The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Reveals Awesome Feature Cut From the Game

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom almost didn't have its echoes feature.

By Tyler Fischer

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of the Wisdom had a major feature -- that sounds awesome -- cut from the game during development. That said, in its ashes the "echoes" feature was born. For those unfamiliar with the upcoming Legend of Zelda game, one of its main mechanics is the ability to create" echoes" using the Tri Rod. These echoes are imitations of things found in the environment that can be used in the environment whenever needed. For example, you can make a bridge using old beds or recreate monsters to help you in battle. 

Before this feature was in the game though, Nintendo was experimenting with letting Nintendo Switch users create their own dungeons. Ultimately, this feature was cut and morphed into echoes because the development team thought the latter was better. 

"We were exploring a few different ways to play the game in parallel. In one approach, Link could copy and paste various objects, such as doors and candlesticks, to create original dungeons. During this exploration phase, this idea was called an 'edit dungeon' because players could create their own The Legend of Zelda gameplay," said Satoshi Terada, a director at Grezzo, the developer on the game. 

Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma added: "They showed it to me and told me to give it a try. 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. That was the beginning of gameplay using 'echoes'. The gameplay was shifted from creating dungeons up until then to using copied-and-pasted items as tools to further your own adventure."

Anomua continued, revealing the dungeon feature was in the works for a year before it was scrapped and changed into the echoes feature. 

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 "Everyone else was developing the game with dungeon creation in mind, but I was right next to them thinking of something different. But there's a reason it took a year to upend the tea table. After all, you can't really see the potential for ideas to develop into solid gameplay until you can verify features and their feel, so I wanted them to try making it first. I felt that the 'edit dungeon' feature they showed me had significant potential to be developed into a new way of playing The Legend of Zelda games if the gameplay was changed to use "echoes" instead. So I thought it would be good to expand in that direction and could be even more interesting that way."

The full interview can be found on Nintendo, but from the sounds of it, this dungeon editor feature could be revisited in the future in a different game. If this happens, it will likely be a in a non-mainline release, like Echoes of Wisdom.

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