Zelda Skyward Sword HD (July 16th 2021)

[KHCast]

No ones expecting them to talk about this kinda stuff in like directs or something, but it shouldn’t be an issue to explain in press statements or something, what some of the quality of life changes are. You don’t have to go “we fucked up before, but fixed this thing” to do that. Just do some generic bullet points on a couple changes 

[VO.SUPER]

4 hours ago, KHCast said:

No ones expecting them to talk about this kinda stuff in like directs or something, but it shouldn’t be an issue to explain in press statements or something, what some of the quality of life changes are. You don’t have to go “we fucked up before, but fixed this thing” to do that. Just do some generic bullet points on a couple changes 

I guess the big difference is just that this was one of those few things the Zelda team made very intentionally the way it is. When you consider the changes to Wind Waker and Majora's Mask, and how the devs would openly talk about those changes like they were making up for the limitations of the period or things they considered regretful due to the circumstances of the original release. Compare that to Skyward Sword which intentionally made Fi as yappy as she is for the sake of the newest of new players.

[Blue Blood]

11 hours ago, VisionaryofSUPER said:

I guess the big difference is just that this was one of those few things the Zelda team made very intentionally the way it is. When you consider the changes to Wind Waker and Majora's Mask, and how the devs would openly talk about those changes like they were making up for the limitations of the period or things they considered regretful due to the circumstances of the original release. Compare that to Skyward Sword which intentionally made Fi as yappy as she is for the sake of the newest of new players.

You've kind of already made the counter-argument though. Skyward Sword was made by Nintendo at the peak of their "gimmicks and casual gamers" Wii-era. They still do both of those things, but to a far lesser extent than they did previously. They only have to frame it as refinements to the tutorial and guidance systems for both Skyward Sword veterans and veterans of Zelda and games in general. Lots of people playing SSHD on Switch will have already played SS on Wii, and even if they haven't they might already know their way around video games and Zelda. That can now be taken into account, because it wasn't really considered in 2011.

Yes Skyward Sword was designed the way that it was intentionally, but so was everything else. The Triforce hunt in WW was the result of deadlines, but the solution that they came up with was kind of trash. They chose a bad solution. They fixed it by dramatically reducing the number of charts that you needed to get deciphered and increasing your wallet capacity. Fi's interruptions in SS were a naff solution to the problem of managing the the needs of the player.

Nothing is stopping Nintendo from saying "we heard your complaints and have refined some of the game's design". BotW's design ethos can be summarised as the antithesis of SS's, and has been described pretty much as being such by Nintendo. The Great Plateau was made to teach the player how to play the game with minimal intrusions and not explicitly spelling things out wherever possible, which is the opposite of what SS did. It's all a matter of perspective.

[Marcello]

Pretty sure Nintendo had no problem talking about shortening the tutorial in Twilight Princess, so I'd be surprised if they did here.

I imagine/hope they fix the thing where every time I turn the game on, it has to tell me what each thing I collect is. That was really annoying. TP had the same problem with Rupees, but they fixed that for SS, but then the same thing happened for materials, from what I remember.

15 hours ago, KHCast said:

No ones expecting them to talk about this kinda stuff in like directs or something, but it shouldn’t be an issue to explain in press statements or something, what some of the quality of life changes are. You don’t have to go “we fucked up before, but fixed this thing” to do that. Just do some generic bullet points on a couple changes 

I do, actually. It's something people want, and it improves the game, market it! Better than just repeating themselves again like E3.

[Wraith]

We will probably hear something toward the end of this month/early next month on this. Nintendo likes to with hold information until the eve of the game's release now for w/e reason.

[Sonikko]

Fixing the pacing was pretty much a given, since all the Zelda remasters before this one have had QoL fixes like that.

I'm extremely glad that Nintendo treats this series with such respect. Zelda remasters are usually an easy choice over the original games, even the most controversial ones like Majora's Mask still have a lot going on for them all things considered.

Even at their worst (Super Mario 3D-All Stars), Nintendo remasters are serviceable and still better than the original experience, so I'm sure it'll be the definite way to play Zelda Skyward Sword from now on.

Also 60fps Zelda woohooo.

EDIT: This also gives me hope for 60fps WW and TP at one point, and reduced bloom in the former.

[KHCast]

26 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

Even at their worst (Super Mario 3D-All Stars), Nintendo remasters are serviceable and still better than the original experience

Mmmmmm nah, nope, nadda, I’d still take the original Galaxy and Sunshine over the remastered ones, and the less we say about Majoras Mask 3D, the better.

 

That said, the Zelda console remasters usually end up being the definitive experience, so I’m expecting the same to hold true to SSHD.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

2 minutes ago, KHCast said:

less we say about Majoras Mask 3D, the better.

So, what's exactly the deal with that one?

[VO.SUPER]

42 minutes ago, KHCast said:

Mmmmmm nah, nope, nadda, I’d still take the original Galaxy and Sunshine over the remastered ones, and the less we say about Majoras Mask 3D, the better.

 

That said, the Zelda console remasters usually end up being the definitive experience, so I’m expecting the same to hold true to SSHD.

Now hold on there chilidog! Sunshine Remastered outdoes the original just fine, and Galaxy remastered is by and large better.

Majora's Mask 3D.... debatable.

2 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

You've kind of already made the counter-argument though. Skyward Sword was made by Nintendo at the peak of their "gimmicks and casual gamers" Wii-era. They still do both of those things, but to a far lesser extent than they did previously. They only have to frame it as refinements to the tutorial and guidance systems for both Skyward Sword veterans and veterans of Zelda and games in general. Lots of people playing SSHD on Switch will have already played SS on Wii, and even if they haven't they might already know their way around video games and Zelda. That can now be taken into account, because it wasn't really considered in 2011.

I just don't think Nintendo or at least the Zelda team want to make the admittance that they were so heavy handed at least with the point of Fi being that extra navigation when it came to the purest Zelda structure which hadn't hugely deviated since Ocarina of Time. And even then, they didn't seem to take into account how 7 million people played Twilight Princess before hand.

And we already got something from Aounuma in that vague statement when SSHD was first announced, about how the game laid the groundwork for BoTW and to please understand.

But I can't really say specifically because it's just kinda a debate on the hypothetical whether the team wants to admit all that for advertising and all. It's either that or they were seriously debating on whether to actually adjust a lot of those bits on Fi early in development and didn't want to say anything definitive. It could be a lot of things I guess.

[Blue Blood]

10 minutes ago, VisionaryofSUPER said:

Now hold on there chilidog! Sunshine Remastered outdoes the original just fine, and Galaxy remastered is by and large better.

Majora's Mask 3D.... debatable.

Galaxy is basically the same game in HD, but with less reliable motion controls that regularly need resetting and ugly colour banding issues that greatly impact a lot of the visuals. Sunshine similarly for the widescreen and HD treatment, but it was a slap-dash port without GCN controller support even though it could work, basic emulation bugs and and messed up camera controls. 

I don't want to hear about patches that fix things, because the limited edition SM3DAS release was riddled with problems at release and made virtually no effort to improve the games. The collection does the absolute bare minimum and still misses the bar even there. As a collection, it's on-par with or slightly worse than the original games. I can't bring myself to say that it's worse than the originals in any way that really counts though. It's lazy, but it's not broken or unplayable.

SSHD is much more along the lines of the SM3DW port, minus the inclusion of a whole new side game. It's full price and looks like a straight up port with a number of enhancements. 3DAS was definitely an outlier compared to Nintendo's usual standards.

[VO.SUPER]

10 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Galaxy is basically the same game in HD, but with less reliable motion controls that regularly need resetting and ugly colour banding issues that greatly impact a lot of the visuals. Sunshine similarly for the widescreen and HD treatment, but it was a slap-dash port without GCN controller support even though it could work, basic emulation bugs and and messed up camera controls. 

I don't want to hear about patches that fix things, because the limited edition SM3DAS release was riddled with problems at release and made virtually no effort to improve the games. The collection does the absolute bare minimum and still misses the bar even there. As a collection, it's on-par with or slightly worse than the original games. I can't bring myself to say that it's worse than the originals in any way that really counts though. It's lazy, but it's not broken or unplayable.

SSHD is much more along the lines of the SM3DW port, minus the inclusion of a whole new side game. It's full price and looks like a straight up port with a number of enhancements. 3DAS was definitely an outlier compared to Nintendo's usual standards.

But... the patch did fix things. It genuinely made the experience better to play by adding the GCN support and fixed the camera controls.

Galaxy's color banding issues feel like a YMMV moment because I have not heard people complaining about that on a huge scale. The GYRO resetting I can understand, but it really wasn't difficult to just push a button and reset.

Sunshine just plays fine, and with minor graphical bugs and again the patch did fix the camera controls. I don't know what to tell you. They are better than the originals even with that minor effort. Like I'm not going to say they were the best that could have been offered and that limited release scheme sucks on a major scale. But I can't seriously say playing the originals on their ORIGINAL format is better. Not taking emulation into account I just can't say there's any benefit to the originals.

I can say they are better while also acknowledging that they are pretty half assed.

[KHCast]

Idk given our views on remasters overall and what is “definitive” (see: colors remastered HD thread) I don’t think we’re gonna come to an agreement here on these being by and large “better”/more definitive experiences. The reasons Blue had listed for me personally make them experiences that make these feel slightly inferior for me, even if they’re still bare minimum competent. Having to constantly recalibrate the motion controls does get annoying especially when you’re in the middle of doing something that requires heavily the motion controls. Stuff like that while not game breaking, is still annoying and makes it in my eyes, not feel any better than the original, or like it has some leg above it, outside being more readily available

[VO.SUPER]

Edit: Getting insecure again. Sorry.

[Sonikko]

My entire point was that SM3D All-stars is as half assed as Nintendo remasters get, and even then, they're not offensive.

Sunshine and Galaxy on Switch are still the definitive way to play them legally nowadays, even with the colour banding issues Galaxy has.

The same can't be said for the vast majority of remasters, there are usually long lists of pro and cons and you're left picking between trade offs, Sunshine had no analogue trigger support at launch, and one issue with widescreen when using the turbo underwater, that's kinda the extent of its issues, both of which were patched soon after launch.

Even without taking the patches into consideration, it took people a month to realize there was that underwater issue in Sunshine, which means it's really nothing major or deal breaking.

[Sonikko]

 

This was shadowdropped on YT

[Blue Blood]

6 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

 

This was shadowdropped on YT

Awesome. Almost five minutes of... Nothing? I mean, it's a pretty solid (possibly spoiler) overview of what the Skyward Sword has to offer, but apart from mentioning the new control options and bullshit Amiibo functionality, it tells you nothing about this new version. It even ends really abruptly. Lol 

[Sonikko]

Yeah, I was baffled by the ending too. I don't remember the pre-release material for WW/TP HD, did they go in detail on the QoL improvements they had made or did they gloss over them too?

[VO.SUPER]

They didn't say jack in the trailer we didn't know already. Big waste of time if you're looking for something new.

Still, I forget how pretty this game looks. I'll give it that. Though the lava and water aren't that impressive. 

[Sonikko]

That's most of the stuff that needed to be fixed right?
The first bit, are all Fi's hints gonna be optional? Or did they add more optional ones lol. Wasn't too clear imo.

All the other stuff, item descriptions only pop up the first time, you can fast forward dialogues, skip cutscenes, looking good. Just what a remaster should be.

 

EDIT: Updated with Youtube link

[VO.SUPER]

Fast forwarding dialogue is a god send in its own right. 

[JezMM]

Man, did they tell you what a Stamina Fruit was each time you booted up the game in the original?  I don't remember that.  I thought it was just the spoils used for crafting that were an issue, in which they showed you them appearing in your inventory as if it was the first time you were collecting one each time you booted up the game.  Hopefully they just picked a bad example with the stamina fruit and they meant to illustrate that change.

I'm not passionate enough to do a deep dive, but I guess if someone was to find that particular treasure chest in the first dungeon in a longplay video, we can see whether originally Fi gave you a mandatory hint at that spot (I know she tends to re-explain items after you've just collected them and read the description, but the chest is clearly closed there so it's not one of those).

[Wraith]

The stamina fruit always behaved that way and she didn't stop the game at any of those points in the original release either(I didn't check but someone who cares more than I do did.) The only improvements that seem certain are the control stuff we already knew about and the fast text speed.

Weird trailer.

[VO.SUPER]

If Fi doesn't spoil the solution to the Ancient Cistern, that'd be a big improvement right there. 

And I do think the trailer was trying to explain how Fi now works. It seems like Navi and Midna now, where the sword will just make a noise when she has a hint to give you, instead of just popping out. At least thats how I interpret it. 

[Sonikko]

I sure hope that's what they meant with it. It's not entirely clear?
The way they word it, it almost looks like they added those optional hints, rather than making the ones that were already there completely optional.

I'm sure it's the latter case, but the marketing for this game sure is not the best it could be lol.

[Sonikko]

Some more footage from Nintendo JP