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Aonuma - multiplayer in Zelda games is a high hurdle, working on ideas for Zelda Wii U
A portion of a Wired interview with Eiji Aonuma...
Wired: It seems like a lot of Nintendo’s games are going in a multiplayer direction right now. I was surprised to see the Tokyo team, instead of doing something like Super Mario Galaxy 3, do a 4-player Mario game. I’m wondering if something like Zelda: Four Swords might get revisited on Wii U.
Aonuma: Actually, multi-play has been a high hurdle for me, something that’s plagued me for a long time. We did come out with Four Swords but I don’t think that offered a whole lot of surprises for the user. I still believe there’s one Link; the one-Link philosophy works for Zelda. But there are other ways to incorporate kind of a multiplayer experience. One of those ways is the Tingle bottle that we announced. It uses Miiverse. In Wind Waker there’s this vast kind of sea world that you’re traveling in, and there are lots of Links exploring this space. Through the Tingle bottle, that’s where that communication happens with those other Links. They may not physically appear in that space, but you know of their presence through the messages that they leave. They share their experiences, things that they’ve discovered through their explorations, and so again you can feel their presence without their physically being there. That’s a kind of multiplayer, if you think about it. With the new Wii U Zelda, we’re coming up with new ideas that still allow the one-Link idea but are the same type of multiplayer.
Full interview here
Wired: It seems like a lot of Nintendo’s games are going in a multiplayer direction right now. I was surprised to see the Tokyo team, instead of doing something like Super Mario Galaxy 3, do a 4-player Mario game. I’m wondering if something like Zelda: Four Swords might get revisited on Wii U.
Aonuma: Actually, multi-play has been a high hurdle for me, something that’s plagued me for a long time. We did come out with Four Swords but I don’t think that offered a whole lot of surprises for the user. I still believe there’s one Link; the one-Link philosophy works for Zelda. But there are other ways to incorporate kind of a multiplayer experience. One of those ways is the Tingle bottle that we announced. It uses Miiverse. In Wind Waker there’s this vast kind of sea world that you’re traveling in, and there are lots of Links exploring this space. Through the Tingle bottle, that’s where that communication happens with those other Links. They may not physically appear in that space, but you know of their presence through the messages that they leave. They share their experiences, things that they’ve discovered through their explorations, and so again you can feel their presence without their physically being there. That’s a kind of multiplayer, if you think about it. With the new Wii U Zelda, we’re coming up with new ideas that still allow the one-Link idea but are the same type of multiplayer.