Echoes of Wisdom actually started out as a dungeon editor

Many released video games look very different from their prototypes, or even just earlier builds, and that was also the case with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, set to release later this week. In fact, the game originally started out as a dungeon creator and editor.

In a series of interviews published by Nintendo starting Monday, the development team at Grezzo discusses some of the challenges they faced when working on their first original title. They had previously been behind many Zelda remakes, including Ocarina of Time 3D and 2019’s Link’s Awakening, but this was the first time they were trusted to come up with their own idea. Arguably the biggest was what to do with their first chance.

The team came up with an idea for a feature where Link would copy and paste objects from the outside world into a dungeon, but that eventually evolved into the “echoes” concept. “As I played, I started thinking that while it’s fun to create your own dungeon and let other people play it, it’s also not so bad to place items that can be copied and pasted in the game field, and create gameplay where they can be used to fight enemies,” Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma says in the interview.

“Creating dungeons was fun, but being able to copy various objects and use them in different places was even more fun,” co-director Tomomi Sano adds.

Of course, with an original concept came more obstacles. How do the developers allow the players to copy and paste objects without crashing the game? There were questions about how to create echoes that people will want to use, and how to keep them engaging enough that players will want to try out multiple echoes instead of just using one repeatedly. The developers also had to figure out how echoes would work across different environments, and if they should implement any restrictions on player freedom — something that has become a core tenant of the series, especially after Breath of the Wild. In the end, the developers decided to let players run wild.

Sano explains that the team thought of the popular player exploit from Breath of the Wild‘s Myahm Agana Shrine. While players had to move a ball throughout a series of obstacles on a tilting board, they could also just flip the board over and complete the puzzle more easily.

“If this kind of solution isn’t allowed, then it’s not fun,” Aonuma says.

Echoes of Wisdom is a game of many firsts. It’s the first original Zelda title developed by remaster/remake studio Grezzo, the first Zelda game with a female director, and the first Zelda title starring Princess Zelda as the main playable character. It’ll release on Nintendo Switch on September 26, 2024.