StephenTotilo: Skyward Sword time
StephenTotilo: Aonuma wants to know if people played the bird boss battle in Skyward Sword last year
StephenTotilo: (not many raise their hand, to his surprise)
StephenTotilo: Wonders if they found it hard. They said no.
StephenTotilo: But Aonuma basically says we should not worry and play it, using the game's motion-controls for swordplay
StephenTotilo: he wants to walk through some Skyward Sword features
StephenTotilo: Nintendo's Nate Bihldorff takes the stage
StephenTotilo: (apologies if I bungled the spelling, Nate)
StephenTotilo: (once I wrote a story that mentioned Nate crying. His colleagues gave him a lot of grief)
StephenTotilo: There are two characters called, Mogmas?
StephenTotilo: They've buried fice things Link needs to find
StephenTotilo: There's also a spirit in Link's sword, named... Fie?
StephenTotilo: Fy?
StephenTotilo: We're in a first-person mode, using the Wii Remote to point the sword to parts of the ground, like prospecting for buried metal on a beach with a metal detector
StephenTotilo: The sword is leading Link to a ledge, but when he jumps it, he winds up sliding down to a lower level
StephenTotilo: under a tower?
StephenTotilo: (this is all in a desert, by the way)
StephenTotilo: Link climbs back up and bowls a bomb flower down to the tower to expose the second piece
StephenTotilo: Link slides down and gets the second piece
StephenTotilo: (It should be noted that MIyamoto actually questioned Aonuma in front of us about why they hid five pieces... he said it seemed like a random number)
StephenTotilo: Search for third piece brings Link into fight with bad guy
StephenTotilo: Nate uses motion controls to swing his sword well and kill the guy (puff of smoke death-style)
StephenTotilo: Searching for next piece takes Link through what looks like a deserted, small stone palace
StephenTotilo: Nate need to roll bombs down a slope to open a cave
StephenTotilo: It requires careful timing.
StephenTotilo: He goes down and gets a new piece
StephenTotilo: Link uses a new item for this game, metal gauntlets, to dig things from the earth (that item sounds familiar... maybe in a portable Zelda? Can't remember)
StephenTotilo: On to the next Skyward Sword demo
StephenTotilo: We're going to the Siren world
StephenTotilo: This game, he says, has Link going through trials to forge the Master Sword
StephenTotilo: We're in the forest scene from last year's E3 demo
StephenTotilo: Link drives his sword into the ground and is transported to the blue-green siren world version of the forest
StephenTotilo: (I dare say this is some Link to the Past Dark World type thing here, but it might be a small thing. Don't get excited)
StephenTotilo: Whenver Link goes to Siren world, he needs to collect items to leave environment
StephenTotilo: Basically it looks like the forest world with a dream-like blue-green filter on it
StephenTotilo: He needs to collect these teardrop items
StephenTotilo: Link is unarmed in this world
StephenTotilo: one hit from the guardians in the world will do him in
StephenTotilo: (this is looking a bit Princess Mononoke to me.... which is a good thing!)
StephenTotilo: He walks out of a safety circle and the guardians started coming after him
StephenTotilo: (this obviously echoes how the central temples worked in Aonuma's recent DS Zeldas)
StephenTotilo: (also echoes Metroid Prime Echoes, pun intended)
StephenTotilo: guardians are put to sleep briefly, but when a flower petal meter expires, the guardians come back
StephenTotilo: picking up items refills that flower meter
StephenTotilo: Link is climbing a wall covered in ivy
StephenTotilo: You will be doing things that are different in this Siren world than you would in the regular version of the world
StephenTotilo: (he's not saying if the world is subtly rearranged, a la Link to the Past... just saying that knowing how to traverse helps)
StephenTotilo: He feels as if the envioronments in this game that leads to dungeons are dungeons unto themselves
StephenTotilo: says that typically in most Zeldas, once you go through an area and do all the puzzles, you're done. You move on and don't return. He says in this one you'll find that if you go back, you'll find there are new puzzles and things to do
StephenTotilo: (sounds Metroid-y, your comparison-heavy liveblogger thinks)
StephenTotilo: This idea of going back to multiple areas multiple times is core to Skyward Sword
StephenTotilo: Miyamoto is commenting (uh-oh)
StephenTotilo: He says this is "a game you can play for a very long time. Understanding the map is going to make the game very interesting to play"
StephenTotilo: Link was running from a guardian, but Link got tired and collapsed.
