One of the big reveals at the Nintendo Direct broadcast this morning, was the announcement of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker getting an HD makeover for the Wii U. While Nintendo was unable to show anything new for the next installment in the Zelda franchise, the producer of Legend of Zelda, Eiji Aonuma, made an appearance to share some themes that they will be focusing on. A couple of those concepts were to remove the linear mechanics of Zelda, like when players were only able to tackle dungeons in a certain order. There was also hints of multiplayer possibly returning to Zelda, as playing by yourself might not be a central focus.
Aonuma went on to further explain that after the team worked on the breif Zelda E3 demo for Wii U, they were curious to see how past Zelda titles will look with an HD makeover, in order to gain some ideas on what the graphical style for the next Zelda title could be. This lead to them creating The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker into HD. They felt the HD look brought new life to the game and created something entirely new. With the development of the next Legend of Zelda game taking a long time before it’s ready, the team decided to offer this HD upgrade of The Wind Waker to help make the wait a little easier.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for Wii U will feature upgraded graphics, a tune-up to the overall game experience, support for off-tv play with the gamepad, and a community on Miiverse. This HD remake of The Wind Waker will be made available for the Wii U this coming Fall.
