Development
In April 2008, game designer Shigeru Miyamoto confirmed the Zelda team to be "forming again to work on new games". He later clarified at the E3 2008 trade show that the staff members had been working on a new installment in the series for the Wii. The development of Skyward Sword started between the production cycles of the two The Legend of Zelda games for the Nintendo DS: it began after the completion of Phantom Hourglass and before the development of Spirit Tracks. Director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and his team developed Skyward Sword and Spirit Tracks simultaneously until the latter was completed and all staff was transferred to work solely on the Wii game. A report of Official Nintendo Magazine pointed out that the developers were still in the planning stages in November 2008, and that a first screening at E3 2009 was considered an optimistic prediction.
While the implementation of the graphics was not advanced enough to present actual footage at the 2009 trade show, the story of the game was almost completed, and a single piece of concept art was revealed to a select group of journalists. The image was released to the public a few days later, and showed a near-adult Link with a shield in his left hand, a mysterious female figure standing at his back. During an interview, Miyamoto provided a story hint by pointing out that Link does not hold a sword in the illustration. The comment raised speculation about the mysterious female being a personification of the Master Sword.
Miyamoto also announced use of the Wii MotionPlus peripheral for integral parts of the gameplay, such as sword-fighting. Support for this feature was dropped for several months because producer Eiji Aonuma did not feel it was effective enough. However, the decision was eventually reversed when Miyamoto told game designer Katsuya Eguchi to challenge Aonuma with creating swordplay similar in quality to that in Wii Sports Resort. This turn of events also resulted in Skyward Sword borrowing some of its technology from the sports game. Aonuma later confirmed Wii MotionPlus to be mandatory, and described aforementioned swordplay as feeling very natural, as if Link's sword and the player's controller became one. Instead of developing Skyward Sword around cutscenes, the team focused on the gameplay mechanics first. The game was intended to correct the flaw of too big and vacant areas in Twilight Princess, while maintaining and improving on the realism it portrayed. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata revealed plans to release the game by the end of 2010, and mentioned that it would debut at E3 2010.
At Nintendo's press conference coinciding with the trade show in June 2010, it was announced that the subtitle of the Wii Zelda was Skyward Sword, and that the game would be delayed until 2011. The presentation also revealed a hybrid of graphics from Twilight Princess and The Wind Waker resembling a painting come to life, similar to the graphics of Okami. The art style has been described as resembling the work of impressionist painters like Cézanne and was chosen based on the designers' desire to tell a fantasy story. One of the reasons fully realistic visuals were dropped was to allow for more exaggerated character designs, emphasizing the enemies' attacks and weaknesses. The game's soundtrack was primarily composed by Hajime Wakai, and long-standing series musician Koji Kondo provided additional compositions. Staff members expressed their wish to include orchestral music in Skyward Sword, but Miyamoto initially intervened because he felt its inclusion was not yet necessary for a presentation that focused on gameplay. After the summer break of 2010, however, it was decided that there would be orchestra recordings, and Super Mario Galaxy composer Mahito Yokota joined the development team as orchestration director. At E3 2011, it was announced that Skyward Sword would be released in Q4 2011. On August 17, 2011, Skyward Sword was announced to be released in Europe on November 18, 2011, and in North America on November 20, 2011. The game was released as both a standard edition and a limited deluxe edition that includes a gold Wii Remote Plus. For the initial production of the game, an anniversary CD was included with both editions of the game containing orchestrated music of iconic music of the series.
Read more about this topic: The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Creativity seems to emerge from multiple experiences, coupled with a well-supported development of personal resources, including a sense of freedom to venture beyond the known.”
—Loris Malaguzzi (20th century)
“... work is only part of a man’s life; play, family, church, individual and group contacts, educational opportunities, the intelligent exercise of citizenship, all play a part in a well-rounded life. Workers are men and women with potentialities for mental and spiritual development as well as for physical health. We are paying the price today of having too long sidestepped all that this means to the mental, moral, and spiritual health of our nation.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)