The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is not the radical reinvention of the Zelda franchise Nintendo has implied it might be. But it is everything you wanted out of Twilight Princess when it came out alongside the Wii four years ago. Remember how you thought the Wii's motion controls would enhance Zelda's combat when you first looked at them? Precise one-to-one sword movement, smooth and accurate aiming, the visceral impact of moving the remote and nunchuk as if you were fighting with a sword and shield... all that stuff is in here, and I thought it felt great to play.
The sword and shield movement feel really natural.== TEASER == Make no mistake, this is still a traditional 3D Zelda in the vein of Ocarina of Time. Lock-on Z-targeting, bombs and boomerangs, a floppy green hat. It's all in there. I fought moblins and deku plants and a giant scorpion boss. I slashed grass to pick up rupees and hearts. I threw bombs at cracked walls (and rolled them too). If you were expecting a sci-fi future Zelda starring Spaceman Link or something, this ain't it!
But now that I've tried out the new Motion Plus-assisted combat, I don't think it needs to be. If you're going to make a traditional fantasy Zelda game where you waggle the remote to swing the sword and thrust the nunchuk out to raise your shield, this is the way to do it. The sword control feels really accurate, allowing you to slice down trees and attack enemies from whatever angle you want. No more waving the remote wildly back and forth to activate a generic slash animation; the sword attacks now follow the way you swing the remote precisely enough that you feel like you've pretty much got total control over the way you attack. You can even jab the remote straight out to thrust your sword directly into enemies. It's a neat effect.
The demo at E3 is rife with opportunities to aim your sword. Moblins attack you by constantly guarding high or to the side, forcing you to slash where their blade isn't. Deku plants open their mouths vertically or horizontally. Even that giant scorpion boss, its weak points inside the hinges of its claws, forces you to watch the orientation of its attacks so you can swing the right direction to make contact and damage it.
Giant enemy scorpion! There's also a quick timing element to thrusting your shield out to block enemy attacks with the nunchuk. There aren't any flash visual or auditory cues to let you know when, say, a stalfos is about to swing its sword at you; instead you can only observe enemy behaviors and learn to anticipate when they're about to attack. If you manage to time your shield bash with an incoming attack, you'll stun the enemy in some way and get to go off on them unimpeded for a few seconds. (In the stalfos' case, you knock its arms off, leaving it defenseless.)
The sword-aiming and shield-timing combined in my 20-minute demo to give the impression that Skyward Sword's combat is going to be deeper and more demanding than past Zeldas, where you mostly just hacked away at whatever enemy you currently had Z-targeted. Sure, you can still take a bunch of hits and collect hearts to stay alive if you don't want to explore the finer points of the combat model here, but if you do get a mastery of the more direct way you handle your sword and shield in this game, and combine that with Link's traditional set of flips and dodges, you'll be able to pull off some snazzy moves mid-fight and escape from a lot of battles unscathed.
After playing the game for myself, I felt bad for the technical difficulties Shigeru Miyamoto experienced at Nintendo's conference. I can confirm that was just some good old-fashioned radio interference, since I had absolutely no problems aiming the bow and arrow, the new beetle (which lets you fly around to get an aerial view of the area, and pick up items), or any of the other typical Zelda items in the demo. Like they said in the presentation, you don't have to point the remote at the screen now; you just pivot it in your hand and the onscreen cursor moves accordingly. Like the other controls, the Motion Plus aiming felt easy and natural.
Here's that demo, where you can see a lot of the concepts I'm talking about in action.
I'm personally thrilled that Nintendo hasn't completely abandoned the cartoony art of The Wind Waker; this game looks about two-thirds the realistic style of Twilight Princess with the painterly whimsy of the recent handheld Zeldas making up the remaining third. Some people around the show floor have been accusing Nintendo of making Zelda too casual with Skyward Sword, but I'm not seeing it. If "casual" is a pejorative term for "lighthearted and more accessible" or something, then fine, it's casual. I just know I had a great time with it and am really looking forward to playing more when the game hits the Wii next year.
EDIT: For those asking (a lot of you!), Nintendo has said that giant Wii remote overlay on the screen is an instructional aid for the E3 demo and that the final game's UI is still in development. I'd expect it to be gone in the final version.
