Miyamoto: Wii Zelda underway with ‘fundamental changes’

So, new Mario and Zelda games are in development. Right. Now. That’s a given, and we knew as much after reporting on the shenanigans at E3 this summer. And then we knew a little more thanks to Reggie at Nintendo’s autumnal press foray a week or so ago (or Atonement, as some would like to call it today).

Forgetting the fact that the past 12 months have been a Nintendo first party bonanza, we want more. It’s how we roll, especially when those games are so, well, good.

But wait. What’s this? There is more? And it’s from the notoriously loose-lipped Shigeru Miyamoto? Do dish, Miyamoto-san, do dish:

“The Zelda team in particular always works on Zelda titles. The core members of the Zelda team have for a very long time now been focused on Zelda games, and continue to focus on Zelda games, so they are hard at work and working away,” Miyamoto said. “And then, of course, we have the DS Zelda team as well, so even there we’re having some switching of people in and out where the DS team is mixing in with the Wii team and working on the Wii version.”

Hmm, still ambiguous at best. Perhaps a follow up question on some first person shooter changes from GDC 2007 will grease the wheels a bit?

At GDC 2007, Eiji Aonuma gave a presentation on The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. At that time, he showed a brief snippet of an experimentation the Zelda team conducted — it was Twilight Princess running in the first-person view. We asked Miyamoto if such a fundamental change could await players of Wii’s next Zelda adventure.

“I don’t necessarily think it will change that drastically, but I think that Zelda is a franchise that does need some big new unique ideas,” he said. “And so the team right now is very focused on trying to find those ideas.”

Alright. So we know what a Wii Zelda won’t be. In that respect, we can approach Nintendo’s clandestine new approach to game announcements like Sherlock Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Any thoughts on Zelda now that we know a FPS design is, thankfully, in the garbage?