Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword SPOILERS Thread (SPOILERS I TELL YA)

[Holder of the Heel]

I'm guessing SSB4 will represent Skyward Sword and Zelda 3DS. So we're looking at probably two new Zelda candidates at most: Ghirahim and a rep from the latter. Skyward Sword will easily inspire a stage, though they could choose just about any part of the game for representation. Who knew Great Bay would make it into Melee? It's not the most recognizable part of Majora's Mask, but it made it above Clock Town, the Moon, etc.

Ghirahim and a rep from the new 3DS game might be interesting! Or if they alter Toon Link to fit it (assuming it is another Toon Link game, who knows). And you have a good point, Great Bay would never have come to my mind, and yet it was a neat little stage that was fun for me to play.

 

[Spire]

Great Bay was such a dynamic Zelda stage; it really captured the cluttered feel of Termina. It was always a joy to play on, particularly because of how dangerous the water was beneath the platform. And Tingle!

Speaking of, did you guys see the Tingle doll in Zelda's room?

 

[DtJ Glyphmoney]

Me and Spire talked about how cool the fight against Demise at the end could have been since he had 'dominion over time' or something (Spire I don't remember what you said).

That sentence reads really poorly but I'm not changing it, since the important thing is how ****ing amazing it would be to fight Demise in a graphically updated version of all the old ganon fights throughout the series. Like you start off in that water stage, move to Ganon's Tower for a bit, etc until you're fighting under the sea with water pouring down all around you. Would have been such an incredible moment for people who have had anything to do with the series.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

Great Bay was such a dynamic Zelda stage; it really captured the cluttered feel of Termina. It was always a joy to play on, particularly because of how dangerous the water was beneath the platform. And Tingle!

Speaking of, did you guys see the Tingle doll in Zelda's room?

Yeah whoever thought of that idea for a stage had a good idea.

And nooo, I didn't know it was there, all I cared about was the Piece of Heart. xD I ended up only finding out it was there afterwards, but I don't enjoy Tingle enough to care. The people who think he is obviously the next one to join SSB4 confuse me to no end.

Also, @Glyph, a fight with Demise could be so boss.... FINAL boss. (awful joke..) He looked amazing on the miniature Wii, on the Wii U it would just look way too ridiculous to handle. The Demise fight was a bit flat in relation to potentiality and TP's lengthy last battle, but maybe we'll get a better one soon, since apparently Demise was sealed up TWICE before Skyward Sword, strange number to choose and I'd really like to know what happened the first time he tried to take the Triforce.

 

[Spire]

When targeting Demise in battle, Fi mentions that he's a demonic being who has "mastered time itself". Because of that, Glyph and I figured it'd be really sweet if you transcended through all of the future events involving Link and Ganon, but with Demise in his place.

This idea came from my original desire to have one final dungeon in Demise's world.

 

[DtJ Glyphmoney]

Pretty much we just wanted SOMETHING more than 'oh hey guys I am Demise, if you want to fight that's cool I'll wait over here'

 

[Holder of the Heel]

When targeting Demise in battle, Fi mentions that he's a demonic being who has "mastered time itself". Because of that, Glyph and I figured it'd be really sweet if you transcended through all of the future events involving Link and Ganon, but with Demise in his place.

This idea came from my original desire to have one final dungeon in Demise's world.

Didn't even think of using Fi during that fight. xD Wow that is pretty cool... He didn't use any of those powers, he basically just had a test of skill with the blade with Link with some lightning involved.

Pretty much we just wanted SOMETHING more than 'oh hey guys I am Demise, if you want to fight that's cool I'll wait over here'

Pretty much we just wanted SOMETHING more than 'oh hey guys I am Demise, if you want to fight that's cool I'll wait over here'

I personally thought that was a cool moment and showed that Demise at least has some sort of personality to him, but I do see what you mean, I'd like some more build up and development, Ghirahim did good with that but you learn early he isn't even the main focus.

 

[Mr. Johan]

I am utterly clueless as to how to solve the Timeshift Orb puzzle in Sky Keep (The room that holds the Triforce of Wisdom). I see a rusty old fan that can be blown with the Gust Bellows to rotate on one side of the room, a symbol that I have no idea what on earth it means on the opposite side, 2 Bokoblins, a machine turret, and platforms that rise up when you carry the orb around, and I have no idea how to work them all together. Help?

 

[DtJ Glyphmoney]

That one took me a while too. You don't shoot through the fan where you are at right now, but if you look up at one of the walls (to the left if you're looking at the fan), there's one of those walls that go away when you take the timeshift orb next to it. Put the orb close to it to remove the wall (there's an arrow target behind it), and run up to where you first got the orb from and hit it. Should be easy from there.

 

[Mr. Johan]

Ah, that did the trick. Yeah, I saw the fenced off area up there, but I tries everything but the arrows to activate the switch up there. Bomb tossing, beetle, scattershot, even Beetle carrying a lit Bomb. I thought the rock pillars that came up would obstruct any arrow trajectory. Thanks.

 

[LLDL]

Damn..Sky Keep was....pretty lame. Easy puzzles, the changing rooms was an interesting concept but they failed to make it challenging : /

Guess that makes the Lanayru Mining Facility the hardest one in this game, and I had a relatively easygoing time playing through that as well.

Disappointing.

 

[MuraRengan]

I thought Sky Keep was harder than Lanayru >_>

 

[LLDL]

Nah. Probably just over thought things in Sky Keep. All you had to do was get the key and then rearrange the tablet so that it connects to the next triforce piece that you want. I did the entire thing in like 25 minutes, where as I spent a few hours in the mining facility.

 

[Spire]

The Mining Facility was the only dungeon of traditional length. Every other dungeon felt stunted.

But Sky Keep was something else. We've never had a dungeon like that before. Also, Dreadfuse was welcome because Scervo was awesome. Even though it was basically the samething...

Edit: "samething", it's like something but not.

 

[#HBC | ZoZo]

Edit: "samething", it's like something but not the samething.

fixed that

 

[Problem2]

I'm guessing SSB4 will represent Skyward Sword and Zelda 3DS. So we're looking at probably two new Zelda candidates at most: Ghirahim and a rep from the latter. Skyward Sword will easily inspire a stage, though they could choose just about any part of the game for representation. Who knew Great Bay would make it into Melee? It's not the most recognizable part of Majora's Mask, but it made it above Clock Town, the Moon, etc.

I have reasons to believe that the next set of Zelda characters will not be the Skyward Sword variations, or at least not their models. First off, Ganondorf isn't in Skyward Sword, so they would have to make a new Ganondorf model. I guess that's not hard. They made a TP model for Sheik after all. The second and more important reason, Smash Bros in the past 2 games has been about showing Nintendo characters with very detailed skins. Just look at Mario. He's jeans have every stitch in them visible nearly, meanwhile in Super Mario Galaxy, Mario's design is very simple despite being released around the same time. The best bet to me is that they will have a Skyward Sword type Link with the lips, nose, and baggy pants, but have an entirely new pallet on him similar to the one like in TP but better.

 

[WindMajor]

I remember the Sky Keep dungeon being extremely intimidating when I first saw it.

I walked into the first room, saw a chest already, and I was like, "Ummm.... Nintendo are you toying with me?".

Walked slowly to the chest and opened it up just to find a dungeon map of a peculiar shape. "Okay I think Nintendo is definitely toying with me here... This is definitely something out of the ordinary. A dungeon map now is too easy, something bigger must be up."

After getting the dungeon map, I took a step to the right into that little room and looked at the little table and then I saw it. It's an interactive dungeon, and all the pieces are ****ing jig-saws to this dungeon.

"OH ****."

*stares at the puzzle*

"Okay so this puzzle is either gonna kick my ***, or it's gonna be easy peasy."

Luckily I knew the trick to slider puzzles so I was able to figure out that it was impossible to get all the pieces to form in a straight path from Room 1 to Room 9, so it got a little bit easier from there. It only took me forever though to realize that, and some of the rooms were really tricky.



Perhaps the dungeon would've been cooler if there were more Spirit Realm segments with actual puzzles inside them.

Edit: Silly Smashboards, keeping me from typing Sky Keep in one word.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

I finally beat Hero Mode after a bit over 70 hours! :D With everything but the Peatrice quest, one Life Medal, and three heart pieces. Yaaaaaay!~

 

[Big_R]

In regards to the triforce talk. I thought that it basically went....Unbalanced (evil?) person who gets triforce will only retain one part while the other 2 will be sent to the 2 people of destiny. Then said unbalanced (evil) person has to gather those two people to make a wish.

So when Ganon did gather Link and Zelda in the other games he essentially had the triforce.

In SS no one touched the triforce yet. This game you went through trials to get the mark of each piece which symbolized that when you touched the triforce it would not split apart because you're characteristics are pure and balanced.

Am I missing something?

 

[majora_787]

I'm just gonna toss a few thoughts out since I beat the game recently, after getting curb-stomped by Demise about six times... Just gotta 100% and maybe to hero mode.

- On a SSB-related note, I'd almost like to see Ganondorf swapped with Demise for one game.

- On a plot-related note, I had some plot conversations with people about Demise, and as we know, he's the source of Ganon and Ganondorf. But they had said that he is also the source of all evil in the series, including Majora, Bellum, Nightmare, Vaati, and Malladus, the only villains who weren't minions of Ganondorf in any way.

What do you guys think of that?

And, Big_R... I think the game implies that Link's qualities AREN'T balanced to begin with, and he's being made into the "true hero" by the trials. So the triforce isn't going to split apart after he's proven himself to be the true hero. If that's what you were asking. If you're asking anything. xP

 

[MuraRengan]

In regards to the triforce talk. I thought that it basically went....Unbalanced (evil?) person who gets triforce will only retain one part while the other 2 will be sent to the 2 people of destiny. Then said unbalanced (evil) person has to gather those two people to make a wish.

So when Ganon did gather Link and Zelda in the other games he essentially had the triforce.

In SS no one touched the triforce yet. This game you went through trials to get the mark of each piece which symbolized that when you touched the triforce it would not split apart because you're characteristics are pure and balanced.

Am I missing something?

Not sure if you're missing something, but I'm definitely missing the part where the red text is made clear in the game.

 

[Spire]

I want to say I remember Fi perhaps mentioning the "pure of heart" context after assembling the Triforce on the hands of the statue of Hylia. However, I don't recall it being explicitly stated and as such, it's probably just a nice assumption.

 

[Big_R]

Yeah I was assuming that I guess. It just seemed that way since Ghirahim didn't even seem to care about it. Usually the evil people are after the triforce. He just wanted to bring Demise back.

The triforce really let me down. It's like Link coulda powered up his sword then rocked Demise. What gets me is he didn't SAY I want Demise dead in my time. It talks more about purity of heart. Wouldn't you think in his heart he would never want Demise to exist? Maybe not...on second thought. It never felt like you were really struggling to save everyone. Zelda was always the motivation, which is a little selfish, but more understandable.

Even Groose got close with old Impa in the meantime. More character growth from him than anyone else lol

 

[MuraRengan]

Yeah I was assuming that I guess. It just seemed that way since Ghirahim didn't even seem to care about it. Usually the evil people are after the triforce. He just wanted to bring Demise back.

The triforce really let me down. It's like Link coulda powered up his sword then rocked Demise. What gets me is he didn't SAY I want Demise dead in my time. It talks more about purity of heart. Wouldn't you think in his heart he would never want Demise to exist? Maybe not...on second thought. It never felt like you were really struggling to save everyone. Zelda was always the motivation, which is a little selfish, but more understandable.

Even Groose got close with old Impa in the meantime. More character growth from him than anyone else lol

I very much agree with the red. One of my main gripes with the game is how the gravity of the situation is never really felt. The presence of a menacing threat is not felt from either Ghirahim or Demise. It really disappoints me. All the fun I had with the game came from how brilliant the combat system was, but I enjoy good stories way more. SS's story was very weak and particularly fairy-taleish.

I remember constantly thinking "So what if the Imprisoned breaks free? What can he do?" And I was always looking to see where exactly the danger in the game was. I wanted to see something important get destoyed or something. Honestly, I think the only reason the Imprisoned's escape is so dangerous is because he'll kill Zelda in the Sealed Grounds, that's the only immediate threat. When Demise got set free, I wanted to see him go ape-**** on a couple of things before I actually get to fight him. I mean he looks like a pretty menacing villain, but we never get to see the extent of his power, and thus, no motivating reason to want to beat him other than, "Well, he's the last boss."

Zelda needs to retouch its interpretative roots like how it did in MM. MM 4 lyfe.

 

[#HBC | ZoZo]

I see where you guys are coming from...

but I really wanted to save Zelda. Really. Really. I even went on a couple hours past midnight just cuz I wanted to save her. It was a big drive for me.

 

[LLDL]

I got the impression that Demise would get whooped by Majora's Mask. Just the Mask.

 

[Spire]

I thought Majora might've played a role in this game as well. There were telltale signs, but it didn't add up.

 

[#HBC | ZoZo]

Nooow you got me interested.

Tell me.

 

[Spire]

Well, Ghirahim's human form resembling the Gilded Sword automatically drew suspicions of a link to Termina. From an interview ca. September I believe, Aonuma said that we would revisit familiar places in Skyward Sword, but that not all of them would be part of Hyrule. Unless he considers any of the locations in the game to not actually be part of Hyrule, I'm lost.

Well anyways, that statement raised further beliefs that we may revisit Termina in some form.

Upon looking upon the full map prior to playing the game, I thought that the odd geographical positing of Hyrule indicated that it might be overlapped with Termina. There's an old dried up ocean to the west in Skyward Sword, and there's an actual ocean to the west in Majora's Mask. I thought that given the ancient architecture, foreign to most classic Hyrulean motifs, it could be some product of overlapping worlds. Heh, obviously my imagination got carried away.

 

[SkylerOcon]

Gonna disregard the rest of the thread for a second (sorry guys) and just throw out my own opinions on Skyward Sword. It was a really good game, probably one of the better games this generation, but it was still a huge letdown. Every review I read before the game came out spoke about how amazing the story is and how challenging the game was. The story was good, not amazing and the gameplay was pretty far removed from challenging.

Nintendo improved on the gameplay in tons of ways. The sword play is awesome, the RPG-lite elements are really cool, and the bosses finally moved past the three strikes rule. However, the dungeon design is where it all falls apart. I was never stuck for more than five minutes at any point in the game. Most of the puzzles were predictable and the ones that weren't didn't take too long to figure out. It simply wasn't very hard, and I don't play Zelda for simplicity.

The story was also a let down, but that's more a fault of the design. When one looks at the past four major Zelda games (OoT, WW, TP, and MM), one thing the game excelled out was painting a picture of how the different species and cultures of Hyrule lived at worked. The only culture we're given an adequate picture of is Skyward Sword is the citizens of Skyloft and we don't even spend the majority of the game there. We don't really see anything resembling Mogma or Goron cities and only see the same three or four characters the whole game. This makes the player unable to truly see the gravity of the situation. Why should we care about the surface when the game doesn't even make an effort to show there's a substantial amount of creatures capable of sentient thought? Perhaps SS worked better on a character basis than most Zelda games, but Zelda has always excelled in amazing world building (even then, MM proves Nintendo is capable of both great character and world stories). SS absolutely fails at this, and the game suffered as a result.

SS is still an amazing game. However, it is still very deeply flawed.

@Spire: Perhaps a game explaining why Termina even exists is on the way? Afterall, we still don't know why Hyrule even has a parallel universe. Maybe Termina was split off for some reason.

EDIT: The best way I could describe it is that in the process of improving everything that needed improvement with the Zelda series, Nintendo forgot what made it good in the first place.

 

[Spire]

Goddamn I agree with you.

I'm past my hype for SS. It's all gone.

While I had fun, I was disappointed with the game, mainly because of the lack of culture. Even Skyloft felt falsely cultural.

 

[kys]

Constructing good puzzles is a huge challenge. You have to consider the audience. What might be easy for you can be incredibly challenging for someone else. And what might be hard for you might be downright impossible for someone else. The game has to be made accessible to a large audience, yaknow, to make money and all that. While I agree with you that the puzzles were easy, I'm sympathetic towards the designers. It's extremely difficult to design puzzles.

 

[SkylerOcon]

Constructing good puzzles is a huge challenge. You have to consider the audience. What might be easy for you can be incredibly challenging for someone else. And what might be hard for you might be downright impossible for someone else. The game has to be made accessible to a large audience, yaknow, to make money and all that. While I agree with you that the puzzles were easy, I'm sympathetic towards the designers. It's extremely difficult to design puzzles.

It's the designers job to make a satisfying game experience. In a game series centered around puzzles, the difficulty of the puzzles is a credible metric for which we can judge the game. We can't be sympathetic towards the designers when the game doesn't change in difficulty level the whole time. This lowers player engagement and harms the game experience as a whole.

So yes, making good puzzles is a challenge. As designers on the Zelda team, that is their job. I'm not saying it should've been difficult straight out of the gate, but the puzzles at the beginning of the game were no easier than the puzzles at the end. That's why I have a problem with the puzzle design in Skyward Sword.

Every other major Zelda game has sold millions and had a relatively high difficulty level towards the end. I don't think it was an attempt to make more sales, it was a result of poor design.

EDIT: Just clarification, Skyward's puzzles were good in the sense that they were highly intuitive. The solutions felt natural. The thing is that they didn't require any real thinking. The solutions were obvious and predictable, and didn't require much thought to figure out.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

It's the designers job to make a satisfying game experience. In a game series centered around puzzles, the difficulty of the puzzles is a credible metric for which we can judge the game. We can't be sympathetic towards the designers when the game doesn't change in difficulty level the whole time. This lowers player engagement and harms the game experience as a whole.

So yes, making good puzzles is a challenge. As designers on the Zelda team, that is their job. I'm not saying it should've been difficult straight out of the gate, but the puzzles at the beginning of the game were no easier than the puzzles at the end. That's why I have a problem with the puzzle design in Skyward Sword.

Every other major Zelda game has sold millions and had a relatively high difficulty level towards the end. I don't think it was an attempt to make more sales, it was a result of poor design.

EDIT: Just clarification, Skyward's puzzles were good in the sense that they were highly intuitive. The solutions felt natural. The thing is that they didn't require any real thinking. The solutions were obvious and predictable, and didn't require much thought to figure out.

I'd say (and who knows how many times I've mentioned this) that TP had a very weak ending in terms of difficulty, only the boss stepped it up, which isn't much since the rest were all easy. Also, yes, the story was awful, but compared to most RPG games with a story only, compared to the other Zeldas on the consoles? Definitely surpassed them by a mile. But to solve the puzzle dilemma, and I may get hate to say this, but they need to liken the game that likened itself after Zelda: Okami. The game with puzzles that didn't have you staring puzzles right on the face, it even solves the story problem by delving very deep with a story. I've heard someone reviewing the game saying the expression, "The best Zelda game Nintendo never made". I may have to agree with that assessment. It even bore more difficulty.

But you do raise a good point, I've found most of the reviews quite misleading, especially the ones that hand out 10 out of 10s (or whatever measurement they used), since it may feel that way at first, once you put forth some ex post facto judgment, it is more like an 8 out of ten.

 

[etecoon]

I never expected a link to termina and I'm glad there wasn't one, MM is ambiguous and as far as I can tell termina's existence is supposed to be left a complete mystery, the idea of termina being simply a neighboring land to hyrule really doesn't sit right with me

it is odd though that something in SS is supposed to be "not hyrule" but also familiar, maybe the most western parts of lanayru could be considered not hyrule but where were they seen before? by OoT the gerudo desert is part of hyrule isn't it?

 

[MuraRengan]

Well, considering Hyrule didn't exist yet, even if these lands are what become Huryle in the future, they are technically not Hyrule yet.

 

[Spire]

By that logic, what places in Skyward Sword have we visited before?

 

[etecoon]

I can't see the logic in that, the way it was worded I can't think that was the intended meaning unless it was really really badly translated. you can rationalize that we've visited a lot of places in GROOSELAND before, eldin volcano eventually becoming death mountain and the lanayru region becoming lake hylia and the gerudo desert and so on, but these are all "part of hyrule"

 

[kys]

I agree completely about the lack progressive puzzle design (well, some of it did get a little more complex towards the end, but not by much), but I have seen a lot of people ragequit the game out of frustration. I just think it's good to remember that puzzle difficulty is subjective.

I was REALLY looking forward to the whole "familiar places we've seen before, but not hyrule", and came away disappointed. But then when I think about it, I don't really play Zelda for the story so meh. I mean, when LoZ and AoL came out, do you HONESTLY believe there was some sort of timeline then? I'm pretty skeptical. I think story enthusiasts will end up being shafted.

 

[ParaChomp]

Everyone on the last forum killed me after I posted this. Do I mind? Not at all.