First Zelda Wii artwork

On the E3 Miyamoto finally gave us some more information about the upcoming Zelda Wii, he also showed an artwork, which was now finally leaked. He stated, that the game would heavily use the MotionPlus controls (if MotionPlus will be successful, but I don't have any doubts about that) and that the controls will be very similar to the sword fighting and archery in Wii Sports Resorts in this case. He also said, that this will be a new era (so no continuation of Twilight Princess) and gave us a little hint about the story, by pointing out that Link doesn't carry his Mastersword in the picture.

If you look close, the little girl, that somehow looks like the great fairy in The Wind Waker, closely resembles the Mastersword. In Zelda Universe Forums someone even showed the similarities in a graphic, so take a look. So, obviously the Mastersword will be alive this time and this girl/fairy/spirit/whatever is the physical incarnation of the Master Sword. It probably will be able to transform into the fairy, so it can communicate with Link, and back into a sword. So, the Mastersword itself will be Link's next sidekick.

My theory is right now, that this idea was created for first person gameplay in Zelda. There were rumors about a first person Zelda since the release of Link's Crossbow Training, where Miyamoto stated that this game is supposed to be a bridge to more first person games, and I even talked about this a lot on my blog in my "The Future of Zelda" articles. Nintendo experimented with the first person perspective since the development of Ocarina of Time and there even was a first person demo of Twilight Princess. Plus the first person perspective would be the perfect choice for more MotionPlus powered gameplay.

So, what does the artwork have to do with first person gameplay? We have a living Mastersword, that can take the form of a fairy or something similar. But why should Nintendo want to do that? The story of a Zelda game is ALWAYS developed around the gameplay elements, which they want to add to the game. I love the Midna example in this case, Midna was created, because they wanted to have a Link, who can transform into a wolf. But a Wolf Link alone looked boring, so Miyamoto suggested to have something riding on it - and that's how Midna and her story was born in the end. So, why should Nintendo want the Mastersword to be a girl? The Mastersword must be really important for the game (even more than usual) and maybe it's simply because of MotionPlus. But I guess, this case is pretty similar to the Midna one. So far they used the 3rd person perspective, because it was nice to look at Link and it was the best way to distinguish the different forms of Link in the N64 games (young Link, old Link, Deku Link, Zora Link, etc.) So, but now if you use the first person perspective, it would be boring for Zelda gamers, because there isn't anything interesting to look at all the time, you can't see how Link does his fancy sword moves with his full body and so on, like you're used to. That's why they needed something interesting in front of the player and what would be more interesting in the case of a Zelda game than sword, that is actually alive? That's a freaking cool idea and I believe, that's how Nintendo came up with it.

Source: IGN Miyamoto Interview