Miyamoto Reaffirms Graphical Direction in Skyward Sword, Takes Place in Hyrule

The king of the world, Shigeru Miyamoto, talked about The Legend of Zelda – Skyward Sword in an interview with Joystiq, among other things. He elaborated on their reasoning to use the graphical style they did, and talked a bit about the controls. Read the full interview here.

Skyward Swords is arguably the first Wii Zelda game, since Twilight Princess started on Gamecube and was modified for when it came out on both platforms. It’s using Wii MotionPlus. How much different is that experience from Twilight Princess?

We tried to talk about it a little bit during the presentation, but we had some wireless difficulties with the demo, so it didn’t look as smooth. A big focus for us this time was not necessarily a comparison in terms of how this game is different from Twilight Princess, but how we’re separating it from the Zelda series. What I mean by that is particularly with the control and how you’re able to do so many different things by combining motion with just a few simple button presses. Particularly in this game, the fluidity of moving from sword to items and the realistic motions that you’ll be doing to use these different items is going to be really important in terms of immersing you within the experience, making you feel like you’re in that world doing those things. Even something as simple as the aiming, which is handled not necessarily with a pointer but by moving your hand around, just like you would aim an item in real life, will make it that much easier for you to feel like you’re in that world of Hyrule and experiencing the adventure that Link is, because you’re so connected to what’s going on.

Visually, it looks more like a Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time than Majora’s Mask or Wind Waker. Where do you think it fits with the Zelda library in terms of gameplay, visuals and style?

I think that from a visual standpoint, it’s probably something that’s closer to some of the older Zelda games. There are two things that we strive for when creating a Zelda game. One is to make the experience easily understandable to people who are playing the game, and the other is to have an art style that is unique and can stand on its own. With this game in particular, because we’ve implemented Wii MotionPlus and the sword controls, so that the enemies actively defend against your sword control, it requires clear visual cues for you to understand what angle they are holding their sword at or what direction the mouth of the enemy is open at. The best way to create those types of visuals on screen is with characters that are somewhat over exaggerated. That’s something that doesn’t look good with hyper realistic style graphics.