Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Aonuma Explains the Rental System in A Link Between Worlds

From Miiverse:

Hi everyone, I'm Eiji Aonuma from Nintendo.

Fans in Europe will have to wait a little longer, but it makes me happy to see so many of you using the Tingle Bottle feature to post in-game messages in The Wind Waker HD community. So thank you!

In today's Nintendo Direct, we revealed the name of the character in the A Link Between Worlds screenshot I posted here last time. His name is Ravio, and we also announced that you can rent and purchase items from his shop. You may be wondering what in the world we mean by "renting" items. Well, let me explain.

In Ravio's shop, each of the items you can use in the game are on display from the beginning. But Ravio only has one of each item in stock, so if he sells them he'll go bust! For this reason, he set the purchase price for each item at an outrageously high rate. Unfortunately, that means Link can't move forward and Ravio can't sustain his business, so he decided to start renting the items at reasonable prices. The rental period for each item is unlimited, so you can rent them for as long as you’d like, but if Link falls during his adventure and it's game over, the items will be returned to the shop. If you want to continue playing, you'll have to rent them again. After a while, you can eventually purchase the items, and once you do, you'll be able to keep using them even if you game over.

This may seem similar to the three day system in Majora's Mask where all your items are lost when you reach the end of the third day, but you'll be able to rent every item from the beginning if you can afford it. So unlike past Zelda games, you won't run into a scenario where you can't do something because you need a certain item that won’t be available until later. I hope all of you will experiment with many different items and play as you like.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds comes out on November 22nd. There’s still a lot more information to come, so please stay tuned.




Wait, what? I only lose the rented items, when I die? That means I'll never lose them, because when do you actually die in a modern Aonuma Zelda game? The games have been so super easy, most people don't even know how a Game Over in Zelda looks like. Or may it be that they actually amped the difficulty, so that you will die more often? It sounds like it and I hope so, but I also doubt it.

But if the game is as easy as any other Zelda game from the last ten years, the rental system will be a joke. Why should I ever purchase the items (except for completion)?

I thought the "you can only rent one item at a time"-system sounded a lot better.

(The above screenshot now confirms what the icons in the shop mean. The arrow meant that you rented the item and then there's a special "sold out" sign for items, which you have purchased.)


Also.. the comparison to Majora's Mask is "off". You don't lose your items there, the counters for Rupees, Bombs and Arrows just go back to zero and your bottles are emptied. But it seems like Majora's Mask is really on their minds lately, so I'm betting that they're currently working on Majora's Mask 3D.

3 comments:

K2L said...

Looks like your anticipation has just halved.

I will wait until I play the game to have a proper judgement.

TourianTourist said...

I'm a fan of the whole item shop idea and of the freedom, it will hopefully give me. So, I'm still excited for the game.

It's just that using Game Overs as an incentive doesn't really work for me.

K2L said...

I see. Well, time will tell if they're made the game harder or not.