The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom originally had a dungeon-maker

Nintendo at one point toyed with the idea of letting players design their own dungeons in the new Zelda game.

Nintendo
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The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is nearly upon us, bringing about the first new 2D Zelda game in over a decade. Starring Zelda as its protagonist, Echoes of Wisdom’s gameplay primarily revolves around conjuring creatures and objects previously discovered in the world. However, we’ve now learned that this ability was part of a scrapped dungeon-maker feature in Echoes of Wisdom.

Grezzo’s Satoshi Terada discussed the abandoned dungeon-maker feature for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom in today’s Ask the Developer blog post. “In one approach, Link could copy and paste various objects, such as doors and candlesticks, to create original dungeons,” he said, explaining some of the original gameplay concepts for EoW. “This idea was called an ‘edit dungeon’ because players could create their own Legend of Zelda gameplay.”

Zelda overlooking Hyrule.

Source: Nintendo

Grezzo showed the dungeon-building feature to series producer Eiji Aonuma, who suggested that players should be able to place tools and creatures in the world to aid them in their adventure. This was the birth of the Echo feature, which ended up replacing dungeon building in the final product.

Those who yearn for a Zelda equivalent of Super Mario Maker may be disappointed to learn that they nearly got exactly that with Echoes of Wisdom, the bones of that concept were used to create a brand-new feature for the franchise. Bookmark our topic page dedicated to The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom for more relevant updates leading up to and following the game’s release.

News Editor

Donovan is a young journalist from Maryland, who likes to game. His oldest gaming memory is playing Pajama Sam on his mom's desktop during weekends. Pokémon Emerald, Halo 2, and the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 were some of the most influential titles in awakening his love for video games. After interning for Shacknews throughout college, Donovan graduated from Bowie State University in 2020 with a major in broadcast journalism and joined the team full-time. He is a huge Scream nerd and film fanatic that will talk with you about movies and games all day. You can follow him on twitter @Donimals_

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