Zelda on the Wii To Include Sword Swinging

IGN has the news that the Wii version of Twilight Princess has been retooled to allow you to swing Link's sword. The bow and arrow has been moved to the 'B' button, alleviating one of the big complaints hands-on users had at E3. From the article: "Miyamoto felt that that shooting the arrow with the D-pad was too difficult, and the B button allows for quicker and easier shooting. It's unclear if the game will require the new control scheme or if players will be able to chose between different methods of control. Nintendo Dream closed off by asking Miyamoto to name the version of Zelda he personally prefers. The master game maker said that he'd play the Wii version, but added that both versions will be fun."

Comments

Noooooooo!!!

[laxcat]

Please, please, please no! I don't want to swing the damn sword, I want Link to swing it! I'm hoping this is just an option, not a required control scheme.

Then again, this is IGN. Maybe they misinterperted "absolutely not" as "maybe," as per usual

Re:Noooooooo!!!

[7Prime]

I dunno, man, I just started a brand new game of WW last night, and went through the whole sword-fighting tutorial. I'm starting to see why Nintendo would want to move away from that, the whole button combos thing is starting to feel almost as confusing as a Metal Gear Solid control setup. Now thankfully WW is a fairly easy game, at least on the action end of things, so you're really not required to memorize all the different sword slashes, but if you really wanted to play with them while fighting enemies, it's a real pain in the ass. I mean, even simple things like whether to do a simple sword slash, a jab, an overhead slash, or a jumping slash gets hard to remember, and usually the button scheme has little to do with the actual movement, so you pretty much have to memorize it, which means it'll take a half a second or so to recall how to do it, and in the middle of a nice sword battle, you don't have time for that. I think swordplay with the Wiimote should be much more tactile, the gestures will be much more representative of the actual sword motions than simply hitting a combination of buttons, so sword dueling should be much more fun and involved this time around.

Fatigue shouldn't be a problem. Zelda games tend to only have intense sword battles in short spurts, most of the series is about problem solving, anyway. I could imagine fatigue being an issue in, say, a Wii-based Ninja Giaden, but even then, the controller is very lightweight, and as other people have pointed out, even real-life sword technique requires very little wrist motion. A few degrees of wrist motion translates to a few feet at the other end of the sword. I did about a semester of fencing... I was pretty bad at it, but it's really not a very tiring sport, in the least. The most tiring thing about it is probably the weight of the protective gear.

Re:Noooooooo!!!

[Fozzyuw]

How often do you actually swing the sword in the Zelda games?

For anal-retintive people like me... quite a lot. Have you ever noticed how much grass there is to cut in these games?

I'm interested but I don't know.

[kinglink]

The wiimote being swung like a sword does sound good, but I don't know if it'll work with Zelda's feel. I'm sure they've tested it and it feels more natural than the B button, but I hope both options are there still.

The problem comes in that Zelda is not an FPS. I'm sure there's not a way to move your shield up for the block except a button. But maybe the sword swinging will work. However no matter how you swing the sword, Link will only have a couple attack animations. I hope it'll work, and if so that's great but I want a little more indepth Zelda for this type of thing. Actually a bigger problem that will come up with the system is will it allow lefties to hold the wiimote in the left hand and the nunchuck attachment in the right hand. If they allow that it'll be gravy.

What I'd really like to see is a game where you are in FPS mode but the entire game is Oblivion style, swords and shields, some bows, all controlled by the motion. that means you can hold the sword in one hand and swing it, but at the same time guard. And the best part would be the shield should basically cover your view, and hit detection on the shield should be spot on. So if a guy swings from the left, and your shield is on the right you can block it, but at the same time you can attack back, however it wouldn't be a strong attack in game, no matter how you swing your wiimote.

Re:I'm interested but I don't know.

[Scoth]

Some of the earlier games used sprite-flipping for certain directions, so it was hard to tell which hand was "official". The Zelda 2 manual makes reference to the left-handedness, and the 3D games have always had Link left-handed.

Actually, even though I'm right handed, I've played so much Zelda that the few times I've had the occasion to do it, I've automatically picked up swords with my left hand.

Yeah, I'm a Zelda geek. Proud of it too :) My fiancee gets sick of listening to the music though.

Re:Why wouldn't it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Red Steel not have something pretty weak too - i.e. you swing the wiimote, but the sword on screen swings in a standard way, regardless of how you actually swung the remote?

I haven't played Red Steel, but from my understanding it was initially designed so that your swing would be translated to a "canned" sword swing (horizontal, vertical, diagonal, or what not) where speed and direction were controlled. I have heard that Ubisoft is reworking the system to be more free form but the exact details are not known; I would still expect to see a limited number (possibly 10-100+) of attacks but that a greater variation would allow for a much more intuitive feel. For example Quick, Average, Power attacks in each of 8 directions for a possible 24 attacks; flicking your wrist is a quick attack, a minor swing is an Average attack and a Big swing is a power attack (having 24 varieties of attacks is a lot considering what is possible on a standard controller).

As for Zelda ...

I expect that every detail of controll is being tried in several ways; everyone who has worked on Zelda in the past has focused on making it one of the easiest games to controll, I wouldn't be surprised if they have tried an insane number of controll schemes with TP.

Re:My Arm

[masklinn]

My poor poor arm. I don't actually Want to be Link. Holding a sword or even a very lightweight version of one and using it effectivly take lots of practice of strength most gamers don't have.

I, for one, like that. It may allow me to build strength without getting out of my mother's basement!

A technical question about sword swinging

[WillAffleckUW]

I was watching Hellboy with my girlfriend, and we had both been talking about how some movies couldn't be made before CGI.

But during the movie, Hellboy grabs a stone sword from a statue and starts cutting through the CGI tentacle god. I noticed - because I've used cutlasses, epees, and other swords - that he literally cut through it as if it weren't there (which it wasn't, he swung the sword before the CGI monster was added).

My technical question is: exactly how are they going to deal with sword resistance - when I chop through a tentacle, or for example let's just use a chicken here, or an octopus, there is resistance which:

a. slows my sword, even when I'm in a very fast spin attack; and

b. puts pressure on my wrist, arm, and shoulder due to that.

Now, are we going to have to live in a world of "massless" monsters, and then they'll have to change iron golems into marshmallow golems?

Or will the Wii controller have some feedback loops, like heavy vibration and sounds and the image on the screen slows to represent what really would happen?

Just wondering.

Re:A technical question about sword swinging

[WillAffleckUW]

Ah, but couldn't they make sure the game sends:

a. rumble feature on contact with non-gelatinous beastie or human, to simulate vibration effects when you hit something that has resistance;

b. noise feature on contact with object, to use auditory feedback such as: .1. Clang (hitting armoured individual or stone/metal surface) .2. Chunk (hitting wood or something like that) .3. Grrk (hitting flesh or thickish material) .4. Slice (highly strong weapon hitting something it is good at cutting)

and then modulate the sound based upon spin, kinetics versus potential energy, angle of attack, etc.

It would be up to the sword-user (the character), to realize the depicted on-screen reaction is what his Wiimote should be doing - obviously they can't stop your Wiimote from moving, but they could translate continued force as if it was pushing.

You could even emulate sticking by a red flash icon over the weapon onscreen, a SqueeSqueeSquee or ErrkErrkErrk sound as the weapon stuck in, and have the rumble vibrate on and off whenever you "tried" to move it.

It's a software problem, not a device problem - the devices are all there - sound output in the Wiimote, rumble in the Wiimote, sound output on screen, visual feedback on screen.

Re:Why wouldn't it? or how heavy is my sword

[WillAffleckUW]

They originally wanted all swinging to be done through the Wiimote, but then found that it tires you too quickly, so they just constrained it to "special" sorts of attacks, or something like that.

Well, real swords do that. They're heavy. Your wrist and your arm and your shoulder get tired.

Personally, I rather look forward to more realistic swordplay. I've had it with teeny young girls swinging giant two-handed swords in glowing arcs as they attack, or throwing halberds (those things are heavy) as if they were toothpicks.

I would hope you can choose to have "realistic effects" if you want, quite frankly. Sure, turn them off if you can't handle it, but leave them for the purists like me who just don't want all the scars you get from that kind of thing.

Feedback

[GFLPraxis]

The real difficult part is feedback. You swing a sword from right to left. Halfway through the swing, on screen, your opponent puts out his sword and blocks the attack. Your hand keeps going. Now your hand is all the way on the left, but on the screen, your sword is in the middle of the screen, confusing the heck out of the player.

Regardless, the reason the Wii version of Zelda didn't have real-time sword tracking is because it was an up-port of the GameCube version. Nintendo simply mapped all the GameCube buttons onto the Wii-mote, and then let you use the pointer for aiming arrows (which worked spectacularly well when I tried it at E3, I was pulling off headshots within ten seconds of pulling out the bow and arrow).

Re:Feedback

[Joe Random]

The real difficult part is feedback. You swing a sword from right to left. Halfway through the swing, on screen, your opponent puts out his sword and blocks the attack. Your hand keeps going. Now your hand is all the way on the left, but on the screen, your sword is in the middle of the screen, confusing the heck out of the player.

I don't think this will be a problem at all. When the on-screen sword is impeded, you could treat further deviation of the controller from the virtual-sword's position as applying force to the opponent's sword. Keep moving far enough (within reason), and you could begin to push the opponent's sword back. Move the controller back the way it came, and your avatar slowly lets off pressure, allowing the opponent's sword to advance. Combine this with the rumble feature, and you end up with even greater control over your virtual sword.

Simplify this to having the on-screen sword simply attempt to move in a straight line from where it is to where you want it to be (perhaps with some on-screen indicator to show where you're currently pointing), with the force of the attempt controlled by the distance left to travel, and you could do all kinds of cool stuff. To use your above scenario:

Halfway through the swing, on screen, your opponent puts out his sword and blocks the attack. Your hand keeps going. Now your hand is all the way on the left, but on the screen, your sword is in the middle of the screen, as your avatar struggles to push back your opponent's sword. You then swing the controller straight up, causing your sword to slide upward along your opponent's in a shower of sparks while still holding it at bay. As soon as it's clear, you flick the controller down and to the right, easily splitting your opponent's head.

Re:Not a real sword, folks.

[oGMo]

Because as we know it takes years of fitness training for, say, an orchestra conductor to manage to wave his baton continuously for the hour or three (depending on the performance really, some operas are rather lengthy) of a performance.

You may think you're joking, but I invite you to conduct a 3-hour concert sometime. It is anything but trivial, untiring movement. Yes, you get used to it, but it does a lot of stamina. Just because you see a guy with grey hair up there doesn't mean he wouldn't be able to conduct hours after your arm is in a sling.

That said, the motion used for Zelda is more likely to be a wrist-flicking type motion than a full-on swing, although perhaps it will be configurable. Either way, this could lead to RSI if they're not careful. Jury's still out on whether this all works.