The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is, to this date, the installment in the series that appears to be the most influenced by the reception of its predecessors. Directed by Hidemaro Fujibayashi, Skyward Sword is a game of a lot of ups and downs, which tries to fix some of the flaws that always plagued the series, but ultimately reaches irregular results.

The story starts above the clouds, on a floating island called Skyloft. Its inhabitants live bucolic lives, completely ignorant to the existence of any land beneath them. They carry several portions of pumpkin from one side of the place to the other and like to race on their Loftwings – birds that are spiritually attached to every person in town. Link is about to graduate from the Academy and become one of the soldiers in charge of protecting the people at night – a dangerous time when Skyloft is infested by dangerous bats, smiling green blobs, and demonic kittens. The protagonist also intends to win a tournament, whose prize will be delivered by his best friend Zelda. However, an unforeseen event occurs during the end of the ceremony and the girl falls from the sky.

Skyward Sword has a strong opening, introducing the player to a new world while showing very special care with dialogues and characterization, building that innocent, mysterious and magical atmosphere that is very reminiscent of the classic Disney films. The character named Groose, for instance, is a man who sees Link as the only ridiculous obstacle to be overcome if he is to win the admiration of Zelda, and he reminds me a lot of the villain Gaston from The Beauty and the Beast, a comparison that is reinforced by his egocentric nature.

Here, Zelda has one of the most strong personalities yet. Even with little time available on screen, she can convince us of how she cares for Link – something that is also helped by the beautiful and energetic musical theme of their relationship –  which doesn’t stop her from teasing him whenever she can. Another character that certainly deserves attention is the main antagonist, Ghirahim, who surprises by the discrepancy between the playful language he uses (“This news has just filled my heart with rainbows“) and his evil nature – although he can be accused of falling into the “queer representation as villainous”  trope. However, if Ghirahim is an interesting, but problematic villain, the same, unfortunately, cannot be said about his master Demise, a dull Akuma who is more unidimensionally evil than printers. Therefore, it’s a shame that the game devotes its final moments to the less interesting villain.

Skyward Sword’s most striking element, however, is its level design, and it is here that we can see how developers have looked at and reacted to past mistakes and successes. As with Majora’s Mask, for example, which also focused on just one city, the Nintendo EAD team shows special care when making each inhabitant of Skyloft special. The result is certainly positive, since players really feel that those characters live in that place, each possessing their own house, personal problems, and place of work. The problem with this design lies only in the fact that the developers have not created a lot of characters: Skyloft is beautiful and extremely well designed – the player will wander aimlessly around the place to enjoy the good view and music – but it’s also ridiculously empty. The player will also find himself wandering aimlessly because there will rarely be anything special to do. It is also curious to note that a large part of Skyloft’s population works by selling or repairing utensils (potions, arrows, and shields) at the city bazaar, and, as the few others are too busy drinking in the “Pumpkin Bar” or training at the Academy, there will never be any living soul, other than Link, to buy anything from them. No one can deny, therefore, that the imminent end of the world did not serve to boost the local economy.

The secondary missions are also hit and miss. Some show an unusual sensibility, such as when the mother of a Link’s colleague offers him a small number of rupees to help him clean his house, and only later at night does the players find out all the personal and financial problems that their supposed aid caused. Others quests are fun and bizarre: the zombie/ghost hand of Majora’s Mask is back and players are once again given the chance to satisfy its strange desires with a love letter. However, various activities only boil down to a certain character losing a random item of vital importance to them and it is up to Link to go on a not-so-epic quest at some random spot on the surface to retrieve it. Spoiler Alert: that stops being fun after the first time. Oh, and it’s worth mentioning that the memorable, but flawed, hunt for Skulltulas of Ocarina of Time has been replaced by a search for crystals of gratitude that the characters magically release when they are, well, grateful to the player. And it is worth pointing out that this is a mission that achieves the feat of being even less… gratifying than the one from N64.

But if it’s a The Legend of Zelda title, the first three things that come to the mind of any series veteran are dungeons, exploration, and adventure. Most of these things are related to the surface world, which is divided into three major areas: forest, volcano, and desert. Using the same logic employed when crafting the characters of focusing on a smaller but more complex design, the developers try to keep the player busy by inserting puzzles, enigmas, and obstacles at each step. As much as this strategy works, it inevitably lessens the impact of actually entering the dungeons themselves, as players will do there basically the same things they were doing before.

What leads to another problem: the irregularity between the three main areas. Faron Woods gets the most well-crafted dungeon of the game (Ancient Cistern, which is built around the Buddhist tale, The Spider’s Thread), but Lanaryu Desert is by far the better one gameplay-wise, thanks to the constant use of Timeshift Stones, which, when triggered, take their surroundings to another period in time – this yields moments of pure magic, such as when Link navigates through a sea of ​​sand and one of these stones forms the ocean as he passes. Meanwhile, Eldin Volcano has nothing interesting in its main are or dungeons. Absolutely nothing. Its dungeons are the weakest and most disappointing; it’s artistically poorer than the others and even its soundtrack is pretty dull. This negatively affects the pacing of the narrative, since, because nothing is interesting in Eldin Volcano, it gives players the impression that the game is lasting a little more than necessary.

The dungeons themselves also present their ups and downs. While the last one, Sky Keep, has an ingenious idea – to change the physical location of the rooms at will – with its diminutive size preventing it from fulfilling its whole potential, the Earth Temple is as bland as the Sandship is complex. The bosses, in turn, follow the creative pattern already established by the series, and although some are repeated to exhaustion, such as Imprisioned and Ghirahim, others such as Koloktos and the giant character from Monsters Inc., Tentalus, help to raise the standard for the series.

As for the exploration part, the game that probably was most taken into account during development was, unfortunately, The Wind Waker. Although it continues to be the weakest 3D title in the franchise, one of the most frequent complaints about it is, in fact, unfair: the complaint that the ocean is too gigantic and the ship too slow, which would make moving around the world a slog. With probably that in mind, Nintendo reduced the map and considerably accelerated the Loftwing’s speed compared to The Wind Waker. The result? Virtually the absence of any sense of exploration. Here, Link’s bird crosses the skies so swiftly – with the map being already revealed from the get go – that going from one end to the other is a matter of a couple of minutes at the most. Navigating that immense ocean, without having the faintest idea of ​​what one would find, but incredibly eager to discover, was the great charm of The Wind Waker. In Skyward Sword, exploration is grossly reduced in a probable attempt to fix this “problem”.

However, regarding the technical aspects of its presentation, Skyward Sword doesn’t disappoint in any way. The art style used is brilliant, with its original look inspired by Impressionist paintings. As anti-aliasing and Wii have always been antonyms, the Nintendo EAD team transforms the distant scenarios into a painting, thus removing any problems that the great views would cause on the console. The only caveat of this technique is when it is applied to small environments such as houses: the player takes a step forward and sees textures, takes a step back, and sees a brushstroke painting: it’s just funny.

Now, the soundtrack, for the first time orchestrated, remains efficient. I could spend several lines here only describing the beauty of the tracks, from the more bucolic-like music of Skyloft to the more eerie ones, like the theme for Link’s new companion, Fi (who is constantly annoying in explaining the obvious), but it’s enough to just listen to the theme of a random chubby guy who cuts bamboo and marvel at its power to get a glimpse of how great this soundtrack is. And it’s worth noting that only the bazaar has a variation of its theme song for every vendor present, which reveals exceptional care from the music department.

However, when one remembers Skyward Sword, all those elements will come in the background. The point that will come first will its gameplay centered on motion controls. Here, the player no longer presses the “A” button to attack. With the aid of the motion-plus accessory, they have to really attack with the controller, brandishing it like a sword. Is your enemy leaving their right side open? Make a horizontal attack, from right to left, and hit them there. Do they now have their weak point unprotected in the middle of their chest? Just lunge! Skyward Sword is definitely proof, if a very belated one, that motion controls work even in a game called “hardcore”. Swinging your sword with care and planning – because if you simply shake the controller it will hardly get you anywhere, especially during the battle against the first boss – provides a highly immersive experience and makes the player feel like that little child who wears an eye-patch and a pirate hat, and fights with wooden swords with their best friend.

This control scheme is not just about combat, though, and it is applied unnecessarily to any mechanic possible: players also control the direction of their Loftwing by rotating the controller, prevent Link from falling when walking on a rope by pointing it to the opposite side to which Link is hanging, and even play the harp – the most useless and boring instrument of the series so far – by moving it from one side to the other without any logic.

And there is the problem of the Motion Plus itself. When it works the world is a happy, fluffy place, but sometimes the accessory likes to freak out and do whatever it pleases, totally destroying the immersion and frustrating the player: it’s not nice to see Link dancing with his sword in front of an enemy instead of attacking them.

For every two steps forward, Skyward Sword also takes one step back. The Legend of Zelda was a franchise that needed a good shake to be revitalized and this title doesn’t fulfill that mission, never moving too far from the series’ formula. We can only hope that the next titles learn from Skyward Sword’s mistakes and make Zelda feel fresh again.

December 20, 2018.

Originally published in Portuguese on February 12, 2012.