The Legend of Zelda: Evolution of a Franchise
I don't post in these forums too much so I hope that this hasn't been shown already. It's not really concerning TWW2 so I didn't put it in that thread, however it does have a bit of reference to the future of the Zelda series. It's basically Eiji Aonuma talking about his involvement in the Zelda franchise so far and what it means to be 'Zelda-esque'. An interesting read....
Linkage~
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The following transcript is from a speech made on March 24 by Eiji Aonuma at the 2004 Game Developers Conference in San Jose. Content has been edited for clarity and length.
Good Afternoon. My name is Eiji Aonuma, and I work in the Software Production Department of Entertainment Analysis & Development, or EAD, at Nintendo Co. Ltd. For roughly eight years I've been doing work related to a game known as Zelda, but I never imagined that an opportunity for me to talk to all of you about this experience would ever come.
I was very surprised when the opportunity arose, and at the same time I was incredibly honored. So, allow me to outline for you the topics that I'll be speaking to you about today regarding the evolution of the Legend of Zelda franchise.
I will start by introducing to you in order the numerous titles in the series that have appeared since the birth of the first Zelda game. Next I will explain how Zelda has changed over the years. Then, since my main theme today is looking behind the scenes of franchise evolution, I'll talk about exactly what it means be Zelda-esque. Finally, I'll talk about approaches to evolving the franchise.
Zelda History
I'm sure that many of you who are here today are familiar with the Zelda series, but since some of you may not be, I'd like to take a look back at Zelda's history. Let's start by taking a look at each of the Zelda games in the order they were released.
[Mr. Aonuma shows a movie featuring previous Zelda games on a large screen]
This is the Zelda Retrospective that was included on the Legend of Zelda: Collectors' Edition disc, which was bundled with Nintendo GameCube hardware sold in North America late last year.
We start with the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985 -- 19 years ago, and two years after its launch in Japan. This marked the beginning of all Nintendo video game products -- not just Zelda.
Two years after that, in 1987, we saw the now celebrated release of the first title in the Zelda series, The Legend of Zelda. This game unveiled the top-down viewpoint. This was followed up the next year with the 1988 release of The Adventure of Link, a more action-oriented Zelda with side-scrolling areas. This marks the year I joined Nintendo, which technically means that Zelda has seniority over me at Nintendo.
In 1991 we released the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and followed that a year later with the release of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on that system. With this title, the Zelda series once again returned to the top-down isometric view. It can probably be said that were it not for this title, the Zelda franchise would never have developed.
A Link to the Past established many of the conventions of Zelda games to come, including those that were refined in The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, which was released for the Game Boy the following year. Even now, Link's Awakening is lauded as a quintessential isometric Zelda game, and it was remade in full color in 1998 for the Game Boy Color.
Finally, in 1998 came the game that revolutionized the Zelda series, taking the top-down 2D series into full 3D. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time refined the 3D camera of Super Mario 64, allowed players to target enemies, and created a smooth 3D sword-fighting experience which strengthened the appeal of the Z-Button on the Nintendo 64 controller. This title sold 7.6 million units worldwide.
It was after this 3D Zelda title that I was put in charge of the series. When I talk in detail about development shortly, I will be talking mainly about Majora's Mask (which was released two years after Ocarina) and the platform change to Nintendo GameCube and subsequent release of The Wind Waker.
So, in 2004 we've seen that the Zelda series has developed into top-down style games on the hand-held Game Boy Advance, and into full 3D-style games on home consoles like the Nintendo GameCube. This year we will see the release of the multiplayer Nintendo GameCube game Four Swords Adventures, which is a game that links the Game Boy Advance to the Nintendo GameCube for a top-down game that takes advantage of a 3D engine on the Nintendo GameCube. This allows for 2.5-D artistic expression.
So, with this new expressive quality, and with the upcoming release of the unique Nintendo DS system, I think we'll see more changes coming to the franchise, the likes of which we can talk more about at this year's E3.
That covers my discussion of the history of the Zelda series, but in addition to the games I've listed here there are others that cannot be left out when speaking about Zelda. Please take a look.
[Mr. Aonuma displays a movie featuring Super Smash Bros. Melee and Soul Calibur II]
What you just saw were two Zelda titles developed by other creators after my involvement with Zelda began.
The first was Super Smash Bros. Melee, and I'm sure you are all aware that this was developed under the direction of Masahiro Sakurai, who is also speaking here at the GDC this year.
The second was Soul Calibur II, which was planned in collaboration with Namco, and which featured Link as an exclusive playable character in the Nintendo GameCube version.
While I was not directly involved in development of these titles, both teams were extremely careful with how they handled the Zelda characters and universe, and their work led to even further expansion and development of the Zelda franchise.
In planning collaborations like these (and the Capcom-developed Oracle games for Game Boy which were listed in the timeline), there can be difficulties in fitting the direction that creators want to take with the existing Zelda universe. And there is also the risk that collaboration work will feel forced -- or even worse -- that it will negatively affect the franchise. But allowing other talent to pioneer new possibilities for the Zelda games is a very important development for the series.
That covers the major developments in the Zelda franchise from past until present, so with this as our background, I'll now begin a simple explanation of my involvement with the Zelda series and my work on the Zelda team.
My first encounter with Zelda came in 1988, shortly after I joined Nintendo. After studying design in college I began work designing a variety of pixel characters. At the time I didn't have much experience playing games, and I was particularly bad at games that required quick reflexes.
Immediately after I started playing the original Zelda, I failed to read the movements of the Octoroks that appeared in the field, and my game suddenly came to an end. Even after getting used to the controls, each time the screen scrolled to a new area, new Octoroks appeared, and I thought "Am I going to have to fight these things forever???" Eventually I gave up getting any further in the game.
The result was that I was left with the impression that The Legend of Zelda was not a game that suited me. So, what kinds of games did suit me? Those would be Text-Based Adventures.
To someone like me who enjoyed reading stories, these were games that let you actively participate in the story and let you experience the joy of seeing your own thoughts and actions affect the progression of the story. Plus, these games don't require fast reflexes, and thus are games that don't require gaming skills. So I thought that if I were to make games, I'd want to make this type of game.
After that I spent my days drawing pixel art of Mario and Peach and honing my design skills on a variety of projects. Then in 1991 I came in contact with a new Zelda game called A Link to the Past.
Although I had been frustrated by the original Legend of Zelda, since I knew of the graphical display improvements of the Super NES, I knew A Link to the Past was a game I had to play even if I quit halfway through.
In playing the game, I kept repeating basic actions unrelated to battling enemies -- things like cutting the grass, lifting stones to search beneath them, and using keys to open doors. In these I discovered reliable methods for proceeding through the game, and I got the same feeling I did when using command inputs to actively participate in the story of text-based adventures. And yet I realized that those same feelings were coupled with a sense of play-control response that far exceeded what one experienced with command input alone.
Unfortunately, at that time Nintendo still needed my skills as a designer, so my hope to create a Zelda-like game could not be immediately realized. Two years later, though, there was a project that gave me just such an opportunity. It was 1996, and the game was one that was released in the overlapping time between the SNES and the N64.
For a variety of reasons, localization of the game was abandoned so it did not make it to the world-wide market. The game, called Marvelous, built upon the Zelda-style adventure events, and was praised in Japan as "an ambitious work that feels like a change-up to the Zelda style of play."
Now, I've never asked Mr. Miyamoto how he viewed this game, so I can't make any claims about his thoughts on it, but it was after this that he instructed me to join the team that was creating the Next Zelda.
I wasn't involved in Ocarina of Time from the initial stages of development, but rather joined from the point at which the planning framework had already been finalized. When I joined, work was beginning on building onto that framework.
This project started off with multiple directors responsible for individual portions of the game, which was a different style from the way EAD had developed software in the past. I was mainly responsible for Dungeon Design and the design of enemy creatures in the dungeons. Of course it was strange that I, who was so terrible at fighting enemies and who had decided that Zelda was not the game for him, ended up in charge of enemy design. The type of gameplay used in enemy battles is an extremely important element of dungeon design, so there was no way for me to escape it.
In Ocarina of Time I also took on the challenge of incorporating Adventure Elements into dungeon design, by which I mean giving each dungeon some type of theme, such as rescuing the trapped Gorons, or hunting down and defeating the Poe Sisters.
After finishing work on Ocarina of Time, Mr. Miyamoto instructed us to use Ocarina of Time to create Ura-Zelda -- a Zelda-esque second version with rearranged dungeon gameplay. But I felt that just changing around the puzzle-solving without changing the overall structure of the game would be too limiting, so I turned down Mr. Miyamoto's offer, and proposed that if anything, I wanted to make a new Zelda game.
Ura-Zelda was to have been developed for the Nintendo 64 Disc System that was released only in Japan, but since I turned down this project other staff members developed it. It was finally coupled with the Nintendo GameCube version of Ocarina and released as the Master Quest. Even now Mr. Miyamoto still scolds me for being the lazy type who comes to conclusions before even giving something a try.
Despite this, when I proposed doing a new title I wasn't thinking that I would be the director, but under Mr. Miyamoto's instruction we were to create a new Zelda game with the focus on its game system, and we were to complete it in a short period of time using the Ocarina engine. It was necessary for someone who had been responsible for bringing together all the details of Ocarina's game spec to handle the overall design of the new game, so that role was given to me.
Mr. Miyamoto's goal to complete a new game in a short period of time was the result of having spent so much time developing the 3D Ocarina engine. He wanted to make effective use of that engine in creating a new game. While we decided that this would be very important for future Zelda development, we were faced with the very difficult question of just what kind of game could follow up Ocarina of Time and its sales of 7 million units?
In response to this challenge we came up with the idea that the solutions to puzzles would be found in a series of recurring events. So, we adopted a three-day time system. This three-day system in Majora's Mask introduced players to a variety of events that occurred at the same time over a period of three days that players played through multiple times. Once all the puzzles were solved, then the hidden goal appeared. With this system it was possible to make the game data more compact while still providing deep gameplay.
Designing all the matters and events that were governed by this three-day period proposed new challenges, and thus led us to a number of new discoveries.
Before creating Majora's Mask there was actually one new type of expression that we began considering, but we weren't able to accomplish it on the N64. With the emergence of the Nintendo GameCube platform we had the power we needed, and went back in this direction. It was the Toon Shading graphical style of The Wind Waker, which we completed in 2002.
We had decided in advance that the story in The Wind Waker would start with Link being young and unfold from there, but we felt that there was an unnatural feeling in using a more evolved version of the realistic Ocarina character to tell the story of a child. That lead us to instead adopt the Toon Shading graphics technique. We all had great expectations for evoking new game ideas out of this new style.
The result was to use the main character's impressive eyes in a new Focus System and to increase the game's action elements with improved sword fighting. In the end, I feel I can boast that with the new visual style and new game ideas such as these, we were able to push the franchise in a pioneering new direction and further expand the Zelda universe.
That explanation was a little long, but it covers my encounters with the franchise and some important points in game development. The result of this is that I now work as a producer overseeing all Zelda development. I have inherited this role from Mr. Miyamoto, but the reality is that I'm a producer who is close to the development team, while Mr. Miyamoto remains the ultimate producer who has final say over all things Zelda. So, that process has not changed.
But this leads me to the next subject I'd like to talk about, which is the all-important question that Mr. Miyamoto instructs us on: What does it mean to be Zelda-esque?
The first thing I want to tell you about in my discussion of Zelda-esqueness is an extremely important process that is inseparably connected to Zelda development. That process is something I call The Miyamoto Test (AKA: Upending the Tea Table).
The Chabudai Tea Table is a low dining table in which you sit on the floor to eat at. You don't see them often nowadays, as most Japanese families eat at western style dining tables. But when I was growing up in the 1950's through the 1970's, every house had one.
Upending the Tea Table refers to a scene from a famous Japanese manga called Star of the Giants, in which the father seated in back hits his son in front of him so hard that the food on the table is knocked up into the air.
The father, who is in no mood to eat what's been served, upended the table and forced his wife to cook a new meal. This action by the head of the household was absolute, and it represents the action of old-fashioned Japanese fathers.
These days, if a father were to do such thing it would immediately destroy the household, and the father would be arrested for child abuse, but long ago in Japan there was an era where this was seen as a proper and acceptable action.
Nowadays, all that remains is the phrase Upending the Tea Table, which refers to a leader figure taking on the role of the strong, proper father. Whenever a game nears completion, with only the final polishing remaining, without fail Mr. Miyamoto upends our tea table, and the direction that we all thought we were going in suddenly changes dramatically.
But Mr. Miyamoto doesn't just upend the tea table and send the team into utter confusion. He then sits down with us and together we rethink what we have done that has been effective, and what we can do that will create a positive result for a Zelda game. So in Mr. Miyamoto's case, even if he upends the tea table, he always picks up his own plate. His test is very important, and it is something that we even welcome.
In his checks lately, there is a phrase that he mentions that speaks to the very nature of the Zelda series. That phrase is: Zelda is a game that values REALITY over realism.
In the art world, realism is a movement which faithfully replicates the real world to whatever extent possible. Reality, though, is not mimicking the real world. Rather, it's an attempt to make people feel like what they are experiencing is real. The big difference is that even using more exaggerated expression can be an effective means of making things feel more real.
So, what does the Zelda reality that Mr. Miyamoto talks about mean? This next image is one scene that represents that reality.
[A scene from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is displayed]
As you can see, this a scene from the Bomb Shop in The Wind Waker. Let's take another look at it. First we see the bomb shop shopkeeper. He has a weird looking face, but other than that he's a normal guy. Next, Link arrives.
In response to Link's arrival, the shopkeeper says, "Welcome to my shop." So far, this is the general flow of shopping at any store, and there's nothing special about it. But I think there may be some here who noticed that the scene in this clip occurs late at night, and Link is just a child. This means that this scene fails The Miyamoto Test.
Then what would be the correct answer to this problem? We're fine up to the point when Link enters the shop and speaks to the shopkeeper. It's the shopkeeper's response that must change to:
"Are you alone, kid? Where are your parents? This is a BOMB shop. This is no place for kids to come to in the middle of the night. You be a good kid, now, and run on home ... That's what I should say, but the thing is, these pirates came and stole my bombs, so business hasn't been good lately. So I tell you what: I'll sell you bombs if you promise not to cause any trouble for me or my shop."
This type of response from the shopkeeper would pass The Miyamoto Test. Of course when I tell you this, I'm sure some of you may think "It's Nintendo. Of course! They want to make sure that they remind people of what's proper." But that's not the point. The important point here is that people who have been playing the game for a long period of time tend to forget that Link is just a child on an adventure toward some sort of objective.
While playing through the game, there's no need to be aware of Link's age and how that age relates to his actions. But when that happens, the things the player does simply become typical game actions and the awareness that the player is just playing a game becomes stronger.
Players who need bombs to progress through the game but don't happen to have any will by chance find themselves visiting the bomb shop in the middle of the night.
So, when the shopkeeper says "You're just a boy!", the player who had not been consciously thinking that Link was just a boy realizes "Oh, that's right! I'm just a boy!"
The player reflects on the fact that he is walking around in the middle of the night, and starts to feel the loneliness of the middle of the night. That leads the player to become one with the game world, and the player experiences reality.
Allow me to show you one more example.
[A scene from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is displayed]
This scene shows Link blowing up a wall with a bomb in Ocarina of Time. In this case, Link is blowing open the entrance to a dungeon, but that's not what is important. It's the sound that's important. Allow me to explain this scene in detail.
First, the player has an object that he thinks he might be able to destroy. He puts a bomb there, the bomb explodes, and this results in the wall breaking and the room ahead being revealed.
There is a start and an end to the explosion. There are several frames from the start of the KABOOM of the explosion until the smoke blurs your view. The player still does not know for sure what has happened. Once the smoke has cleared, the player can see the result.
It is at this time that the famous Zelda success chime is heard. This chime informs the player that he has solved a puzzle, so in the scene we just saw, this sound was timed to play at the start of the explosion. This also fails the Miyamoto Test.
Please look at the correct answer.
[A scene from The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is displayed]
This is the same type of scene, this time from The Wind Waker. Were you able to catch the difference between this scene and the one from Ocarina?
In the Ocarina scene, the Success Chime was heard before the explosion ended. Although the chime indicated success, it was heard before the player realized the results of his actions. As a result, the player did not feel that his actions resulted in the correct answer. It felt more like a mere game mechanic.
In the Wind Waker scene, it was changed so that the Success Chime is played at this point in time [Link is shown detonating a bomb. The Success Chime is heard after the player has seen the results of the explosion]. This way, the player has some idea of the results of his actions when the Success Chime is heard. As a result, the player gets the feeling that he has accomplished something. This is reality.
The Zelda Success Chime is one element of Zelda-esqueness that has been carried on throughout the entire series, but if we think that we can just insert it whenever, it becomes a negative rather than a positive. This is just one example of the mistakes that developers who have grown accustomed to developing Zelda games can make.
I think these examples give you an understanding of Zelda reality, but these are primarily what we consider to be production techniques and are really quite trivial in relation to gameplay. However, Zelda reality is built by piling on these trivial elements, for these are what draw players into the game world.
This raises the question of whether or not we should apply these trivial details to all areas of the game. The answer is no. There are countless areas where we must remove elements of reality for the sake of gameplay.
When considering implementing production techniques, what's important is not adding them everywhere, but instead adding them with effective timing. Anticipating how players will play and how they will interpret different moments helps determine this timing, as shown in the bomb shop example above.
Of course, trying to think about how players will interpret what you are creating while you are in the process of creating it is extremely difficult, and answering whether or not game developers can do so objectively is also difficult.
So, how then do we assure that in the end Zelda reality is maintained in a Zelda-esque way? We allow outside testers to play the game, and stand behind them to watch their reactions, or we ask the opinion of a producer who is separated from the actual development team.
This is why I think the Miyamoto Test will continue to be an important one for us. But at the same time, I get very frustrated when I do not notice sooner the things that he notices, so it is my objective to eventually be able to look at Zelda from the same perspective that Mr. Miyamoto does.
In the few Zelda titles that I have had my hand in, I have always tried to establish a new theme that guides the gameplay.
Of course, we feel that if we were to continue doing the same thing simply because Zelda has succeeded in the marketplace as a franchise, it would only be a matter of time before people grew tired of the series, and Zelda would have its place in the video game world stolen by some other revolutionary title. Even more importantly, though, is that as creators it wouldn't be any fun to simply continue making the same thing over and over again.
We have continued creating new Zelda titles over these last few years without changing our core team members. Creating the next installment with the same team as the last can lead to barriers caused by a conformity of ideas, but being able to take the regrets of the last title and make them a theme for the next is extremely effective and leads us to decisions related to Change and Continuity.
For instance, in the 3D Zelda games since Ocarina, we have continued to make use of the Targeting Camera that always focuses on the axis that links the character to the target. This is because we decided that this patently Zelda-esque camera system allows players the smoothest control of their characters in a 3D environment, and thus should not be changed. Instead, we have continued to tune this system to ease gameplay even more with each new installment.
We have also continued using the Action Icon system, whereby button controls for actions the player can perform are displayed on-screen. Our objective with this is to give players guidance on solving puzzles which have become more difficult in 3D, making this system another example of continuity.
Now on to what I mean by change. While it is true that we changed the entire game system in Majora's Mask into a three-day time system, this idea actually stemmed from the thought that we could perhaps take the time-passage system we introduced in Ocarina of Time and find a way to flesh it out more.
Likewise, the idea of turning the main field of play in The Wind Waker into a vast ocean that the player traverses by boat started with the idea of presenting players with a new type of movement to enjoy that would be different than the horse-based movement of Epona in Ocarina of Time. So even the changes that we do implement often come from ideas for improving and expanding elements found in previous installments.
In terms of an example that represents a change made without consciously thinking of a past installment, the best one I can offer would be the Toon Shading in The Wind Waker. But as I explained before, we thought that this was the best style suited to a younger Link. Our objective was to develop this into new game ideas, so it could be said that even this was changed from the last installment in pursuit of more reality.
Basically, most of the things we try to change in new Zelda games come from experiences with, and improvements and expansions being made to past Zelda games. These are what I like to call Inevitable Changes.
Of course the question of whether or not what the creators see as being inevitable or necessary changes will be considered so by the consumer is a difficult one to answer. But as long as we are able to add new elements of fun without losing what was good about the last installment, we believe the new games will continue to be ones that Zelda fans will be happy with.
Now this is a slight tangent, but can everyone here cook? I'm a bit of a glutton, so I like to both cook food and eat it.
Cooking is something anybody can try and immediately see the results of their efforts. I think it is a very friendly form of creative work. I always feel that Zelda is like a stew that takes a wide variety of ingredients and balances them in perfect harmony.
When making a stew, the one thing that you absolutely have to do is work to remove something that's called AKU in Japanese. Does everyone know what AKU is?
It's possible that this is distinct to Japanese cooking, and it may be difficult to understand, but when you stew ingredients together, they naturally release astringent flavors and other impurities into the stew. You have to skim these impurities off the top when stewing, because if you don't, the stew you are making will not be delicious.
It's difficult to explain clearly, but generally when you combine distinct flavors and textures, the stronger the ingredient, the more impurities that come out when you mix them with other ingredients. In Japan, we describe people with very colorful personalities as having a lot of AKU.
Even when making a game, mixing different ingredients together into one pot always produces AKU -- in games the impurities are the elements that feel unnatural or out of place. I think that making a good game, or being a good chef, means doing a good job of removing these impurities.
By combining together the slow and steady work of removing the impurities, and adding in the spice that is what Mr. Miyamoto calls Zelda Reality, and by doing a good job of stewing in the occasional fresh ingredient, we maintain the deliciousness of Zelda and lead the way to new evolutions in the franchise.
I'm afraid some of you may have come here today hoping to hear a more technical discussion, but the essence of the Zelda franchise is difficult to sum up in technical terms, so instead I have tried to sum it up with my own open and honest impressions.
However, since I have only been involved in three Zelda titles to date, I cannot say that I am anywhere near having a complete and thorough knowledge of the Zelda universe.
Going forward as producer and continuing to make the Zelda franchise into an even more stimulating one, if a time comes when I can talk to you about Zelda in slightly more technical terms, I would be more than happy to do so.
Thank you very much.
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04-27-2004, 04:00 AM
