Many released video games look very different from their prototypes, or even just earlier builds, and that was also the case with The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, set to release later this week. In fact, the game originally started out as a dungeon creator and editor.
In a series of interviews published by Nintendo starting Monday, the development team at Grezzo discusses some of the challenges they faced when working on their first original title. They had previously been behind many Zelda remakes, including Ocarina of Time 3D and 2019’s Link’s Awakening, but this was the first time they were trusted to come up with their own idea. Arguably the biggest was what to do with their first chance.
The team came up with an idea for a feature where Link would copy and paste objects from the outside world into a dungeon, but that eventually evolved into the “echoes” concept. “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,” Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma says in the interview.
“Creating dungeons was fun, but being able to copy various objects and use them in different places was even more fun,” co-director Tomomi Sano adds.
Of course, with an original concept came more obstacles. How do the developers allow the players to copy and paste objects without crashing the game? There were questions about how to create echoes that people will want to use, and how to keep them engaging enough that players will want to try out multiple echoes instead of just using one repeatedly. The developers also had to figure out how echoes would work across different environments, and if they should implement any restrictions on player freedom — something that has become a core tenant of the series, especially after Breath of the Wild. In the end, the developers decided to let players run wild.
Sano explains that the team thought of the popular player exploit from Breath of the Wild‘s Myahm Agana Shrine. While players had to move a ball throughout a series of obstacles on a tilting board, they could also just flip the board over and complete the puzzle more easily.
“If this kind of solution isn’t allowed, then it’s not fun,” Aonuma says.
Echoes of Wisdom is a game of many firsts. It’s the first original Zelda title developed by remaster/remake studio Grezzo, the first Zelda game with a female director, and the first Zelda title starring Princess Zelda as the main playable character. It’ll release on Nintendo Switch on September 26, 2024.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.