January 2010 ONM Aonuma Interview

We can now finally read the interview with Aonuma by the Official Nintendo Magazine, which has caused much confusion lately with its contradicting statements that Zelda Wii is well into development, but that on the other hand they haven't even decided the graphical style yet. Well, but he's really avoiding the questions about Zelda Wii in this interview and I think he definitely didn't mean, that there's still the option to go back to the style of The Wind Waker. It's clear that they are going to use a realistic and more mature style for the game, the artwork from E3 2009 has already shown that. But there's still the possibility that they might try something different than Twilight Princess, like realistic cell-shading for example. Which is good, because I hope it won't be just a simple copy of the graphical style of Twilight Princess. But overall he just totally dodged the question about the graphical style for whatever reason.

About the artwork, this is the interview where Aonuma confirmed, that some of the speculation on the internet is correct. Since the most common speculation is about the fairy girl being the Master Sword or your sword in general, you can assume that any rumors stating otherwise are most likely wrong.

He also talks about the new structure of the game again. There are no new details about how the course through the game will change, but the goal is to surprise long-time Zelda fans. And that's certainly a good goal. The question at the moment is, whether the new structure will help with the lineariy problem or not. I've discussed this yesterday and I want to see Zelda games becoming more non-linear again, so they would offer more free exploration. About that, Aonuma talks once again about Monster Hunter Tri and how this game made an impression on him. I hope that the open gameplay of this game will inspire him to make Zelda more open and non-linear again, to add more choices to the gameplay of Zelda.

What is interesting are the statements about the Nintendo DS Zelda team. He seems to be skeptical about including the DS Zelda team into the development of the new Wii title, but he also says that right now there are no clear plans for what they could do on the Nintendo DS next. But a third Nintendo DS Zelda, while they made only one real Zelda game for the Wii? I would still say, that the most interesting thing the Nintendo DS Zelda team could do right now is some classic 2D Zelda game for Wii or WiiWare. After all their first project was Four Swords Adventures for the GameCube. I would like to see another Zelda in the upgraded A Link to the Past style, though with much more focus on the singleplayer experience.

There is also some talk about the plane idea again. Aonuma already joked about this in an interview with Guardian.co.uk, there he said this his son asked him, if Link will fly through the sky after he now used boat and train. Well, I could certainly imagine Toon Link with aviator goggles, flyer clothes and a scarf flying in some old biplane. Definitely could be funny. But that would of course lead to yet another Zelda game in the style of The Wind Waker with its empty ocean/field style overworld, which would be in this case the sky with some sky islands probably. And we had enough of that lately.