{"id":67098,"date":"2022-09-05T23:07:57","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T23:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/retro-studios-unreleased-zelda-project-was-an-experiment-gone-wrong\/"},"modified":"2022-09-05T23:07:57","modified_gmt":"2022-09-05T23:07:57","slug":"retro-studios-unreleased-zelda-project-was-an-experiment-gone-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/retro-studios-unreleased-zelda-project-was-an-experiment-gone-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"Retro Studios’ unreleased Zelda project was “an experiment gone wrong”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It turns out that Retro Studios’ Zelda project progressed to the point where it had working gameplay – but it just wasn’t very good.\n<\/p>\n

Retro Studios – the developer behind the Metroid Prime series – was long-rumoured to have worked on a canned Zelda game and in 2020 concept art of the project was discovered.\n<\/p>\n

Now, YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming has uncovered more information about the project.\n<\/p>\n

Launch Timing Update for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The surfaced concept art, drawn by former Retro Studios contract artist Sammy Hall, had a much darker tone than previous Zelda games and featured Sheikh in a lead role as the game’s plot relayed the origins of the Master Sword.\n<\/p>\n

Did You Know Gaming since followed up with Retro Studios employees to glean more information on the game.\n<\/p>\n

This led to Paul Tozour, a programmer at the developer willing to speak on the project.\n<\/p>\n

“At no point was it really anything like Zelda,” said Totour. “It was an experiment gone wrong that happened to be set in the Zelda universe.”\n<\/p>\n

Essentially, the gameplay was atypical of the Zelda series and did not live up to expectations.\n<\/p>\n

Totour describes combat as simplified whack-a-mole, with lead character Sheikh standing in place as wolves took turns to attack. Simply flicking the Wii Remote was enough to kill them.\n<\/p>\n

When Totour voiced concerns about the gameplay with designers, he was told that simplified gameplay was the wave of the future, which was compared to Link’s Crossbow Training.\n<\/p>\n

Overworld traversal was totally separate, with Sheikh transported into separate battles like in a JRPG.\n<\/p>\n

Totour described this part of gameplay as “a hot mess”.\n<\/p>\n

While the artwork has been widely praised, the gameplay of Project X \/ Sheikh wasn’t reviewed by Retro’s other designers.\n<\/p>\n

Instead, Totour suggested the team work on something like Shadow of the Colossus. Unfortunately his pleas fell on deaf ears and Tozour blames Retro’s leadership for the game’s poor quality.\n<\/p>\n

Incidentally, many designers from Retro left to form Bluepoint Games, which worked on a remake of Shadow of the Colossus for Sony.\n<\/p>\n

So what did Nintendo think of this game when it was pitched?\n<\/p>\n

“[Nintendo] couldn’t really make heads or tails of it,” says Totour. “Their reaction basically boils down to ‘this is seriously what you’re proposing? Really?’ …[it was] immediately rejected. [That’s what I was told,] but I wasn’t there when it happened, and I suppose there’s a possibility it never actually happened and they decided not to show it to Nintendo.\n<\/p>\n

“Nintendo gave us the greenlight to make the prototype… but they had zero input or visibility [during] the nine months of pre-production, which is one of the reasons it failed.”\n<\/p>\n

A further story from Did You Know Gaming’s video is that Retro Studios was also working on another Zelda game.\n<\/p>\n

Known as Heroes of Hyrule, the story focused on a Goron, a Zora, and a Rito who lived 100 years in the past, plus a version of Link who’s now an old man. That seems suspiciously like Breath of the Wild.\n<\/p>\n

The YouTube channel will have further details in a new video soon.\n<\/p>\n

You can watch the video in full below.\n<\/p>\n

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