Final Fantasy 14 and Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki 'Yoshi-P' Yoshida has said that one of his favorite recent games is actually The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom for how it reuses resources in interesting ways.
Speaking to Famitsu - with machine translated quotes and the help of Genki - the Final Fantasy flagbearer said that all of the recent Zelda games have been good fun, but he was particularly smitten with Princess Zelda's first proper solo adventure.
"What I am about to talk about is a bit nerdy, but even from a producer's perspective, there were many points that made me think, 'Wow, that's amazing', in terms of how they used resources, how they made it, and the game design," he said.
He also mentions how a lot of the "base resources" were used in some other games in the series, probably referring to assets also found in the Link's Awakening remake, but that's a good thing in his eyes. "That is to say, the production costs were kept to a minimum by focusing all the efforts on making the game fun to play." Yoshi-P then went on to encourage aspiring game devs to play and study Echoes of Wisdom to see how to focus on fun in efficient ways.
In an era where big publishers are struggling with swelling production costs, many developers have talked about the benefits of simply reusing assets and animations and environment to innovate in the areas that truly matter. The Like a Dragon games are famous for building the series with that in mind, and Elden Ring Nightreign's director focused on the same thing.
Final Fantasy 14 devs "struggling to find a balance between referencing past Final Fantasy games and introducing new content," but a new Gundam anime may be just the inspiration Yoshi-P needs
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