The last two parts of the "Ask the Developer" interview series went up today and these are my favorite tidbits.

Aonuma: That makes exploration much more exciting, but since there were places where we preferred players not to jump, the auto-jump system was, in some ways, convenient from a development standpoint. If you remove that restriction and make it possible to jump anywhere, you need to anticipate all kinds of player behavior and make corresponding adjustments to the environment. So, at first, we were like, 'Are we sure about this?' (Laughs) So, even a single change can instantly increase the number of things that need to be reviewed.

I just picture the devs watching speedrunner footage and debating giving those mad lads the power of jumping on command.

Taguchi: For the bosses, we also struggled quite a lot in the early stages of development to decide where to draw the line in terms of what to change and what not to. For example, Gohma, the first boss players encounter, can only take damage if you hit its weak point at the correct timing. However, in the original game, it was a little difficult to tell exactly when you were supposed to attack. As we struggled with what to do, one of the team members figured we could make it clearer by taking advantage of the two arms on top of Gohma’s head. So we made it so that Gohma guards its weak point with those arms anytime it’s immune to attack. When that worked and made things easier to understand, I felt a real sense of confidence for the first time. I thought to myself, 'So this is how you make it feel new again without changing its essence.'

Nintendo is obsessive about essence in their games. It's the crux of my video essay The Spirit of Super Mario Galaxy. That's all the more important when handling the essence of one of their most beloved titles.

Ohashi: That’s right. We also gave a lot of thought to how we could convey the emotion and nostalgia of the original game. In fact, some pieces combine a live full orchestra with sounds from the original Nintendo 64 version.

Wait, the music incorporates sounds from the Nintendo 64 version?

Ohashi: We didn’t use the audio output from Nintendo 64 as is. Instead, we used the original Nintendo 64 sound source as a reference to faithfully recreate some of the sounds. We wanted to do something only Nintendo could as a way of bringing back memories of that time.

Come on! This sounds amazing. I cannot wait for this soundtrack to be dumped.

Ng: We felt that if we were going to improve the graphics so dramatically, the cutscenes needed to be fully voiced to match. But at the same time, we knew we shouldn't mess with established perceptions of how certain characters sound based on the original. Navi’s “Listen!” is one example. Even someone who's never played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time may have heard it before. We absolutely didn’t want to change anything as iconic as that. So when auditioning for each character, our top priority was selecting voices that recreated the sound and feel of the original game. We conducted blind auditions.

Aonuma: We deliberately hid the voice actors’ names during the Japanese auditions to force ourselves to decide based solely on which voices most closely resembled those of the original. And as fate would have it, one of the actors we selected had actually voiced the same character in the Nintendo 64 version. None of us saw that coming.

Even Nintendo knows not to mess with Navi. Kotaku ran a report about fans speculating that the original Japanese voice actor for Navi, Kaori Mizuhashi, has returned, which may be the mystery voice actor mentioned above.

Reviews for the remake ought to hit the web tomorrow. It's a good time to be a Zelda fan.