Eiji Aonuma on The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - Why they're doing the remake, Chamber Dungeons, art style, and more

The Switch News channel shared an internal Nintendo interview with Eiji Aonuma that focuses on The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. You can check out the full interview below.

Nintendo: Why did the team decide to reimagine Link’s Awakening specifically?

Eiji Aonuma: So, you may know this, but for the original Link’s Awakening game, I wasn’t involved in the development – I was only a fan when it was released 26 years ago on the Game Boy. Since it came out so many years ago, it’s a little hard to get ahold of. I’ve always wanted to remake it.

I’ve also had the idea of arranging dungeons in a Zelda game, and I wanted to add this new feature when I was thinking about the Link’s Awakening remake. The fact that the dungeons in Link’s Awakening fit well with the idea of arranging dungeons also encouraged me to remake this game. And this is how the new feature called Chamber Dungeons was born.

Nintendo: Speaking of Chamber Dungeons, what made Link’s Awakening a good fit for this feature?

Eiji Aonuma: So, while we wanted a way for players to arrange their own dungeon, we thought a 3D dungeon would be harder for players to manage. However, Link’s Awakening is always viewed from the top and each room in the dungeon is the same size: making it easier for the player. There’s a lot of ways you can do something called “dungeon arrangement,” but we wanted to make it so it’s more like solving a puzzle. We wanted to make it accessible for everyone.

Nintendo: Many folks have remarked on how cute the art style is. How would you describe the look of the game, and how was it decided on?

Eiji Aonuma: We didn’t really intend on making it necessarily “cute,” but the original game was a small world that you kind of glimpsed into. We thought this diorama-like world that you could look in from an angle was a perfect fit for the remake.

Nintendo: After The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, this may be a lot of Nintendo Switch owners’ second Zelda game, and they may be surprised how different this game is. How would you recommend Link’s Awakening to players who have only played Breath of the Wild before?

Eiji Aonuma: If Breath of the Wild is the player’s first Zelda game, it may be easy to think that that’s what all Zelda games are like. But honestly, when you think about it, traditional Zelda games led up to what Breath of the Wild is. By playing Link’s Awakening, I hope those newer fans will enjoy the difference between Breath of the Wild and a traditional Zelda. And we hope that new things like Chamber Dungeons will give players a different kind of experience.

Nintendo: We saw a few characters from the Super Mario series appear in Link’s Awakening, but which cameo is your favorite?

Eiji Aonuma: Ah, I really like Bow Wow. He is so useful!