Eiji Aonuma, overseer of many a game in The Legend of Zelda series, was recently making the rounds in the United Kingdom to promote his latest title, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. And during his time there, he did what any good employee of the company would– he stopped by the Official Nintendo Magazine offices to give the staff some of their time to talk a little about what is going down.
And perhaps the most interesting news to come out of the meeting regards the internet’s speculation surrounding the upcoming Wii Zelda title, and can be best summed up in five little words: “some of it is right.”
Indeed, he admit that someone out there in the vastness of the interwebs has cracked the secret behind Link and his mysterious new companion, but he could say nothing more:
“You will have to wait until next year when we can elaborate on this and many other things,” Aonuma said. “But what I can tell you is that yes I have read some of the speculation, and some of it is right! That is all I can say at the moment.”
Popular speculation goes back to when Miyamoto pointed out at E3 that the image of Link revealed at the show uncharacteristically depicts the hero of Hyrule without his trademark weapon, the Master Sword– or a sword of any kind. The popular theory is that the lithe figure standing alongside him is the Master Sword. But is that the theory that is true?
As Aonuma stated before, we’ll have to wait for E3 2010 to find out more.
ONM talks more about the man and the meeting itself here, stating “Often when you’re speaking to game developers and you ask about their future projects you just get a flat out, ‘No comment. Next question.’ Even though he clearly didn’t want to give too much away about his plans for Link’s next Wii adventure, Aonuma answered each of our questions about Zelda Wii as fully and intelligently as he could. Top man.”
The full interview with Aonuma will appear in the 51st issue of Official Nintendo Magazine, due in four weeks’ time on December 18th, but they did leave this little nugget of info for everyone:
Talking about how he spent his lunch breaks, Aonuma had this to say. “Recently I have been spending my lunch with other game directors playing over local connection battle in Spirit Tracks. It is very good to do that in order to facilitate better communications between us. I have been partnering with the director of the Spirit Tracks to fight against the director of the new Wii game and yes, recently we have been winning!”
Well, that stands to reason, I suppose. Can you imagine if the Spirit Tracks director were beaten at his own game, with Aonuma on his side, no less? One can only wonder if the Wii title’s director will have a way to get even when his game is ready to come out.
