Even Miyamoto Doesn’t Like “Stupid” Navi In Zelda: Ocarina Of Time

Navi is one of the biggest sticking points of the otherwise flawless Zelda: Ocarina of Time, so it’s encouraging to learn that even Shigeru Miyamoto isn’t a fan of the pesky fairy.

His admission comes from a 1999 interview which was originally part of a Japanese strategy guide but has now been translated into English and published online by the fine folks at Shmuplations.com (thanks, Eurogamer).

During the interview, Miyamoto is asked about the game’s puzzles, and replies:

I think the way we give hints is still a little too unfriendly. Speaking plainly, I can now confess to you: I think the whole system with Navi giving you advice is the biggest weakpoint of Ocarina of Time. It’s incredibly difficult to design a system that gives proper advice, advice that’s tailored to the player’s situation. To do it right, you’d have to spend the same amount of time as you would developing an entire game, and I was very worried we’d be digging ourselves into a hole, if we pursued perfection there…

If you read Navi’s text, she says the same things over and over. I know it makes it sound bad, but we purposely left her at a kind of “stupid” level. I think if we’d tried to make Navi’s hints more sophisticated, that “stupidity” would have actually stood out even more. The truth is I wanted to remove the entire system, but that would have been even more unfriendly to players. You can think of Navi as being there for players who stop playing for a month or so, who then pick the game back up and want to remember what they were supposed to do. It’s a brazen excuse, I know. (laughs)

Otherwise, we tried to make the hints friendly for players, but I heard many people saying how they couldn’t solve them without a strategy guide. When we took a closer look, though, we’ve found that the sections people need hints for vary from person-to-person. There’s no consistency. That can’t be helped, though, in a game like Zelda which combines action and puzzle solving.

Despite Navi being a constant annoyance, Ocarina of Time is considered to be one of the best video games ever made, and certainly one of the best in the Zelda series.