As far as we know, there’s no Ganondorf in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Instead, the antagonist of the game this time is Ghirahim. Zelda series producer, Eiji Aonuma, says that Ghirahim has the ability to read your movements.
By that, Aonuma’s referring to sword battles against Ghirahim. Since Skyward Sword uses the Motion Plus peripheral, you can swing your sword in a number of directions. In certain instances, Ghirahim fights with his bare hands, and he’s able to determine which directions he could be hit from. If he predicts your swing, he stops your sword with his hand.
In order to defeat Ghirahim, Aonuma says that you have to “trick” him. The solution to this is understanding that Ghirahim moves his hands wherever Link’s sword is, and figuring out how to trick him with your attack.
In Skyward Sword, you can also hold your sword still in mid-air, which was a feature requested by Miyamoto. It led to the creation of the Sword Beam feature. If you hold your sword still and point it high up by holding the Wii Remote straight up, energy builds up, and you can release a beam that serves as a ranged attack.
It’s also what led to the name of the game. While “skyward” refers to pointing your sword up at the sky, Aonuma heard from Nintendo of America that “ward” can also mean to guard something. Likely because of how kanji combinations work in Japanese, Aonuma sees “sky” + “ward” to mean “protector of the sky” or “one who is protected by the sky”.
Published: Oct 18, 2011 10:30 am