Burny

Remember that the first couple of SE owners in France got that art book? Some guy has scanned the complete (Japanese) version of the book and put it online. It's a real treat, but quiet spoiler heavy. Don't look until you've finished the game! Art book.

Might be nice, but I don't think it'll happen. Any ideas they have for good new tracks they can work into the next Mario Kart for the WiiU instead.

Didn't we establish that Link has to remain mute?

Obviously everyone but Link would have to talk. You can't let the main characters who get the most dialogue remain mute. Finding the right voices isn't some sort of unsolvable problem. After all Pixar and Disney create all kinds of non-human speaking characters as well. For the distinction what to voice and what not they could also apply a rather easy rule of thump: Cut scenes without player control that develop the story have to be voiced. Player "controlled" text bubble dialogue outside of cut scenes that merely tells you "Go to place X and pick up Y" should not be voiced (or rather: limited to the usual gibberish). I'm personally fine with "mute" characters in Zelda. But seeing some of the cut scenes from the Skyward Sword footage, I do think that a bit of well placed understandable voice acting could add a lot to the game's mass appeal. I just can't imagine that voice acting for the less important NPCs and dialogues would add anything to the game.

Someone will always bitch. You'll be the one who will, if Nintendo decides voice acting might give Zelda more mass appeal...

Let them bitch. They would bitch just as much when they realized that many of the side characters simply don't make for interesting voice acting, but had to listen to them anyway. Zelda has a lot of very cinematic scenes and today it's convention to have them voice acted. Given that these scenes have become ever more elaborate in recent games, voice acting would fit in naturally.

It needs a fitting soundtrack! Audio Although I don't think Nintendo has gone beyond 0:25 yet.

You know, I don't think it would be that bad. Link of course should always remain silent. The silent protagonist approach works incredibly well for Valve games and Metroid Prime 3. Links personailty doesn't need fleshing out. But the other characters might just as well be voiced in cut scenes. Text-bubble dialogue could still remain unvoiced. The ridiculous requests from NPCs don't need to be acted out in painstaking detail.

I never understood why some people loath the stealth segments in Zeldas. I quiet like them. The best one was the pirate fortress in Wind Waker imo, which really built up a bit of a creepy atmosphere. Only downside to it was that I found navigating the fortress quiet confusing. The sections in Spirit tracks with the different phantoms were excellent, too. The abilities of the phantoms really allowed for some nice puzzle elements. Edit: I might just be imagining things, but the forest theme's melody sounds quiet strange to my ears, especially when it sets in for the first time in that video. Might this be another well known Zelda theme played in reverse? Edit 2: No. Playing it in reverse definitely doesn't result in a melody I would recognize.

Have you guys been on a media blackout for this game? Maple Treeway footage starts at 1:36.

If they didn't yell randomly every time the video showed some favorite part of one of the games, they were already rather well-mannered in comparison to the audience from one of the filmed concerts: Audio It's hard to listen to.

@Supergrunch The game doesn't come packaged with the Motion Plus addon. You either have to get the addon separately or the limited edition game that comes with a Wiimote+.

Bad. Then again, I'm not trying to avoid them. Watched pretty much all trailers. The latest one however was a bit too spoiler-heavy, even for my tastes. I knew or suspected Link would eventually get that thing, but being shown some crucial parts of the scene itself does spoil a bit of the surprise element. Was worth it though.

I do think these criticism are justified and come from the way the game strings together its dungeons. Going to a dungeon, getting a new item, vanquishing a boss with it, going back to the overworld and accessing the next dungeon with some new items is standard fare for Zelda and as formulaic as game progression can get. Although all Zelda games follow that formula, Twilight Princess felt somewhat especially formulaic. In hindsight I feel that all there was to do in between dungeons, was finding the next story sequences that led to the next dungeon. "Interaction" with NPCs was mostly limited to the story sequences, with very little interesting side stories. The world itself didn't really come alive, as it was mostly barren, bar the occasional monster. It didn't help that the world was so large, as that only accentuated how empty it was. It didn't help either that dungeons where also quiet large, which only accentuates that there was little to do with any new items, after you emerged from an hour-long sequence of puzzles and bosses in the dungeon.

You could still convince you that this is the "official fanboy magazine of rose tinted glasses". It's not too late! Or you could wait until the reviews complaining about the general SD-ness and motion-control-ness start trickling in to quench your excitement.

At the moment fairly little, which is good, because I should use my time to finish my studies. The games for which I neglected my studies before were MotoHeroz (ignore the "Z", PLAY IT!), a bit of Donkey Kong Country Returns and Xenoblade. The next will be Zelda. Not quiet. But then I have only indifference for everything that's hack and slash with strange button combinations for moves. The likes of Devil May Cry, Bayonetta and God of War do nothing for me either. And if they did, I'd basically play any of those before I'd touch Pandora's Tower.

That was probably the main source of all the confusion at E3 and a major oversight by Nintendo. Showing Wiimotes and games that looked like Wii games by all rights before even showing the new console itself. Way to imply the Pad is only a Wii-addon. In hindsight the intended message is clear though: There is one "U-Pad" per console and for local multiplayer everyone else uses Wiimotes/Classic-Controllers. I'm personally hoping that pointer controls will pick up. The new Counter Strike is confirmed to support Move on the PS3, isn't it? I believe even Bioshock Infinite was confirmed to support Move. I hope more devs use the opportunity in the future, as I found it hard to go back to dual analogues after getting accustomed to pointer controls. Options don't hurt.

Yes, in fact focus was shifted so much away from pointer controls in Nintendo's E3 presentation, that about the second thing Nintendo showed of the WiiU were Wiimotes.

Zelda will lose the story- and "vast open"-world comparison, if one were to put them side by side. The story will be an excuse for the main novelties in Skyward Sword's game mechanics and measured in "openness" and "vastness" there are precious few games that got anything on Xenoblade. As it's Zelda though, that does not have to mean anything. The stories are always poor from a general plot point of view, but can still be well told. As Zelda is a puzzle-heavy action adventure instead of a stat based, combat-heavy RPG, a vast open world filled with the occasional monster and not much else is about the opposite of what Zelda needs. It's probably possible to say that one world or the other is better realized, but due to the games' different nature, what makes one game great wouldn't necessarily work for the other.

Which is a bit foolish, as Zelda games are still not RPGs. Unless people will complain again that Zelda is not another game than Zelda. But in reverse they could complain that Xenoblade has zero puzzles.

Loads of rubbish, really. I get the impression the writer desperately wants to be able to call Zelda an RPG and completely overblows this analysis into a small novel. All this seems to be are some more intricate mechanics layered on top of the usual Zelda stuff. Degrading and tiered shields, medals that change some effects etc.. Doesn't turn Skyward Sword into a stat-based game with choice of character classes and the likes. Edit: Looking at stats and customization, multiplayer components in most modern shooters are probably more RPG-ish than Zelda is with these new elements.

Joystiq is already whining...

The intro music is extremely good. Audio

And I suspect there are good reasons for that, too. If they added any more areas, I wouldn't be so sure that this: ...would still hold. There is no guarantee that adding another leg- and foot-area or the area that was removed from the game but is still on the disc would actually be fun. As it stands, the game flows very well despite its immense length. Simply adding areas in between without building the story around them, might turn it into a chore. Normally I'd say that such stuff belongs into an addon that extends the story. But that doesn't seem like a good idea for Xenoblade, unless they told some kind of parallel story that's happening while Shulk & co. are adventuring on the titans.

Wait, didn't Sharla corner Melia and tell her to go for Shulk in a cut scene where it was made implicitely clear that Melia had a crush for him? Or was that also one of the a heart to hearts?