Skyward Sword Gameplay Demo – Flight Gameplay Confirmed

GameTrailers has a demo video of Skyward Sword, showing actual gameplay and many new things we haven’t seen before, explaining it as they go. A lot of the details on things discussed are unclear; while they’ve confirmed a lot of things, how exactly they will play out remains to be seen. What this video confirms or reveals can be found after the jump.

-There is flight gameplay, where you ride on a bird through a sea of clouds.

-Flight will function similarly to the overworld in The Wind Waker, in that it is a sea of clouds and you can visit small floating islands.

-There is a gameplay sequence near the beginning of the game in which Link must prove his skills as a bird rider by catching another bird.

-At the end of this sequence as Link catches the statue, the text dialogue says “Wait till Zelda sees this!”, implying that the girl in the trailer is indeed Zelda.

-The sea of clouds is only one small part of the game; there is an overworld below.

-It’s implied that there aren’t towns in the lower overworld, so you will have to return to the sky to buy potions.

-It was claimed that the entire game is like a dungeon even though there are normal dungeons, in that there are puzzles everywhere including the enemy fights. It’s unclear what exactly this means, though.

-Enemy fights will require strategy and puzzle solving to determine enemy weak points; button mashing and flailing will not be enough.

-Dungeons are supposedly “approached differently” in Skyward Sword, and it was also stated that you may find yourself going back to old dungeons much later in the game. It wasn’t stated why, though.

-When the interviewer was concerned about the game staying fresh with backtracking like that, the representative talked about it not being like that, saying that you will also be searching for story elements. What could this mean?

-There will be a huge collection aspect to Skyward Sword: You will have to collect ingredients for upgrading your weapons, many of which can be found in chests.

-You can return to Skyloft by locating bird-shaped Save Statues.

So what do you think of the demo? Do you think the game looks good, and what do you think about this gameplay information alongside the cinematic trailer? I myself am excited, and am almost happy my prediction regarding flight gameplay was wrong. It sort of looks to me like Skyward Sword has a more compelling version of The Wind Waker’s overworld, but below it is a pure-land, purely on-foot overworld that is dangerous, a lot like the classic 2D Zelda games. That and the promised difficulty and collection system sound amazing. Tell me what you think in the comments!