The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was released nearly two years ago, and since then there has been very little news regarding Zelda Wii U. Eiji Aonuma, the current producer and director of the series, confirmed to Mashable at New York Comic Con this past weekend, that more info will be coming at E3 2014.
While it’s nice to receive confirmation of when we will be hearing more about the game, it’s a little disheartening knowing we have to wait another eight months. As the old saying goes, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
Another piece of enlightening information came at the conclusion of his interview. When asked about how open we can expect the next Zelda to be, Aonuma had this to say:
I think the most open-world Zelda we’ve had so far has been Wind Waker, just because you were able to sail the ocean and go all over the islands. When creating a game, we look at what is the core, kernel gameplay. You try to construct the game around that, and making that core mechanic the easiest to access.
For Skyward Sword, that kind of narrowed, focused world helped us with that, but at the same time it meant you didn’t have that wide-open world to explore. We’ve heard the complaint about lack of openness from a lot of fans. As we’re deciding what the core gameplay mechanic was, we have that open-world desire at the forefront of our minds, and we’re trying to figure out how to incorporate that as well.
In June this year, Aonuma revealed he was a fan of Skyrim. In his interview with Eurogamer, he was asked about games that inspire him, and he responded with the following:
I don’t look at what’s happening in the game, but how it made me feel, what in the game moved me, and how I can bring out those same emotions in players who play my games. My intent isn’t to copy them, but those are the things that stay with you as a player.
There are never any guarantees when it comes to Zelda, but based on his feelings towards Skyrim and open worlds, it’s a safe bet we can expect Zelda Wii U to be the most vibrant and expansive game yet.