Friday, July 24, 2009

Zelda Wii: The Sword Spirit of Recalibration




Wii Sports Resort was released today in Europe and I just love that game. It has a great variety of different fun games and it shows, what could be possible in Zelda Wii. The sword combat is very accurate and a lot of fun. The Archery is epic, probably the best sport in the whole package, and I would be very disappointed, if it isn't done that way in Zelda Wii too. Though the way you hold it might be a problem, because you would have to switch Wiimote and Nunchuk ingame. Canoeing is also relevant, if they include canoes like in Twilight Princess, and the Frisbee shows how the Boomerang in Zelda could work. MotionPlus is definitely a great tool to make the next Zelda game an unique experience. However, the MotionPlus needs to be recalibrated from time to time. It's not as troublesome as some so called professional review site editors might want you to think, it only happens once in a while and you just lay down the Wiimote on a flat surface (like a table) for like two seconds, that's it. You can manually recalibrate it during the game by pausing, but most sports use a stance determining mechanism anyway, so there's normally no need to do so.



To come back to Zelda Wii and the mysterious artwork with the Mastersword fairy/spirit, I have a new idea, why Nintendo uses this story concept in the upcoming Wii Zelda game. In my previous article about the Zelda Wii artwork I've dealt with the theory, that it has something to do with first person gameplay, since the development of Zelda Wii probably started around first person gameplay ideas. However, Miyamoto then recently stated, that Zelda Wii is not going to be that different, remember? Which is why I basically backed off from the whole first person thing. A different theory now would be, that the sword spirit idea could have something to do with the recalibration of the Wii MotionPlus. That Nintendo wants to make the recalibration into an ingame gameplay feature. I proceed on the assumption, that the fairy/spirit on the artwork is the Mastersword and that the Mastersword can transform into this living being and back into a sword, so it can communicate with the player. The sword is basically your sidekick this time. Now what if Nintendo wants you to use the recalibration of the MotionPlus as a trigger to call your sidekick? Like an ingame feature. Take off and lay down your sword (your Wiimote), so it can transform into the spirit. While this may have certain important ingame advantages, your Wii uses this time period to quickly recalibrate your MotionPlus. Actually not a bad idea, Nintendo. Not bad at all.

But what speaks against this theory is, that Miyamoto stated, Zelda Wii would only utilize MotionPlus, if MotionPlus is successful. So, why preparing ideas like that, if they still aren't sure, if they're going to use it? And, more importantly, why showing artwork of such ideas? Well, maybe because they liked the idea storywise so much, that they kept it, even if the initial reason, why it was developed, may not be part of the game anymore. This could also apply, if the idea of the Mastersword spirit was created by first person gameplay concepts. Maybe it really was, but now it's used for MotionPlus. And maybe Miyamoto just said funny things, while he knew, that MotionPlus is going to be successful anyway. Even if it's not, Zelda Wii could be a strong draft horse for it.

No comments: