Nintendo is bringing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword to the Switch with an HD makeover, but just how different does it look when compared to the Wii version? Check out the videos above, which compare the Switch debut trailer to Wii footage.
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I can’t help but shake the feeling that something looks a little off with this remaster. Feels like we get less of the “living painting” feeling that the original had, but I’m not sure if that’s just because it’s now in HD. Would be curious to see how SSHD compares to upscaled versions of the game on emulators like Dolphin.
Remasters at times clean too much the image given the tech allows it.
I suppose game developers are also passing through that phase in which they're not aware that some murkiness gives a bit of more authenticity to an old work.
For example the clouds in the beginning short. Which have that paint-like effect like splotches of paint in contrast to the blurry effect they put in the remaster.
With that said, the Windwaker HD, QoL, did made revisiting the game more fun. It's not necessarily the authentic feeling, but I do like the option to sail faster, have briefer animations of the actions you do, cutting the windwaker animation if you already did that song in that play session, and so on.
Agreed, I'm disappointed they couldn't capture that memorable oil paint-like texture of the clouds in the original. For a game where you're in the sky with clouds in the frame so often, that's a big miss. The video also shows an interior scene with Fi that they de-saturated for some reason.
That said, the rest of the trailer looks very faithful and improved by the HD. I wouldn't say they totally threw the baby out with the bathwater.
It looks like run of the mill upscaling and the inherent improvement in hardware from Wii to Switch lets it run a Wii game at 60fps. Let's see BOTW2 run in 1080p and at 60fps on the current Switch.
There’s a fan-made HD texture mod for Skyward Sword that looks far better than this. I won’t be surprised if this is just the Wii version emulated at 1080p 60FPS- which wouldn’t be as much of a big deal if it were part of a collection but for £50 on its own I’d expect better (if that is the case).
If they haven’t done the bare minimum of removing the irritating hand holding things the original had going for it like telling you what an item is every time you pick one up I’m not going to bother with this. We’ll see!
This is the case, it is £50. I had made that point on Discord.
And you know, I wouldn't put it past Nintendo to delete the Wii U eShop Wii version coming up to the Switch release. It wouldn't be the first time.
Edit: Sorry, here's the link.
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Search/Search-299117.html?q=skyward%20sword&f=147393
Eh not paying the full price for what looks to be another lazy remaster. Should have at least been bundled with another game.
Hope they at least improved some really annoying parts of the game, like the constant item popups, Fi being annoying as hell, slow transition animations and the shitty harp controls.
Wow what a disappointment. Same muddy textures, same low poly models, same lighting. This just looks like the Wii game running in higher res. After WWHD I expected much better. Shame.
It was the Imprisoned, which was the major gripe with SS, the monotony of it, was uncalled for. Other than that it was challenging, different and the dungeons were typical Aonuma.
I still feel like people are way too hard on Skyward Sword. The artstyle definitely still works well, and many of the aspects like textures don't need huge updates like Twilight Princess did in order to work well in HD. There's actually a lot more subtle changes you notice as you keep looking deeper. In addition 60fps is a huge bonus to the control responsiveness and the addition of button controls will be really nice for the people who got stumped by motion controls in the original release. I'll be picking this up day one for sure.
I'd like to know if there is camera control. I know the right stick can do the sword thingy and I mean why not, even though I'm 100% sure I'll never use it. But the question is, is there going to be camera control if you don't choose to go with the no motion controls option.
It would be a real plus but I'm afraid they might want to keep the sword always mapped to the right stick for whenever you want to switch from one control method to the other. In which case that would mean no camera control at all.
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