Thanks to Nintendo Everything, we now have a full translation of Famitsu’s recent interview with the legendary Eiji Aonuma. The popular Japanese publication got to sit down with Aonuma soon after The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild bagged the prestigious Game Of The Year award at this years’ annual The Game Awards ceremony. Aonuma speaks of his shock, excitement and very brief discouragement before claiming the amazing prize. I have included the excerpt from the interview below:
Famitsu: We saw you receiving the prize during the live stream, but you were in a situation where you wouldn’t know whether you would win it or not, weren’t you?
Aonuma: That’s right. When I was sitting at the awards ceremony, there were more and more foreign titles being mentioned… I somehow became discouraged, thinking it might be difficult at all for a Japanese game to win this. And as the event was about to close, I was talking to Fujibayashi saying, “Let’s prepare to leave.” And just as I underestimated it, the Game of the Year announcement came, and my head went completely blank. I stood up hugging Fujibayashi, but at that time I was already completely unconscious. I stood on the stage while still being in that situation, and the first words that came from me were “Thank you America!” Are you a middle schooler? [referring to himself at the awards ceremony] (laughs).
Famitsu: (Laughs)
Aonuma: Now I understand how people cannot say anything at times like this. (wry laugh)
Famitsu: But we were moved when you were cheered. Aonuma-san must have been very excited.
Aonuma: No no, I didn’t even know whether I was excited or not. That’s why I had “Thank you America” as my first words. After that, the development staff tampered with the speech quite a lot… (laughs). But yes, I was that happy.
You deserve every credit possible for this outstanding game.
I can imagine the amount of staff and effort that has gone into this game is incredible
Poor guy.
Come on dude, we thought it was touching that you appreciated us for loving your game so much.
I smiled brightly when he said it.
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For some reason, I never thought that game developers took these sort of awards all that seriously. But I guess they do. I never watch the game awards because there’s SO much crap about games I have no interest in. I can’t stand sitting through them just to see the bits and pieces of actual good games here and there.
Except from PUBG there where only great games at the GA though