Miyamoto On Skyward Sword Development

Along those lines, Skyward Sword required a great deal more preliminary experimentation than previous titles in the vaunted series. “We went through several fragmentary tests, something which I think was the most important point of this project,” Miyamoto recalled. “The structures we made with this experimentation — the Siren world is probably the best example of this — we then looked at and said ‘Maybe we can use this.’ The project was, in a way, driven on how we could take Siren and tie it up with the game’s story in a single package. It’s a more fundamental ground-up process than we went through with The Wind Waker and later Zeldas.”

It was also a process that took time. Lots of it. “I had wanted to keep it within three years, really,” Miyamoto admits. “When you have a development period of five years, it’s often the case that around two of those years wind up being completely wasted effort. With this game, though, I think all the work that everyone put into this project gets fully seen in the final product. I did say it was five years, but the first two of those were spent with assorted experimentation, so essentially it was three years. We went through kind of a long experimentation period, I suppose.”

One of the fruits of that experimentation is a new control method that attempts to streamline the process of selecting and using items. At the core of that is the Wii MotionPlus, which gets used for a lot more than just wrist-based swordplay. “You may think the Wii remote is just used as a pointer in this game, but it’s not,” Miyamoto said. “Wii MotionPlus allows us to detect how the remote is being tilted, so you don’t have to point it right at the screen to get it detected any longer. In other words, all you have to do to move the cursor is change the angle of your wrist. It’s kind of like a 3D mouse that way. You can also press down on the control pad if the cursor’s offscreen to reset its position to the center of the screen.”

The way the game world itself is structured has also been radically changed for Skyward Sword. “With previous Zeldas,” explained Miyamoto, “we took what we thought was good from the past and used that as a base to build on. Sooner or later, though, we need to add some new play structure to the thing, or else people will say ‘Well, Zelda’s just the same old puzzles going across the same eight dungeons.’ I don’t feel a need to stick with that system, because I think Zelda’s core lies in playing around in the same world over a period time, gradually learning more about it and building experience as you discover new secrets. The NES Zelda had a small map so that worked, but as hardware progressed, the scale got large enough that often you’d see places that you only visited once in the game. I wasn’t entirely sure that made for a real Zelda-like experience.”