Just a year after the release ofThe Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time,Zeldacreator Shigeru Miyamoto gave his refreshingly candid thoughts on one of the game’s characters: Navi. InOcarina of Time, Navi is Link’s fairy companion who serves a few mechanical purposes. One is the handy Z-targeting system where Navi highlights an enemy, allowing Link to lock onto them. Her other main purpose is as a guide, delivering hints to the player, which is also her more contentious role in the game.
Navi’s consistent cries of “Hey, Listen!” are as infamous amongZeldafans of a certain age asOcarina of Time’s Water Temple. Anyone who grew up playingOcarina of Timelikely remembers joking around about how annoying Navi was. When I got my first flip phone that allowed me to have custom ring tones, I remember setting my text notification as a clip of Navi’s famous line, but I quickly changed it because of how grating it was. Although this is a common talking point among fans, I was surprised to learn Miyamoto also had his issues with Navi.
Miyamoto Admits Navi Is A Weakpoint
In An Interview, Miyamoto Got Candid About His Dislike For Navi’s Finished Form
In an interview with a Japanese strategy guide, since archived bySchmuplations,Shigeru Miyamoto expressed his displeasure with the way Navi’s hints were implementedinOcarina of Time:
“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.”
It’s clear from Miyamoto’s statements that getting Navi right was a bit of a tricky task. As the first 3DZeldagame, there were a lot of new mechanics to explain. With no journal feature, it was also important to have a way to remember what you were meant to do next. Navi couldn’t be cut out, but there was also a limit to how much time could be dedicated to her.
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Miyamoto’s honesty about Navi is a refreshing reminderof the type of effort that goes into creating a game, and the realities of any creative endeavor. I notice a tendency among some players to assume anything they don’t like in a game was an intentionally bad decision by the game’s developers. While this may sometimes be the case, more often than not, developers likely notice just as many, if not more, flaws with their games than players do. However, the realities of deadlines mean that compromises sometimes need to be made.
Having a game designer be as candid as Miyamoto is a great way to make players more aware of the realities of game design, and hopefully be a little more forgiving of features that don’t turn out 100% right. As a more interactive art form, games can be more heavily scrutinized by a larger portion of their audience than more passive forms of art like movies, TV, or even traditional art like paintings. This can make annoying elements of them, like Navi, stand out a bit more to audiences.
Why Navi Is So Annoying In Ocarina Of Time
Navi’s Hints Are Intrusive And Repetitive
Navi’s role as a guide inOcarina of Timequickly goes from helpful to frustrating. As you get further into the game, you’ll find yourself leaving the main path more often, either for fun mini-games or to complete side quests. All the while, the Navi prompt will be flashing near your equipment. Her hints don’t change to reflect whatever side quest you may be following.Instead,she will always deliver the same message, directing you back to the main quest.
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The best thing I can compare Navi’s hints to is having a constant unread text notification on your phone, but when you open it up it’s a text you’ve already read a dozen times.Navi also constantly wants to give you advice about how to defeat a monster you’ve already killed a thousand times. These hints get more annoying whenrevisitingOcarina of Time, when you likely won’t need them as much. As frustrating as Navi is, Miyamoto did give some insight into why Navi ended up the way that she was, even if he didn’t love it.
Why Navi Was Designed This Way In OoT
Navi’s Annoying Design Was Better Than Nothing
In the same interview, Miyamoto discussed why Navi is constantly repeating the same phrases:
“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 may 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)”
It’s clear thatMiyamoto did not see Navi as the perfect system for delivering hints to the player, but rather as the lesser of two evils. Players needed some form of guidance, and Navi was seemingly the best the team could manage without abandoning the system altogether. That said, I would be interested to know what considerations were made about a potentially more “sophisticated” version of Navi.
The first thing that comes to mind would be that when you talk to Navi, a small menu would come up, allowing you to choose one of several prompts to hear a hint about. However, I could see that style being just as frustrating as the current model, since I’m not sure how Navi would keep track of the most relevant hints for whatever you happened to be doing at a given moment. I can see not wanting todedicate too much time to programming a more complex quest-tracking system into Navi.
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I think it’s also worth noting that what Miyamoto shrugs off as a “brazen excuse” probably isn’t too far off for some players’ realities. I was five years old when I got my N64, and I was only allowed to play video games for 30 minutes a day. I also had a few games, so I split my attention betweenOcarina of Timeandgames likeMario Kart. As a kid who played the game infrequently,I found Navi’s repetitive hints helpful when I hopped back into the game after a long stretch away.
While I grew to find Navi more annoying over time, I can still appreciate how essential it was forOcarina of Timeto offer some hints to players. Even if the system wasn’t perfect, I agree with Miyamoto’s sentiments that removing Navi altogether would have been a more unfriendly option to players. That said, I also appreciate his candor about what he sees as the flaws in Navi’s design. It’s refreshing to hear developers speak openly about the flaws in their own game, and it’s a nice reminder they may have the same complaints as players about their finished product.
Source:Schmuplations
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Heralded as one of the greatest games of all time, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is an action-adventure game and is the first in the franchise to transition into 3D. Players take on the role of Link, a young boy sent on a quest to save the world from the evil Ganondorf. Players will switch between young and adult Link as they head to the past and the future to save Hyrule from its dark fate. A Nintendo 3DS version of the game was released in June of 2011, including improved visuals, frame rate, and motion controls.
