Why not spread the story across the entire game, instead of putting it all toward the beginning?
Eiji Aonuma: Because it had the light world and the Twilight, it was necessary to explain what exactly Twilight was thoroughly, so the player understood what exactly the goal was in the game. As Link progressed through the game, he basically lifted the Twilight off these different realms. So towards the end of the game, it wasn’t really necessary to focus so much on the story, and focus more on the action. NWR: In the second half of the game there were points where we needed to collect items and such. How do you keep things fresh in the exploration area, to prevent it from becoming a collect-a-thon kind of game? Aonuma: In a game where exploration is such a heavy focus, like with a Zelda game, collecting items is always an integral part of it. What we try to do to keep it fresh is change the timing and the conditions under which the player accesses an item. For example, if they need to collect an item without having cleared certain conditions, it’s going to be significantly different i
