Astral/H3X
Member
So, I've been thinking this for a while, but I think that Skyward Sword has the most to gain in a potential remaster on the Switch, and I do *NOT* mean by removing motion controls.
EDIT: First and foremost, I speak within the bounds of precedent that we've seen in the other remasters -- small tweaks and changes to controls, small additions, and no major overhauls that completely change the game.
So what do I mean by this? Particularly, I am referring to the fact that most of the complaints on Skyward Sword are, largely, not content based (though it's not free from such issues), but rather geared towards flawed implementations of otherwise sound or agreeable concepts. Very little would have to be changed in any major way, to improve the game immensely. Most of these changes are "small" enough that honestly, they could have been implemented in something as minor as a patch, had the Wii been more accommodating of that.
Because of that, a remaster that touches on these issues, would do a lot of good for the game.
Easily Improved Point 1: Fi. Fi is a sweet concept, giving the Master Sword itself a personality, which gave the sword that's accompanied Link a deeper connection. It retroactively makes the Master Sword in the other games cooler, because now it's not just a weapon, but an eternal companion.... THAT WON'T SHUT THE FUCK UP, JESUS CHRIST I GET IT THERE'S A 95% CHANCE THAT THERE'S A FUCKING MOUNTAIN IN FRONT OF ME! SHUT THE HELL UP!
So, easy fix, you can already talk to Fi at will, right? Maybe one of those dialog options is, "Hey Fi, I know what I'm doing, mkay?" or "Hey Fi, I'm a little lost, can you point me around a bit?" Make all of the annoying "MASTER THERE'S AN 85% CHANCE THAT THE THING THE GUY TOLD YOU TWO SECONDS AGO IS A THING" optional, through a simple dialog, and bam, Fi goes from annoyance to cool dancing robot sword lady. Problem fixed. This is especially easy, because most of the time Fi isn't even a part of the fucking conversation she's annoying you with -- she's just throwing a second unskippable conversation where she just repeats the thing they just told you. Would take very little reworking/effort.
Also included is not opening a slow ass dialogue box every time you walk over an acorn, and other slow ass dialogues.
Easily improved point 2: Gyro pointer.
Okay, so in Skyward Sword, all point controls are kinda ass. Many are quick to blame the Gyro being used over IR, but that's only *half* right. The issues aren't the gyro being used fundamentally, but rather in quirks in how it's being used. We know this, because Pikmin 3 is a thing, and Pikmin 3 handles it much better.
The problem is that Skyward Sword is prioritizing having a smooth, "stable" pointer over a responsive one -- it achieves this by sampling position over several frames, and then averaging that out to decide where to put the pointer. You can actually mimick this same thing in any Wii/U CoD game by adjusting the "smoothness" setting.
Problem is, there's no fucking reason to use smoothness on Zelda! They seem to have realized this for BotW, where the gyro aim is much more responsive, and if they clear this up, aiming and using the Beetle will be massively improved.
Easily improved point 3: Controls
To follow up on the gyro pointer, there's a few other quirks that fuck up the game as a whole, that are easily remedied in a remaster. First -- pointer recentering. We all know that the pointer needs to occassionally adjusted to recenter, and I think most people can live with that. Where things get *REALLY HORRIBLE* however, is that the game frequently recenters the cursor without telling you. The biggest offender of this, is that the game will recenter your "cursor" when you walk through doors. So then, when you walk in the other room, and pull out your sword, suddenly it's pointing the wrong way! Why? Because you were holding your hand by your side when you walked through the door and it recentered, and the game for whatever fucking reason thinks you're pointing at the screen. This is fucking stupid, and just disabling this would honestly clear up a lot of control confusion.
Also, fuck the swimming controls. This is easy: either A, totally remove the motion aspect from it, or B, have orientation controlled by the control stick, and then "paddle" with motion if they REALLY want them in there. Ideally, just remove motion from swimming altogether, it's one of the cases where motion legitimately added *nothing* but frustration. Not even "hey that's cool", just frustration. They already totally reworked swimming as a Zora in MM3D, so we know this isn't so much change that they'd never do it.
To add to this point, consistency in general would already be improved by being on the Switch, in my opinion. I believe much of SS's fidgety controls came about due to the Motion Plus being an add on with some controllers, and built in with others. Using a built in M+ controller was a massive improvement over using an addon M+ on the Wii version, so I think having one good, base, accurate gyro controller will already alleviate the inconsistency problems SS had on Wii.
Less easily improved point: Empty Sky
This is probably the least "efficient" improvement point, in the sense that this did the least damage to SS's reputation of these points, and would mean the most amount of work to fix, since it would actively require content being created, but adding some Windwaker styled islands with caves in them to the sky would probably be for the best. At the very least, a challenge dungeon ala Cave of Ordeals could be added, though SS's combat is not particularly geared to the multiple enemy styled encounters that would encourage.
EDIT: First and foremost, I speak within the bounds of precedent that we've seen in the other remasters -- small tweaks and changes to controls, small additions, and no major overhauls that completely change the game.
So what do I mean by this? Particularly, I am referring to the fact that most of the complaints on Skyward Sword are, largely, not content based (though it's not free from such issues), but rather geared towards flawed implementations of otherwise sound or agreeable concepts. Very little would have to be changed in any major way, to improve the game immensely. Most of these changes are "small" enough that honestly, they could have been implemented in something as minor as a patch, had the Wii been more accommodating of that.
Because of that, a remaster that touches on these issues, would do a lot of good for the game.
Easily Improved Point 1: Fi. Fi is a sweet concept, giving the Master Sword itself a personality, which gave the sword that's accompanied Link a deeper connection. It retroactively makes the Master Sword in the other games cooler, because now it's not just a weapon, but an eternal companion.... THAT WON'T SHUT THE FUCK UP, JESUS CHRIST I GET IT THERE'S A 95% CHANCE THAT THERE'S A FUCKING MOUNTAIN IN FRONT OF ME! SHUT THE HELL UP!
So, easy fix, you can already talk to Fi at will, right? Maybe one of those dialog options is, "Hey Fi, I know what I'm doing, mkay?" or "Hey Fi, I'm a little lost, can you point me around a bit?" Make all of the annoying "MASTER THERE'S AN 85% CHANCE THAT THE THING THE GUY TOLD YOU TWO SECONDS AGO IS A THING" optional, through a simple dialog, and bam, Fi goes from annoyance to cool dancing robot sword lady. Problem fixed. This is especially easy, because most of the time Fi isn't even a part of the fucking conversation she's annoying you with -- she's just throwing a second unskippable conversation where she just repeats the thing they just told you. Would take very little reworking/effort.
Also included is not opening a slow ass dialogue box every time you walk over an acorn, and other slow ass dialogues.
Easily improved point 2: Gyro pointer.
Okay, so in Skyward Sword, all point controls are kinda ass. Many are quick to blame the Gyro being used over IR, but that's only *half* right. The issues aren't the gyro being used fundamentally, but rather in quirks in how it's being used. We know this, because Pikmin 3 is a thing, and Pikmin 3 handles it much better.
The problem is that Skyward Sword is prioritizing having a smooth, "stable" pointer over a responsive one -- it achieves this by sampling position over several frames, and then averaging that out to decide where to put the pointer. You can actually mimick this same thing in any Wii/U CoD game by adjusting the "smoothness" setting.
Problem is, there's no fucking reason to use smoothness on Zelda! They seem to have realized this for BotW, where the gyro aim is much more responsive, and if they clear this up, aiming and using the Beetle will be massively improved.
Easily improved point 3: Controls
To follow up on the gyro pointer, there's a few other quirks that fuck up the game as a whole, that are easily remedied in a remaster. First -- pointer recentering. We all know that the pointer needs to occassionally adjusted to recenter, and I think most people can live with that. Where things get *REALLY HORRIBLE* however, is that the game frequently recenters the cursor without telling you. The biggest offender of this, is that the game will recenter your "cursor" when you walk through doors. So then, when you walk in the other room, and pull out your sword, suddenly it's pointing the wrong way! Why? Because you were holding your hand by your side when you walked through the door and it recentered, and the game for whatever fucking reason thinks you're pointing at the screen. This is fucking stupid, and just disabling this would honestly clear up a lot of control confusion.
Also, fuck the swimming controls. This is easy: either A, totally remove the motion aspect from it, or B, have orientation controlled by the control stick, and then "paddle" with motion if they REALLY want them in there. Ideally, just remove motion from swimming altogether, it's one of the cases where motion legitimately added *nothing* but frustration. Not even "hey that's cool", just frustration. They already totally reworked swimming as a Zora in MM3D, so we know this isn't so much change that they'd never do it.
To add to this point, consistency in general would already be improved by being on the Switch, in my opinion. I believe much of SS's fidgety controls came about due to the Motion Plus being an add on with some controllers, and built in with others. Using a built in M+ controller was a massive improvement over using an addon M+ on the Wii version, so I think having one good, base, accurate gyro controller will already alleviate the inconsistency problems SS had on Wii.
Less easily improved point: Empty Sky
This is probably the least "efficient" improvement point, in the sense that this did the least damage to SS's reputation of these points, and would mean the most amount of work to fix, since it would actively require content being created, but adding some Windwaker styled islands with caves in them to the sky would probably be for the best. At the very least, a challenge dungeon ala Cave of Ordeals could be added, though SS's combat is not particularly geared to the multiple enemy styled encounters that would encourage.
