We all know that certain video games go through heavy changes during development, as sometimes content is cut, or things pivot to reinforce a new idea that’s come up. With The Legend Of Zelda Echoes Of Wisdom, the key mechanic that Nintendo and the team at Grezzo is pushing is being able to create “Echoes” for Princess Zelda to use to solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and more. However, as they noted in a special interview with Nintendo, that wasn’t the first idea Grezzo had for the game. Instead, they wanted to use Link, and have him create dungeons.
After Grezzo pitched ideas for the game, designer Satoshi Terada noted how they had Link doing things like creating doors and other items while going through a dungeon:
“In one approach, Link could copy and paste various objects, such as doors and candlesticks, to create original dungeons. During this exploration phase, this idea was called an “edit dungeon” because players could create their own Legend of Zelda gameplay.”
Not-so-ironically, it was longtime producer Eiji Aonuma who steered things to where it is now, as he felt that simply making copies of items and pasting them around was a fun idea, so things shifted in that direction. However, even Aonuma admitted that he didn’t rush to do this, as he wanted to see what the Grezzo team would make, and he needed to see and feel how things would work:
“After all, you can’t really see the potential for ideas to develop into solid gameplay until you can verify features and their feel, so I wanted them to try making it first. I felt that the “edit dungeon” feature they showed me had significant potential to be developed into a new way of playing the Legend of Zelda games if the gameplay was changed to use “echoes” instead. So, I thought it would be good to expand in that direction and could be even more interesting that way.”
He wasn’t wrong in thinking that, as The Legend Of Zelda Echoes Of Wisdom is easily one of the most unique entries the franchise has ever produced based solely on the Echoes system.
