In last week’s Nintendo Treehouse Live stream, Zelda Producer Aonuma explained that he wanted to remake Link’s Awakening in order to give players a more “traditional” Zelda after Breath of the Wild broke the series’ conventions.
In a recent interview with Kotaku, Aonuma elaborated on why Nintendo decided to pursue this remake. “The original game was released 26 years ago on the Game Boy. Getting that Game Boy version is a little hard to do these days. So I’ve wanted to remake this game for a while.”
“For even people who have played the original, I want it to be a fresh experience.”
He went on to explain why he chose not to make the content in the remake identical to the original’s. “When I create a remake or reimagination, I don’t want to just make it completely the same,” Aonuma says. “I always want to incorporate new elements. For even people who have played the original, I want it to be a fresh experience. So I was looking for that opportunity.”
Aonuma previously revealed to IGN that the new Chamber Dungeons mode, which allows the player to craft their own dungeons, was a leading “inspiration for making this remastered game.” He explained that the idea was a perfect fit for this game, “because a lot of the dungeons in Link’s Awakening were a set size.” He elaborated on this in his conversation with Kotaku.
“When we were thinking about arranging dungeons, creating a puzzle on your own is always a little bit hard,” expresses Aonuma. “So we thought, ‘What’s an easy way to have players be able to arrange things?’ We thought maybe room arrangement or a map arrangement would be an easy way, and it’d feel like solving a puzzle. That’s how we landed on the [dungeon editor] Chamber Dungeons.”
In this same interview, Aonuma also discussed the important topic of overtime in the games industry, and we learned that Ocarina of Time 3D developer Grezzo is working on the Link’s Awakening remake.
