The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds takes place in a fictional fantasy setting. Within the series's chronology, A Link Between Worlds falls in the "Defeated Hero" timeline, taking place some time after the events of A Link to the Past and falling between the Oracle games and the original The Legend of Zelda.[10] The game is set in Hyrule, a location used in many past Zelda games, and Lorule, a new kingdom that acts as Hyrule's dark twin.[3] An ancient Hyrulean legend tells of the events prior to A Link Between Worlds. Ganon sought to dominate the kingdom using the power of the sacred Triforce, but he was defeated by a legendary hero and sealed away by the Seven Sages. The Triforce was divided into three pieces to prevent evil from rising again. One part stayed with the royal family, one part was returned to Ganon, and the third part took its rightful place in the heart of the hero and his descendants. Lorule is a kingdom that once possessed a Triforce, which was destroyed to stop Lorule's people from fighting for its power. Without a Triforce, Lorule decayed and became a ruined land. In A Link Between Worlds, Princess Zelda rules Hyrule, while her counterpart Hilda rules Lorule.

Link, the apprentice of a blacksmith, goes to deliver a sword to a captain at Hyrule Castle, only to encounter a mysterious figure named Yuga, who transforms a descendant of one of the Seven Sages, Seres, into a painting. After being knocked out during the fight, a merchant named Ravio finds Link and gives him a bracelet in exchange for him being allowed to stay in his home; he tells him to report what had happened to Princess Zelda. After going to Hyrule Castle, Zelda gives Link the Pendant of Courage and instructs him to seek out the pendants of Power and Wisdom to gain the power of the Master Sword. Along the way, Link encounters Yuga again and is turned into a painting, but Ravio's bracelet protects Link from Yuga's spell and gives him the ability to merge with walls and move around as a painting. After finding the other pendants and obtaining the Master Sword, Link returns to Hyrule Castle where he witnesses Yuga transform Zelda into a painting. Link pursues Yuga through a dimensional crack, arriving in the twisted, decayed kingdom of Lorule. There, Yuga uses Zelda and the descendants of the Seven Sages, who he had trapped inside paintings, to revive and fuse with Ganon, obtaining the Triforce of Power in the process. Just then, Link is assisted by Lorule's ruler Princess Hilda, who traps Yuga in magic bonds.

Hilda instructs Link to find and rescue the Seven Sages, who have been scattered across Lorule, to gain the Triforce of Courage. With help from Ravio, Link accomplishes this and returns to Lorule Castle, where he discovers Hilda taking the Triforce of Wisdom from Zelda. Hilda reveals that Lorule fell into ruin after her ancestors destroyed their Triforce. Deciding that she needed Hyrule's Triforce to restore her kingdom to its former glory, she arranged the events of the game so Link would bring it to her. Hilda attempts to use Yuga to obtain the Triforce of Courage from Link, but Yuga betrays her and turns her into a painting, stealing the Triforce of Wisdom for himself. With Zelda's help, Link defeats Yuga and restores Zelda and Hilda from their paintings. As Hilda feels bitter over her loss, Ravio, revealed to be Link's counterpart, convinces her that stealing Hyrule's Triforce isn't the right way to save Lorule, having secretly sought out Link to help her see the light. After Link and Zelda return to Hyrule, they use their Triforce to restore Lorule's Triforce and bring Lorule back to its full glory. With his quest completed, Link returns the Master Sword to its resting place once more.

In late 2009, following the completion of The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS, the majority of its development team were assigned to work on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the Wii.[11] Three members of the Spirit Tracks team began working on a new handheld title in the Zelda series for the upcoming Nintendo 3DS console.[11] Two of the three members working on the new game were Hiromasa Shikata and Shiro Mouri.[11] During this early phase, they had not considered developing a sequel to The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past; instead they were building a game around the theme of "communication".[11] Around six months into the project, they presented their concept for the game to series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who called the idea outdated. The three then decided to rethink the concept.[11]

Shikata proposed the idea of Link having the ability to enter and merge onto walls; this feature would eventually become one of the title's unique gameplay aspects.[11] Within a day, Mouri had created an initial prototype to demonstrate the feature, and seeing it in action led to an influx of ideas.[12] Link was able to transform from a 3D character to a 2D character by entering walls, and then move smoothly around corners to reach places he previously could not.[12] This ability opened up possibilities for creating new puzzles and using new mechanics.[12] At this stage in the project, they still considered the game an extension of the DS Zelda games and used the same viewpoint and design of Link from Spirit Tracks.[12] Around October 2010, the prototype was presented to Miyamoto, who approved of the new concept.[12] However, within two weeks of entering production, core members of the development team were reassigned to work on launch games for Nintendo's Wii U console which was scheduled for release in 2012.[12] With the team disbanded, development ceased.[12]

In November 2011, Skyward Sword released for the Wii, and Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma began thinking about the next project in the series.[13] While Nintendo had released a remake of Ocarina of Time for the 3DS, demand for an original Zelda title to be released on the 3DS was growing.[13] Aonuma chose to revisit the idea of Link entering walls.[13] With Shikata and Mouri still engaged in the development of Wii U launch games, Aonuma decided to revive the project without its core members, 13 months after it was shelved.[13] Kentaro Tominaga was brought onto the team to continue where Shikata had left off.[13] He refined the system of entering walls and designed some small dungeons, which he presented to Miyamoto in May 2012.[13] Tominaga planned to create 50 more small dungeons that would use the wall-entering mechanic, but Miyamoto criticised this approach and suggested basing the new game on A Link to the Past.[13] Aonuma proposed combining the wall-entering mechanic with the top-down perspective and landforms of A Link to the Past. He felt that the shift in perspective when entering a wall would be complemented by the stereoscopic 3D capabilities of the 3DS.[13] Aonuma converted the two-dimensional landforms of A Link to the Past into three-dimensional space and the team placed Link into the setting with the wall-entering mechanic to test the feature.[13] After several more presentations to Miyamoto, development of the project was allowed to progress in July 2012.[13] The development team began expanding before the end of 2012, with people joining from finished projects; Shikata rejoined as director and Mouri returned as assistant director and lead programmer.[11][13][14] Development was completed in October 2013.[15]

The development team encountered challenges in the creation of the game. Implementing the top-down perspective became a particular issue and resulted in a lot of trial and error.[16] With a true top-down view, players would be unable to see characters' faces and bodies.[16] To circumvent this issue, objects in the world were slanted at an angle so they were more visible.[16] Mouri requested that the game run at 60 frames per second instead of 30 to stabilize the stereoscopic 3D and smoothen movement animations.[16] While doubling the frame rate increased the processing load, it allowed the developers to implement a feature where players could select items by dragging and dropping them from their inventory using the Nintendo 3DS's touchscreen and stylus; at 30 frames per second this feature felt too sluggish for the stylus's movement.[16]

Rethinking the conventions of Zelda became an important theme as development progressed.[17] In previous Zelda games, the player would go into a dungeon, obtain a new item, and then move onto the next dungeon in a specific order.[17] The development team felt that this formula was flawed as a player could get stuck on a dungeon and be unable to progress.[17] They wanted to give the player more freedom in the ways they could advance through the game, allowing them to tackle dungeons in any order and clear multiple dungeons in parallel, but this meant that the method for acquiring items had to be changed.[17][18] They opted for a system where players could rent or purchase items using the game's currency, rupees.[17] In the final game, rented items are returned to the merchant when the player is defeated, but the team had considered other ideas for returning rented items, such as setting a timer on the rental period and imposing fees if they were returned late.[18] The development team found out about the Nintendo 2DS during the game's production. As the Nintendo 2DS lacked 3D capabilities, the team decided to revise some of the game's dungeon designs to be certain that they could be completed without the 3D effect.[19]

The designers thought that Link's appearance should change when Link entered a wall and the perspective switched from a top-down view to side view.[14] They chose to make Link a mural while he was on a wall; this led to the creation of the antagonist Yuga, a sorcerer that can transform himself and others into paintings.[14] Aonuma mentioned that the idea of Link turning into a mural was inspired by Phantom Ganon jumping into paintings during his encounter in Ocarina of Time.[20] As the game's story takes place long after the events of a A Link to the Past and the player travels between the two worlds of Hyrule and Lorule, the development team chose A Link Between Worlds instead of A Link to the Past 2 for the game's English-language title.[17]

A Link Between Worlds features original music along with tracks from A Link to the Past. Ryo Nagamatsu composed and orchestrated new music for A Link Between Worlds, and played the flute music featured in the game's milk bar. He also composed arrangements and adapted Koji Kondo's original music from A Link to the Past.[21] Nagamatsu wanted to balance arrangements of past music with new music to please both old and new players. He began by revisiting old tracks and thinking how he could best adapt them for A Link Between Worlds. He was eager to include choral performances as a way to add tension to the eerie and unpleasant scenes in the game. Nagamatsu performed the vocals and made use of multitrack recording to layer the different vocals tracks.[22] The audio team decided not to use a live orchestra for recording the game's music—the primary reason for this was to create optimal sound for the 3DS. The reverberations and low-pitch sounds created by a live orchestra were not suitable for the 3DS speakers. The majority of the string music was created using a synthesizer, with Toru Minegishi playing guitar on one track.[21]