Nintendo Power interviewed Shigeru Miyamoto and Satoru Iwata during E3. Check out excerpts on Zelda & next year's show!
During E3, Nintendo Power sat down with legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto and NCL’s new president Satoru Iwata to discuss E3, the games and what’s next. It’s always great to hear what these two have to say, so here’s a chunk of the interview!
Nintendo Power: With Nintendo's huge showing at E3, the biggest ever with its Game Giants and Connectivity presentation, you have to be thinking what next year's E3 will be like. How are you going to top an E3 presentation that's this enormous?
Miyamoto: Next year, our big focus is going to be on uniqueness and innovation.
Iwata: We thought that for our second year [with Nintendo GameCube and Game Boy Advance] that it was really important to focus on our strengths. And that's why we see this really historical presence of Nintendo franchises at this year's show. And I think that it'd be difficult to repeat in the future. We've never seen a lineup like this. But at the same time it's extremely important for us to continue to put out new products and new ideas and new franchises. Because, if we don't, there's really no future for us. And so that's going to be our main focus going forward.
NP: And by "uniqueness," does that mean we're going to see more connectivity, with an even stronger presence of connective games at next year's E3?
Miyamoto: Yes. I think that definitely means more connectivity, but it also means more games that are in and of themselves unique. Unique ideas--of course, half of that is still all in my head.
Iwata: Connectivity is one of our strengths, but it's not the only thing that bring uniqueness to our games. And so we're really looking forward to making games themselves unique. Next year we may see something more like last year--when we brought out Pikmin, which was something totally new and never before seen. And it surprised a lot of people. That's really the kind of surprise that Mr. Miyamoto is looking for. And so the kinds of things we'll be showing next year may have some characters that people are familiar with but are completely new games. There might also be games that have characters that are themselves completely new. Mr. Miyamoto is thinking about a lot of different things. There will be a lot to look forward to.
A big part of the interview is Zelda and how it is so much like an interactive cartoon:
NP: Even certain games that are based on existing cartoons have only partially recreated the cartoon experience. What do you think are the real challenges of making a game play like a cartoon?
Miyamoto: I think a really large goal was to find a kind of expression that really fit the Zelda world--to create his own universe. In doing so, we came up with many ideas and went with the cartoon-style of cel-shading that we now have. But from early on, the designers were able to look at that style of cel-shading and understand what elements of that really fit the Zelda world and helped to draw out the characters in the world.
From all over E3, we can see that cel shading is a kind of trend in game technology, and there are many games that are trying it. But, in Zelda, we're not just taking this technological trend and applying it to the game. We're really taking the idea of it being a cartoon and creating the entire world as a cartoon--rather than just applying a graphic technique to an already-created world.
So we're using cartoon-style expression on Link's face and cartoon-styled expression in the emotions and animations of other characters as well. The whole world feels like a cartoon, rather than just using this cartoon technology and applying it to a medium.
Nintendo Power promises more of the interview will be available on Nintendo.com in the future and also in the July issue of NP. In the meantime, check out the full interview yourself!
