One of the innovations for which The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64 is most fondly remembered is the addition of Z-targeting, a feature/function which has been adapted for numerous titles since.

Those thinking that the method of keeping track of your enemies in Ubisoft's Red Steel 2 bears more than a passing resemblance to Nintendo's technique would be correct. Creative Director Jason Vandenberghe revealed that they did indeed borrow the method used to help players aid Link in his quest, as changes to the interface would not be necessary.

However, it is but one of two options players can use to combat their foes.

On Ubisoft's forums, he states:

Well, of course we looked at everything in the known universe for inspiration (Metroid Prime, Zone of the Enders, etc, etc), but hell yeah, Zelda is a great example of how to make locking in melee work, and I'm very much of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school of thought when it comes to interface. I prefer to take a hard look at what has already worked in the past, start there, and then evolve. Which is pretty much what we did.

Just so that you know, we have two selectable lock systems in the game – the default "auto-lock" system (that will do most of the work for you), and a "manual" system (that gives you full control over when and on whom you lock).

With auto-lock, the idea was that you can just jump into the fray and start swinging, without having to think too much about where you were looking. This is my favorite mode, FYI – my fighting style is berserker (for sure), and I love it when the game does its best to put targets in front of me.

Roman (my lead designer) feels differently – he's much more a "style" player, and prefers to have exact control over his enemy selection. He's always cautiously strafing around, getting behind people, dodging, looking for chances to take out more than one at a time… thus, he prefers the manual lock.

We're continuing to make refinements to both systems even now. We will not rest until it's frackin' perfect!

This sounds promising, but I'm not sure which system I would go with. Hopefully, the option will exist for you to change it in mid-game, so that you can test the two and see what works best for you.

Something tells me I might like the auto-lock, though.