Nintendo Developer's Roundtable Report

Nintendo on Skyward Sword
Many more interesting things were revealed about Skyward Sword at the developer's roundtable. Firstly, it was revealed that the release date for Skyward Sword is set for 2011, with a slight possibility for it to change to late 2010. However, Mr. Aonuma said that although Skyward Sword was in the 'in the final stretch,' there was too much content left to create to confidently say the game will come out in 2010. From there, the part in trailer where Link jumps of the cliff is elaborated on. Of course, this concearns the storyline of the game, so if you want to avoid all potential spoilers, don't click the following link. If you don't mind on the other hand, check out the Skyward Sword storyline section.

Next up, Miyamoto talked about the efforts Nintendo has put into 'streamlining the inventory system.' The Wii Motion controller is used like a '3D mouse' to highlight onscreen items in order to select items more efficiently - to get an idea of what problems the new system negates, the infamous example of the Water Temple and the Iron Boots is brought up. 'You know the Water Temple? Who thought it was tough or even horrible? I've lived with that for the last ten odd years,' says Miyamoto.

Questions and Answers

Question: In Zelda, is the HUD a work in progress, with the on-screen controller? It was designed and implemented for E3. Will it change?
Response: Yes. At E3 we're throwing a lot of things at you at once, and we made something for people to quickly understand. We've had HUD in past Zelda games, and you've always had the option to turn it off with a button.

Question: Will Zelda have orchestral music and/or voice acting?
Response:We can't do what we did in Super Mario Galaxy 2 and not move forward and do the same thing in Zelda. We have people on staff looking forward to getting to work on that.

Question: Can you tell us about the decision to have the world continue in realtime while you consume potions, a change from past Zelda games?
Response: We didn't want to interupt game flow, we didn't want to stop the game just so you can drink a potion. It's to keep the game moving.

Question: Which came first, the whip in Spirit Tracks or the whip in Skyward Sword?
Response: With Wii Motion Plus you can do more with it than you could on touch screen. The majority of people who worked with Aonuma on Spirit Tracks are now on Skyward Sword.

Question: Will the sword controls become tiring after long gaming sessions?
Response: Yeah it gets tiring. We designed the E3 version to have very aggressive enemies. The final version will have better pacing with puzzles to solve, you won't have just swordfighting. It won't tire you out as much as you think if you look at the E3 demo. You can tweak it for smaller moves, but it feels better when you really get into it.

Question: You show older Zelda games in the trailer at the start. Do the other games have any impact in Skyward Sword?
Response: Nope, sorry!