Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom sees the series' first female director, gameplay completely changed a year into development

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom comes to Switch on September 26th, 2024, which is just a few days away! Ahead of that release, Nintendo has given us a detailed behind-the-scenes look at how the title came together via a brand-new Ask the Developer feature.

Ask the Developer Vol. 13, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom lets us hear from key figures on the game’s development team, and they’ve shared some extra interesting tidbits. First and foremost, we learn that Tomomi Sano is the director or Echoes of Wisdom. Sano has been working with Nintendo since 2004, and she’s been involved with the Zelda series since Ocarina of Time 3D in 2011. Sano taking the director’s position on Echoes of Wisdom marks the very first time the Zelda series has seen a female heading the project!

Later in the interview we also learn that development of Echoes of Wisdom shifted considerable roughly one year into the project. Nintendo had Grezzo pitch them ideas for a new Zelda title that followed the groundwork laid by the Link’s Awakening remake, and they conjured up the idea of Link being able to copy/paste objects in dungeons. The team ended up calling this the “Edit Dungeon” feature, and it let players basically build their own Zelda dungeons.

Eiji Aonuma, producer on the Zelda series, liked the “Edit Dungeon” idea, but he believed it could be taken further. Rather than just using this mechanic to create dungeons, Aonuma thought it could be expanded to let players copy/paste elements in the overall game world, and could even be used to fight enemies. Convinced this was the path to go, Aonuma suggested the new direction to Grezzo a year after they had been working on the “Edit Dungeon” approach. From that point on, Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom as we know it began to take shape.

There’s a lot more to read through in this interview, and you can find the entirety of Part 1 here.