Topic: Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Looks great, another must have game.

Couldn't have said it better myself bub!

I honestly think that the wonderfully streamlined item selection -- and, thereby, abolition of an inventory screen -- is the best thing to be shown yet.

@HawkeyeMartin Exacly, and I was one of the dumb people who wrote off Wind Wake due to the initial shock of the cell shading. Damn shame, and I still regret that decision. Always will. Played it on the Wii, finally, AFTER Twilight Princess (which I loved). I think WW is top 3 in the series.

So, I'll NEVER be closed minded about the visuals of a Zelda again. Unless the complaint is material (controls, gameplay, fluidity), not just subjective, I'll just pay no mind to it.

@wario yeah, I agree. The inventory system is something they never really ever took to a "next level". This "motion controlled" system can potentially be revolutionary. Imagine being able to switch between items by muscle memory alone? This stops the whole "stopping of time" while you are on the inventory screen, makes it more realistic. While in battle? Oh.. My... Lord...

That being said, I think the "half-way" visuals is pure genius. Something more stylized can look great on the Wii, and it tends to hold up well to time. Just pop Wind Waker right now, and tell me how, if you didn't know otherwise, you wouldn't believe it was made this year.

Like a lot of people are saying, it's what I would imagine A Link to the Past would look like if remade in 3D. That, to me, is AWESOME.

I actually like the new direction since the graphics reminded me of Super Mario Galaxy which is a good thing and i personally think the title is attracting.

Thanks, i'm glad you agree!

here is some more info about everything, there was more to that LoZ trailer than I though! Just read this NIntendo/press list:http://gonintendo.com/viewstory.php?id=127109

Considering the hype, the few details released, and all the talk from Iwata saying that the next Zelda will be something new which would reinvent the franchise, I'm sure many were left expecting more after finally seeing the game in action. I saw nothing new or reinventing from what was shown. They basically took the same outdated Zelda formula with the busted controls of Twilight Princess Wii and slapped MotionPlus on it. That's not reinventing or changing anything.

Plus the giant Wiimote display for your items and command prompts on the right side of the screen was so damn stupid. It's like Nintendo doesn't think we can remember which button does what. It's an early build of the game but that has got to go. I know the motion controls will be better because of the interference but after watching Sony's Move demonstrations, that kind of made MotionPlus look like a joke, even when it's working without problems. I don't plan to buy Move or MotionPlus so I'm probably only getting Skyward Sword if it's $50 packaged with MotionPlus. Not big on peripherals that most developers don't care about utilizing.

My thoughts exactly. Even some of the animations look the same as in TP.

pretty good link- it answers most of the questions asked so far, like the inspiration for the cartoonish visuals:

"There will be lots of visual cues to identify enemy attacks and weaknesses, and the best way of relaying this to the player is through overexaggerating character designs, so full realism just wouldn't work. If we used the same graphics from Twilight Princess, the game would already be done."

the importance of the sky:
"How many people remember the scene where Link dives off the cliff in the trailer? That's a very important point for the storyline. This time around, Link is born and raised in a land called Sky Loft, a land floating above the clouds. It may sound unique for someone to live on a floating land, but Link finds it ordinary. A land beneath the clouds is discovered, it's ruled by evil forces, but Link is forced to go there. Link has to travel between the two lands in this adventure. The Skyward Sword is his driving force behind his traveling between lands."

and the status of the master sword looking girl from last year:
"That mysterious figure in last year's art is the Skyward Sword. People suspected this to be the Master Sword…but spoiler alert, the Skyward Sword becomes the Master Sword."

i'm really glad the HUD is just a temporary placeholder. i couldn't stand all the crap they put on the screen in twilight princess

Why Nintendo? The best game i have seen at E3 (next to Kid Icarus Uprising and Kirby's Epic Yarn) is being released in 2011!

I don't see how the controls bear any resemblance to Twilight Princess, other than having the sword controlled by your right hand, which is pretty much a given. What they've done is to take Motion Plus and find a way to make sword combat interesting again, by making the direction of your swings a crucial part of every strike. They've also sped up the gameplay tremendously by rethinking the inventory and item switching, so that you just need a quick movement of your wrist in a specified direction (while holding B, I think) in order to swap weapons without stopping the action for a moment.

The way they intend to "reinvent the franchise" here is pretty clear, especially given the interview / roundtable comments. The sped-up controls are part of a larger vision in which the game will be cut down to the essential elements of combat and exploration, without the complications that have muddied the experience over time. They keep stressing "back to basics," and I think that's clear from all the accounts of the playable part of the game.

As for the visuals, they gave us a great deal more than we were led to expect. Prior to E3, we'd heard that they intended to use the graphics from Twilight Princess in order to save development time for the rest of the game (like Majora's Mask), but while you could see that the model of Link and so forth came from that game, they created a beautiful hybrid of that visual style and the more bright, cartoony style of WindWaker. Many, myself included, have been saying that this is exactly what a 3D Zelda should look like, more so than any preceding game.

Yeah, the suggestion that it's too similar to TP's controls is pretty bizarre. If anything, it seems to be borrowing from Sports Resort's fencing and archery games (and I'm very glad it is!). Would anyone argue that Sports Resort's controls are just Twilight Princess's with M+ slapped on it? Of course not.

I'm definitely excited for this. And the visual style has the potential to be downright gorgeous. I'm one of those who feels that Wind Waker was far and away the most beautiful Zelda game, and the smoothness of the cel-shading was an enormous part of that. I'm very, very glad to see it return.

Well, don't be too pleased. In the round table last night, Miyamoto said that was temporary, done specifically for E3. I was excited by it, too. I hope the final version will be similarly simple.

TP was a pretty small game in terms of aera's. This seems like it will be windwaker big with less open space. Also i'm calling this is isn't the first link but first master sword.

I'm not sold on the art style. I loved the graphics for both Windwaker and Twilight Princess... but this half-way compromise doesn't quite capture my attention like those two games did.

This isn't a complaint - just a first impression. Maybe seeing more of the game will change my opinion.

@Adam

I'll look back at accounts of the roundtable, but I'm not under the impression that it's temporary. I believe Miyamoto and Aunoma went over that part of the controls during their Iwata Asks interview, and made a big deal about how you'll be able to switch weapons from basic muscle memory, comparing it to knowing that your slingshot is in your front pocket, so that you can switch with a quick directional gesture.

I was under the impression that the rest of the HUD was temporary, like the remote silhouettes and whatnot.

Ah, I hope that is the case.

I was dissapointed by the art style. I wanted something darker and more atmospheric. I know you can't do realistic graphics on Wii, but that doesn't mean every game has to look like a cartoon. I thought this zelda would be more in the Twillight Pricess direction, not in the kiddie art style they've gone with on the DS.

Wii is pretty good at this kind of Super Mario Galaxy graphics. I think it´s a wise choice. Realistic graphics often give Wii-games a grey, watered down look.

My only doubt is: Is the game playable? I hated the sword-swinging in Zelda: TP. This game has to handle the gameplay a lot better to have me interested. Otherwise, I´m going back to play something with buttons in it.