the game. Would it have been asking for too much to add a difficulty selection that greatly increases the damage enemies do in later dungeons? Come on, you have at least 11 hearts in the final dungeon, no need to have enemies take off less than two per hit.

[Ian Sane]

It's somewhat of a relief to know that there is no way to get into Fado's house.  It sucks that they cut a corner like that (extra time to polish the game my ass, it was obviously delayed for the Wii port) but at least now I won't waste time trying to access a room that doesn't exist.

Regarding the difficulty being in the sidequests I don't necessarily have a problem with that but I think that has to be approached more like Majora's Mask.  MM relies a lot on sidequests but there's a logical reward for doing that.  I don't really have much desire to do the extra stuff in Twilight Princess or Wind Waker.  Hell I've left WW sidequests unfinished for years now.  In Majora's Mask I didn't even attempt to beat the game until I had all the masks.  To me that was a requirement.  In Twilight Princess there's no desire to have all the poes before I beat the game.  I might as well beat the game and then later wrap up loose ends like collecting poes.

As usual I don't like the emphasis on eliminating buttons.  That seems like pushing idealogy instead of doing what is best for the game.  It seems too much like Nintendo is focused so much on removing buttons that they're not stopping and thinking "does it make sense to do this?" or "is this the best solution for the game we're making?"

The only way to get non-gamers to like Zelda will be to change it in such a way that Zelda fans no longer like it.  The mainstream doesn't like stuff that requires effort and when something requires no effort to enjoy it's a waste of time for people who actually care.

Multiplayer doesn't bother me because Four Swords was great.  Unlike Metroid there isn't a large portion of gamers that don't like Zelda asking for a major alteration to the gameplay specifically to fill a genre gap Nintendo, for some reason, isn't filling with something else.  Multiplayer Zelda still plays like Zelda.  It isn't like they're turning Zelda into a platformer to appeal to the "WHAT NO JUMP BUTTON?" crowd.

Though if they go all Phantasy Star on us where a single player series becomes multiplayer focused then the sh!t's going to hit the fan.

[Kairon]

If you read NWR's takedown of Aonuma's presentation, it seems the team was flailing around a lot. They really weren't done by 2005, and even now, they're not done. As a result of seeing this difficulty, I now consider the traditional Zelda game in a serious decline, NEVER to regain its former glory.

Dear Aonuma, stop making Zelda games and start making games YOU want. You were onto something with Majora's Mask and your darker atmospheres... explore that, trust your heart, develop your instincts, and you won't become a Miyamoto-replacement, but stand tall as an Eiji Aonuma.

~Carmine "Cai" M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

P.S. Is Aonuma really the correct spelling? ARGH!

[Bill Aurion]

"I now consider the traditional Zelda game in a serious decline, NEVER to regain its former glory."

I find Twilight Princess to be a far better game than Ocarina of Time (and obviously Majora's Mask)!  I totally went there!

[Ian Sane]

"I find Twilight Princess to be a far better game than Ocarina of Time (and obviously Majora's Mask)! I totally went there!"

Didn't you say the same thing about Wind Waker?

[Bill Aurion]

Oh no, you went THERE!  (Yes, it's better than OoT and MM, too, but TP is better than WW in terms of gameplay... )

[GoldenPhoenix]

Actually Bill is a very smart man, Wind Waker was better better than OOT even with its flaws and personally I think TP trounces Wind Waker. The game was epic in scope, and I even ::gasp:: thought the end boss fights were better than OOT (Not to mention more difficult).

[Smoke39]

It does sound like TP's development was a pretty rough ride.  I think it's odd that the Wii remote was seen as the missing ingredient the game needed to be special, and yet the Wii controls were, at best, uninspired.

[GoldenPhoenix]

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Originally posted by: Smoke39
It does sound like TP's development was a pretty rough ride.  I think it's odd that the Wii remote was seen as the missing ingredient the game needed to be special, and yet the Wii controls were, at best, uninspired.

But vastly more intuitive when it came to aiming. Even the "waggle" provides a better sense of excitement for me when I was a chopping a boss up!

[TrueNerd]

I thought the Wii controls were the biggest reason why I had more fun with Twilight Princess then any other Zelda game ever. Holding down a button for a spin attack is sooo last gen.  

[Ian Sane]

"It does sound like TP's development was a pretty rough ride. I think it's odd that the Wii remote was seen as the missing ingredient the game needed to be special, and yet the Wii controls were, at best, uninspired."

I think it's more likely Nintendo is making sure to push the Wii controls as the missing ingredient.  Either that or they just honestly think that the Wii controls somehow makes the game so much more special when really the pros and cons of the game are entirely unrelated to it.

But if shoehorning in remote controls makes Nintendo think they're making a better Zelda and inspires them in some way then that's overall a good thing.  At the very least they'll have a better attitude when designing the game.

Controls don't make a game special, it's the gameplay that does.  Controls can contribute to the gameplay but they alone will not make a game special.  At it's core Twilight Princess follows the same template as the other 3D Zeldas.  The very fact that there is a Gamecube version and it has been as well received critically as the Wii version proves that.  The game works well with both control schemes.

I personally trust Aonuma with the Zelda franchise.  I think so far under his reign Zelda has been fine.  I am concerned about Phantom Hourglass but I think the touch controls would be there regardless of who made it because Nintendo wants to prove the touchscreen concept, even though I think by now it's likely there is no concept to prove.  If there was they would have pulled it off already and there never be any forced touchscreen usage.  The Nintendo higher-ups want touch controlled Zelda so if it sucks I wouldn't blame Aonuma.  Though if it turns out great I would praise him for it.

[Smoke39]

TP's Wii controls were half-assed.  On the 'Cube they were completely abstracted, and I could accept that.  On the Wii, they were half there.  Pointing to aim made sense.  Waving the remote to attack made sense.  But it didn't match up very well, and that broke any feeling of imersion it could have created.  Why does he swipe in random directions?  Why do I have to be moving forward to stab, instead of simply thrusting forward?  Why can't I wave the remote up and back down to do a jump attack?  Because time was short, and they just mapped waggle to B.  In my opinion, if they weren't gonna do it right, they shouldn't have bothered.  I think it would have been more productive to finish the 'Cube version, then focus on doing it right for the next game.

[UltimatePartyBear]

I'm not fully satisfied with the sword controls (though I don't think they're bad), but the aiming made a huge difference in how I played the game.  I was constantly shooting things as I rode around the world.  It was so easy to do, and there were so many opportunities, that I found myself buying more arrows (and bombs) almost every time I returned to town.  If it hadn't been so easy, I probably would have just ignored the snipers.  It also made it easy to grab items from a distance, unlike every previous 3D Zelda.  I hated it in Wind Waker when a lot of rupees would appear and I wouldn't be able to get them all with the boomerang before a lot of them disappeared.  That wasn't even a concern in TP.  I was using all of my equipment constantly because it was fun to do so for the first time in any 3D Zelda game.

Aonuma said it was the bow that the Wii remote seemed to fit so well, and I can see that easily.  They had to put in "waggle" sword swinging to accommodate the real benefit of using the remote.

[Kairon]

They need to make an ENTIRE game based just around strafing around while aiming the bow in third person mode.

~Carmine "Cai" M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Bloodworth]

Quote
Originally posted by: Smoke39
TP's Wii controls were half-assed.  .... Because time was short, and they just mapped waggle to B.  In my opinion, if they weren't gonna do it right, they shouldn't have bothered.  I think it would have been more productive to finish the 'Cube version, then focus on doing it right for the next game.

He said that before E3 they had more realistic sword control, but it didn't feel as good as they thought because most people aren't thinking about what direction they're swinging the remote.  So it has nothing to do with them not having time. They simply did what they felt worked best for the game.  You can disagree with that choice, but don't make out like they just went with the first thing that came to mind when they tested at least three completely different control systems.

[Smoke39]

I know they tried different control schemes.  I didn't mean to suggest that they didn't.  I just think what they ultimately came up with is kinda lame, and I like to think that--if given more time to experiment--they could have come up with something better.

[MegaByte]

Quote
Originally posted by: Kairon
They need to make an ENTIRE game based just around strafing around while aiming the bow in third person mode.

Yoshi's Safari 2?