Un Wind Waker 2 ? C'était en projet !

À l’occasion d’une interview tirée de l’ouvrage Arts & Artifacts, Satoru Takizawa, un des artistes travaillant sur divers jeux Zelda a témoigné : selon ses dires, dans les années 2000, un deuxième opus de The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker basé sur Link cartoon était bel et bien prévu très probablement pour la console Gamecube. Le projet qui visait à faire évoluer Link Cartoon sur terre et à cheval fut avorté et transformé en Twilight Princess pour des raisons que nous connaissons à présent :

C’est un fait, la sortie de The Wind Waker fut une surprise, douloureuse pour certains fans, qui attendaient déjà à l’époque le retour un Link adulte façon Ocarina of Time. Malgré le succès du jeu, une aventure dans la veine d’Ocarina of Time, plus réaliste, était toujours fortement attendue par les fans, et ce depuis l’ère Nintendo 64. Répondre à cette attente était également un bon moyen d'assurer de bonnes ventes

Couplez à ça le fait que les proportions de Link Cartoon n’étaient pas compatibles avec l’équitation ; le héros était trop petit et ses jambes trop courtes. Ces soucis, ainsi que l’insistance des fans, sont des raisons qui ont mené plus ou moins directement à la naissance de Twilight Princess et de ses partis pris plus réalistes.

Realistic Link came back four years after Wind Waker in Twilight Princess, which was released on GameCube and Wii. The pendulum returned again to the realistic direction, but what kind of circumstances resulted in it?

Takizawa: To tell you the truth, we had begun the initial steps towards creating Wind Waker 2 around that time. However, demand for a more Ocarina-like game was growing by the day. We did our very best with Wind Waker, and put everything we had into it…

Takizawa: However, Wind Waker 2 would have taken place in a more land-based setting, rather than on the sea, so that we could have Link gallop across the land on a horse. But Link’s proportions in Wind Waker weren’t very well suited for riding on horseback, he was too short, and an adult version of Toon Link did not seem appropriate either. So, while we were stuck on those problems, we became aware of the greater demand for a more realistic, taller Link. High-budget live-action fantasy movies were also huge at the time, so with all things considered, we decided to have at it. I was on board with the project as art director, and started off by bringing [Yusuke] Nakano on to do the design for Link.

So the project began with Mr. Nakano’s Link as the basis?

Takizawa: He had joined after the graphics testing process, when we were trying to figure out the game’s “product-level visual identity”. I think that was the first time we had ever brought him on during that part of development.

Nakano: Yes. That was the first time for an internally developed Zelda game.