Nintendo recently published Parts 1 and 2 of their “Ask the Developer” interview with the internal development staff behind Echoes of Wisdom. The interview confirms that the third-party game company Grezzo, who helped Nintendo develop the remakes of Ocarina of Time 3D and Majora’s Mask 3D in the past, have also recently assisted Nintendo with the production of Echoes of Wisdom. This would be the first time Grezzo is directly involved with an entirely new Zelda installment. Grezzo director Satoshi Terada was interviewed, along with Eiji Aonuma and recently promoted director of Echoes of Wisdom Tomomi Sano, who is historically the first female director of the Zelda franchise.
Even though Tomomi Sano was recently promoted, she has worked with the Zelda and Grezzo teams for a good while. In the interview, she explained that her primary role in the past was to support the director with the 3DS remake projects and Link’s Awakening for Nintendo Switch. She worked closely with Grezzo to ensure quality control. “I was also involved in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, as well as some of the titles in the Mario & Luigi series released prior to Mario & Luigi™: Brothership, which will be released in November this year,” said Somo.
Aonuma stated in the interview that he felt very confident with Grezzo co-developing Echoes of Wisdom. “Grezzo had established an excellent way of reviving the top-down Legend of Zelda experience for a modern era, so I thought we could develop something completely new that had never been done before.” He and other Zelda staff then offered Grezzo staff to pitch ideas for the new game.
“It was a big event for Grezzo,” Terada laughed. “After all the remakes we had been working on, this was the first time we were challenged with a new game project from the conceptual stage. There was even a time when every single one of Grezzo’s employees was thinking about ideas. Thanks to this, we came up with so many ideas that it took us three days just to go over and review them. Since it was a Legend of Zelda project, everyone worked hard on proposals and presented them in front of Aonuma-san with pounding hearts.”
“I’ve worked with Grezzo for a long time, though,” Aonuma admitted. “But when we were working on remakes, we didn’t really get the chance to hear everyone’s ideas. This time, we asked everyone, not only the project planners for the game, but also the designers and programmers, to come up with lots of ideas.”
The developers further explained in the interview that Echoes of Wisdom was initially conceived as a dungeon-maker type game. This is fascinating to learn about, as it was likely Echoes was developed around the same time as Tears of the Kingdom, a game that embraces the idea of thinking outside the box. You can find the interview in full on Nintendo’s website here. Part 3 will be published tomorrow worldwide.
