Nintendo shares a secret about Zelda's facial expressions in Echoes of Wisdom, details struggles with her design
Not just any princess
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom may include a lot of traditional Zelda mechanics, but it also breaks a lot of new ground. One of the biggest changes this time around comes from the fact that you play as Zelda, and that actually led to quite a few challenges for the dev team.
Famitsu had the chance to talk to Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom producer Eiji Aonuma, director Tomomi Sano, and Grezzo’s Satoshi Terada about how the game came together, and what it was like putting Zelda in the starring role. The team reveals that making Zelda the lead involved a ton of design work as far as her look and style went, and the dev team also put in extra effort with Zelda’s facial expressions…and to a degree you might not have even noticed!
Sano: Her position is completely different from previous Zelda princesses, and she is merely the player’s avatar, so if we made her too “cute,” it would feel unnatural as a player’s avatar, so we were conscious of keeping her plain. Furthermore, since she is a wanted character this time, if we made her design too distinctive, people would think, “Why is she dressed so flashy when she’s wanted?” However, on the other hand, if we made her dress too much like a wanted character, her appeal as a player character would decrease. It was very difficult to aim for the middle ground between being too cute and being too conspicuous.
Aonuma: And yet, you have to act like a princess.
Sano: We also wanted a sense of elegance, so the design of Princess Zelda was not finalized for a considerable period during development. The design was supervised not only by Grezzo but also by Nintendo, and in the end, we refined it to the point where we had to make small adjustments to the position of the eyes and the angle of the eyelids.
Aonuma: For example , Marin from Link’s Awakening is a girl who lives singing with animals, so there’s no problem with an easy-to-understand, cute image, but if Princess Zelda, who has a harsh fate, is always smiling or has a cute face, the player will think, “That’s a little different.” Even when creating a new Link in the Legend of Zelda series, the story gradually builds up, but if you make him a protagonist with a sharp look in his eyes from the beginning, like “Okay, I’m going to do it!”, it will not match the player’s feelings. When we were making the video that first showed “Breath of the Wild,” the link had a very sharp look in the beginning, but when we thought about the background story, we felt that this link was strange, so we remade it.
This time, Princess Zelda is the player’s alter ego, so it would be weird if the situation the protagonist finds herself in at the start of the story did not match the character’s expression. Princess Zelda must have been confused at first, thinking, “What should I do?”, and when she becomes a wanted man, she must have been thinking, “I’m a princess, but…”
This time, Princess Zelda is the player’s alter ego, so it would be weird if the situation the protagonist finds herself in at the start of the story did not match the character’s expression. Princess Zelda must have been confused at first, thinking, “What should I do?”, and when she becomes a wanted man, she must have been thinking, “I’m a princess, but…”
Sano: For example, when facing a boss, or in other situations where we expect the player to be motivated, we incorporate serious expressions and motions, and we work with the staff in charge of directing Grezzo to adjust every detail.
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joeshabadoo
9d agoI love reading about minutia like this that can ultimately have far more impact than the literal material adjustments might imply. I generally feel as though her portrayal in this game was very successful and they ‘flipped the script’ in some great ways. People who claim that she’s too much of a blank slate for player projection are off-base and lack a certain degree of discernment or motivation to read between certain lines.
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