Blog Articles in Category “Critique”

In April of 2020 I got my own Switch, and a copy of Breath of the Wild to play on the go - something I planned to eventually do at some point. I had previously beaten the game's main story on the Wii U, but I didn't purchase the DLC because I knew I was going to be upgrading to a Switch copy at some point. Now that I have completed the DLC, it's time I finally share my thoughts on the game as a whole.

Clearing the water, it is probably true that the mere fact this is an open world Zelda was bound to impress me, and negate a lot of shortcomings, which I can definitely see bothering other people. I remember stepping out of the Shrine of Resurrection and witnessing that pan out view of Hyrule for my first time, and like many I was in awe - this was it, the game I had been dreaming of since the time while I was playing Ocarina of Time 22 years ago and thought, "What is beyond that 2D tree barrier?"

For me Breath of the Wild does a lot right, however, it isn't flawless. That said, most of…

Read More

Finally, we’ve reached one of the biggest subjects on Skyward Sword. Reiterating what I said in the previous segment on Design, Skyward Sword was created with two things in mind: the Motion Controls which made the game combat focused, and story. Skyward Sword is very story driven, they started with the premise of the game being the origin story of the Master Sword and went from there. Some argue this game executed story in Zelda better than any other game to date, and that it also had the best character development. I disagree. I admit it feels like they did try to put emphasis on story, but the end result falls short.



The plot didn’t really come together easily at all. Besides the idea of exploring the origins of the Master Sword, another concept was showing the creation of Hyrule. For a long time, progress was hard to gain during development because many contradictions to established lore came up. (The game still has contradictions, but there could have been a lot more.)…

Read More

Design



(Moldarach in Faron woods!???)

It is true that SS was created from the beginning to be combat focused, as well heavily story driven. They never had any intention for exploration to be a factor, they purposely designed the game so you couldn’t ever get lost. They made areas compact, they gave us beacons, and the dowsing feature. I was oblivious to that fact about the game, as I was very picky about what I watched so I wouldn’t spoil the game for myself. Gameplaywise, I only watched a video of the beginning of the game, and I watched footage of the first Ghirahim battle in Skyview Temple.

I understand that bashing a game for not being something it was never intended to be is unfair, but I have my own opinions on where I think the Zelda series should go for future games, the way SS turned out wasn’t the direction I think Zelda should have gone.

My biggest issue with the game was the world. It bothered me that the regions of the surface weren’t connected via the surface itself. I can…

Read More

Controls



(Remember Skyward Sword Collector’s Edition with that Golden Wiimote? I bought it. The Gold Wiimote and the Orchestral CD turned out to be the only things I liked in the bundle.)

Now let’s actually get into breaking the game down. The best place to start is the Motion Controls. The game as a whole was made to have what was supposed to be a quality showcase of what Motion Controls could really do. In the Wii version of Twilight Princess you could swing the remote to have Link attack with his sword. It wasn’t accurately registering the swings you were making though. So Skyward Sword’s focus was 1 to 1 Motion Controls for Link’s sword. The way you swing your Wii Remote, Link, in the game, is supposed to mirror perfectly.

After the game released I did research and found out that the extra year of development towards the game was really took because the promise of 1:1 Motion wasn’t even close to being fulfilled by 2010. While being interviewed Aonuma even mentioned that he set up a…

Read More

I’m going to devote a blog series to Skyward Sword. I really feel like doing it, the initial motivation was from a debate on Discord last month, a guy got me ranting about the game and I wasn’t able to share everything I wanted to say. All the rumors about an HD remaster have kind of triggered me on this too. Fair warning, this Blog series is going to tap into my personal feelings towards the game, so this isn’t an objective review. The originall plan was to just write one Blog, but after reaching roughly 12 pages, or 5,000 words, and still not being nearly done even at this point, I realized few people will read over 5,000 words with a Blog about a SS rant. So I'm just going to split it up, I'd rather have people read this than write a massive article nobody will really read in it's entirety.

[…]

Challenge accepted

My experience leading up to the release



Skyward Sword was the first Home Console Zelda game where I had full online access leading up to the games release. With other Zelda…

Read More