Interview with Satoshi Iwata: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD Part 2

The first part was awesome, but…

Iwata: I want to talk about the content of the game. How did these unique characters and vast oceans come to be in the game?

Eiji Aonuma: We hardly hesitated and decided early on to set the game on the sea. Not only are we happy to use open oceans when designing the mechanics of the game world, but we thought it would be fun to show the ocean in this visual style. One by one, the team members came up with new ideas around the islands in this ocean and what the people living in them look like.

Iwata: Even for the Legend of Zelda series, the unique character in the Wind Waker is unprecedented.

Takizawa Tomo: I remember that the planning department and character production department led by Mr. Haruka really went back and forth, each showing their magical powers.

Eiji Aonuma: Mr. Haruka has been proposing a bunch of weird characters since Ocarina of Time, but for The Wind Waker, it seems like he ate a transforming mushroom and unlocked the insurance! (laugh)

Iwata: It feels like the entire world of The Wind Waker was formed in the process of cooking these weird beings.

Integrity: This is where the strength of this visual style lies. With this stylized, animated look, no matter how big the head or how short the legs are, it doesn’t look strange. Instead, it will give a positive impression that everyone can recognize.

Eiji Aonuma: Yes. These characters have distinct characteristics and are very rich in expressions and actions.

Iwata: Yes, their expressions are really impressive. When you try to get the expressions to be realistic, it tends to get weird with the difference from the real world. But for this visual style, it doesn’t pose any problem, you can express facial expressions and body posture as you like.

Eiji Aonuma: Yes. Until “Ocarina of Time”, it was difficult to express too much even if you wanted to move a mouth, so this time we put a lot of effort into “The Wind Waker”.

Takizawa Zhi: Now that the eyes are so big, we want to make the facial expressions richer by increasing the styles of the eyes and mouth. Halfway through, we even discussed shooting light out of those eyes! (laugh)

Iwata Satoshi: Huh? Eye rays?

Takizawa: Mr. Miyamoto (Shigeru) and Mr. Tezuka (Takuzhi)[16] said that we need to provide a reason for these big eyes. But I don’t think it’s a reason to shoot light.

Integrity: We made it happen that when Link stopped, the eyes moved, looking left and right.

Eiji Aonuma: Yes, yes! That’s when we came up with the idea of ​​using Link’s gaze to give players hints. We used it later in Ocarina of Time 3D, but the first time was Wind Waker.

Iwata: Oh, it came from here.

Eiji Aonuma: Until then, we’ve always made reservations so that players feel like they’re Link when they play. But in The Wind Waker, even though you are controlling Link, you can still look at him objectively, as if you were interacting with the world through Link. The way players pour out their emotions is different from previous Zelda games, and the longer you immerse yourself in it, the more emotional you become.

Iwata: Just like the slogan used at the time (Japanese market only), it’s called animation that can be touched. After the R&D work started, did you not hesitate to go all the way to the end?

Eiji Aonuma: We never hesitated to create a new Zelda game. But we did notice the negative feedback after the game was released, so we were very upset. However, developing the game in a state of anxiety must be the worst, so we went ahead and decided to desperately hope that players will accept us.

Iwata: Mr. Iwamoto, how does it feel to watch the development process from the outside?

Daiki Iwamoto: I don’t watch much, but when I actually bought the game and played it, I was shocked at how vivid the animation was. But beyond the visual aspect, there is something else that bothers me.

Eiji Aonuma: He did convey a lot of harsh opinions. But since he has put so much energy into it, we asked him to oversee this development.

Iwata: With that said, there is a saying that the game starts out great, but it drags a little later. Of course, a lot of people say it feels great to be in that world, so they enjoyed it until the end, but I think that’s an expression of the Wind Waker players.

Daiki Iwamoto: My perspective is entirely from the player, and while playing, I found something that made me think, “This is not quite right…” or “It would be much better if I did this!” This time, I Replayed the entire game and found that there are quite a few places that can be adjusted to suit the needs of the current player.

Iwata: Yes, times have changed.

Daiki Iwamoto: Yes. So I made a list of those points, listened to the dev members who made those parts, and finally identified the parts that needed tweaking.

Eiji Aonuma: If you modify it like this, the game changes so much—so good that you think, “Why didn’t we do this earlier?”

Iwata: Mr. Miyamoto always said that if you develop a game twice, it will definitely get better. This sentence is worth thinking about. But I always say, “That’s right, but generally you can’t do that!” (laughs)

Aonuma Eiji: That’s right.

Daiki Iwamoto: But even if you don’t develop it twice, when you’re about to cross the finish line, if you still have time to look back, you can always notice something that could be changed.

Eiji Aonuma: I understand…you’re so right, but when you’re rushing forward like crazy, it’s impossible to look back.

Iwamoto Daiki: I can understand that! (laugh)

Iwata: I understand that you have done your best this time, and I also think that the team put a lot of energy and creativity into it with all the enthusiasm. If they hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t have had a chance to make an HD remake.

Eiji Aonuma: We won’t be able to see that until eleven years later.

Takizawa: The opportunity to look back and remake a game with a clear mind like we do now is really rare.

Everyone: (nodding in agreement)

Iwata: But this time, you have to do it!

Eiji Aonuma: It’s always painful to comment that the first half is great but the second half is slow, so I don’t think if it was five years ago, I probably wouldn’t have enough will to do a remake.

archeology

Iwata: Let’s change the subject. Developing software for NGC and Wii U is almost completely different from the hardware architecture level, so it is not easy to make an NGC game exclusively for Wii U. I would like to ask Mr. Tangada and Mr. Takizawa what they think.

Takizawa: Let’s start with the development inspiration. With the development of the Wii U, we discussed how to develop a Zelda game for it, and we thought…

Iwata: You have made The Legend of Zelda HD experience [17].

Takizawa: Yes, that was the natural evolution of Twilight Princess, and we wanted to try a painting style that was different from photorealism. In addition, we also tried to take the data out of the past “The Legend of Zelda” games, and put the HD version directly into the Wii U to see how it works. Mr. Tang Tian devoted himself to the specific work.

Iwata: Yes, we have a lot of image material, and a programmer can do a lot with it.

Takizawa: Exactly. We put The Legend of Zelda HD experience, Sky Sword, and Link from The Wind Waker into the same scene. Using almost the same shader [18] to achieve similar shading results, Link of The Wind Waker achieved the best results. He displayed a certain overwhelming presence.

Iwata: He didn’t do anything. Appearance alone makes it stand out.

Takizawa Tomo: That’s right! And it looks very natural. We thought it was awesome, so we built the Wind Waker’s ocean and island, put it into the Wii U and tweaked the graphics. The final image produced flickering light and shadow, with strong contrast.

Iwata: Was it the clip we showed at the Nintendo Direct in January?

Takizawa: Yes.

Takuhiro Doda: That’s what I did, when I suddenly received an email from Mr. Eiji Aonuma asking how long it would take me to finish it.

Iwata Satoshi: Aonuma Eiji has entered the state. This question directly points to the possibility of this work. (laugh)

Toda Takuhiro: No ! (laughs) To be honest, we were speculating privately, so I promised it and said it could be released in the fall of 2013.

Iwata: Mr. Aonuma, I guess you should be surprised that they can do this in less than a year.

Aonuma Eiji: Surprised! (laughs) If they said it would take a while, I probably wouldn’t have decided to do it, but being able to do it in a year is so appealing! I also think that making an HD version of The Wind Waker has some value in determining the visual style of The Legend of Zelda for Wii U.

Iwata: I guess it is.

Eiji Aonuma: I went to Mr. Miyamoto right away and said, “Can we do this?” Then the idea of ​​the Ring of Zelda came to my mind, which added another fire to us. Since it could be completed in a short period of time, he gave the project the green light.

Takizawa Tomo: Um…may I interject? Even if the first-line development members say they are done, I as a producer must buy more time! (laugh)

Everyone: (laughs)

Toda Takuhiro: The composition of the development team this time is a bit special, and only a few designers come from within. Whenever it comes to parts that can only be done with pure human power, such as high-definition materials and other elements, we look for external designers to work with us. As for other optimizations, it was basically completed by Mr. Takizawa, Mr. Arimoto and another colleague, and we relied on these three chief designers to advance the work.

Iwata: Only three designers? Given the tight schedule, it was impossible to fix all the data by hand, despite the remake.

Toda Takuhiro: Yes. In fact, the limited number of internal designers who can participate in this work is that the candidates must be very familiar with the direction and data of the original design. We clearly know that we can’t rely too much on workflows that employ multiple people. Therefore, a special development mode was adopted this time. We devised a way to transfer the NGC data into the Wii U for better visuals, with minimal changes to the 3D model data.

Iwata: Did this method exist from the beginning?

Toda Takuhiro: No. We’re also scouring around for Wii U development tips and tweaking old graphics footage to render crisply in Wind Waker HD.

Iwata: But the new method didn’t make all the images clearer than the NGC version, did it?

Toda Takuhiro: Yes, some materials require special attention from us. Some of the data took us a long way to guess what the developers had in mind in the vanilla and reflected it in the Wii U shader.

Iwata: Guessing their intentions… Sounds like archeology!

Everyone: (laughs)

Takizawa: Yes, Mr. Donda is basically doing this work.

Toda Takuhiro: Yes. Some of the images look weird from the data, but the original paintings are beautiful. I spent a lot of time debugging how to reproduce the original on the Wii U.

Daiki Iwamoto: Problems like this come one after another.

Takuhiro Donda: The more we do, the more problems we have.

Honesty: Please take this as a confession from more than ten years ago, but it was not a strict rule to take care of the designer’s data clearly at that time.

Iwata: Yes. People had their own way of doing things back then. Everyone will organize their responsible roles in a customary manner.

Toda Takuhiro: Yes.

Takizawa Tomo: Mr. Doda will say, “Mr. Takizawa! This is impossible to set as an environment map at all. Look!” I will look at the data I have made in the past! (laughs) But instead of acknowledging the blame on myself, I’d say, “Oh, that’s scary! Can you deal with it?”

Everyone: (laughs)

Doda Takuhiro: It’s not just data. NGC’s 3D engine could produce that kind of picture, so I went to hear what people who knew the engine specs at the time had to say. I walked around the company and finally got Link’s eyes to move normally.

Eiji Aonuma: The big question was how exactly did they use NGC at the time to achieve a cartoonish animation style that was not seen anywhere else, so everyone was manually debugging in their own way.

Iwata: I guess in the process of changing a few settings, you hit a certain moment, and you said, “Just follow this.”

Toda Takuhiro: Yes. By the way, we found that many bugs were also generated in the process of generating these images on the screen. So, to add these things to…

Iwata: You recreated them?

Toda Takuhiro: Yes. I thought to myself, “What the hell am I doing?”

Iwata: I understand. While tweaking the color picker, you’re recreating those bugs!

Everyone: (laughs)

Daiki Iwamoto: The specifications are the same. Some specifications no one understands, so we need programmers to analyze and explain.

Takizawa: Generally speaking, it should be dealt with after the designer has confirmed it to a certain extent, but since our designers are too limited, we have to take this rather reckless approach.

Eiji Aonuma: But for Wind Waker HD, it was very important to do it this way. It has really helped us a lot in handling it this way.

[16]: Tezuka Takuzhi: General Manager of the Software Development Department of the Planning and Development Headquarters. He was involved in the development of series such as Super Mario, Yoshi’s Island, and Animal Crossing.

[17]: Zelda HD Experience: A technical demo announced at the 2011 E3 game show, showing the capabilities of the Wii U in the game world of The Legend of Zelda series.

[18]: Shader: An image program that depicts light and shadow.

Translation: @RED Rhyme

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