Tuesday, September 13, 2011

New Skyward Sword Footage at 3DS Conference

So, this is a 3DS conference, so what can we expect about Zelda? Nothing much really, oh wait, Miyamoto gets on stage with Master Sword and Hylia Shield... Waaaahhh, cool new version of Four Swords! Waaaahhh, tons of new Skyward Sword stuff!!!

The latter I did not see coming and there's lots of stuff to process here. I will update this post later after I got some sleep (it's 6AM here).

But... giant flying Windfish thingy, Dual Clawshot returns, the Bug Catching Net returns, collecting butterflies, the F.L.U.D.D. from Mario Sunshine as an item, Phantoms, awesome mincart rails, flooded forest area, giiaaaant dark boss thingy, stuff, stuff, stuff... they shown us more about this game in two minutes than have shown us before.



Update: You can watch the whole thing here. Let's start to talk about some interesting things here.

Most if not all B-Items are revealed at this point. The Bug Catching Net will return for the first time after A Link to the Past and Ancient Stone Tablets. No other Zelda game brought this item back yet (if you don't count the bunny catching net in Spirit Tracks) and it's definitely something that would utilize MotionPlus very well. The Double Clawshot from Twilight Princess also returns. It was definitely a cool item and one of the few items that got a lot of usage back then, but this is also the reason why I'm not really excited about this. Because we got that already. The last item is some kind of sprinkler, it reminds me of the F.L.U.D.D. device from Super Mario Sunshine. Wouldn't be the only thing taken from 3D Mario games. (UPDATE: Actually this item will be similar to the Gust Jar from The Minish Cap, very awesome.)

The Mole Mitts were also shown for the first time, though it doesn't seem to be a B-Item, but rather something, which you only use in first person scout mode. There you use the Skyward Sword like a compass, it points to many things including Zelda herself.

We get a larger look at the desert area for the first. I bet there are a lot of quicksand areas, where you can't touch ground. It looks like some giant, massive obstacle course, where you climb stuff and go on insanely fast minecarts, etc. And there are desert ships. I just love this idea in general, this was probably the best thing about Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and I welcome the sand sailors to the realm of Zelda. I always wanted something like this in a Zelda game ever since Oracle of Seasons, where you leave the Samasa Desert on board of a pirate ship.

The forest area from the E3 2010 demo seems to be flooded at the beginning. Nice clear water, reminds me of the GDC2005 trailer of Twilight Princess, where Links also dives in some clear water inside a forest area.

There are actually Phantoms in the so called "Silent Realm" (and not Siren Realm like thought previously), they look really badass and you can put them to sleep by collecting Tears of Light, however, when a Poe notices you they wake up anyway. I guess this part will be the one that's least fun for me, I hate running from enemies.

I misjudged the giant fire spider rock boss though. It's called Scaldera and you don't actually run from him. The boss arena is a ramp and you can now run up ramps using the dashing. Luring the boss up there seems to be part of the fight, so this is luckily not some giant chasing sequence like I feared previously.

Talking about awesome bosses, there was this huuuuge dark thingy and you had to climb on top of it. It's scary, dark, huge and there was a meter indicating the distance between the monster and some destination. You probably have to stop it before it gets there. That was some real crazy shit. But not as crazy as the giant flying Windfish monster with Eyesoar Bellum eyes all over it (it felt really similar to the Ghost Ship battle sequence in Phantom Hourglass). So, there's actually sky combat, however, you attack by dashing into things with your bird. And to get more Pirates of the Caribbean references, Link is on board a ship that gets attacked by same huge Kraken-like tentacles.

Another cool thing was the fighting sequence where Link dashes at one of the fat enemies and jumps over him. That was stylish, I'm really going to enjoy battling the stronger normal enemies. About the stamina stuff, you collect green fruits to recover your stamina instantly.

The first collectible quest got introduced next to the already established Pieces of Heart. If you've followed my blog for a while, you know that I'm a huge fan of collecting items in Zelda games: Secret Seashells, Gold Skulltulas, Gasha Rings, Figurines, Spirit Gems, Ship Parts... I just dig that kind of stuff and it's really important to me. And now that we have the Bug Catching Net it makes sense that you collect bugs with it. In A Link to the Past you would use it for all kinds of stuff but not catching any bugs (only some bees). However, this kinda looks lame. It's seems to be the same like the Golden Bugs in Twilight Princess, only not golden, which makes it even lamer. But at least you get better uses for you bugs than just Rupees and Wallet Upgrades, you can upgrade potions using bugs for example. It looked like you can collect multiple bugs of one kind. For the potion upgrade you needed one yellow beetle, three blue butterflies and one lady beetle.

Yeah, and there was Beedle, who was powering his flying house by cycling on a bike, lol. He sold a Bombbag Upgrade (I think) and something that looked like a shattered Heart Container (not a Heart Piece). Update: this is one of the medals. However, expect some nice "oohhhhhhhhh, thaaank youuuuuuuu" in this one.

But I'm going to stop here, there's so much stuff to process and the video was only the beginning, it's a real overload of Zelda information today. More in upcoming posts.

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