Zelda & Loftwing amiibo Announced

 

Finally, there are some Zelda news to talk about... Sadly, it's not exactly good news. With the release of Skyward Sword HD on July 16th, we're also getting a new amiibo: Zelda & Loftwing. It looks really beautiful and will be a perfect addition to the current line-up, where from Skyward Sword we only had its Link so far. Getting both the Skyward Sword Zelda and a Loftwing in one is a really nice idea.

So, what's the bad news? Well, watch for yourself. There's a catch. The problem is not that we're getting this amiibo, the problem is what it does inside the HD remaster. If you scan it by calling Fi, the game will let you ascend back to the sky from any point on the overworld. And if you scan the amiibo again, you will be able to return to this point. This even works in dungeons...

If you look at my three year old suggestions for Skyward Sword HD, then you'll see that improving the whole traveling and warping system was one of the key points there, including the ability to go back to the sky at any point. And locking such a quality of life improvement behind an amiibo figurine is simply not okay, no matter how you put. Even if you own the amiibo, it will be highly unpractical to use it for this. Such a feature should be easily accessible and not require you to keep a figurine around for the entirety of your playthrough. It's just really bad design.

We're speaking about a new teleportation feature here, after all. Imagine, if you had to scan an amiibo in order to use the Travel Medallion in Breath of the Wild. This would be ridiculous as well, but that's exactly what Nintendo is doing with Skyward Sword HD now. And in Breath of the Wild this was already bad, because that feature was locked behind DLC.

But what's next? In order to use the new button controls you'll have to scan the Skyward Sword Link amiibo when starting the game? We can probably be happy that The Wind Waker HD released before the age of amiibo or else you would have to scan a Red King of Lions figurine each time you want to use the Swift Sail..

A better idea would have been adding new Medals to the game, where some of them are amiibo exclusive. The one from Zelda & the Loftwing could have given you additional blue wing icons for your Loftwing to increase its stamina. That still would be a terrible practice and such items should be available without amiibo, but at least it would be more convenient and the Medals were a really underdeveloped feature, where this would hit two birds with one stone.

In general, I've enjoyed using the amiibo loot system from Breath of the Wild, where you scan all your amiibo once per day and might get some cool cosmetic items out of it. But using amiibo to perform regular ingame actions isn't exactly enjoyable, it's just cumbersome. And normal game features should not be locked behind these figurines in any case.

You also have to consider that these figurines don't get made in sufficient numbers and are usually sold out online within minutes. So, a majority of the Skyward Sword HD players won't even be able to make use of this (legally). What was Nintendo thinking here?

And overall you can only wonder how badly Nintendo is doing these days. Apparently they are doing fine, but stuff like this looks incredibly greedy. Ten years ago you would get the full new game with a golden Wii Remote and a CD with orchestrated music for the same price as they are selling this lackluster remaster now in two months. And if you want the figurine or the new Joy-cons on top, you'll have to pay extra.

Update: According to Nintendo's press release, this is the only amiibo supported by the game. Feels like Nintendo didn't know what to do with amiibo in Skyward Sword HD and then simply slapped one of the remaster improvements onto it.