Echoes Of Wisdom is the first Zelda game to be directed by a woman
Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom is making history for Nintendo (Nintendo)
The first Zelda game to put Princess Zelda as the lead also has a woman in charge behind the scenes, as the game’s developer is finally revealed.
Despite being announced back in June, Nintendo has been reluctant to reveal the developer behind The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom, as it has been with many of its most recent games.
It turns out everyone’s initial assumption was half true. Grezzo, the team behind the 2019 remake of The Legend Of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, has co-developed Echoes Of Wisdom with Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development (EPD), in what is the first mainline entry to feature Princess Zelda as a playable character.
A developer deep dive has unearthed more details of the game’s creation, namely that it marks the first title in the series to be directed by a woman.
In a Q&A posted on Nintendo’s website, Echoes Of Wisdom developer Tomomi Sano is described as ‘the first female director of The Legend Of Zelda series’.
Sano is part of Nintendo EPD, but she previously supported the director on other Zelda games developed by Grezzo, including 3DS ports Zelda: Ocarina Of Time 3D and Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D, and the remake of Link’s Awakening.
‘I was also involved in The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, as well as some of the titles in the Mario & Luigi series released prior to Mario & Luigi: Brothership, which will be released in November this year,’ Sano added.
Tomomi Sano is a director behind Echoes Of Wisdom(Nintendo)
Detailing her role on Echoes Of Wisdom, Sano said: ‘I was the director for this title from Nintendo’s side. My role was to manage and coordinate the production for this project, suggest adjustments, and then check the outcome to ensure the gameplay created by Grezzo is aligned with The Legend Of Zelda series.’
Echoes Of Wisdom was co-directed by Grezzo’s Satoshi Terada, while longtime series producer Eiji Aonuma oversaw the project.
It’s unclear if Sano pitched the idea to put Princess Zelda in the title role (part three of the deep dive is released on Tuesday), but the game’s core mechanic was borne out of a slew of pitches from the Grezzo team.
‘It was a big event for Grezzo,’ Terada said. ‘After all the remakes we had been working on, this was the first time we were challenged with a new game project from the conceptual stage. There was even a time when every single one of Grezzo’s employees were thinking about ideas.
‘Thanks to this, we came up with so many ideas that it took us three days just go over and review them. Since it was a Legend Of Zelda project, everyone worked hard on proposals and presented them in front of Aonuma-san with pounding hearts.’
Where did The Legend Of Zelda get its name? Despite what many newcomers to the series assume, Zelda is not the name of the playable character in the game. Until recently you were always able to change his name to whatever you want, but the default has always been Link.
Instead, Zelda is the name of the princess that you’re usually trying to rescue. Her prominence varies from game to game, and technically she has been playable before, but Echoes Of Wisdom is the first time she’s had a full Nintendo-published game to herself. The character is named after American novelist and painter Zelda Fitzgerald, because series creator Shigeru Miyamoto liked the sound of the name.
The main idea behind Echoes Of Wisdom, where players can copy and paste objects into the world, grew from an expanded ‘edit dungeon’ concept – which was later trimmed down to specifically focus on ‘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.
There’s plenty of other details in the deep dive, including how it was inspired by Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom’s flexible puzzle design, but hopefully the final part will shed some light on the decision to put Zelda front and centre.
We don’t have long to wait until the game is out either. Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom is released Friday September 26 on Nintendo Switch.
Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom – legendary tables (Nintendo)
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