Wii U Zelda ‘not necessarily’ the same as tech demo

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The Legend of Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma has warned that the Wii U Zelda tech demo, shown at this year’s E3, is not necessarily what to expect from the inevitable Wii U title.

“You probably remember that when we introduced the GameCube, we showed a somewhat realistic Zelda demo,” Aonuma told Wired.

“And what we actually created was the cel-shaded Wind Waker. So when we show a graphic demo, people think, ‘Oh, this is what the next Zelda will look like,’ but that’s not necessarily the case.”

Wind Waker turned out to be both critically and commercially successful, but when the first images of the game were revealed, fans were decidedly worried. Aonuma is making sure that this mistake isn’t made again.

With the Zelda team currently hard at work on Skyward Sword, which is due to be released later this year, another team were responsible for putting together the tech demo.

“We talked to each other a lot about several elements, one of which was, ‘How exactly will the HD graphics work?’ In doing concepts for that … we used Zelda assets quite often to examine, OK, how real will we make this look?”

Despite the short amount of time it took to develop, Nintendo has said that the Zelda Wii U demo is not possible on other consoles, and is reason to believe Nintendo will have no issues creating top end high definition games for its new console.

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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

  • Platform(s): Nintendo Switch, Wii, Wii U
  • Genre(s): Action, Adventure
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