After the debut of the new trailer at Comic-Con, GameSpot was able to talk with Bill Trinen about a wide variety of Skyward Sword topics. The video also features good footage of the Ghirahim and Sky Temple demos that were available to play along with the Bird Riding demo at the convention. After the jump, you can find several highlights and quotes.

Trinen again describes what we know of the story and gameplay, with a few new bits thrown in. For example, he suggests that the player will have a feeling that someone (Ghirahim) is following Link up until their confrontation at the end of Sky Temple. I didn’t notice if this was apparent in the demo, but I like the idea of keeping the plot going through traditionally plotless parts of the game. Frequently when going through dungeons in Zelda games, one might focus so much on the puzzles that they forget the larger task of collecting the item at the end or confronting an important character. It’s nice to have a subtle reminder that you’re still progressing through a story, like when carrying Medli and Makar in The Wind Waker, or collecting soup ingredients in Twilight Princess.

After reiterating the integration of Wii MotionPlus into the game’s enemies, puzzles, and overworld, and describing the art style, Trinen reveals that the Sky Temple dungeon is actually much larger than what we saw in the demo.

So this is the same dungeon that we showed at E3, but I think what a lot of people don’t really realize is that we were plopping people down in the middle of the dungeon; there was a whole section of the dungeon that came before this that nobody got to see yet.

Those who regret spoiling the dungeon by watching too many gameplay videos may be relieved that they have only memorized half of the dungeon. There’s still plenty more to figure out on your own first-hand.

GhirahimPhiThis GameSpot interviewer happened to notice the diamonds that appear on Ghirahim’s waist and Phi’s chest (Trinen pronounces her name with a long I if there’s still any confusion leftover from E3 about that), and when he asked Trinen if there was any connection between the two characters, he didn’t get a direct answer: “That’s an interesting observation. You’re going to have to play the game a bit more to figure that out. You’re astute!”

Trinen also elaborates a little bit on the upgrade system that was alluded to in E3:

What I can say though is what we have done with the game this time that I think a little bit different is… They’ve built an entire upgrade system into the game. So for example, right now you can see that Link has his traditional shield, but he actually will get a lot of diferent shields in the game. He will start off with a very basic one, and then as you fight enemies, you will recover these kind of treasures or artifacts that you can then use as resources to upgrade your items. And you can do that with your shield, you can do that with the beetle, and some of the other items that you have where you’re able to kind of combine your collection of rupees and your collection of resources and improve the items that you have.

Of course, with the interviewer so excited by the talk of this highly anticipated game, he has to ask yet again when it will be released. The most recent word from Nintendo now is still “this holiday.”

Source: Nintendo Everything via GoNintendo

Related: Skyward Sword Walkthrough

Sorted Under: Skyward Sword