Skyward Sword Will Rule Them All…

And wash the Twilight Princess taste out of my mouth.

As I wait in anticipation of the Wii’s next and last great game, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, I have had plenty of time to reflect on why I am psyched about this game when I haven’t been psyched about a new Zelda game in about 15 years. This matters, to put things in perspective, because I was (and very recently AM) a huge Legend of Zelda fan. The first Legend of Zelda is easily my favorite game on the NES. The same goes for A Link to the Past on the SNES.

With those games, my friends and I would stay up all night passing the controller around, drawing our own maps, and debating on what each clue meant to find the next item. Even while I was in college, although my gaming tastes had changed, I still had some love for old school Nintendo characters and looked forward to the memories a 3D Zelda would make with my friends and me.

I could, as the title of this blog post suggests, blame my absence from Zelda fandom all on Twilight Princess, but honestly it all started with a humble little game called Ocarina of Time. I couldn’t wait to play OoT when it first came out. Unfortunately, I blew all my extra money on a PC where I played most of my games, but a friend bought the game at launch. As soon as I could, I went over to his house and feasted my eyes on what was supposed to be (and many say that it IS) the greatest Zelda game ever made.

PC Gaming Ruined Zelda for Me

But, after several attempts at trying to get into the game, I walked away from it disappointed. Very few people can say they experienced this phenomenon, but being a PC gamer back then meant that you had access to the slickest looking 3D games imaginable at the time. I was playing Unreal, Quake II, Need for Speed, etc. So, to go from those 3D environments to an N64, there had to be something other than the graphics to keep me interested. Exploration was a key ingredient for me as a Zelda fan, but again, the aforementioned games offered a massive amount of freedom to roam around the world built for it. OoT did to an extent, but it didn’t leave the same impression on me as my PC games did. I didn’t feel this way with other N64 games either. Mario 64 had fun, open worlds that were chalk-full of things to do and graphically it’s a game that has aged well. I know I am in the minority in criticizing OoT, but it is what it is. I guess I just wasn’t ready for the 3D leap.

There was something else Ocarina of Time was missing though. Whimsy. You may argue that it had plenty of whimsy by itself and you may be right if you compare it to Twilight Princess. But, try comparing it to A Link to the Past. You can tell that while N64 fans were just fine letting Mario stay a kid, they wanted their Link to grow up. Considering that OoT was a direct predecessor to TP, you can see where Nintendo was headed with the franchise.

As a result, when Twilight Princess was revealed, my response was, “Color me uninterested.” It again went for a more realistic tone and color palette. But, when games like Lord of the Rings and Prince of Persia were better looking Gamecube games, I decided to pass at the time.

Then I got a Wii about two years ago. On the insistence of a Gamestop employee (yeah, something I’ve learned not to do any more) I reluctantly bought a used copy of the Wii version of Twilight Princess. I liked Link’s Crossbow training a lot and I was over the whole graphics issue. Or so I thought.

Within a week I returned the game. Here’s where I rant: I do not want to spend my time as a WOLF. If I wanted to play a wolf, I would have gladly bought Okami. If they would have just left it to one part of the game, I would be fine with it. I may have even liked the wolf character a bit. But, NOOOOO. It was throughout a massive portion of the game. And I hated Midna. Hand-holding in video games should be optional. I should have the option to turn her off (or better yet, kill her). I got sick of her constantly popping up reminding me of how “bad” of a player I was every time I messed something up. Let’s see, what else am I missing…

• Big open fields with nothing in it. Seen it before.
• Linear gameplay (except the dungeons which were pretty cool).
• Too many cut scenes. Honestly, I felt like I was watching a movie, not playing a game.
• Tacked-on waggle controls. They were done better in Link’s Crossbow training. Unfortunately, I played that first.
• Boring, uninteresting side quests.
• Bland graphics

So, yeah I think I’m done with “realistic” Zelda games. If I wanted a realistic fantasy game, I’d go play Dark Souls.

The Wind Waker Connection

At this point, as the title of this blog post suggests, I could say that the Skyward Sword previews is what got me hooked on Zelda again, but that’s just not the case. That credit goes to a TRULY whimsical 3D Zelda game called Wind Waker. I played Wind Waker briefly when a friend let me borrow his Game Cube for a few weeks. It was fun, but it didn’t draw me in at the time. My then girlfriend (now wife) and I did have fun working through the game together (she’s a Zelda fan, too).

So, when I got a good trade-in deal at Gamestop, I was looking to see what cheap games I could get and decided to give Wind Waker another try (mostly because I thought my daughters and wife would get into it with me and they did).  I am so glad I did, because I LOVE that game now. It captures the life and spirit of the old Zelda games I grew up playing. Sure, it borrows items, enemies, and some gameplay staples from Ocarina of Time, but its essence is pure A Link to the Past. Tons of places to explore, characters I cared about, and well, the Tingle Tuner (cool gadget, in my opinion).

It was while I was playing through Wind Waker that the first full trailer was released for Skyward Sword. I saw it first at a Gamestop and upon viewing, my mind was instantly transported back to 1993 when I first saw the trailer for A Link to the Past. When it was over, I said to myself, “I want that game!”

As more news came out about it, the more it started to shape up to be the kind of 3D Zelda I have always wanted to play. You see, even though I loved Wind Waker, it wasn’t all that challenging. Especially the combat system. The only boss that was challenging was the sand worm. None of the enemies in the game provided any tension whatsoever. And thanks to the Gamecube controller (worst controller to have for first-person aiming) there times where the controls were clunky. So, to have a game that looks like Ocarina of Time (with much more challenging puzzles) and Wind Waker (best visuals of any 3D Zelda) got together and had a baby… Yeah, I was pretty excited.

The Reviews

Reviews from all around the cyber-world in the past week or so have trickled in. Lots of perfect scores. I knew it would get high praise, but I didn’t expect so many perfect 10’s. It made me think, “I wonder how this compares to Twilight Princess’s reviews when it first came out.” So, I cruised on over to Metacritic to find out. Lo, and behold, it got almost the same scores from the same sites!  That dowsed my fired just a bit. Were professional reviewers just blind Zelda fans that will give Nintendo high praise for whatever Zelda slop they put out? Where were the dissenting opinions?

I voiced my concerns over at Nintendo World Report in their comments section, and as usual, they gave a thoughtful response that I thought was spot-on. Pedro Hernandez said:

I think the reason Twilight Princess got so many great reviews is because the game was indeed the best launch title for the Wii, and its motion controls were actually new and interesting. Save for Wii Sports (which came with the system anyway), what other game at launch was this full and interesting? Red Steel was a disappointment for many, and the rest of the launch titles were PS2 titles with tacked on waggle. So Twilight Princess came as an impressive game that did its stuff really well. It wasn’t until the hype of the Wii died off that people finally saw the game for what it was, and thus gained the reputation of being the most disappointing in the series.

With Skyward Sword, the game seemingly came with little to no expectations. We knew that Wii Sports Resort was a testing ground for some of the ideas seen in Skyward Sword. We knew that the graphics would be a mix of TP’s realism and Wind Waker’s colors and artistic interpretation. We knew that it looked like it wouldn’t be extremely groundbreaking. So when we stripped ourselves out of those notions, we see the game as being this groundbreaking, great title, and thus it stands out better as “Game of the year” material than Twilight Princess did.

In other words, Skyward Sword came at a time where players felt disenchanted by the franchise, and they fell in love with it once it delivered.

I can certainly get behind that statement. Furthermore, once I started to read the reviews, I saw why it was getting such high praise. Nintendo seems to have addressed all the complaints that fans have had concerning Twilight Princess. Reviewers have confirmed the following:

• True one-to-one motion controls. Not only are they done right this time, but many reviewers are saying they wouldn’t want to play it any other way.
• Engaging story with expressive character animations and cool new antagonist.
• Tough enemy AI and incredible array of abilities for Link.
• Good, but not annoying puzzles.
• Fully orchestrated soundtrack of epic proportions.
• Good, but not annoying fetch quests.
• A world chalk-full of stuff to explore.
• Great graphics that will last longer than 10 minutes before it’s replaced with something more realistic.

All things considered, I think Skyward Sword will go down in history as a true perfect 10.  People who bash the Wii will now have to put an asterisk next to their bashing to make room for Skyward Sword, because they know this is a great game and not just regardless of the Wii, but BECAUSE of the Wii.