If there’s one game whose general appreciation changed drastically from its reveal to launch and subsequent legacy, it’s The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. After Ocarina of Time y Majora’s Mask, everyone expected a more ‘realistic’ Link for the GameCube, while Toon Link meant the opposite. Everything seems to indicate that Shigeru Miyamoto himself, franchise creatorlike many fans, did not agree either.
According to an interview in the Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream – recently translated by the YouTube channel DYKG – Miyamoto felt true cringe (shame, pity of others) when seeing the graphs of The Wind Waker, game directed by Eiji Aonuma. He had doubts that he could sell well.
However, the initial plan for the first Zelda on GameCube was to continue what was built by the Nintendo 64 games. But the team’s artists did not want to repeat explored concepts and proposed the concept of Toon Link. When the other developers became interested in the new style, they tackled cel shading and it was only revealed to Miyamoto some time later. In Aonuma’s words:
“If I had talked to him about it from the beginning, I think he would have said, ‘How is that? Zelda?’. Miyamoto had trouble leaving the realistic art style behind only until the very end. At some point, he had to give a presentation against his will. That’s when he said something to me like, ‘You know, it’s not too late to change course and make a Zelda realist’.”
The visual style wasn’t Miyamoto’s only reserved aspect, as he was ignorant of much of the story. Despite not being very convinced about the development of the game, he allowed it to continue, since it would have required 10 years to make a game. Zelda realistic with the equipment they had.
Even so, a few years later, in November 2006, they would carry out part of the idea with the launch of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Needless to say that The Wind Waker It proved to be a visually and playably wonderful game. It didn’t sell as much as they’d hoped, but it did spawn two sequels for the Nintendo DS, a Japan-only GameCube side game—along with Four Swords Adventures (Tetra’s Trackers) – and an HD version on Wii U.
Fuente: Did You Know Gaming?