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[TI82]

When skyward sword came out, Aonuma said:

“I honestly think we cannot go back to button controls now, so I think that these controls will be used in future Zelda titles, too.”

https://gamerant.com/legend-of-zelda-motion-control-future-tao-121155/

Clearly that isn't the case, does this mean that skyward sword was actually not well liked by the majority, or what else can we gleam from that answer and the reality of what happened?

I remember when skyward sword came out it was one of the lesser selling series in the franchise as well. While being on Nintendo stop selling hardware that was quite shocking.

(I'm biased in that I thought skyward sword was horrible. Those motion controls simply do not work 100% of the time. And thus are garbage)

 

[Mihael Mello Keehl]

No it doesnt, just form your own opinion and leave it at that.

 

[Sayad]

No it doesnt, just form your own opinion and leave it at that.

Did you read the OP?!

 

[Femto.]

No it doesnt, just form your own opinion and leave it at that.

Spoiler

Read the OP

 

[James Scott]

The Zelda series stuck with motion controls. You don't make a game for a new system that requires a controller for the old one, tho, so Wii motion plus for sword play had to be dropped in favor of gamepad support...which was dropped as well

Also you can like both, i do. They're very different experiences. We've also known they weren't using that control scheme since like 2014 so I'm not sure what the purpose of bringing it up now is

Spoiler

well I know why, but heh

 

[Supermanisdead]

No it doesnt, just form your own opinion and leave it at that.

you posted 5 minutes after the op and still lmaoo

 

[Common Knowledge]

Aonuma has stated directly that a lot of the design goals of BotW (i.e. the open-world and freedom of exploration) is in part due to criticism of SS's highly linear and contained structure. Personally, I respect him for listening to criticism and taking it into account when designing future games.


As for the motion controls, well, BotW has some of them.

 

[LambdaTeos]

No it doesnt, just form your own opinion and leave it at that.

it must be hard to read the OP when you've been crying 12 months straight...

 

[Poor GRIMES]

BotW was a rebuke to a ton of SS design choices.

-Button controls
-Connected overworld, less dense
-Story on the backburner
-More natural tutorial segment
-No sidekick (that spoiled puzzles!!!)

 

[_Clash_]

I think it's fair to say Skyward Sword stunk it up and copped the brunt of Zelda fatigue that lead to the table being turned on Miyamoto's tropes

Enter Breath of the Hype

 

[James Scott]

BotW was a rebuke to a ton of SS design choices.

-Button controls
-Connected overworld, less dense
-Story on the backburner
-More natural tutorial segment
-No sidekick (that spoiled puzzles!!!)

BoTW also has a lot from SS like item collection, weapon degradation, stamina, potion types, etc

 

[ffdgh]

It's for the best since SS controls were a pain at times. Motion controlled aiming is always nice though.

 

[Foffy]

Breath of the Wild is the anti-Skyward Sword.

Nearly anything you can say about BotW, you can likely find a direct opposite in SS.

 

[TI82]

Aonuma has stated directly that a lot of the design goals of BotW (i.e. the open-world and freedom of exploration) is in part due to criticism of SS's highly linear and contained structure. Personally, I respect him for listening to criticism and taking it into account when designing future games.


As for the motion controls, well, BotW has some of them.

They have motion assisted controls but not motion only controls. Fairly big difference.

BotW was a rebuke to a ton of SS design choices.

-Button controls
-Connected overworld, less dense
-Story on the backburner
-More natural tutorial segment
-No sidekick (that spoiled puzzles!!!)

Yeah, I think this is what I'm getting at and is why this and link between worlds are my two favorite Zelda games. Just so much more... Adult oriented? In that they don't hold your hand force you do whatever. I really like both and felt like skyward sword was just the textbook case of how not to do a Zelda game.

 

[Mihael Mello Keehl]

Read the OP for what? He says that since Zelda has reverted back to a traditional controls, that its clear case that the motion controls were disliked by majority, no? Yall need to read the OP instead of my wonderful first post that hits the nail in the head.

 

[AnathemicOne]

No it doesnt, just form your own opinion and leave it at that.

Lol that instant reply full of wrong

 

[takriel]

BotW nearly succeeded at combining the best of both worlds (original NES Zelda and later 3D games).

I would say that it could have done more with its music and have a more fleshed-out story as well as more traditional dungeons, though.

 

[JD_Lars]

"I'll wait for the remaster of SS without motion controls" - Me 6 years ago

I'll be waiting a long ass time. Motion controls are so baked into that title it would take a full redo of game mechanics to fix it. Good luck getting a port to future systems as well for that same reason.

 

[MisterGrey3000]

No.
The Zelda team has literally no say in what Nintendo chooses to use as its primary input device, and the WiiU gamepad wasn't built with SS's specific motion controlled mechanics in mind- the concept was mostly focused on touch controls, asymmetric multiplayer, dual screen gameplay, and (limited) portability.

They were never gonna develop a WiiU Zelda game where you swing that big ass, honkin' controller around to interact with it's world, and they were never gonna be allowed to prioritize motion controls or the Wiimote over the game pad's touch mechanics, second screen, and the (limited) portability.
This should all just be common sense.

 

[FloweryMarston]

I think that the main problem with skyward sword wasn't even the motion controls, which could very well be refined and evolved from what was in that game.

The problem is that it was a game that came out in an era where open worlds were getting more and more popular, with skyrim in particular blowing up like no other game outside of the rockstar games. Skyward Sword on the other hand was extremely linear and very focused on the puzzle solving aspect of the zelda series, alongside other design choices that really aimed to get the "blue ocean" of the wii, with heavy handholding, slow introduction and things like that.

Not only the market nintendo was aiming for left them, but the wide audience of gaming loves exploring huge worlds and doing things at their own pace, Skyward Sword fell between these two audiences and didn't reach any of those. Not only that but in following interviews, aonuma said that he and miyamoto felt that the zelda series was stuck in a rut, where they constantly tried to find that new "gimmick' for the ocarina formula for it to feel innovative.


The decision to make botw in my opinion comes from looking at what the problems of the zelda series had, through feedback of the japanese audience and from the other nintendo hq, NoA, NoE, etc, looking at the market and how well the open world genre was doing. Nintendo also felt like going out of their own bubble, with aonuma saying that he played a lot of other open worlds and even started playing other games more to get a feel of what other developers were doing.

So yeah, tl;dr SS didn't meet its goals, Botw already sold more than it and it shows a much better blueprint for future zelda titles.

 

[MattKeil]

No.
The Zelda team has literally no say in what Nintendo chooses to use as its primary input device, and the WiiU gamepad wasn't built with SS's specific motion controlled mechanics in mind- the concept was mostly focused on touch controls, asymmetric multiplayer, dual screen gameplay, and (limited) portability.

They were never gonna develop a WiiU Zelda game where you swing that big ass, honkin' controller around to interact with it's world, and they were never gonna be allowed to prioritize motion controls or the Wiimote over the game pad's touch mechanics, second screen, and the (limited) portability.
This should all just be common sense.

Wiimotes work just fine on the Wii U, so none of this makes much sense at all. The move away from motion controls was clearly a choice made by the developers, not forced upon them by the hardware.

 

[James Scott]

Wiimotes work just fine on the Wii U, so none of this makes much sense at all. The move away from motion controls was clearly a choice made by the developers, not forced upon them by the hardware.

It's not a controller that's bundled in so you're limited by the people that had a Wii Motion+. They had to bundle a Wii motion+ with a lot of copies of the game back in the day. It's not a suitable business decision

 

[watershed]

I think it has long been the fan consensus that Skyward Sword, and in particular it's motion controls, are not well liked. BOTW feels like an answer to a lot of the criticisms of SS.

 

[StayDead]

I think the main reason why they removed motion controls at least for this one is they wanted for Switch marketing to distance themselves as far from the Wii name and branding as they could.

IMO I think I prefer Skyward Swords controls to button controls, but I can see why some people don't.

 

[MTC100]

Motion control was a disease, pestering games like Mario Galaxy with unneeded extras distracting from the game experience and I'm glad Nintendo was cured.

In Zelda it felt very much forced "look, hold the controls that way, yes that way, that's how we build the whole game and all the items around it, so you can have some fun doing exactly what we'd like you to do!"

BotW made a 180 luckily, well not like they had any other choice.

 

[Alex_Mexico]

Skyward Sword's controls were the least of that game's problems. So yeah, it's safe to say it missed its mark.

 

[MisterGrey3000]

Wiimotes work just fine on the Wii U

The Wiimote wasn't the WiiU's main draw, it was a secondary peripheral.

They (Zelda Team) were never going to be allowed to build the next AAA 3D Zelda title around a secondary peripheral and its unique features when Nintendo was being HEAVILY criticized for failing to utilize the GamePad, the primary input device meant to sale the damn thing, in it's premiere titles.
It just wouldn't make any sense to continue building upon SS's Wii style motion-controlled mechanics under these circumstances. It doesn't say anything about whether or not Zelda Team thought they failed at their goals or whatever.

I think it has long been the fan consensus that Skyward Sword, and in particular it's motion controls, are not well liked by a vocal/loud minority of fans limited to niche enthusiast spaces.

Ftfy.
(Okay so yeah, this is basically a SS hate thread)

 

[Yazuka]

All I can say is that I would have enjoyed Skyward Sword much more without motion controls. I would love to see a version of SS without motion controls, I don't think I'll replay it otherwise.
So for me I'm glad it didn't become standard for the Zelda games, but if they can give you the choice between classic or motion controls I'm all for it.

But I really like the artstyle at least, one of the best designs for Zelda.

 

[_Clash_]

I don't think it was the motion controls completely

Skyward Sword just felt really conservative and iterative to my eye

 

[PKrockin]

As others have said, it has nothing to do with Skyward Sword. The next console did not have a pack-in motion-focused controller, it had the Gamepad, and for Nintendo to release their headlining game of the generation game designed around an old controller would be to aid the narrative that the Gamepad is a pointless waste of money.

 

[Rappy]

Did you read the OP?!

Spoiler

Read the OP

you posted 5 minutes after the op and still lmaoo

it must be hard to read the OP when you've been crying 12 months straight...

Lol that instant reply full of wrong

I think his posts are usually dumb as much as the next guy but...what? How does reading the OP help? How does BOTW not using sword motion controls (it still uses motion control for aiming) correlate to "Skyward Sword was actually not well liked by the majority"? Skyward Sword has a 93 on metacritic from 81 critics. But that's just "cuz Zelda" amirite? What are these goals that SS supposedly had (which the OP never even outright states) that were never reached?

Oh btw, the word is glean.

 

[Yoshi]

BoTW also has a lot from SS like item collection, weapon degradation, stamina, potion types, etc

The sad thing is, they dropped the awesome new achievements of SS (in particular the dense world design and most of the overworld puzzles) but kept the dumb busywork that infests modern game design so much .

 

[spazchicken]

I think the Wii was a fluke and a fad but the motion controls for Skyward Sword worked for me and was a lot of fun.

One guy saying something and years later doing something different doesn't mean the game's control scheme was a failure. It just means that the vision and direction has changed for the next game.

 

[Nuu]

The motion controls were by far the best part of Skyward Sword. What was wrong with it was everything else.

 

[qko]

Sword swinging was not the problem that plagued Skyword Sword. Fi's forced interruptions (which BotW fixed letting you skip any cutscene) and the shoed-in puzzles where they didn't belong made SS frustrating to play, not necessarily the motion controls.

We still got motion controls using the bow, so Aoumna isn't exactly wrong.