‘I was amazed’: Zelda leads react to Echoes of Wisdom speedruns, and criticism

The creative leadership behind the latest Legend of Zelda game, Echoes of Wisdom, have responded to players’ creative tricks to speedrun the game, as well as common criticisms of the title.

Since its release, players have used Echoes of Wisdom’s spawnable items in various surprising combinations to more quickly and easily beat the game. The game’s co-director, Satoshi Terada, said even he was surprised by what players came up with once the game was released.

“Seeing how players are using it, I was really amazed at people’s imaginations,” he told the BBC, going on to mention a popular trick, which sees players combining beds with a tornado enemy to propel Zelda into the air, skipping larges sections.

“That was one that we hadn’t thought of,” he said. Co-director Tomomi Sano added: “Players were using the tornado and the bed to actually climb and go over mountains. And this was something that I was amazed by, something that I probably wouldn’t be able to do.”

Echoes of Wisdoms received mostly positive reviews at release, though there was some common criticism of the game, particularly its uneven performance on the ageing Nintendo Switch console.

Sano told the BBC that Echoes of Wisdom uses a variable framerate, and that the developers felt this was the “best option” available for the game.

Terada addressed another common criticism, that it’s difficult to navigate the game’s over-100 spawnable creature and items via its UI menu.

“One of the essences of this game is being able to figure out different ways of using each of these echoes,” he said. “And so in that sense we wanted players to fall upon and see the echoes that they may not have noticed or have been using while they’re sorting through all the echoes that they have.”

He also pointed out that players can more quickly navigate their inventory using the alternative notebook method.

In VGC’s Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom review, we wrote: “Despite some ambitious ideas, beneath the surface Echoes of Wisdom is a surprisingly uneven Zelda adventure. Few of its headline mechanics are utilised to their potential which means that, while enjoyable and charming, it ultimately feels less essential than other modern 2D entries.”