‘The Legend Of Zelda’ Series Producer Eiji Aonuma Says Nintendo Games Are Designed Around Gameplay, Not Story: “I Think It Would Actually Be Kind Of Difficult To Do The Reverse And Start With The Story, Then Try To Match The Gameplay Mechanics To That”
In reminding players that there exists at least one remaining developer who understands the ‘game’ aspect of ‘video games’, long-time The Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma has revealed that rather than a story, Nintendo games are built around their actual gameplay mechanics.
Aonuma, who got his start with the Zelda franchise serving as the lead designer of Ocarina of Time and has since worked on every subsequent entry, provided this insight into Nintendo’s development practices during a post-Echoes of Wisdom release interview given to The Washington Post’s Gene Park.
Asked by Park as to why Nintendo sometimes revisits old game formulas, as seen with Echoes of Wisdom‘s use of a Link’s Awakening-esque top-down camera and Emio: The Smiling Man‘s decision to present its story in a point-and-click adventure style like the past entries in the Famicom Detective Club series, Aonuma asserted that rather than choosing to arbitrarily do so for any superficial reason, the company instead believed that “to make any of these types of games, there really needs to be some sort of opportunity.”
“I have all sorts of different ideas in my head, things I want to do, and I really feel that’s probably true for all the producers at Nintendo,” he explained. “Even Mr. Miyamoto probably has ideas and things he wants to create as well.”
To this end, the game’s director co-director Tomomi Sano, who was also being interviewed alongside Aonuma, interjected to note that the Echoes of Wisdom team took this same approach to developing the game’s story, as the team wanted to present players with a reasonably believable reason for Zelda taking up arms herself rather than delegating the job to one of her many, many allies (eventually settling on the idea of having practically every other inhabitant of Hyrulke teleported to the mysterious Still World, thus rendering them unavailable to help the princess save her kingdom).
“We struggled with giving her a reason to feel like she needed to go and be the hero because she had so many people that could be there to support her,” she recalled. “We wanted to come up with a reason and introduce it into the story pretty quickly.”
Having found the conversation turned to the topic of the game’s story, Aonuma then revealed that when it came to Nintendo, the company deviated from the wider industry by having ‘gameplay’ serve as the basis for any and all of their games rather than ‘narrative’.
“I’ve never really made a game where you think of the story first and then go into gameplay,” he explained. “First when you think of the gameplay, what you’re trying to think of after that is how you can get players to understand that gameplay.”
Drawing his thoughts to a close, Aonuma affirmed, “The story becomes used as a vessel because it has a beginning and end and the player moves through it.”
“I think it would actually be kind of difficult to do the reverse and start with the story, then try to match the gameplay mechanics to that,” he concluded.
And given the critical and commercial success of not just Echoes of Wisdom but Nintendo’s library as a whole – especially when compared to their Western peers, who absolutely love producing cinematic ‘playable movies’ – it seems that truly, the key to pushing your industry forward, if not absolutely revolutionizing it, is to focus on actual gameplay rather than trying to tell a ‘deep’ story.
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