Zelda: Exclusive Interview with Trailblazing Director

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom marks a significant milestone as the first Zelda game to feature a female director at the helm. Read on to learn more about Tomomi Sano and Echoes of Wisdom’s early stages of development.

Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom Details Revealed During Nintendo’s Ask the Developer Interviews

Meet Tomomi Sano, the Zelda Series’ First Female Director

The Legend of Zelda series has always been a masterclass in weaving epic narratives with puzzles and dungeons that feel like living labyrinths. But with the upcoming release of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Nintendo revealed details during their recent Ask the Developer interview that the game holds a special place in Hyrule’s history for two key reasons: Not only is it the first Zelda game where Princess Zelda takes center stage as the playable protagonist, but it's also the first to be directed by a woman.

"Prior to this project, my main role was to support the director," Echoes of Wisdom’s director Tomomi Sano said in an interview with Nintendo. Prior to taking the reins, she contributed to Grezzo’s remake projects, including Ocarina of Time 3D, Majora’s Mask 3D, Link’s Awakening, and Twilight Princess HD. Additionally, she has experience working on the Mario & Luigi series.

"My role was to manage and coordinate the production for this project, suggest adjustments, and then check the outcome to ensure the gameplay created by Grezzo is aligned with the Legend of Zelda series," Sano continued.

Regarding her involvement with previous projects, series producer Eiji Aonuma said, "I almost always ask her to be engaged in the Legend of Zelda remakes that Grezzo works on."

Sano is a veteran in the industry, with a career spanning over two decades. Her first credit dates back to 1998 when she worked as a Stage Texture editor for Tekken 3 on the PlayStation 1. While her early Nintendo credits include the Japan-only Kururin Squash! and Mario Party 6, both released in 2004, she has since contributed to a variety of Legend of Zelda and Mario & Luigi titles. Notably, she has worked on several Mario sports games, such as Mario Tennis Open, Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, and Mario Golf: World Tour.

Echoes of Wisdom Started as a Zelda Dungeon Maker, Revealed Aonuma

The seeds of Echoes of Wisdom were sown in the wake of the critically acclaimed 2019 remake, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening. During the interview, Aonuma revealed that Grezzo, the co-developers of Link’s Awakening, were tasked with taking their expertise in top-down Zelda gameplay and creating a blueprint for the franchise’s future. Initially, this vision leaned toward another remake, but Grezzo surprised Nintendo with a bolder proposal: a Zelda dungeon maker.

Aonuma asked Grezzo, "If you were to make the next new game, what kind of game would you like it to be?" A simple request received numerous proposals. In the end, while the winning concept was similar to the final game, Echoes of Wisdom wasn’t initially conceived as it is now. Two of the early prototypes explored a "copy-and-paste" gameplay mechanic and a top-down and side-view perspective similar to Link’s Awakening.

"We were exploring a few different ways to play the game in parallel," Grezzo’s Satoshi Terada said. "In one approach, Link could copy and paste various objects, such as doors and candlesticks, to create original dungeons. During this exploration phase, this was called an ‘edit dungeon’ because players could create their own Legend of Zelda gameplay."

Grezzo spent over a year developing Echoes of Wisdom with a focus on the dungeon creation mechanic. However, the project took a significant turn when Aonuma intervened and "upended the tea table"—an expression used by Nintendo which means halting a game’s development to radically change it’s direction.

While Aonuma liked their previous ideas, Aonuma believed that the dungeon-maker feature would show more potential if players used copied-and-pasted items as tools to progress through the adventure, rather than them creating their own dungeons.

"For example, in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening, there is an enemy called a Thwomp that falls from above and crushes things below and only appears in the side–view perspective," Sano explained. "If you copy that and paste it into the top view, you can drop it from above and crush things below, or conversely, you can ride on the Thwomp and use it to climb upward."

Aonuma then mentioned the initial struggle to impose restrictions on Echo usage, fearing players might exploit the system. However, the team gradually realized that these limitations were unnecessary and removed them entirely in the final version.

This approach encouraged players to "be mischievous," a principle the developers had that emphasized creative and unconventional gameplay. As Aonuma explained, "We wanted to do some things that were really out there." This led to features like spike rollers, which, despite its unpredictable interactions in colliding with items in the world, was deemed essential to the experience. "If we didn’t allow for this possibility, it wouldn’t be fun," he said.

Sano added that the team even created a document defining "being mischievous" to guide development efforts. Terada and Sano outlined three key rules: "’Be able to paste things however, wherever, and whenever you like,’ ‘Make it possible to complete puzzles using things that aren’t there,’" and "being able to find uses for echoes that are so ingenious it almost feels like cheating should be part of what makes this game fun."

Freedom and creativity have always been at the center of most if not all Legend of Zelda titles. Aonuma compared the game’s allowance for "being mischievous" to the Myahm Agana Shrine in Breath of the Wild, where players had to guide a ball through a maze. However, using the controller’s motion controls, you can forgo the obstacles by just flipping the entire board and using the smooth surface of the other side.

"It’s like finding a secret trick in the game, just like the old days," said Aonuma. "If this kind of solution isn’t allowed, then it’s not fun."

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is scheduled for release in just two days, September 26, on the Nintendo Switch. The game takes place in an alternate timeline where Zelda, not Link, is the one rescuing Hyrule as countless rifts tear through the land. For more details on The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’s gameplay and story, check out our article below!