Home > Aonuma Explains What Zelda is All About!
Aonuma: Ten years or so ago, the "Hobo Nikkan Itoi Shinbun (Almost Daily Itoi Newspaper)" ran an interview with Miyamoto-san, after he'd made "Ocarina of Time". In that interview, there was a bit that made me think, "Oh, so that's what it was".
Iwata: And you didn't know about the article back when it first came out?
Aonuma: I'd probably read it, but at the time I just thought, "Huh…" (laughs) It's probably because I wasn't directly involved. I read it just after finishing the The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time job, and at the time, I had no idea I'd keep making The Legend of Zelda. Only, I was asked in an interview about the period when I was working on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time; it had been a while, and I'd forgotten quite a bit, so I reread the article as a sort of review. And then, among the things Miyamoto-san had said, there was something that really made an impression on me.
Iwata: What was that?
Aonuma: He said, " I want people to see that there are no games that compare to this one" (interview in Japanese). The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a game where we did things that others would never think to try.
Iwata: That's true. Hearing that they tried to make The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time a game with such an overwhelming presence that no other game could compare, and that they gave it their very best, is incredibly convincing.
Aonuma: That's why we made it so detailed. If we didn't do that much, I thought, the end product wouldn't be really overwhelming, something other people wouldn't do. This already came up earlier, but even with the railroad, we experimented with a lot of things at first. Honestly, if somebody had said, at the beginning, "That's just a pain; let's not bother with it", I wouldn't have been surprised. But doing things simply because you don't know whether or not they'll work until you try them… I think that in itself is…
Iwata: "A thoroughness that others don't even think to attempt", you mean.
Aonuma: Yes, that's it. This time, we were trying for a game that used trains in a way no other game had used them before. So, as Iwamoto-san said before, we had some people asking "A train in The Legend of Zelda? Are you sure?" But, as far as I'm concerned, trains are just fine. I felt as though, if the train became something that couldn't be portrayed by anything else, then that would be The Legend of Zelda.
