The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time recently celebrated its 26th anniversary, but you may be surprised to hear that we’re still learning things related to the game many years later. There are even interviews with Nintendo from that time that are only just recently resurfacing, and they offer information that had been unknown until now.
For example, in 1999, Shigeru Miyamoto was interviewed for a Japanese strategy guide. In the interview, which was recently translated by Shmuplations, Miyamoto spoke about Navi, who gives the players hints throughout the game. According to Miyamoto, “I think the way we give hints is still a little too unfriendly. Speaking plainly, I can now confess to you: I think the whole system with Navi giving you advice is the biggest weak-point of Ocarina of Time. It’s incredibly difficult to design a system that gives proper advice, advice that’s tailored to the player’s situation. To do it right, you’d have to spend the same amount of time as you would developing an entire game, and I was very worried we’d be digging ourselves into a hole, if we pursued perfection there”.
Miyamoto continued, saying that “if you read Navi’s text, she says the same things over and over. I know it makes it sound bad, but we purposely left her at a kind of ‘stupid’ level. I think if we’d tried to make Navi’s hints more sophisticated, that ‘stupidity’ would have actually stood out even more. The truth is I wanted to remove the entire system, but that would have been even more unfriendly to players. You can think of Navi as being there for players who stop playing for a month or so, who then pick the game back up and want to remember what they were supposed to do. It’s a brazen excuse, I know. (laughs)”.
Navi is actually great as a targeting system. No one actually cares about the hints, but miyamoto could have put in an option to turn hints off.
Why do I think I already knew this?
I think the Zelda sidekicks are fine as long as they only speak when spoken to or when it’s a story-centric cutscene. Basically, an option to ask for hints or descriptions is totally fine… but getting sound and/or vibrate notifications while you’re playing isn’t fun.
She was beyond useless for me, but that’s because I’m a 2000 kid and I had easy internet access as a kid, if I was stuck in the game I would easily go on YouTube and find what I had to do. But if you were playing it back in the 90’s I think you could get some nice info instead of getting stuck with no info at all, shiggie is too harsh with himself
A manchild.
I can’t really recall a time when Navi was actually helpful. When it came to places to go the story already pointed you to that direction, and the points she would point out with puzzles were obvious. That being said, she wasn’t nearly as annoying as people make her out to be.
i remember not getting annoyed by navi for my whole playthrough of oot, and i once i find out that everybody on the internet had a problem with her, i started pretending that i hated her too just to fit in with the masses
Eh she was mildly annoying for me at most
Miyamoto’s use case for Navi is literally one that I have used myself. The first time I beat OoT I stopped playing for literally a year at one point. When rejoining, Navi reminding where I needed to proceed the story was genuinely useful.
I agree that Navi wasn’t especially well implemented, but also not useless. When assessing OoT through a modern lens there are definitely bigger issues with the game, but in 1999 those things undoubtedly weren’t so obvious.
I never understood why people thought Navi was annoying. Granted, the first time I played Ocarina of Time was on the 3DS, and I played Majora’s Mask on Wii Virtual Console before that (I assume that Tatl was an improvement over Navi in terms of hints because I liked her a lot)- that to say, maybe the N64 Ocarina of Time wasn’t good with Navi. Idk
Never had an issue with Navi myself, but Fi… Fi is pure evil, I just wanted her to shut up.
I love her. The only problem I have with Navi is her lack of involvement in the story. She needed more cutscenes to show off her character. Hence why OoT is one of the few LoZelda games that could do with a reimagination. It would give Majora’s Mask more of an emotional pull, too, as you’ll understand why Link set off to go find her as you actually want to find her yourself. Honestly, a reimagination of MM would be nice, too. They could have flashbacks spread out in the story where Link recalls moments with Navi we didn’t see in OoT. These 2 reimaginings could then be followed with a brand new 3rd game where Link (and us, the player) is still trying to find her. It could culminate in Link dying at the end where Navi ultimately finds him instead, comforting him as he passes away. To add more gravitas to the ending, we finally get spoken words from Link himself for the first time ever in the games as he laments he won’t be remembered as the Hero of Time, setting up his role as the Hero’s Shade for Twilight Princess. Maybe he could even lament the fact he won’t be able to pass his skills to his son. That could be a twist ending that even more directly ties the Hero of Time to TP. Link actually talking where we actually see & hear him speak should be a rare occurrence after that. It would make Link talking a special occasion type of thing. Sort of like how WWE use to use Brock Lesnar back in the 2010s.
“Hey listen !”….^^