The Legend of Zelda is a big deal. The first entry in the series came out in 1986 and represented one of the industry’s first attempts to make a game which focused on adventure over action. Nintendo spent several years refining that formula before coming out with The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in 1998. That game was one of the first to effectively implement combat in a 3D space and featured one of the richest, most fully realized game worlds of the time. The series has spawned a swath of imitators, made a ton of money, and is partly responsible for Nintendo’s venerability as a developer. It’s a big deal.
At the same time, The Legend of Zelda is a chore. The last few games in the series, 2002’s Wind Waker and 2006’s Twilight Princess among them, have switched up the aesthetics but kept the core gameplay more or less unchanged. Add in 2007’s Phantom Hourglass and 2009’s Spirit Tracks, and the Legend of Zelda seems in danger of stagnating.
So comes Skyward Sword, a game which has the unenviable task of paving a new path for the series while remaining faithful enough to its past to please long-time fans. It’s a fine, fine line, and while I don’t think the game always walks it successfully, Skyward Sword is still a full, lengthy adventure with a lot to offer and enjoy.
The more things change…
Although they’ve played it safe in terms of gameplay, the last few Zelda games have at least taken us to some interesting places. The Wind Waker was set on a vast ocean. Twilight Princess took place in a darker, relatively more realistic version of Hyrule. Skyward Sword continues that trend. This time, Link begins his adventure as a citizen of a floating island called Skyloft where he spends his days napping, riding around on the back of a giant bird, called a Loftwing, and hanging out with his best bud Zelda. The game spends quite a lot of time upfront introducing the player to the characters and their world. It’s nice to get an idea of who Zelda is and what she means to Link, but it didn’t take long before I was itching to get to the game part of the game. When a mysterious storm tosses Zelda off the back of her Loftwing and down to the mysterious surface world below, I was more than ready to chase after her and start adventurin’.
Upon reaching the surface, the player starts to realize just how different Skyward Sword will be from past games in the series. First up are the controls: Skyward Sword makes use of the Wii-motion Plus attachment to give the player complete one-to-one control over Link’s sword arm. Move the Wii-mote to the left, and Link moves his sword to the left. Make a downward slash with your arm, and Link makes a downward slash with his. This new degree of control is enjoyable in and of itself. It’s fun to just run around and make Link wave his arm like a lunatic, but Nintendo has also cleverly integrated this feature into the gameplay. Many monsters will block or counter your attacks unless you swing at them from a certain angle. This makes combat a touch more cerebral than in past adventures.
As usual, Nintendo provides Link with a bevy of weapons and tools, most of which make use of the new motion controls. Items like the slingshot and the bow work about how you would expect, but a few of Link’s new toys are pretty inspired. The whip, for example, lets Link swing from banisters and yank far-away switches, while an air cannon allows for some interesting physics-based platforming. Best of all is the Beetle, an airborne, remotely controlled drone that can be used to scout terrain, pick up far-off items, and air-bomb enemies. The dungeon areas, always a highlight of the Zelda games, challenge the player to use these items in inventive ways. Thanks to them, some of the latter dungeons are among the most deviously well-designed in the history of the series. There are a few points where the motion controls come off as gimmicky, such as when Link has to rotate three-dimensional keys to unlock giant doors, but for the most part they breathe interesting new life into Zelda’s puzzle and combat-based gameplay.
The changes don’t end with the controls. The geographical structure of Skyward Sword is markedly different from past iterations in the series. In most Zelda games, Link runs around a vast, interconnected over-world in search of dungeons, treasure, and whatever else. In Skyward Sword, the world is divided into a number of independent sections. First there’s Link’s home in the sky. Here, Link can interact with villages, fly to surrounding islands on his Loftwing, and undertake side-quests. Link is safe in the sky, and eventually it starts to feel like a pit stop between his more dangerous journeys to the surface world, which itself is divided into three discrete areas none of which are accessible from any of the others. Rather than try and compete with open world games the likes of Skyrim, Nintendo seems to have gone in the other direction and compartmentalized its game world to a greater degree than ever before.
This choice might rub purists the wrong way, but it definitely gives the game focus. You’ll never be confused as to where to go next; a new section of unexplored surface will be all but roped off for you. The world is also far denser than it was before. When getting from point A to point B in Twilight Princess, the player had to transverse a huge but kind of empty area that gave him freedom but didn’t provide much to do with it. The surface areas in Skyward Sword are smaller but are packed to bursting with monsters, terrain-based puzzles, and goodies placed just out of sight or out of reach. In this game, the world is basically an extension of the even denser dungeons. I wish Nintendo had found a way to connect the surface areas into a unified whole, but the smaller scale ensures that minute-to-minute gameplay is faster, more stimulating, and ultimately very satisfying.
But that razor-sharp focus has some unintended consequences. Because the game made my objectives so very clear so much of the time, I started to become very aware of the fact that I was playing out a pre-set pattern rather than embarking on an adventure. Go to a new area. Explore it, make your way through the dungeon, beat the boss, and repeat. This tedious predictability is especially stark in the early goings when the areas explored are most similar to those from Zelda games past, and it takes some of the gee-whiz fun out of the experience.
…the more they stay the same.
That experience is helped and hindered in about equal measure by the game’s story, which is probably among the more robust tales the series has told. That still makes it pretty slim by modern standards, but there are some unexpectedly impactful moments and the principal characters are charmingly drawn. Link remains a mute, but thanks to the game’s effective facial animations he is a very expressive mute. The character of Zelda, who is often relegated to sitting in a tower or getting spirited away to a demon dimension early in the game, is well-developed. I was surprised how easy it was to sympathize with Link’s desire to find her after she is, inevitably, kidnapped.
One character I could have done without is Fi, this game’s version of Navi the fairy. Ever since introducing us to Navi in Ocarina of Time, Nintendo has felt the need to saddle Link with an ever-present partner who occasionally gives unsolicited information about what he should do next. Fi, a spirit who lives in Link’s sword, is easily the worst of this lot. She pops up at the slightest provocation to interrupt the flow of the game and impart incredibly obvious bits of wisdom. A sample: Link enters a room in search of an item. Fi: “The item you seek is in this room. Find it and complete your task.” I loathed her. This is one Zelda tradition I would be very happy to see taken behind a shed and shot.
That tension between tradition and progression is apparent throughout. Skyward Sword’s best sections throw enough new material at the player to make him forget that he’s playing the fifteenth entry in a long-running series, while the worst remind him that parts of the series remain stuck in the past. A section involving a search for a pirate ship on a time-traveling ocean is unexpected and delightful, while an Ico-inspired protect-the-tag-along trek up a familiar mountainside is deeply tedious. One water-based dungeon features eastern-inspired architecture, a giant statue that figures prominently in several puzzles, and a mysterious lower level that gives it a real sense of place. Another dungeon, the fire one, doesn’t do much to stand out and feels like an excuse to present us with yet more blow-up-the-false-wall puzzles. Nintendo made some brave choices with this game, but I think they should have made even more.
One tradition I do support is Nintendo’s continued commitment to excellent production values. The game’s score, which is fully orchestrated, sounds very rich and features a number of memorable tunes. Graphically, the game is bright and bold with more than a few artistic flourishes. The art style is a combination of the Saturday morning cartoon look from Wind Waker and the relatively realistic vibe from Twilight Princess. I think it’s a good look for the series going forward.
It feels a bit petty to complain about Skyward Sword’s failure to reinvent the wheel when I know that, shortcomings aside, it’s still a excellent game. It’s consistently entertaining, polished to a shine, and in some respects is very inventive. But I know Nintendo is capable of more. They CAN reinvent the wheel; I’ve seen them do it, and if they want the Legend of Zelda to remain the big deal it is they may have to do it again. Skyward Sword isn’t quite up to that challenge, but it remains a fine, fun game more than worth your time and money.
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