me.letsPlay(SkywardSword).getPart(0);
Dec. 30th, 2011 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
code_gorillaYep! You read that correctly! I got Skyward Sword for Christmas, and I've been playing it (of course) for the last few days. And I've been taking notes, because I feel like doing a new LP. The Mother one isn't going anywhere right now (though I might finish it later - might; long story short, boring game is boring, go play the sequels instead), so I need something new, and this seems like as good of a choice as any. So, without further ado...
Let's play: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword: Part 0
... are there enough colons there? Sheesh.
Our game begins with a typical Zelda-esque backstory; a long long time ago there was a great and wonderful paradise and a goddess that watched over it. Then evil beings came out of the ground. The people were all "oh noes!", so the goddess took the golden power that kept the world happy and put it in a temple. Then she lifted the temple and the rest of the humans into the sky on a floating continent, above the clouds. Eventually the surface people fought back the evil and sealed it away for good. Or so they believed...
Now one might think, knowing the Zelda series' typical pattern and given the above back story that Link would start on the surface and have to find his way to they sky and the golden power (or, as we all know it is, the Triforce). Well, one would be wrong. Instead, we see Zelda hand a letter to a large bird (known as a loftwing) who then makes a point of delivering it to Link - by sticking his head through Link's window. Needless to say, Link is a bit startled. It doesn't help matters that he's waking up from a nightmarish vision of a large black wormlike thing with a huge mouth and several rows of teeth, each as big as a tree. Yeah, I'd be a little freaked out too. But Link quickly gets his act together and reads the letter - it's a reminder from Zelda that he agreed to meet her that morning before the Wing Ceremony. As it turns out, Link is a student at the Skyloft (the name of the floating city) Knight Academy, and today is the day of the big Wing Ceremony, in which several of the students compete for the opportunity to graduate and become a full-fledged knight.
This is enough to get Link's lazy bum up and moving, unsurprisingly. Elsewhere in the building we run into a few other students: Pipit, who's wearing a yellow version of Link's typical outfit (which, by the way, Link does not have yet), which leads me to believe that the outfit in this game is a kind of uniform, which makes sense if Link's training to be a knight. Guess who's gonna win today's Wing Ceremony? I'll give you three guesses, and none of them count. Another one of the students that we run into is Fledge, a skinny nervous kind of guy who's kind of a wimp. More on him later.
In any case, once we head outside, Link runs into one of his instructors, who gives him the tutorial on moving around. This takes the form of retrieving the headmaster's cat from the roof of the academy (by the way, no, it won't let you throw the cat off the edge of the world). During this, we run into one of the big changes about this game from just about every other Zelda game there is: Link gets winded. Yeah, I know it doesn't seem like much, but think about it: no matter how much you run around, Link never gets tired. Except in this game, if you dash around too long, he wears out. Just an interesting touch that I personally liked.
Another thing that we learn from this interaction is that Zelda is actually Headmaster Gaepora's daughter, which is interesting; it means Zelda isn't a princess... yet. There's still plenty of game to go, of course, but in most of the Zelda games she starts off as a princess, with the notable exception being Wind Waker. Still, given that this seems to be the only town there is in the sky, having her be a princess to begin with would be kind of strange.
Anyways, Link eventually makes his way to the giant statue of the goddess that takes up one side of the island where he's supposed to meet Zelda. Zelda is indeed there, playing on a harp (probably the instrument for the game, I'm guessing) and singing a song that couldn't possibly have any plot relevance later on, no, certainly not. What follows... well, is one of the most awkward teenager conversations ever put in a video game. It has to be seen to be believed. Starting at about 6:40 in this video, to about 11:15 is the most awkward:
Link: "Uh... I'm standing right here, you know... right over here... you're a lousy girlfriend."
So after that incredibly awkward conversation, Zelda drags Link off to go practice... literally, in fact. To the point that she actually pushes him off the edge of the island. What the fuck, Zelda? When Link's bird doesn't answer his call, she has to jump down after him and rescue him from the danger she put him into in the first place. Then she has the gall to be more concerned for her bird than she is for him, since her bird strained itself rescuing him. Seriously, what the hell?
Now Link's bird is missing, and while the headmaster has agreed to delay the ceremony until Link finds his bird (yay for the speed of plot!), it's still a serious problem. Some snooping around reveals that Groose, another one of the students participating in the Wing Ceremony today, might have had something to do with it. We find him down in the plaza, where he's hanging out with his minions, bragging about how he captured Link's bird and locked him up. Yup, have a comic relief villain, y'all. Complete with, I kid you not, bright red pompadour and golden lips.
A face not even a mother could love. A face that will haunt your nightmares.
Groose then pretends that he doesn't know anything about what happened to Link's bird, in spite of the fact that Link just heard him talking about it, and instead decides to start waxing poetic about how he wants to get with Zelda. And since it turns out that this guy has worse luck than Dr. Wily from Bob and George, who should show up behind him but Zelda? Which he of course he tries to back pedal out of that one, too. In short, he makes a total ass of himself. Is anyone surprised? Not really. Unfortunately, he doesn't give any clues as to where Link's bird is. Zelda flies off to look for it from overhead, while Link travels on foot.
Back by the academy sparring hall, Pipit (who has agreed to help Link look for his bird) has cornered Fledge (who was acting suspicious earlier) and seems to be yelling angrily at him. It turns out Fledge, pansy that he is, overheard Groose and minions plotting earlier. Unfortunately, Groose spotted him and threatened to beat the crap out of him if he said anything to Link. Pipit, fortunately, managed to be more threatening than Groose (not that it seems very difficult) and convinced Fledge to spill the beans. Groose talked about hiding the bird near the waterfall. Unfortunately, the waterfall cave is dangerous (and blocked by impossibly skinny trees that really shouldn't stop anyone with half a brain), so a sword is in order. Link borrows one from the sparring hall after explaining the situation to the trainer, and heads out for the waterfall cave.
In the waterfall cave, we get our first taste of blood in the form of Keese and Gels. No, they aren't really much to worry about. Eventually the cave leads to an exterior ledge, where Zelda catches up with him. She apparently is hearing things, though, and mentions it to Link. They both shrug it off and continue onwards. Not far afterwards, they stumble across a boarded up cave with Link's bird inside. Link cuts down the boards and frees his bird, and the two fly off back towards the ceremony.
At the ceremony, the headmaster explains the rules: a statuette will be tied to a golden Loftwing, which will then be released into the air. The winner is the first student to get the statuette. Now, there's not supposed to be any direct interference from other players. Of course, given that the players are Link, Groose, and his two minions, the odds of that are about bupkis. The competition begins with Link and the others diving off the edge of the continent and calling their birds.
Let me just say it now: I don't like the flying controls. They aren't particularly intuitive, and they don't lend themselves to fine control. If you've played Super Mario Galaxy, it works a lot like the manta ray surfing there (which I also hated, but at least you only needed it for two stars in the entire game). You hold the Wiimote flat in your palm, tilt it left or right to turn left or right, and downwards to dive downwards and pick up speed. To move upwards, it's not just enough to point the Wiimote upwards; you have to flick it upwards. This took me a while to figure out. Fortunately, Groose and his minions are horrible at this, because I just sat above the cloud cover going nowhere for a good several minutes.
Once I finally understood the controls, winning was fairly straight forward. Groose and his minions apparently spent too much time trying to cheat the competition rather than actually hone their skills. Although, they do try and stop you by throwing eggs once you get close the first time. But before long Link emerges victorious, at which point he goes to meet Zelda on top of the statue of the goddess. There, we get more awkward ship material, Zelda gives Linka parachute the Sailcloth, and then proceeds to shove him off of the statue! I'm sensing a running theme here. (Un?)Fortunately, this is just part of the ceremony, where Link has to make a perfect landing in the center of the courtyard below the statue.
After the ceremony, Link and Zelda go for a ride to celebrate. As they continue having awkward conversations (well, Zelda talks and both blush), suddenly a giant tornado springs out of nowhere to save the player from suffering through anymore awkward teenage romance. Thank goodness. Of course, it also knocks both of them off of their birds, and Link passes out.
He has another dream during this blackout, wherein he's falling, and I'm reminded of the opening of Kingdom Hearts.
I've been having these weird thoughts lately... like "Is this really a Zelda game... or not?"
In it he sees a strange blue lady that talks to him in an odd dialect. She speaks to him of a great mission that he needs to embark on soon (i.e. get on with the damn game already!). The last thing he sees before he wakes up with a start is Zelda falling towards the mouth of the giant black worm we saw previously.
When he does wake up, it's back in his room at the Knight Academy, and it's dark. The headmaster is there, wondering what became of his daughter. She hasn't been back yet, and now that it's dark, it's too dangerous to go search for her right now. The headmaster encourages Link to get some rest, and then leaves. Once he does, Link hears a noise out in the hallway, and decides to go investigate. Outside, he sees the blue lady from his dreams, and starts following her across town. Eventually, she leads him to the base of the statue, where a doorway opens up and she retreats inside. Inside the statue, Link finds a sword sitting in a stone pedestal, as is typical for these games. Out of the sword springs the blue lady, who introduces herself as Fi. She talks in a way that is reminiscent of A.I., with over-formality, loquaciousness, and with a lack of frills.
Fi lays down some exposition that amounts to this: Link is the chosen one, needs to take the sword (known as The Goddess Sword) and use its power to unite land and sky once again. In other words, typical Zelda game plot. She is the spirit of the sword, and therefore will act as this game's companion character, much like Navi or Midna. So Link takes the sword and strikes a pose with it, at which point the headmaster walks in. Apparently he is the only one on the island that knew of this place, and is not surprised to find that Link is the hero of legend. After some more exposition, Fi gives Link the Emerald Tablet, which he is supposed to place in the altar behind the pedestal. When he does so, a giant beacon pierces the sky, allowing an opening for Link to dive through in order to get to the surface.
The headmaster once again encourages Link to get some sleep before leaving to find Zelda in the morning, and offers him a proper traveling outfit once he wakes up. This, of course, is both his knight's uniform and his typical green tunic and hat. One of the instructors offers Link a wooden shield to take on his journey, and encourages him to go by the bazaar before leaving. We do so, and pick up a bottle of restoration potion that heals both Link and his shield (which has a health meter in this game).
And we'll go ahead and stop there. Join me next time when we visit the surface and meet a race of creatures new to the Zelda franchise.
First | Previous | Part 0 | Next | Last
... are there enough colons there? Sheesh.
Our game begins with a typical Zelda-esque backstory; a long long time ago there was a great and wonderful paradise and a goddess that watched over it. Then evil beings came out of the ground. The people were all "oh noes!", so the goddess took the golden power that kept the world happy and put it in a temple. Then she lifted the temple and the rest of the humans into the sky on a floating continent, above the clouds. Eventually the surface people fought back the evil and sealed it away for good. Or so they believed...
Now one might think, knowing the Zelda series' typical pattern and given the above back story that Link would start on the surface and have to find his way to they sky and the golden power (or, as we all know it is, the Triforce). Well, one would be wrong. Instead, we see Zelda hand a letter to a large bird (known as a loftwing) who then makes a point of delivering it to Link - by sticking his head through Link's window. Needless to say, Link is a bit startled. It doesn't help matters that he's waking up from a nightmarish vision of a large black wormlike thing with a huge mouth and several rows of teeth, each as big as a tree. Yeah, I'd be a little freaked out too. But Link quickly gets his act together and reads the letter - it's a reminder from Zelda that he agreed to meet her that morning before the Wing Ceremony. As it turns out, Link is a student at the Skyloft (the name of the floating city) Knight Academy, and today is the day of the big Wing Ceremony, in which several of the students compete for the opportunity to graduate and become a full-fledged knight.
This is enough to get Link's lazy bum up and moving, unsurprisingly. Elsewhere in the building we run into a few other students: Pipit, who's wearing a yellow version of Link's typical outfit (which, by the way, Link does not have yet), which leads me to believe that the outfit in this game is a kind of uniform, which makes sense if Link's training to be a knight. Guess who's gonna win today's Wing Ceremony? I'll give you three guesses, and none of them count. Another one of the students that we run into is Fledge, a skinny nervous kind of guy who's kind of a wimp. More on him later.
In any case, once we head outside, Link runs into one of his instructors, who gives him the tutorial on moving around. This takes the form of retrieving the headmaster's cat from the roof of the academy (by the way, no, it won't let you throw the cat off the edge of the world). During this, we run into one of the big changes about this game from just about every other Zelda game there is: Link gets winded. Yeah, I know it doesn't seem like much, but think about it: no matter how much you run around, Link never gets tired. Except in this game, if you dash around too long, he wears out. Just an interesting touch that I personally liked.
Another thing that we learn from this interaction is that Zelda is actually Headmaster Gaepora's daughter, which is interesting; it means Zelda isn't a princess... yet. There's still plenty of game to go, of course, but in most of the Zelda games she starts off as a princess, with the notable exception being Wind Waker. Still, given that this seems to be the only town there is in the sky, having her be a princess to begin with would be kind of strange.
Anyways, Link eventually makes his way to the giant statue of the goddess that takes up one side of the island where he's supposed to meet Zelda. Zelda is indeed there, playing on a harp (probably the instrument for the game, I'm guessing) and singing a song that couldn't possibly have any plot relevance later on, no, certainly not. What follows... well, is one of the most awkward teenager conversations ever put in a video game. It has to be seen to be believed. Starting at about 6:40 in this video, to about 11:15 is the most awkward:
Link: "Uh... I'm standing right here, you know... right over here... you're a lousy girlfriend."
So after that incredibly awkward conversation, Zelda drags Link off to go practice... literally, in fact. To the point that she actually pushes him off the edge of the island. What the fuck, Zelda? When Link's bird doesn't answer his call, she has to jump down after him and rescue him from the danger she put him into in the first place. Then she has the gall to be more concerned for her bird than she is for him, since her bird strained itself rescuing him. Seriously, what the hell?
Now Link's bird is missing, and while the headmaster has agreed to delay the ceremony until Link finds his bird (yay for the speed of plot!), it's still a serious problem. Some snooping around reveals that Groose, another one of the students participating in the Wing Ceremony today, might have had something to do with it. We find him down in the plaza, where he's hanging out with his minions, bragging about how he captured Link's bird and locked him up. Yup, have a comic relief villain, y'all. Complete with, I kid you not, bright red pompadour and golden lips.
A face not even a mother could love. A face that will haunt your nightmares.
Groose then pretends that he doesn't know anything about what happened to Link's bird, in spite of the fact that Link just heard him talking about it, and instead decides to start waxing poetic about how he wants to get with Zelda. And since it turns out that this guy has worse luck than Dr. Wily from Bob and George, who should show up behind him but Zelda? Which he of course he tries to back pedal out of that one, too. In short, he makes a total ass of himself. Is anyone surprised? Not really. Unfortunately, he doesn't give any clues as to where Link's bird is. Zelda flies off to look for it from overhead, while Link travels on foot.
Back by the academy sparring hall, Pipit (who has agreed to help Link look for his bird) has cornered Fledge (who was acting suspicious earlier) and seems to be yelling angrily at him. It turns out Fledge, pansy that he is, overheard Groose and minions plotting earlier. Unfortunately, Groose spotted him and threatened to beat the crap out of him if he said anything to Link. Pipit, fortunately, managed to be more threatening than Groose (not that it seems very difficult) and convinced Fledge to spill the beans. Groose talked about hiding the bird near the waterfall. Unfortunately, the waterfall cave is dangerous (and blocked by impossibly skinny trees that really shouldn't stop anyone with half a brain), so a sword is in order. Link borrows one from the sparring hall after explaining the situation to the trainer, and heads out for the waterfall cave.
In the waterfall cave, we get our first taste of blood in the form of Keese and Gels. No, they aren't really much to worry about. Eventually the cave leads to an exterior ledge, where Zelda catches up with him. She apparently is hearing things, though, and mentions it to Link. They both shrug it off and continue onwards. Not far afterwards, they stumble across a boarded up cave with Link's bird inside. Link cuts down the boards and frees his bird, and the two fly off back towards the ceremony.
At the ceremony, the headmaster explains the rules: a statuette will be tied to a golden Loftwing, which will then be released into the air. The winner is the first student to get the statuette. Now, there's not supposed to be any direct interference from other players. Of course, given that the players are Link, Groose, and his two minions, the odds of that are about bupkis. The competition begins with Link and the others diving off the edge of the continent and calling their birds.
Let me just say it now: I don't like the flying controls. They aren't particularly intuitive, and they don't lend themselves to fine control. If you've played Super Mario Galaxy, it works a lot like the manta ray surfing there (which I also hated, but at least you only needed it for two stars in the entire game). You hold the Wiimote flat in your palm, tilt it left or right to turn left or right, and downwards to dive downwards and pick up speed. To move upwards, it's not just enough to point the Wiimote upwards; you have to flick it upwards. This took me a while to figure out. Fortunately, Groose and his minions are horrible at this, because I just sat above the cloud cover going nowhere for a good several minutes.
Once I finally understood the controls, winning was fairly straight forward. Groose and his minions apparently spent too much time trying to cheat the competition rather than actually hone their skills. Although, they do try and stop you by throwing eggs once you get close the first time. But before long Link emerges victorious, at which point he goes to meet Zelda on top of the statue of the goddess. There, we get more awkward ship material, Zelda gives Link
After the ceremony, Link and Zelda go for a ride to celebrate. As they continue having awkward conversations (well, Zelda talks and both blush), suddenly a giant tornado springs out of nowhere to save the player from suffering through anymore awkward teenage romance. Thank goodness. Of course, it also knocks both of them off of their birds, and Link passes out.
He has another dream during this blackout, wherein he's falling, and I'm reminded of the opening of Kingdom Hearts.
I've been having these weird thoughts lately... like "Is this really a Zelda game... or not?"
In it he sees a strange blue lady that talks to him in an odd dialect. She speaks to him of a great mission that he needs to embark on soon (i.e. get on with the damn game already!). The last thing he sees before he wakes up with a start is Zelda falling towards the mouth of the giant black worm we saw previously.
When he does wake up, it's back in his room at the Knight Academy, and it's dark. The headmaster is there, wondering what became of his daughter. She hasn't been back yet, and now that it's dark, it's too dangerous to go search for her right now. The headmaster encourages Link to get some rest, and then leaves. Once he does, Link hears a noise out in the hallway, and decides to go investigate. Outside, he sees the blue lady from his dreams, and starts following her across town. Eventually, she leads him to the base of the statue, where a doorway opens up and she retreats inside. Inside the statue, Link finds a sword sitting in a stone pedestal, as is typical for these games. Out of the sword springs the blue lady, who introduces herself as Fi. She talks in a way that is reminiscent of A.I., with over-formality, loquaciousness, and with a lack of frills.
Fi lays down some exposition that amounts to this: Link is the chosen one, needs to take the sword (known as The Goddess Sword) and use its power to unite land and sky once again. In other words, typical Zelda game plot. She is the spirit of the sword, and therefore will act as this game's companion character, much like Navi or Midna. So Link takes the sword and strikes a pose with it, at which point the headmaster walks in. Apparently he is the only one on the island that knew of this place, and is not surprised to find that Link is the hero of legend. After some more exposition, Fi gives Link the Emerald Tablet, which he is supposed to place in the altar behind the pedestal. When he does so, a giant beacon pierces the sky, allowing an opening for Link to dive through in order to get to the surface.
The headmaster once again encourages Link to get some sleep before leaving to find Zelda in the morning, and offers him a proper traveling outfit once he wakes up. This, of course, is both his knight's uniform and his typical green tunic and hat. One of the instructors offers Link a wooden shield to take on his journey, and encourages him to go by the bazaar before leaving. We do so, and pick up a bottle of restoration potion that heals both Link and his shield (which has a health meter in this game).
And we'll go ahead and stop there. Join me next time when we visit the surface and meet a race of creatures new to the Zelda franchise.
