Zelda: Skyward Sword details from the latest Iwata Asks

The second edition of the Iwata Asks for Zelda: Skyward Sword has been completely translated by Nintendo. There are some interesting tidbits contained in the discussion, so I’ve rounded up some of the information for your convenience. You can find all of the details after the break.

– Shigeyuki Asuke in charge of the Sealed Grounds
– Sealed Grounds is an area that is a connection point for players before they reach the game fields/dungeons
– Sealed Grounds described as “an incredibly important place in the story”
– Huge boss appears in the Sealed Grounds
– In Skyward Sword, players go through the same fields rather than a bunch of new ones
– Eiji Aonuma asked the team to make Skyward Sword compact
– Miyamoto usually tells Aonuma to make the game compact, but this time Aonuma gave out that order
– Fujbayashi believed there could be more interest if the fields were made with height and depth so you would experience something new each time you visited one
– The forest field, which is the first field, is important, so Fujibayashi asked Hiramuki to give it detailed attention
– Skyward Sword’s forest area isn’t dim and creepy unlike in past games
– The forest field has big mushrooms, animals, and insects
– Iwata says that the bug-catching component is deep
– Bugs include grasshoppers, cicadas, dragonflies, butterflies, unicorn beetles and stag beetles and mantises
– Different kinds of birds
– The blue bird is more on the rare side
– Hiramuki tried to make the landforms more three dimensional than before
– Dowsing feature added in early on
– Beacon/Dowsing helps players not to get lost
– Ito: “someone at NOA (Nintendo of America) had said that the effects were featureless and lacked something. So I hurled myself into fixing them. To make it look better, I would make something and toss it out, make something and toss it out. It would fit in well, but I was aiming for distinctive visuals and tried a variety of manners of expression.”
– Ito experimented with the sword so the way you swing would be clearly visible
– Aonuma asked the team to include “A giant enemy attacks one place”
– Fujibayashi then told Asuke, “There’s a giant boss that tries to force its way to a destination. I want you to come up with a way of holding it back.”
– This time you hold the back boss rather than defeat it
– This required a large landform
– Asuke determined that a vast, flat space wouldn’t be suitable since it would be hard to play in; came up with a spiral shape
– Asuke went with an area in which Link could cling to that boss when he fought it
– The boss reaches the top at the end
– Spiral landform allows you to see from the top where the boss is climbing
– Use the Sailcloth to fly down/jump down from a high place without taking damage
– At the bottom, you can attack the boss’s legs, though you can’t see anything else
– Fly up with the Sailcloth at holes with air blowing up
– This boss – the Big Boss/The Sealed One – shows up several times in the game
– Seal the boss, but never completely defeat it
– The way you fight changes as the story progresses
– Link has many actions in the game
– Team wondered if they could make some kind of new gameplay element involving Dash and came up with something similar to tag
– Silent Realm gameplay can be compared to tag, so you can’t use the sword/shield there
– Team used fields that player has been to before for the Silent Realm so they will have an advantage and think about strategy
– The fields have some puzzle solving
– Devs paid a lot of attention to how to enter dungeons
– They tried to recreate entering dungeons similar to how it was done in the first Zelda
– The forest in Skyward Sword changes as the story continues
– On your last visit, “something unbelievable happens”
– Some people consider Zelda as Medieval European-style fantasy, but this title has robots
– Fi may help you learn something that you may not have known otherwise