GinoFelino
Member
He's an absolute genius. So yes.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
You should upgrade or use an alternative browser.
Hidemaro Fujibayashi. Director of Breath of the Wild. Has he earned the Zelda crown?
- Thread starter Cerium
- Start date
In relation to the posts above, as well as the earlier post about how difficult it often is (especially without the intervention of someone like Iwata) to get a deep understanding of the development process, it's interesting to look at the rather complicated credits for Ocarina of Time (on which Yamada was apparently given the same title as Aonuma):
Producer/Supervisor: Shigeru Miyamoto
Game System Directors: Yoichi Yamada & Eiji Aonuma
3D System Director/Character Design: Yoshiaki Koizumi
Script Director: Toru Osawa
Program Director: Toshio Iwawaki
Unfortunate that, at least according to the Wikipedia listing (which looks pretty comprehensive), Yamada was never part of an Iwata Asks interview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iwata_Asks_interviews
Every time I read stuff like this, I'm struck by the fact that the terms "director" and "producer" in the hollywood movie sense aren't all that descriptive of the way games really come together at nintendo.
Even now, it sounds like Miyamoto basically has final say on everything related to Zelda or Mario. He's not necessarily generating any of the original content, but if he doesn't like something, it doesn't make it into the game unless they sneak it past him lol. And if he wants something in the game, it goes in the game.
It's like a pyramid system... The lower you are, the more you work on small details, but the higher-ups make all the final decisions, and often make a lot of decisions in the very early going about the general game concept.
In Hollywood, directors are much more powerful than they are in the game business.
Producers in the video game world (or at least at Nintendo) are apparently more like TV showrunners, and seem to have the greatest amount of creative influence a lot of the time, at least on all big decisions. Overall it sounds a lot more like TV than the motion picture industry... There are tons of writers on any TV show, and several directors working on episodes. The showrunners (producers) are overseeing all those people, editing scripts, working in the story room to determine the plot for the whole season, and etc...
brandonh83
Banned
He directed Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, the two best Zelda games IMO so yeah I guess for me definitely.
Schopenhauerian
Member
Yeah, I noticed that as well: it could certainly be the case that Yamada himself prefers not be interviewed, but its still odd that no one else mentioned him.It's incredibly bizarre how Yamada has never participated in an Iwata Asks. He didn't even get mentioned in the LoT interview even though he was third in the credits!
Earlier in the thread, Shikamaru Ninja indicated that Yamada is still an important part of the team though, as his credits would also seem to indicate.
Every time I read stuff like this, I'm struck by the fact that the terms "director" and "producer" in the hollywood movie sense aren't all that descriptive of the way games really come together at nintendo. Even now, it sounds like Miyamoto basically has final say on everything related to Zelda or Mario...
ICYMI, in 2003 Miyamoto described how those titles came into use at Nintendo, and in 2013, Miyamoto was already saying that Aonuma and Koizumi (in their roles as producers) are now able to handle Zelda and Mario without him.
And coming back to Fujibayashi, in addition to the articles listed in the OP, the most recent piece in The New Yorker gave an indication of the freedom Fujibayashi had on Breath of the Wild, as director:
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-dazzling-reinvention-of-zelda
...The games director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi, told me recently that Miyamoto and other Nintendo executives gave his team carte blanche. They said, Change anything you want, Fujibayashi recalled. So we wrote down all of the stress points, the things that make Zelda games less enjoyable, and we replaced them with new ideas.
TheGreatLugia
Banned
I thought Aonuma was the one who said that.I still don't like his "it's awful when the player gets lost" ethos
Hey, he was assistant director on both the original Starfox as well as the unreleased Starfox 2. Now I know what's missing from that series since.Earlier in the thread, Shikamaru Ninja indicated that Yamada is still an important part of the team though, as his credits would also seem to indicate.
Punished_Snake
Member
Capcom throwing all the talents they had.
In Hollywood, directors are much more powerful than they are in the game business.
For every big director who gets final cut and the authority to put together his own team to make a movie, there are hundreds of directors who simply work on a film under the framework laid out by producers who have already put together the production staff, script, and sometimes even the cast and completely scene storyboards. To the surprise of no one at all, the directors who get to call all the shots are often also a producer or executive producer.
It's not -that- different. If you want to be a director who gets all the glory and calls all the shots in the game industry, you can always try to be a Hideo Kojima or Ken Levine.
For every big director who gets final cut and the authority to put together his own team to make a movie, there are hundreds of directors who simply work on a film under the framework laid out by producers who have already put together the production staff, script, and sometimes even the cast and completely scene storyboards. To the surprise of no one at all, the directors who get to call all the shots are often also a producer or executive producer.
It's not -that- different. If you want to be a director who gets all the glory and calls all the shots in the game industry, you can always try to be a Hideo Kojima or Ken Levine.
True, but at the highest level, the AAA movie level, the directors are the closest thing the movie industry has to authors.
That's why I think the game industry seems to be more like TV. Directors in the TV world are important, but they're working within a very restrictive framework. Writers get more credit usually, and the showrunner gets the most credit, even though he/she usually only writes a handful of scripts, and most don't direct at all. Each individual episode is a complicated project of its own with lots of people doing nuts and bolts work, making important creative decisions, but the showrunner is kind of overseeing the whole enterprise.
It probably isn't like that everywhere in the gaming industry, but that seems to be very similar to how Nintendo does things.
Yeah pretty much.He directed Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, the two best Zelda games IMO so yeah I guess for me definitely.
Schopenhauerian
Member
...It's like a pyramid system... The lower you are, the more you work on small details, but the higher-ups make all the final decisions, and often make a lot of decisions in the very early going about the general game concept...
...Each individual episode is a complicated project of its own with lots of people doing nuts and bolts work, making important creative decisions, but the showrunner is kind of overseeing the whole enterprise...
Briefly returning to the remarks from Iwata from the last page:
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/twilight_princess/0/4
Iwata: ...In fact, until I came to interview all of the developers, I had imagined that a game of the quality and size of Zelda would be produced with strict orders being handed down from above. Without that, I thought that a project of this scale wouldn't come together. But listening to everyone, it seemed that contrary to what I had thought, everyone came up with their own individual ideas for the game. It seems that somehow everyone had their own conception of what the essence of Zelda was, even if this wasn't expressed in words. Using that nebulous idea as a sort of filter, it is the final fusing together of these individual ideas that gives the game its final form. That's one thing to do with twenty or thirty people, but when you're talking about a huge project with over seventy people, it's incredible to think that this process worked. Aonuma-san, what do you think?
And returning also to what duckroll noted about Iwata:
The biggest take away here that really hits hard is that this anecdote from the staff is a reminder that Iwata wasn't just a boss, a business head, or the guy giving them good directions to work towards. He was a person who loved in games because he loved games and people were actually excited to share ideas with him and discuss stuff because they knew that he was someone who could not just give them good feedback but someone who would actually appreciate that sort of exchange....
I think some other takeaways might be the impressive degree to which Iwata has personally helped to make it clear that Nintendo's development process is a collaborative one, as well as the impressive lengths to which Iwata went in order to highlight the contributions of a wide range of Nintendo's staff: Just the sheer number of developers on this list is quite impressive, for example, and I don't believe there has been a similar effort of comparable magnitude by any other company in the industry.
Interestingly, in his December 2010 profile of Miyamoto, Nick Paumgarten of The New Yorker somehow came away with a similar impression, despite Miyamoto's immense personal fame in the West:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/20/master-of-play
...What [Miyamoto] hasn't created is a company in his own name, or a vast fortune to go along with it. He is a salaryman. Miyamoto's business card says that he is the senior managing director and the general manager of the entertainment-analysis and -development division at Nintendo Company Ltd., the video-game giant. What it does not say is that he is Nintendo's guiding spirit, its meal ticket, and its playful public face. Miyamoto has said that his main job at Nintendo is ningen kougaku—human engineering. He has been at the company since 1977 and has worked for no other. (He prizes Nintendo's financial and creative support for his work: ”There's a big difference between the money you receive personally from the company and the money you can use in your job.")...
...The corporate ethos in Japan, and especially at Nintendo, is self-effacing; the humility that has kept Miyamoto at the company for three decades... also governs the apportionment of credit... [Nintendo] contend that the development of a game or a game console is a collaborative effort—that it is indecorous to single out any one contributor, to the exclusion of the others. Miyamoto is also guarded about his private life. The fact that anyone would be curious about it baffles him... He is more often recognized, or at least approached, by foreign tourists than by Japanese, occasionally while he is out walking his dog. His first thought is that the tourists are looking for directions. To preserve his anonymity, he makes it a point not to appear on Japanese TV programs...
IceDoesntHelp
Banned
Yep. Directed the two best zelda games. SS and BotW.
Kinda curious about the Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild love overlap now. Granted I like pretty much all Zeldas to some extent, but I thought Skyward Sword came out flat. Then again maybe that'd be improved immensely with a significantly less hands on Fi.
But then Breath of the Wild gives some of what I want out of Zelda that Skyward Sword failed to, and now it feels more like nitpicks over what I'd want in a Zelda that another series should try to make up for instead anyway.
But then Breath of the Wild gives some of what I want out of Zelda that Skyward Sword failed to, and now it feels more like nitpicks over what I'd want in a Zelda that another series should try to make up for instead anyway.
I've been a major fan of Fujibayashi and was excited to see him as SS director. SS ran into what all Zelda's for the last decade also ran into. Unfocused production and heavy retooling, which made brought uneven pacing, unsatisfactory gimmicks or lack of confidence in the player. The best part about BotW is that it never once treats you like an idiot, which is a massive turn around to the mess that Fi was.
Playing Breath of the wild seems like an expanded Faron Woods from SS.I love Minish Cap (MC) and I'm really liking Breath of the Wild (BotW). Skyward Sword (SS) was a mixed bag for me, but I get the sense that the ideas introduced in SS have been fully realized in BotW without facing nearly the same limitations that SS suffered from. I really feel the SS presence in parts of BotW. I don't remember the Oracle games well enough, but I've loved the towns/NPC interactions in Minish Cap, SS, and BotW so far, so if he's responsible for one of my favorite aspects of Zelda games, great. They're miles beyond Twilight Princess. BotW location spoiler:I mean, just compare Zora's Domain in TP to BotW. Of the towns I've been to in BotW so far, ZD might be my least favorite, but the improvement from TP is huge.
So, if games like MC and BotW are the purest examples of this man's vision for the franchise, then I'll happily give him the crown, especially if this means Aonuma can work on a new IP as a result.