“Hey! Listen!” How many times have you been annoyed by that shrill voice while trying to solve a puzzle in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? While Navi was just trying to be helpful, the fairy only annoyed the players with her squeaky voice and unsolicited advice. It's a wonder how Link found out about his adventures after waking up to that sound.
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Everyone who played this game, either when it launched in 1998 or after, wished there was a way to mute it. Looks like we weren't alone. Although Navi was created to help players and provide hints, it turns out that even the developers at Nintendo weren't too fond of her, including The Legend of Zelda and Mario creator Shigeri Miyamoto.
Shigeru Miyamoto wasn't too fond of Navi either
In a very old interview that was recently translated by shmuplications, Miyamoto admitted that while Navi was necessary, he thought the whole system was one of the major weaknesses of Ocarina of Time (thanks, GamesRadar).
I think the way we give hints is still too unfriendly,” he said at the time in an interview that originally took place in 1999. is Ocarina of Time's biggest weakness. It is incredibly difficult to develop a system that provides the right advice, advice that is tailored to the player's situation.
“To get it right, you'd have to spend as much time as developing the entire game, and I was really worried that we'd dig ourselves into a hole if we pushed for perfection…”
He went on to say that Navi will repeat the same thing over and over again, which is very annoying to developers and players alike. They must have purposely made the angel sound a little “goofy” because if they had made him more sophisticated he would have stood out even more.
“The truth is that I wanted to remove the whole system, but that would have been even more unfriendly to the players,” he admitted. “You can think of Navi as being for players who stop playing for a month or so, who then start playing again and want to remember what they were supposed to be doing. It's a cheeky excuse, I know.'
