Nintendo Running 'Different Experiments' for 'The Legend of Zelda' Wii U

Jun 8, 2012 by Jeff Schille

Legend of Zelda Wii U

E3 2012 has come and gone. A number of high profile game announcement marked this year’s expo as one worth remembering — Watch Dogs, Star Wars 1313, Beyond: Two Souls — but one eagerly anticipated title was nowhere to be seen: The Legend of Zelda for Wii U.

Despite Shigeru Miyamoto’s confirmation that The Legend of Zelda will appear on Nintendo’s new system (as if there was any doubt), the title remained conspicuously absent throughout this year’s festivities. According to Miyamoto, that’s because the game is still in an experimental stage.

Zelda aside, there is no shortage of Nintendo first-party games en route to Wii U. New Super Mario Bros. U is due this year, and Pikmin 3 is slated for the system’s “launch window,” with other titles like Nintendo Land and Project P-100 adding breadth to the console’s lineup. Still, players want what they want, and particularly after the Legend of Zelda HD demo that Nintendo brought to E3 2011, those players want Zelda for Wii U.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, Miyamoto discusses the state of The Legend of Zelda for Wii U.

“With the last game, Skyward Sword, that was a game where you had motion control to use your weapons and a lot of different items, and I thought that was a lot of fun, but there were some people who weren’t able to do that or didn’t like it as much and stopped playing partway through it. So we’re in the phase where we’re looking back at what’s worked very well and what has been missing and how can we evolve it further.”

“…what we continue to ask ourselves as we have over the years is, ‘What is the most important element of Zelda if we were to try to make a Zelda game that a lot of people can play?’ So we have a number of different experiments going on, and [when] we decide that we’ve found the right one of those to really help bring Zelda to a very big audience, then we’ll be happy to announce it.”

Indeed, while the Wii U’s GamePad should open up a lot of creative avenues for Link’s next adventures, it’s not particularly well suited to motion-controlled sword fighting. During the E3 2011 Zelda HD demo, the GamePad was used to access Link’s inventory, but given the creative uses games such as ZombiU have devised for the new controller, an inventory management screen is hardly going to be sufficient. Couple that with Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma’s proclamation that the series will support Skyward Sword-style motion control for the forseeable future, and the challenges Nintendo faces in properly bringing Zelda to its new console become obvious. With that, the long wait for E3 2013 officially begins.

Ranters, how do you think Nintendo should use the GamePad for The Legend of Zelda’s Wii U debut? Do you want the series to stick with the motion control from Skyward Sword, or are you ready for something new? Let us know in the comments below.