Zelda Wii U news comes out in dribs and drabs, to put it generously—think of the pitch drop tar experiment and you’ll understand what kind of pace I’m talking about— but we’ve got a juicy piece now, thanks to the release of Twilight Princess HD and the mini-press tour by the Zelda team behind both the port and the GameCube original. Here it is: Twilight Princess HD is having an influence on Zelda Wii U. It’s a testing ground for the next Zelda game, which is quite far along at this point. So… what could that influence be?

How Is Twilight Princess HD Influencing Zelda Wii U?

It’s actually a little surprising that Twilight Princess HD is exerting influence on Zelda Wii U, for two reasons. First, Zelda Wii U has been in development for many years. It’s surprising that parts of the game aren’t already set in stone, that there’s anything Nintendo can still change. On the other hand, they’ve probably been working on this port for a good year and a half, so Twilight Princess HD could have made a difference for Zelda Wii U when the former was still in the planning stages and the latter was already taking shape.

The bigger point, of course, is that Twilight Princess came out ten years ago. The original game’s lessons for Zelda Wii U were absorbed long ago—heck, those lessons probably made it into Skyward Sword (which was certainly a conscious departure from TP both in aesthetics, thankfully, and scope, regrettably). That means that whatever lessons Twilight Princess HD imparted to Eiji Aonuma and his team, they probably didn’t relate to the original game but to the port itself. Wind Waker HD was like this too, but that was different. The development of the game, which was handled by the Zelda team proper, was the group’s first not-a-drill experience with the Wii U hardware and software. That makes sense from a development perspective—the experience developing that game would certainly influence Zelda Wii U.

Twilight Princess HD ’s insights must have been different—into some new aspect of the game or its presentation on Wii U. For two cents, I’d wager it has something to do with the controls… and the decision not to use the waggle. But it could also involve Hero Mode, the general streamlining of the game, or other such things. Whatever it is, we’ll end up with an even better Zelda Wii U because of it, and it’s hard to argue with that.