Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto and Bill Trinen took the stage today to demo The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The game relies heavily on coordinating movements with your shield and sword in combat in order to survive. Sword control is fully reliant on MotionPlus, sort of like Zangeki no Reginleiv, and you’ll need to manouevre around enemies to break through their defenses.
So, for example, if an enemy is holding their shield over their head, vertical slashes won’t work. Two moves shown off on stage included a Shield Bash, initiated by thrusting the Nunchuk, and a move where you can point your sword up at the sky to charge it with solar energy. The Shield Bash can be used to deflect projectiles from enemies.
Then there are bombs. You can either use these like regular Zelda bombs, or like you control Wii Sports Bowling. If you’re good, you can put a little spin on your roll. Bows and arrows take their cue from Wii Sports Resort as well, as they’re controlled identically.
Next up, was a whip item, used similarly to the one from Spirit Tracks. You can use it to pull in items. The catch is that, this item, too, depends on how you swing your hands. Additionally, switching between items has been streamlined. While the demo ultimately suffered due to wireless interference, Nintendo got the point across.
Graphically, Skyward Sword looks like Twilight Princess, but, we believe, with a slight more dash of cel-shading. Unfortunately, the game has also — not like this is a surprise — been delayed to next year.
