When a game, no matter what size, relies heavily on a singular game mechanic, it can be hard to balance things out to ensure that the title is both fun and uses the game mechanic to its fullest potential. With The Legend of Zelda Echoes Of Wisdom, the team at Grezzo was doing something that no entry in the franchise had done before: give players over 100 different “Echoes” to use at their leisure to solve puzzles, defeat enemies, work their way through the landscape and dungeons they encounter, and more. In a recent interview with the dev team, they revealed the balance and restrictions that had to happen for the game to work how they wanted.
For example, Director Tomomi Sano noted that while they wanted to have plenty of Echoes for gamers to use, they had to clearly define them and what they could do, else the “freedom aspect” would be overwhelming:
“Having the freedom to solve puzzles by yourself is a key feature of Legend of Zelda games. But having too much freedom can leave you feeling stumped. We made a conscious effort to clearly define the functions of each echo so that players understand how and where they should be used. We were mindful of designing it so that players could reach the gameplay elements we wanted them to experience without getting lost and confused.”
They also had to balance things to ensure that you felt Princess Zelda was “doing things” in combat and beyond versus just “making things happen via Echoes.” They wanted to players to feel accomplished through Zelda versus just having her as a “creator” of things.
That’s not to say that there are “numerous restrictions” within The Legend of Zelda Echoes Of Wisdom, as that’s not what the team wanted either. Eiji Aonuma noted that he felt that removing many of the game’s inherent restrictions would open things up for the player creatively and allowed them to “be mischievous.”
“We came up with this key phrase because we wanted to do some things that were really out there. For example, if you roll something like a spike roller along the ground, that’s a lot of work, because it can hit all kinds of things, but if we didn’t allow for this possibility, it wouldn’t be fun. (Laughs) The development team called these kinds of ideas “being mischievous.”
That’s where the idea of “pasting things anywhere” came into play, which allows players to use Echoes in ways that perhaps the creative team wouldn’t have thought of on their own.
