The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - HUGE Iwata Asks details

This is a summary of the 8-page Ocarina of Time Iwata Asks feature that just went live.

- Aonuma didn’t come into Ocarina of Time until later in development
- Ocarina of Time originally had a jump button
- original development on Ocarina of Time started with 3 people
- Nintendo was, at one time, creating Zelda II: The Adventure of Link with polygons on the Super Famicom
- Miyamoto wanted Ocarina of Time to display from a first-person perspective, and then switch to a side perspective during fights
- A visit to Toei Kyoto Studio Park where the team saw a ninja stage show lead to the development of Z-Targeting
- Z-Targeting discussion actually began during Super Mario 64
- the idea for Navi came from the development team wanting to place a marker above the enemy you were targeting, but didn’t want it to be a simple triangle marker
- this was originally called the Fairy Navigation System, but was changed to Navi, which is short for navigate
- the creation of Navi lead to other design choices, like Navi’s hints, color changes for characters and even the main storyline
- with Zelda titles, game mechanics come first and the script later
- Ocarina of Time originally featured only an adult Link
- the desire for a young Link came from Miyamoto and other dev team members
- talk of Young Link didn’t come into play until the second year of development
- the time-traveling mechanic came into play thanks to young Link, and caused a bunch of problems with the dev team
- Link has roughly 500 basic motions
- Ocarina of Time was originally developed with the N64 DD in mind
- Discussion of Epona arose during Super Mario 64 development
- Epona is the goddess of horses and fertility in Celtic mythology
- Miyamoto requested specific camera angles for when Epona jumped
- The reason the horse jumps automatically is Miyamoto-san said that a Zelda game doesn’t need any difficult actions.
- Miyamoto added the carrot system, and also wanted archery and horse battles
- Horse battles didn’t get included in the series until Twilight Princess
- Miyamoto also wanted Link to raise his sword above his head, which has only now been accomplished in Skyward Sword
- the number of items in Ocarina of Time was decided from the start, and this caused problems later
- items would be made, and then devs had to go back and make sure those items didn’t cause problems in earlier parts of the game
- Aonuma says that development on OoT ‘was a mess right up to the end’
- Miyamoto isn’t a fan of cinematic elements
- he thinks including cut-scenes are okay, but they need to have the option of being changed multiple times during development
- the developers would actually fly the camera around in-game to find good locations for cut-scenes
- the dev team was really impressed really impressed when the sword was able to cut a sign
- When Miyamoto saw a cut sign float in a pond, he said “Now that’s The Legend of Zelda!”
- The development period was two and a half years
- Link originally had a button nose in OoT
- Koizumi changed the design of Link based on what his wife said, as she requested a handsome character
- Koizumi gave Link a pierced ear to make him cooler, but also gave him long underwear to keep him from being overly cool
- Aonuma is asked if he wants to work on Mario games from here on out, and he strongly states that he wants to stay with Zelda

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