How Will The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword Change the Zelda Series?

[zbygy9]

I'm all for what sounds like "seamless" transitions between dungeon and field. A complaint I remember having about twilight princess was loading between areas and what not that made some places feel "cut-off" from the rest of hyrule. I even felt like that wasn't even as bad in the 64 games and Wind Waker.

I'm pretty stoked for this game. I hope there are enough changes to make it feel like a breath of fresh air to the franchise, whatever they may be.

 

[Kybyrian]

Personally, I don't think that Skyward Sword will make a giant impact on the Zelda series. It seems that every time we get a new Zelda game, we are always discussing about how it will make such a giant impact on the series as a whole, but usually they don't. I'm not saying that Skyward Sword won't make any impact on the series - most games do in some way or another - but I am saying that it won't change anything big that we'll see down the line for many games to come.

Skyward Sword, with the implementation of Wii Motion Plus, will undoubtedly introduce many features that haven't been seen before in the series. I have a feeling, though, that we will only get one other game after Skyward Sword until the release of the Wii 2, which, as quoted, will "surprise people". There is really little that new games can impact on the series as a whole. We get a new console every few Zelda games, and we get games on the portable systems and others at the same time. We get maybe 3-5 games every generation that we see now. We get a 2 or 3 on a handheld, and 2 otherwise. By the time they start to make the third game, it will be a new generation. Since gameplay changes dramatically with each change in console generation, there is little that can make a huge impact from previous games. A lot of what's in the games is gameplay-related, and can't be simply converted all the time from one game to the next. Something big, like storylines or something like that, also can't have too big of an impact on future games seeing as how each game's story is rather unique and we don't want to see reused ideas from an old story.

I think the best thing that happens to the series as it develops is the new things that we are given, and I personally don't care how much Skyward Sword or any other game affects the series as a whole because I want to see something new. If something was an absolutely huge hit from an old game, that's fine. It can be used again, as long as it's not an exact replica of something that we've seen before so it bothers and bores us. I want to see new things so I can get excited and try out different things that I haven't done before. It's preferable that a game doesn't impact later games in the series. This is to an extent, of course.

 

[February Eve]

Let me operate on the assumption that Skyward Sword will change the series. There are two potential area I can see this happening in.

Gameplay: By this I mean dungeons and more broadly, our purposes for entering the dungeons. There's already a quote that the dungeons are going to be different than we are used to, but beyond the actual design, a well-known formula for Zelda is "collect three items, plot twist, collect several more items." As well as it's worked in the past, if I were a game designer, that's the first thing I'd shake up. If Link were collecting items, instead of having the main villain placing each item in a temple and waiting in his fortress for Link to find them, the villain could realize Link was succeeding and make it increasingly harder for him to complete his quest. And that's just a minor suggestion; I'm sure more could be done.

Over-arching story: Zelda is known for its setting and its (somewhat controversial) timeline. It's possible that Skyward Sword could contain some series-changing event that breaks the Zelda universe open for more variety of location and plot. It could be as simple as broadening the world to contain other lands - or even alternate worlds, such as Termina - or as complicated as causing another timeline branch, like Zelda did in Ocarina of Time.

Of the two choices, judging by the quotes we already have, I feel the first is more likely. Though the latter would be more likely to fit my personal definition of "changing the series as we know it".

 

[green goron]

I agree with Kybyrian. Every one always says that the next zelda game is going to be the best and when it comes out we say it's the worst. I don't think its because the game itself is bad I think it's because we overate it and when it's rated a 9 instead of a 10 everyone starts getting upset and saying the game was bad. I agree that the Wii Motion Plus will open new puzzles with the horizontal and vertical slash but don't get over excited.

 

[Midna666]

So far I don't think that Skyward Sword is going to change the series as much as some people think it will. From What I've seen of the game so far it looks like Zelda with motion control that will be better then Twilight Princess's motion control.

 

[Pete16]

I hope that SS will change the Zelda-series in the way that they tell us a lot about the backstory in the Zelda-series. Maybe they tell us more about the battle for the Triforce or the creation of Hyrule, and then more things in the series will make sense. All of this may change what we think about Zelda.

 

[ケンジ]

So far, I haven't got any impression of it changing the Zelda Franchise drastically. But it did show a very intriguing change of pace. The Dungeon-Overworld-Cungeon-Finds item in dungeon-use item in dungeon to defeat boss then get a main goal-overworld-dungeon formula is a classic formula for the Zelda series. If Miyamoto can make things interesting like changing it, then I see no problem. As long as he gives this game the same feeling or an incarnation of that feeling from OoT, then I'm happy to say go for it, change if necessary.

Though nothing is set in stone yet, it's been rather quiet with the news about SS. So for now I remain until more news about SS have been revealed.

 

[GeneralBleck666]

Not much

The world of Zelda probably won't change an incredible amount. The old games will always be remembered and the new always celebrated.

 

[Retsdob]

As with anything, a change like this is an absolute high-stakes bargin by nintendo's part. But things like this really get fans (Myself included) extremly excited and intriged. So i believe that this is an excellent move on nintendo's part.

 

[43ForceGems]

I think it'll change it in a sense of sticking out like MM or AoL. The controls will make it stick out, the graphics will, and also the placement. For sure being at the beginning of the timeline sticks out a little. I don't personally think it's going to CHANGE the series, I just think it's going to be unique and change it for itself, then after it will become normal back to the same ol same ol again.

 

[The Hero of Pie]

As far as the in-game world goes, it looks very artistic, a new turn for the Zelda Series. I think the graphics are perfect for this game, bright and vivid, very reminiscent of the original Zelda game (Were you expecting me to say Wind Waker?), but detailed enough to remind us that it's still a medieval-fantasy game. Plus, it looks like Link's given in to peer pressure, and put on pants. Isn't that all we need?

 

[MarioBr1]

I think it'll change the series as a whole because I just can't see Nintendo going back to button-controls after SS, therefore SS will set a standard for future Zelda games, and maybe even other games, so in other words, I think it WILL be revolutionary.

 

[Mujura]

I don't think...

I don't think that they will have a revolutionary game here. They haven't really had a "revolution" since the original TLOZ. I agree that OOT was just a revolution in graphics, FOR ZELDA, not for games, so I think that it SS will only be awesome controls and a great, non-revolutionary game.

 

[Shnappy]

I think that the impact that SS will make will be similar to the impact that MM will make, except probably a little less. The Zelda games that we tend to consider "revolutionary" are games on new consoles, such as LttP and OoT. MM was a follow up to OoT. It is generally not considered revolutionary compared to OoT, but it was a fantastic successor. TP wasn't quite revolutionary, but I believe that it made a nice, lasting impact and that SS will hopefully be a good follow-up to the impact that TP made. SS seems to have a lot more hype than MM, and more people expect it to make big changes on the Zelda series, so maybe it will be more than a follow-up. In my opinion, there's one thing that Nintendo needs to succeed on to make this a truly series-changing game.

WiiMotion Plus!

In some ways, WiiMotion plus is like a new console. It's a big improvement on the regular Wii Remote. Instead of a single flick of the controller for Link to do a full on sword slash, we're going to be full-on sword fighting with Link. If this is done successfully, it might be a revolutionary thing. Zelda games from then on would be more realistic, better fighting experiences. Now, of course, there can be series-changing aspects other than simple sword-fighting. If a different format is used (rather than simple field-dungeon-field-dungeon shenanigans), or a very unique story is introduced, it could be influential in that way. But the main thing that I'll be looking for come 2011 will be the swordplay with WiiMotion Plus.

 

[Ganondork]

I doubt that it will change the whole zelda series, but I think that it will help exlain a lot of things that we'vewondered about the series from the beginning.