Aonuma On The Legend Of Zelda: ‘Link Really Is My Other Child’

Legendary Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma has admitted that although he loves working on Zelda and cares for the character like his own children, he would love to take a six-month break to work on a new Nintendo game. Speaking in the latest issue of Edge, Aonuma shares his passion for Zelda and what he’d love to do in the years to come:

“I’m 50 now, so I only have about ten more years to make games at Nintendo. I want to try all sorts of new things before it’s too late — I don’t want to get to the end of my career and only have worked on Zelda. But every time I come up with some good new ideas, they end up being used in a Zelda game! I need a six-month break to get away from the Zelda cycle and focus on something new [laughs]. But I’d probably end up making a game that is similar to Zelda; after all, A Link to the Past was my biggest influence.

“When I first started making Zelda games, I was more interested in the enemy characters than in Link himself. But while I was making Twilight Princess, I was listening to the theme on an iPod while walking hand in hand with my child, and I suddenly burst into tears. I was thinking about all the awful trials Link would have to go through in the new game. I realised that Link really is my other child. I don’t inhabit the character so much as watch him from somewhere very close.”

While sharing his passion for the franchise, Aonuma was also willing to give the fans a few details about the upcoming Nintendo 3DS A Link to the Past successor. He revealed how the title would be presented in 60FPS instead of the normal 30FPS like in other 3DS games, and also confessed that there would be a big surprise for fans:

“This new title will feature lots of things that are new to the series; right at the start of the game, there’s a big surprise that will shock players. We started out with the new play mechanics, such as Link being able to become a painting and walk along the walls, and then figured out from there how to build a story around them. Rather than forcing elements of the original story into this one, we’ve instead focused on bringing back the characters, so you can see what happened to them after the events of the first game.”

Aonuma would clearly love to continue working on the franchise, but would you like to see him work on another IP altogether? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and if you’d like to read the full interview, you can do so in issue 255 of Edge Magazine.