The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time recently celebrated its 26th anniversary, but you might be surprised to hear that we're still learning things about the game many years later. There are even interviews with Nintendo from that time that have only recently surfaced, offering previously unknown information.
For example, in 1999, Shigeru Miyamoto was interviewed for a Japanese strategy guide. In an interview recently translated by Shmuplations, Miyamoto talked about Navi, who gives advice to players throughout the game. According to Miyamoto, “I think the way we give advice is still too hostile. To put it bluntly, I can admit it to you now: I think the whole system with Navi giving you hints is Ocarina of Time's biggest weak point. It is incredibly difficult to design a system that provides appropriate advice, advice that is tailored to the player's situation. To do it right, you would have to spend the same amount of time as you would have spent developing the whole game, and I was very worried that if we were aiming for perfection there, we would dig ourselves into a hole”.
Miyamoto continued, saying that “if you read Nava's text, she keeps saying the same things. I know it sounds bad, but we intentionally left her at some sort of 'stupid' level. I think that if they tried to make Nava's hints more sophisticated, this 'stupidity' would stand out even more. It's true that I wanted to remove the entire system, but that would be even more unfriendly to the players. You can imagine that Navi is there for players who stop playing for a month or two, then start playing the game again and want to remember what they were supposed to do. That's a cheeky excuse, I know. (laughter)”.
