Create Your Own Zelda Adventures: Nintendo's Latest Project Revealed

It's been almost a decade since we got the first Super Mario Maker on Wii U and 3DS. Fans have always wondered if Nintendo might give the level editor gameplay treatment to one of its other major franchises, like Zelda. Well, it turns out that the Switch maker actually did experiment with the idea for a Zelda Maker of sorts, and that's eventually what turned into The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.

From Dungeon Designer to Echoes of Wisdom

In a new developer interview published by Nintendo, Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma sat down with Echoes directors Tomomi Sano and Satoshi Terada. They discussed the ideas behind Princess Zelda's first modern playable outing and how it came to be. Echoes of Wisdom originally started its life as a different idea entirely.

Terada explained, "We were exploring a few different ways to play the game in parallel. In one approach, Link could copy and paste various objects such as doors and candlesticks to create original dungeons." This idea was called an "edit dungeon" because players could create their own Legend of Zelda gameplay.

The Evolution of Gameplay

Aonuma explained how the pitch evolved from there. "They showed it to me and told me to give it a try. As I played, I started thinking that while it's fun to create your own dungeon and let other people play it, it's also not so bad to place items that can be copied and pasted in the game field and create gameplay where they can be used to fight enemies. That was the beginning of gameplay using echoes."

The gameplay shifted from creating dungeons to using copied-and-pasted items as tools to further your own adventure. While longtime Zelda fans would still love a game all about designing challenging mazes, it's fascinating to see how the idea for Echoes developed into a more traditional single-player context.

The Challenges and Rewards

Sano confirmed that the team spent many months prototyping the original concept before changing it. "There's a reason it took a year to upend the tea table," Aonuma said. "You can't really see the potential for ideas to develop into solid gameplay until you can verify features and their feel."

There was one big concern, however. With all the items players can copy and the different types of echoes they can make, Aonuma was worried the mechanic might constantly crash the game. "I wasn't sure how far we could go, but in the end, it was amazing to see how many echoes it was possible to create in the game."

A New Zelda Experience

The results turned out to be surprisingly fun, especially since Echoes changes viewpoints between 3D top-down and 2D side-scrolling. Sano said, "Of course, creating dungeons was fun, but being able to copy various objects and use them in different places was even more fun."

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