It has now been ten years since the release of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. While Twilight Princess was the first game I got for the Wii, it was actually originally intended as a Gamecube release, so much like Breath of the Wild, there were releases on both consoles. Skyward Sword was the Wii-native game, and was sold with an accessory to allow for more precise motion controls with the Wii-mote, which it used for the precision sword fighting required to beat the game.
To be frank, this was the first Zelda game to really disappoint me. Back when IGN was the dominant force in gaming reviews, Twilight Princess (which had come out about five years earlier) had infamously earned only an 8.8 out of 10 from the site. While that's still a good review, the notion that a Zelda game, and particularly the one to restore the Ocarina of Time-style more mature graphical style after the cartoonish Wind Waker, would be rated so low seemed to be a scandal.
And honestly, I did disagree with its rating of Twilight Princess, which I consider one of my favorite Zelda games ever, right up there next to Ocarina of Time.
Skyward Sword, on the other hand, got a perfect 10 from IGN, which seemed to guarantee an instant classic.
In practice, though, the game was a giant mixed bag.
I've developed a bit of nostalgia for it, in part due to the release of Skyward Sword HD on the Switch, along with catching some of the GDQ videos on Youtube (Games Done Quick is an organization that does speedrunning to promote charities like Doctors Without Borders, and seems really cool.)
Watching these videos, I'm struck by how the game is actually really gorgeous, and makes me wish that I liked it more.
Skyward Sword's reputation did not explode in popularity following its release. There were definitely some cool elements (I think everyone thought the Koloktos fight in the Ancient Cistern dungeon was freaking awesome,) but it suffered from several glaring issues.
I think the worst of these issues was its repetition. Over the course of your adventure, you'd find yourself returning to old areas, doing the same searches for various items that needed to be collected, and you also had to fight The Imprisoned several times. Again, while the artistic design of the game is fantastic - a slightly brighter and more colorful world that nevertheless shares DNA with Twilight Princess - one almost gets the sense that Nintendo didn't have enough time to build out a big enough world.
Skyward Sword has a really cool open world in theory in the form of its Skyworld, where Link can fly between floating earth motes (included among them his home town,) though in practice the real action is not here, but on the surface world, where the regions are divided explicitly between different unconnected areas. It makes the regions feel more like levels than the kind of open, interconnected world that has been part of Zelda from the very beginning.
The motion controls were also a big swing, if you'll pardon the pun. But I think that the level of precision required for it was very taxing for me, and I think a lot of players (notably the Switch version lets you handle the various types of sword swipes through buttons instead.) Motion control was a big part of the Wii's mission statement, but I think that this game actually managed to show off the pitfalls of that focus rather than its strengths, which is a shame.
Now, I'm going to address the fact that I'm very much in the minority as someone who did not love Breath of the Wild. I get that most people think it was a massive achievement, and even might hold it up as the best Zelda game ever (which I consider HERESY! Obviously that's Ocarina of Time, or maybe Link to the Past, though I might just be revealing how old I am now.)
But regardless of where you rank Breath of the Wild in the ranks of Zelda games, I think that Nintendo might have overcompensated in a few ways following the issues with Skyward Sword. As I said before, Skyward Sword had a less open world than previous games in the series. By contrast, Breath of the Wild has by far the most open world of any Zelda game. That's great, but the problem I then had with Breath of the Wild was that its open world feels so empty. Skyward Sword had challenges and puzzles to solve in each of its tightly-packed world regions, whereas the only real barrier to getting anywhere in Breath of the Wild is whether you can climb high enough to drift down to the place you're going.
Because of the low frequency of Zelda games on major consoles, Skyward Sword is also the last game to have unique dungeons packed with enemies and puzzles. One thing I think is relatively uncontroversial about Breath of the Wild is that its "dungeons," the Ancient Beasts, are all pretty boring - somehow separating off monsters from puzzles, and all having the same aesthetic design. Skyward Sword does not actually share that issue - indeed, some of its dungeons are downright cool. I'm a big fan of the Ancient Cistern, not just because of its fantastic final boss, but also the amazing aesthetic of a serene temple above with a cursed and haunted cavern below. And the whip is actually a really cool addition to the standard Zelda item arsenal (something that Breath of the Wild more or less dispensed with.)
As a Zelda fan since 1998, I've sort of struggled to understand why I'm so out of step with people who adore Breath of the Wild. And by no means to I want to suggest that its fans' feelings toward the game are in any way invalid - I just wish that I felt the same way about it.
While I don't think we have a release date yet (and this being Nintendo, who knows when it will come out,) I'm very curious to see to what extent Breath of the Wild II (though I expect it to get its own unique subtitle, much as Majora's Mask was originally announced as Zelda Gaiden) sticks to the previous game's formula.
One thing I find really interesting is how it looks as if the world to explore in the upcoming game will actually be a sky world of sorts, with floating islands that Link will cross the skies to reach - perhaps having a second run at some kind of Skyworld.
I will say that I would like to see another Zelda game with the bright colors of Skyward Sword. Breath of the Wild's more subdued pastel look does make sense given the ruined world you traverse, but I'm hoping for them to change things up.
Also, as a note (this is kind of just scattered Zelda thoughts at this point,) among those GDQ videos I saw was a run of Ocarina of Time 3D for the 3DS. It's really funny how when you see an update of a game you played long ago with more modern graphics, it often actually looks the way you remember it, because you sort of updated the graphics in your mind's eye. I do think the Shadow Temple in particular looks way better in that remake - it was one I always felt was a little dull in the original N64 version. It reminds me of how when I played Shadow of the Colossus' remaster for the PS4 I couldn't really tell the difference from my memories. Perhaps because I never played Demon Souls, the remake on the PS5 to me looks insanely good - maybe because I'm thinking of it as a next-gen game instead of a remake of a 12-year-old one.
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