Zelda wasn’t the original protagonist for Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, development required a story “boot camp”

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 up, we learn that Nintendo wasn’t considering using Zelda as the protagonist of Echoes of Wisdom, and instead were planning to go with Link once again.

As Nintendo worked on the gameplay with the copy/pasting of Echoes, they realized that players would be more likely to use Link’s sword and shield to solve problems. Early on, the team thought that perhaps players should only be able to use Echoes early on, and then they’d be given the sword/shield, but that just ended up delaying the sword/shield problem until later in the game.

This conundrum caused the team to think about using another character who wouldn’t use a sword and shield. They wanted a character who better fit with the power of Echoes, and this is when Nintendo’s Eiji Aonuma believed that Zelda could be the perfect answer to the problem.

Later in the interview, we also hear a bit about the approach to lore and story in Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. Aonuma mentioned that the dev team was trying to keep things vague with the story in Echoes of Wisdom, but this approach just wasn’t panning out. Eventually, Aonuma decided to hold a story “boot camp” for the team in order to get things on track. He put together a basic script, took it back to Grezzo, and everyone started brainstorming how they could flesh things out.

Altogether, the team spent 9 days in their story boot camp. They worked hard to create something new and unique while not trying to cause issues with the previously-established Legend of Zelda lore. The end goal was to provide something that allowed for new gameplay, while also making sure it didn’t create story issues that players would find to be nonsensical.