I already stated that how they actually effect the game is irrelevant.
I spoke of the motive, not the effect. I know that whether the controls were successful in making the game immersive or not is irrelevant but I was talking about the reasoning behind their use. The fact that there is plenty of justification for using the motion controls precludes them being merely a gimmick as they are not just there 'for show', which is what gimmicks are. The motion controls serve a purpose and Nintendo used them for that.
The fact is that Nintendo made a big deal about the motion controls, and focused more on that than any thing in the game.
They also made a big deal about
Skyward Sword being a prequel, about it showing the origin of the Master Sword and about the relationship between Link and Zelda.
SS was not marketed solely on its control scheme and Nintendo made just as much fuss about the changes to their approach with story-telling as well as the changes they were making to the overworld too. By this logic, pretty much the whole game was a gimmick. A gimmick is something done to attract you to a product, not the product itself.
The fact that it's a single feature, that it's the biggest feature, and that it's what they talked about most when discussing the game, makes it a gimmick.
No, the fact that it is their to make use of a piece of hardware and attempts to make a more immersive and intuitive experience for the player makes it not a gimmick. To say the controls were the biggest feature in
SS seems a bit odd when you look at all the other changes to the typical Zelda game it made. Things like upgrades, stamina, potion infusions, shield degeneration and a separated overworld all make far more difference than the controls themselves. The controls are just kind of there because this is the Wii and that's what its controller is, a Wiimote. I don't think it's right to call them the biggest feature because then we should call the controls the biggest feature in every game. Was
Ocarina of Time's use of Z-Targetting a gimmick? No, it was a device used because Nintendo had a Z button that needed a function. Was the control stick a gimmick? No, it was a better way of navigating a 3 dimensional space than a standard directional pad. The controls in Nintendo games have always been a natural result of the controllers,
SS is no different. If its controls are a gimmick then logically all control schemes are gimmicks.
Nintendo is a company, companies need something to attract attention. For Zelda, motion controls were the perfect thing for that.
Again, Nintendo didn't think 'You know what will make this new Zelda game sell well? Motion controls!' They thought 'Let's make a new Zelda game for the Wii.' The use of motion controls came not from a superficial desire to make the game more appealing but from the fact that the sytem it was developed for had a motion-based controller. This logic basically means every game ever released for the Wii was a gimmick, because they all used motion controls too.
Nintendo would have gotten the whole gaming industry's attention just by announcing a Zelda game without even giving it a title. In fact, that's exactly what happened in 2009 when they released a single image for an as yet unnamed Zelda game and it was all anyone talked about for weeks afterwards. The image wasn't even shown as part of their conference. Zelda doesn't need and doesn't use gimmicks and I find it inappropriate to label motion controls as such because they have a purpose beyond novelty, they were not singled out as the sole new feature of the game, there were a lot of other new things that Nintendo did with
SS and motion control is what the Wii was built for so their use in Wii games is not simply for attention.
