Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom Was Built Around 'Being Mischievous'

Ooh, cheeky

by · Nintendo Life
Image: Nintendo Life

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is just around the corner and, as seems to be the norm for big Nintendo titles, we've been treated to a rather comprehensive 'Ask the Developer' interview with the team behind the latest title.

One of the key points raised during the interview is that Echoes of Wisdom was actually built around the idea of 'being mischievous'. In fact, the team even created a document to explain what the concept meant, so if anybody wasn't sure on how to proceed, they could refer back to it at a pinch.

Here's what Eiji Aonuma, famed producer for the Zelda franchise, had to say:

"We came up with this key phrase because we wanted to do some things that were really out there. For example, if you roll something like a spike roller along the ground, that's a lot of work, because it can hit all kinds of things, but if we didn't allow for this possibility, it wouldn't be fun. (Laughs) The development team called these kinds of ideas "being mischievous."

It was also explained that the concept revolved around three core ideas:

  • "Be able to paste things however, wherever, and whenever you like."
  • "Make it possible to complete puzzles using things that aren't there."
  • "Being able to find uses for echoes that are so ingenious it almost feels like cheating should be part of what makes this game fun."

It definitely sounds like the team took a lot of inspiration from the freedom that was provided to players in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. We don't want to speak for Nintendo (or indeed, Grezzo), but we suspect the concept of freedom and creation will be a key part of the Zelda franchise going forward. It certainly doesn't sound like Nintendo is anywhere close to ditching the idea just yet, anyway!

Echoes of Wisdom will launch on 26th September 2024. Keep an eye our for our full review later in the week.

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Are you excited to check out Echoes of Wisdom? What are your thoughts on the concept of 'being mischievous'? Let us know with a comment.

[source nintendo.com]

Related Games
   •  The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (Switch)
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About Ollie Reynolds

Nintendo Life’s resident horror fanatic, when he’s not knee-deep in Resident Evil and Silent Hill lore, Ollie likes to dive into a good horror book while nursing a lovely cup of tea. He also enjoys long walks and listens to everything from TOOL to Chuck Berry.

Comments 40

Isn't that basically the franchise in a nutshell, though?

WAIT, WAIT! NICE CUCCO, BE NICE. . .

Zelda's surname is obviously Chievous.

Miss Chievous.

Oh, we've seen how mischievous you can be in the trailers, like when they created an echo of a mole just to make a hole to drop an enemy into it!
Half jokes aside, quite interesting and will definitely read the rest of the interview as soon as I have time!

That thumbnail is cursed lol.

Looking forward to the inevitable memes. (Ideally, after I finish the game since I'll be avoiding spoilers)

I guess Zelda really got her flagship debut at the best possible time, riding on a fresh wave of creativity and curious experimentation in the franchise. The wait was long but worth it.🍻

They've done a really good job of marketing this game. I went from really not caring at all to looking forward to sitting back on the couch watching my wife play it. Don't know when that will be, need to find out how long it is, looking longer than Link's Awakening which took me about 20 hours or so, but it will happen.

I will be getting this, because I have gotten every Zelda game since 1993… but I’m not sure that I’m expecting to like it. I can’t tell… it might be different and unique, cool, or it might be different and half-baked which is sadly what I kind of expect from this franchise now.

Oops I broke a pot, and my Joy Con.

Prolly get it on when it's on offer sometime as not too interested right now. Too busy playing ET on my atari 2600

All ready and downloaded to my Switch. Just waiting for it to unlock

The description makes it sound like the puzzles are going to be as insultingly easy as those in TotK. For me Zelda games live or die by how good the puzzles are. Sandbox puzzlesvare just far too easy to solve. It seems like we will not have great puzzles in a Zelda game for a while

Pretty sure they were inspired by all the nonsense that people put the BOTW/TOTK physics engine through. Can’t wait! I have vacation next month (finally!) so I plan on gaming and turning into a sunscreen slathered charcoal briquette.

"Be able to paste things however, wherever, and whenever you like."

"Make it possible to complete puzzles using things that aren't there."

"Being able to find uses for echoes that are so ingenious it almost feels like cheating should be part of what makes this game fun."

This mixed in with traditional gameplay and Dungeons sounds awesome.

Nintendo seems to be fully embracing the “break the game / solve it your way” philosophy of puzzle design now.

I love a “EUREKA” moment from the classic Zelda’s, but personally, I find myself a lot more engaged with multiple solutions, because you can often be as dumb or as complex as you want. Better still is sharing you solves with friends and finding out they did it a completely different way to you. TOTK was a GOAT for me purely down to watching my 8 Year old approach puzzles in a completely different fashion to my brain. I’d often overcomplicate situations and she’d breeze through on something obvious I’d missed.

In any case, I’m super intrigued to see how well this will translate for the top down 2D space.

Please just give me regular, single-solution Zelda puzzles again.

British people get horny when they hear the word “mischievous”.

@CupidStunt I’ve played literally every single Zelda game and they all have easy puzzles. I can’t think of a single one that is noticeably tougher than the toughest ones in Tears. Maybe closing the DS in PH is the only one I remember stumping me for a bit.

@batmanbud2 Yeah! This tracks. Pretty sure Zelda pushes Link off a ledge a couple of times in Skyward Sword. 🤣

@CupidStunt The general sentiment I'm seeing is that while puzzles are more trivial in Echoes of Wisdom, they balance that out with the combat being more difficult than usual, if that helps (and combat itself is more puzzle-like)

This will be the first LOZ game I don’t buy. I’ve really never had any interest in playing as the princess

@Bonggon5 I agree but I would add that there’s something in the Ice Palace in LttP that’s kind of tricky as well… I can’t remember the details, but I remember being stuck in there for quite a while. Granted I was like 7 at the time. But yeah for the most part the puzzles are always easy.

@Bonggon5 BotW, Majora's Mask and even Skyward Sword had much better puzzles than TotK.

@CupidStunt Better on what scale though? I played skyward sword, which had its clever moments, but even its best puzzles didn't compare to the fun I had solving shrines in totk.

I think this game works better as Zelda than Link.

Link has a defined formula so when it is not met there is criticism. This isn't a link game. It is a Zelda game.

Since first hearing about this game I often thought that maybe TOTK should have just been this game. And I wonder if during the production of TOTK they thought about that idea (they did hint at a playable Zelda at one point).

TOTK felt too much like a reskin but a playable Zelda and new story, in addition to the new mechanic, would have kept things fresh. Instead we look to be getting two versions of the same concept.

I think most hardened fans will get this regardless. How much we enjoy it and how much replay value there is, are questions soon to be answered.

That thumbnail can’t be official Nintendo art, can it?
If, somehow, it’s not photoshopped and Nintendo has actually given the Princess some attitude and a bit of a mischievous streak, I may enjoy Echoes more than I anticipated.

Mind you, I’ll be griefing bad guys with old beds and octorocks as much as possible, regardless. 😈

@Bonggon5 i think people forget that they were kids, and/or in an age where the internet wasn’t so prevalent when they played these games for the first time. The whole “single solution” puzzle is mostly a nostalgic memory that wouldn’t work all that well nowadays. The puzzles would either have to be so convoluted and complex that it would likely turn off younger audiences, or so trivial that they would incite a different host of complaints

I'm not inherently against a puzzle having multiple solutions. The problem comes when you start allowing the player to completely skip over and trivialize every puzzle they see with the same solution. In TotK, that was the air bike. Aonuma mentioned the motion-controlled ball maze from BotW and how you could flip it over, but that wasn't some satisfying trick. It didn't make the game more fun aside from allowing the player to not have to wrestle with the janky motion controls. All I hope for Echoes Of Wisdom is that its puzzle solutions are fun and varied to execute.

@nico85 I don't know if it's really something that comes and goes with age, it can be a personality trait.

I loved puzzles as a kid, and I'd hate when people cheese their way through it. It felt like skipping the fun part, and was so unrewarding to me.

Sadly I'm gonna pass this game if that will be the direction it's headed

it's a straight up 10/10 and goty contender for me. how the heck can nintendo keep coming up with this stuff? this game is almost a genre in its own!!

I can't imagine having the single-solution puzzles back in full force when most of them boil down to using the dungeon-specific item to hit a switch or get a key. Yes, there's the obvious satisfaction of figuring out the "how" in the process but there's only really so much you can do with that setup before it becomes too ubiquitous. The lateral puzzles of Breath/Tears were great because they not only allowed for satisfying out of the box thinking but encouraged it.

I saw from the trailer, Zelda can summon random objects for either used them as puzzle solving or as her weapon.
I wonder if Zelda can summon anvil from the sky so it made me think princess Zelda have some cartoon logic of Tiny Toons Adventures by performing Anvil Chorus. (Summon the anvils from the sky to smash the enemies with Anvil Chorus theme) 🤭

@Bigmanfan The puzzles in TotK were insultingly easy. The dungeons for me were the worst in Zelda history with the most boring and uninspired bosses. The Divine Beasts felt new and the puzzles within more challenging.

Sandbox puzzles take away the challenge. As it was the same map as BotW, the since of discovery was gone, and the Depths were so boring to explore, ot felt like an overloaded Ubisoft game as far as exploration waa concerned. It was by far, in my opinion, the most repetitive Zelda game ever made.

Oh this is going to be a joy to play and run around in. Yay!

@PitThePup what i was trying to say is that I believe a lot of people romanticise how good those puzzles were. Back then if for some reasons you couldn’t figure out how to open a door you could have been stuck there for ages. Not necessarily because of the brilliance of the puzzle itself as much as because we were kids, had way less gaming experience, and solutions weren’t readily available, A link to the past seemed much tougher in the 90s when i was 9 than it did a couple years ago…. Secondly I’m not trying to argue that you shouldn’t prefer that kind of experience, i just don’t think it could ever work nowadays , what in your opinion are some good “one solution puzzle” adventures games that have come out in the recent past? Something that feels of the time/fresh while keeping the formula intact?

in totk i cheesed the fire dungeon so hard it was def meant for high stamina wall climbs not those damnnn mine carts

Just finished Link's Awakening on the Switch and also started the GBC version. Tried stealing the old man and now, for the rest of the game, npcs call me THIEF instead of the name I chose for my character.

I hope in this game I'll be encouraged to be a real gangsta Ò_Ó

@xablexgiroflex I mean, you ARE royalty in this one. By default you should be able to get everything for free.

Well, when you can spawn clones to fight against their originals, distract enemies with food, or take a nap in the middle of a boss battle, the mischief is obvious. All I ask is for the game to not overwhelm me too much like Tears did at first.

@littlegreenbob

You don't think the caves, wells, new enemies and bosses added any depth to the Botw map? For me it felt much more than a reskin.

And every familiar local had very different problems to solve and sidequests to complete. Even if we're technically exploring the same map, there were lots of new experiences and different things added to warrant the revisit imo.

@Turbo857
TOTK with a playable Zelda would have meant no combat. This means puzzles would have been solved exclusively by ultra hand (or wisdom). Defeating difficult enemies would have meant coming up with the genius solutions we see on YouTube.

The unlockable shadow buddies (combat) would have added something new to your arsenal and rewarded you for taking on the temples (in the same way BOTW's champions did by extending abilities).

The underground, without combat, would have been a dark, terrifying maze. The purpose of the item at the end, the fight, and the exclusive role, would have made more sense. Even some of the story elements such as Zelda having a house when she was the one that disappeared from the timeline.

To me it seems obvious / likely TOTK was initially going to be Echoes of Wisdom (Nintendo even said the title couldn't be revealed because it contained a spoiler). But likely backtracked somewhere during development because they wanted game of the year and a game without link, or the combat element, may have been too ambitious.

Having both combat and ultra hand just gave two ways to play the same game. I went with the combat route (classic BOTW style) and didnt even know what ultra hand could do until I started watching YouTube videos post completion.

For me it was the same game. Playing as Zelda without combat would have made it radically different. And far more challenging.

@CupidStunt Calling the puzzles insultingly easy is just wrong. There are plenty of legit tricky shrines. Plus, the fire temple and water temple had some legit tricky puzzles. I also strongly disagree with the sense of discovery being worse. Granted, this is a very opinion-based topic, but I found discovering the caves and islands to be even more fun than exploration in BOTW. And honestly, I find older Zelda games to be kinda boring. I love traditional puzzle games, but the puzzles in the older 3d entries I find to be braindead easy. Not saying.you are wrong to enjoy them, but I personally don't.

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