Nintendo Wii: Three Minutes Of New Legend Of Zelda Skyward Sword Footage And Brand New Information

Here’s three minutes of glorious Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword footage from the latest edition of Iwata Asks. Thankfully there’s an English translation which provides plenty of interesting titbits about the game, which you can read below. Be warned because there are clearly spoilers here:

• This is Director Fujibayashi’s first console game. He was really nervous since all of his previous games have been on handhelds. As he took on the project, he learned that console and handheld aren’t really that different on the development side.
• Design Director Ryuji Kobayashi says that the enemies and NPCs in this game are really varied. Before this game, he was responsible for enemy design in The Wind Waker.
• Ryo Tanaka helped design the user interface (UI) for this game. A hefty role, thanks to the new Motion Plus control! Iwata says this may be the first time they’ve had a UI designer show up in an interview.
• It was very hard for the team to find something that fit well with MotionPlus, in terms of both the UI side and the item design element. They had already basically finished a button layout when Wii Sports Resort changed their minds.
• Miyamoto gets really stumped against Ghirahim because unlike most enemies, he consistently follows your sword movements in the first phase.
• Miyamoto came up with the idea of holding your sword still to charge it for attacks like the Skyward Strike – go figure!
• The name “Skyward Sword” is meant to refer to pointing the sword to the sky as well as the world in the sky, but is also a bit of a pun, because the people of Skyloft are the “wards of the sky.”
• The dash mechanic is apparently possible because most buttons are no longer associated with items. (This makes no sense to me personally since the A button has always been free in 3D Zelda, but whatever.) The idea for the dash mechanic letting you run up walls seems to have come from the awkwardness associated with bouncing off the walls with the Pegasus Boots in A Link to the Past. They wanted to give you a different way of responding when you ran into a wall.
• Ideally, when selecting items you’ll get used to their positions and be able to select them instinctively. This was allegedly the first thing Fujibayashi ever received praise from Miyamoto for.
• Aonuma says that the Beetle is like a replacement for the boomerang. Controlling the boomerang with the Wii Motion Plus didn’t feel right to them, so they tried a sort of Rocket Punch instead, then settled on the Beetle. The Beetle’s mechanical form gave birth to another idea – an ancient technological civilization. We’ve seen some evidence of this group in trailers…
• The Gust Bellow is confirmed to be the same item from The Minish Cap. It can only send gusts of air forward, not draw them in (although this was experimented with during development).
• Tanaka lets slip that you can use the Whip to snag items from enemies. Kobayashi asks if it’s all right to reveal something like that, and Aonuma responds with “there’s so much in this game that it doesn’t matter.”
• Iwata is worried that players may not want to learn a new control scheme, even though everyone on the development team (and in the media) seems to be really taking to the new controls.
• There don’t seem to be any more “equip items” beyond the core eight: Bug Net, Slingshot, Beetle, Bombs, Bow, Whip, Gust Bellow, and Double Clawshots. Obviously there are other items that you don’t equip in this way like the Sailcloth and the Digging Gloves, however, and this sure as hell doesn’t take upgrades into account. Rather than items, they’re focusing on game density.
• Locations of each item: Slingshot – Gift from Kikwi leader Bucha, Beetle – treasure of Skyview Temple, Bomb Bag – gift from the Mogma, Bow – unknown, Digging Mitts – gift from the Mogma, Gust Bellow – sand dungeon, Whip – Ancient Cistern, Double Clawshots – unknown. We pretty much knew this already, but we didn’t quite want to confirm the Gust Bellow’s location without absolute certainty.