I'm playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword at the moment. It's a game that I've been meaning to get around to for quite some time. Initially I couldn't play it because I bought the game long before buying a console to play it on (yep, I may well have been the only person in existence not to own a Nintendo Wii in the winter of 2011). When I finally picked up a second-hand Wii a couple of years later, I started the game but found myself losing interest through its lengthy and patronising tutorial sequence. I made a second false start last year, making it just past the first dungeon before getting distracted by other things and not coming back. All year I've been promising my buddy Matt (who is a huge Zelda fan) that I'll get around to it before the end of 2017, but then Horizon Zero Dawn happened, and the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy happened, and The Witcher happened, and it kept getting pushed back, until about three weeks ago when I dusted off the Wii and fired it up. Third time was indeed lucky for me as I managed to get over the initial tutorial hump and pressed on deep into the game's narrative. Thirty-one hours deep, in fact, at the time of writing. And while I'm definitely enjoying my time with it, I haven't been able to shake the feeling that something about the whole thing is a little "off".

Before any of you start speculating, it isn't the motion controls. I can understand why people might not like them, but as someone who played Twilight Princess on the GameCube and bought a Wii specifically to play this game, I've found the whole experience pretty novel. The swordplay is great for the most part, bringing a much-needed layer of depth to the series' usually simple hack-and-slash combat. It's fun working out enemies' tells and navigating around their defences to land the killing blow, replacing button-mashing with a more methodical watch-and-wait approach. The dungeon items are all fun to use too, although there's not quite as much variety to them as I would have liked (four of the eight items have almost identical controls). But save for a couple of isolated incidents, the control scheme hasn't impacted negatively on my experience. I've never felt like I was telling the game to do something and it did something else, so in my book, that's a success.

I think what's really getting to me is how "guided" the whole experience has been. Skyward Sword gets a lot of flak for how it holds the player's hand through its lengthy tutorial, but what's often overlooked in those criticisms is just how little you're permitted to explore throughout the entire game. A great deal of this is down to the world design, in my opinion. At first glance, Skyward Sword invites comparisons with Wind Waker due to its vast, open hub world (the sky surrounding Skyloft in the former, the Great Sea in the latter) populated by islands for the player to explore. Where the games differ is in both their sense of discovery and the degree to which their hubs are populated. When you first start exploring the Great Sea in Wind Waker, you have no chart, no map, no real frame of reference, and as a result the ocean feels mysterious, unknown and begging to be explored. Comparatively, Skyward Sword gives you a map of almost the entire sky up front. Nothing is unknown, everything is charted. Equally, the sky is much more sparsely populated than the Great Sea, and almost everything significant that happens is concentrated within Skyloft, making it feel comparatively lifeless and rendering exploration almost unnecessary.

Things aren't much better when you break through the cloud barrier and descend to the surface. Skyward Sword's surface world is made up of three distinct regions - Faron, Eldin, and Lanayru. Each of these regions is vast but also very segmented, and progression through them is limited by both the items Link carries and the direction of the story at any given time. What this means is that while some areas look wide and open, there's actually only one direct route from A to B. Couple this with companion Fi's constant interruptions and advice on what to do next and the end result is an experience that feels curated and guided, rather than one in which the player has a reasonable degree of agency. This sense of linearity and throttled exploration even pervades the dungeon design. Having been through six or seven of Skyward Sword's dungeons at this point, I've never felt overwhelmed with options as to where to go or what I should be doing. Don't get me wrong, the dungeons and the puzzles within are brilliantly designed, but they're designed with the intention of funnelling the player down a set path, rather than opening up and giving the player options for exploration.

Even the side quests eschew legitimate exploration in favour of hand-holding, mainly due to the inclusion of dowsing. Using his sword, Link can "track" the location of important items and quest objectives within the world and home in on them. This reduces environmental exploration to a simple game of "follow-the-flashing-light". One particular side activity consists hunting Goddess Cubes on the surface to awaken Goddess Chests in the sky. Initially I had fun hunting down the Goddess Cubes (without dowsing for them, which becomes an option later on), but the fact that the activated chests are then pinpointed on the map with flashing purple icons creates a sorely missed opportunity for some decent exploration in the sky. Instead of scouring the skies, I could simply open my map, plop a beacon of light over the chest icon, and make a beeline for the treasure. When I ultimately opened each chest, the reward felt hollow because I never felt like I'd earned it. Skyward Sword also features some light loot and crafting mechanics, seemingly encouraging exploration in a way that's completely at odds with the rest of its design philosophy.

What really drove the matter home for me was when I blitzed through the original Legend of Zelda on a whim last weekend (with a guide to hand, I'm not bloody Superman). At times I found it hard to believe that these games co-exist within the same franchise. Original Zelda is obtuse as hell, dropping the player in an open overworld with no guidance and encouraging them to explore and find things out for themselves. Even Link's sword is optional - players can head off screen without entering the first cave if they so choose, putting them in a very difficult position against the Octoroks and Tektites that litter the overworld. I'm not saying original Zelda is perfect - in fact, I think it goes way too far in the other direction, to the point where its lack of guidance becomes a severe hindrance for those looking to beat the game. I think a lot of my personal favourite Zelda games, such as Wind Waker and A Link Between Worlds, strike a good balance between direction and exploration, signposting goals for the player without explicitly showing or telling them how to get there, and without punishing the player for trying to go off the beaten track and explore the world a bit.

As I said at the very top of this blog, I don't think Skyward Sword is a bad game. I wouldn't have put over thirty hours into it if I did. One major upshot of the game's more guided design is that it gives the story a much better sense of pacing than any other Zelda I've played previously. In my book, that's a good thing, because the story is the best I've seen in a Zelda game to date. Judging by the point I've just reached, and based on how long it took me to beat Twilight Princess, I'm going to hazard a guess that I'm about three quarters through Skyward Sword. I'm really excited to see where the story continues to go from here, and how it ties in with the rest of the series (I'm aware that Skyward Sword is the first game chronologically, and I'm curious to see if it earns its status of origin story). I just think it's a bit of a shame that engaging with the story is probably all I'll want to do from this point on. Hopefully in the new year I'll be able to get my hands on a Switch and a copy of Breath of the Wild - I'm reliably informed that it addresses the shortcomings of Skyward Sword by overhauling the core of the franchise in some very big ways, and I'm very excited to discover what those are.

As always, thanks very much for taking the time to read this blog. It's been a while since I threw together one of these essay-style posts, so please forgive me if the structure's a little rough. Once I've wrapped up Skyward Sword, I'm hoping to return to my An Hour With... blog series, with a special bumper instalment planned for before the end of the year. And hey, speaking of the end of year, we're getting pretty darn close to them there Game of the Year awards. This year I've managed to make my way through more games than ever before - my total currently stands at forty-three games beaten, and I'd really like to try and push that up to fifty before the end of 2017. As always, I'll be putting together some special blog-based shenanigans to document my year of game-playing, so be sure to keep your eyes peeled for that. Until next time, take care duders, and I'll see you around.

Daniel

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Currently playing - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii)