After the duology of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom finds a new way to continue the trend of new Zelda games doubling down on player freedom, even if it makes some things a nightmare to balance and design.
Veteran Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma discussed this design approach in a new Nintendo dev Q&A, joined by co-directors Satoshi Terada and Tomomi Sano (the first woman to ever direct a Zelda game). Terada says it took a lot of effort to incorporate Echoes of Wisdom's titular echoes, items and entities which can be stamped out in the world to solve puzzles and encounters, in a freeform way.
