Enquiries and rumours and just general declarations of “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” have been circulating for a while now regarding the next Zelda title, which will release on the Wii U in 2013 (apparently) and be the biggest Zelda game till date. Most especially, people have been wondering when Metroid Prime developer Retro Studios will get a crack at the Zelda franchise. Because if you ever needed to take the franchise into the first person mode, as seems the natural direction for Link, why not go for the guys who’ve proven their mettle time and time again?
According to Shigeru Miyamoto, in an interview with Game Reactor (the below quote in question coming from NeoGAF, this won’t be happening any time soon.
“Really, with every game we develop, Zelda gets bigger and bigger. It’s reached a point where, if we had to do it entirely inside Nintendo, we would have to dedicate ourselves exclusively to Zelda given the dimensions it has reached. That’s why Nintendo is working with more and more companies either in-house or subcontracted, like Monolith or Grezzo. Ultimately, Mr. Aonuma is very close with these kind of companies in his work, so the possibility of Retro Studios making a new Zelda, following a good proposal, isn’t a farfetched idea at all and could be totally possible.”
“But on the other hand, so far the design and script was created within Nintendo and this must continue. Even though Retro Studios is qualified, in the end they would have to be in very close contact with us, and, being outside Japan the distance and timezone differences would make communication more complicated. Retro Studios should be a company that is more focused on developing projects with less dependence on Nintendo; they’re probably not the most appropriate [for Zelda].”
That would seem the most logical answer, but the time won’t be long when fans outright demand a change. Then again, if the company can continue making Mario a platforming title, you can sure as hell bet they’ll try to restrict Zelda to it’s more traditional action adventure format.
