The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Wii Previews


	Platform Wii Genre Action / RPG Publisher Nintendo Developer Nintendo ETA 2011
Newsletter
Be notified of site updates. Sign-up for the Newsletter sent out twice weekly. Enter E-Mail Address Below: Subscribe \| Unsubscribe

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

The "watermark" controller in these images was a temporary feature of the E3 demo. My scrawled notes say that the ghost images will not be present in the final game.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's big feature demonstrated at E3 2010 was its 1:1 swordplay. While the on-stage demonstration essentially flopped, the hands-on experience, even under less than ideal conditions, really does work.

The 1:1 swordplay is something I thought would have been included in Link's previous outing on the Wii, Twilight Princess, but clearly the Wii/GameCube simultaneous release had some bearing on how the game turned out. In Skyward

Advertisement

Sword, if I slashed horizontally from left to right, that's exactly what Link did on-screen; if the swipe was at a 45-degree angle, that's what Link did; a downward slash and that's what Link did.

In the limited demo area, the necessity of mixing up the sword slashes was implemented in a very basic way. Some of the enemies needed to be

Advertisement

attacked very specifically with either a vertical or horizontal strikes.

Charging up the sword is done by holding the Wii Remote vertically for a few seconds. It's kinda cool running around as the sword charges then unleashing a big hit.

The Wii remote was also used to control a flying "bug" that could be used to explore the area and reach items otherwise inaccessible; and match some on-screen actions to open a door.

I'm not sure if writing anything about Story matters. It's a Zelda game and if you've played one, it's a pretty safe bet you'll be able to figure out the basic plotline of the game. The only obvious change would appear to be that Link starts the game in a land above the clouds. The closing trailer showed Link leaping off a precipice, so I'm assuming there will be some combat "under the clouds", probably some kind of dark realm, that will play off the general dark/light, young/old, wolf/elf dichotomy explored in the previous console Zelda games.

And Skyward Sword looks pretty good. It's lightly cel-shaded, so it's reminiscent of a cartoon, but the "grown-up" design of Link brings a "realistic" sensibility to the mix.

A release date is pegged to sometime in 2011.

- Aaron Simmer

(November 2, 2010)