The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was a huge divider when it was first unveiled. After Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, Nintendo had showcased a Zelda concept with more realistic graphics that fans truly loved. But when The Wind Waker was unveiled, it was as far from realism as you could get.
Fortunately, the game was very entertaining, but also a bit less content-rich than we'd grown accustomed to from the Zelda series. It felt a bit rushed. Now, GamesRadar has managed to dig up an old interview from Edge Magazine in 2005 with Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma. In it, he discusses the development of Wind Waker in response to a question about whether the game was released unfinished, and provides a much-needed piece of the puzzle with everything still fresh in his memory:
"I think that that's my fault. To tell the truth, originally we were thinking about something bigger, and in order to make it on time we had to make it more compact-sized. But even though I say compact, we were trying our best so that we could entertain people enough."
He isn't trying to shy away from responsibility; instead, in typical Japanese fashion, he takes the blame for any criticism of Wind Waker:
"That was our intention and I thought that we could do that. But if people are feeling that way, that was my fault for lack of effort, and of course when it comes to the new Legend Of Zelda, I really don't want to have that kind of impression from the players."
In short, the ambitions for Wind Waker were greater than what the finished game ultimately became due to time constraints. However, for the past two years, there have been rumours of a new remaster or even a remake of Wind Waker, and if such a project is indeed in the works, we can hope that Aonuma has been given the opportunity to add all the content that had to be cut from the original to meet the deadline.