- Hisada originally came onto the Twilight Princess team without having played a Legend of Zelda game, so she started with Ocarina of Time.
- She didn't have the courage to finish the Deku Tree stage, so she talked to the staff to learn more of the Zelda logic and approach
- this lead to better understanding what Zelda is all about
- the dev team also finds it fun to startle players by putting certain enemies in locations
- Hosaka and Marunami both started the Zelda series with Wind Waker
- the ideas of many staffers build up into the personalities of characters
- Hirono tried to make Skyward Sword's characters feel familiar and cute even if they looked weird
- character details aren't determined at the start, and requests are usually along the lines of, "Make him sort of such-and-such."
- the setting of Skyloft lead to character/location ideas like "Flowing cloaks would be cool," and "The climate must be cool."
- Hirono details the character creation process a bit more:
Yeah! (laughs) In thinking about the characters, I prepare a wide variety of illustrations, and sometimes others come up with ideas based on those, and we narrow them down for a few models, for which the planners and scriptwriters come up with distinctive dialogue, and the sound staff add in actual voices, so in the end ideas and material from all kinds of people get tightly packed into a single character.
- the only direction originally given for Ghirahim was, "He is an opponent for sword battle, and a Demon Lord who has some sort of objective, and his personality was a little affected and vain."
- the reason Ghirahim has so many diamonds attached to his design is because the dev team used "shape to serve as a symbol of a character", giving him a stronger impression
- Ghirahim's tongue has form and joint structure
- Hosaka explains the dungeon design process she uses:
First, I write up as many kind of gameplay as I can think of using items that you get in the dungeon. Then, rearranging them like puzzle pieces, I thought up a flow of gameplay, like once you've mastered these basics, then you can use it over here.
- Mogmas will cheer you on when you do well in certain situations
- there is one portion of the game where all your items are taken away, and you have to use a different approach to get past enemies and recollect your items
- items from Skyloft were designed with a simple approach, matching the people of the town
- items of the Goddess were made with the approach of "mysterious metal or mysterious material that is oddly smooth."
- the dev team even factors in what the people of Skyloft would build their homes with, figuring that trees would be quite scarce, and therefor too valuable to chop down and make homes out of
- the visual approach to the game was made to give "something that doesn't look scary at first glance is easier to take in your hands"
- characters and enemies were originally in the watercolor design we see now, but they blended in too much with the background
- the team then switched to what they call 'half-toon rendering' for the characters and enemies
- this still lead to the team adjusting colors on each item to make sure everything fit right
- bombs were originally a darker blue, but they would just fade into the background with that coloring
- Rupees were made bigger this time to make them more irresistable
- heart flowers came about because the dev team said, why not heart flowers if there are bomb flowers?
- the original design approach for the Stamina Fruit was, "a plant growing various places. It looks like it would give you strength and like it would taste crisp and refreshing."
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