The growth in scope of the title is unmistakable. With so many new environments and gameplay elements to explore, Frontier certainly seem to have upped the ante in every way. “This duality of seasons gives the player a lot more to discover since so many elements of the environment are affected by the type of season,” Watts underlines. “This alone makes for a significantly longer game experience. Also, in this game, if you return somewhere, you will find different enemies there, so the experiences of backtracking won’t be as similar.”
Braben is quick to point out that it is not simply a matter of adding more and making the game last longer. “LostWinds is about maintaining the feeling of discovery for the player. It’s about experimenting by combining new powers with existing ones,” he explains. “We have this story that we want to guide the player through, but we want them to play around while they’re at it.” When we ask if it’s difficult to keep a fresh perspective on the possibilities when the goals have been so meticulously plotted, he responds: “We have a lot of our own people, who are not part of the development team of LostWinds, working on focus testing precisely to maintain that perspective. They haven’t been living and breathing LostWinds like these guys have and they bring that fresh point of view that a player has.”
That afternoon we’re shown a lot of sequences that we would not reveal for fear of spoiling the story, including several major characters that imbue the plot with interesting twists as well as new layers of gameplay that affect what trials and tribulations await when the game is complete. The appearance of one new enemy whose menace is felt throughout the game reminded us of one of the more sinister embodiments of Majora’s Mask, the eponymous adversary of The Legend of Zelda’s Link in his adventures in the land of Termina. Let’s say that the theme of duality runs through Winter of the Melodias in more ways than one, and it is all the more captivating for it.
It’s evident from our session that Frontier have been listening to the players of the original LostWinds and are committed to meeting the demands of those who want more. Another such inclusion is a map that provides an overview of the larger environment and subtle hints to prevent players from getting lost. This time around, aside from more dramatic encounters with numerous characters, the story is told largely via the lost pages of Magdi’s diary. Hidden throughout the nooks and crannies of Mistralis, the pages of the diary can be easily flicked through at the push of a button, or, in another proof of the team’s attention to detail, a flick of the Wii Remote.
So far the winds seem to favour Frontier’s WiiWare endeavours, making us pose the question whether another part of the tale could be told on Nintendo DS as well in the future. “We certainly think it could work,” muses Walsh. “At the moment it is simply not our focus, but I feel that with LostWinds we created a very rich universe and we could clearly conceive of spiritual powers that would benefit from the system. We are constantly thinking of new ideas, and looking for ways to use them in the game. A lot of the ideas that you see in this sequel were first conceived for the original, but at the time we could not make them fit.”
For a WiiWare title bursting at the seams with so many fresh ideas and such loving eye for detail, the thought that some parts might by necessity end up in another future sequel seems like an easy pill to swallow. With the safe knowledge that there is much left to discover, we leave the Frontier offices as one of those typical Cambridge afternoon winds blows through that tree outside their office again, bringing, no doubt, a steady stream of fresh ideas for the future of LostWinds.
