Twilight Princess is probably a better game, but I think they compromised from the outset to appease OOT fans and win some whoops and hollars at E3. Skyward Sword is more of a return to them doing what they want, but there is still an awkward compromise there...
SS felt to me like they were kind of out of ideas.
"Let's make ANOTHER prequel showing the origins of Hyrule!" Did we really need to see this? Things work better when they stay mysterious. I mean it's good for fanfic writers but not as much for the series I think.
"Crap, what kind of art style should we have?" "Let's take the cel shading of WW and the proportions of TP and smash 'em together."
I like a lot of the gameplay enhancements in that game though. More loot-y than I expected and I liked it. (Along with standard enemies actually requiring a half second of thought to kill.)
What I disliked most about it was the lack of content. Felt like 1/3 of the game TP was, and that's being generous.
The origin story felt like a response to 'timeline' discussion to me... an awkward attempt to make sense of the fact that similar legends featuring similar characters keep being retold. The whole thing with Demise, Goddess Hylia and the curse on Zelda and Link's bloodlines made enough sense -- but I agree, it never really needed to make sense. It didn't matter.
As a 25th anniversary game, Skyward Sword had a LOT of fan-service, and I'm one of the people who really enjoyed the motion controls. I'm not missing them in going back to Wind Waker, but I think it would be a step back to not have directional attacks and appropriate defensive positions from enemies in the next game.
You mentioned the sky being barren, but I think as opposed to land, seas and skies are meant to be vast and largely empty. It might have been weird to have just crammed everything together in the sky... What I
would have liked them to do, is more closely link the three main areas they cycled between in Hyrule itself. I enjoyed the way they had items, shortcuts and new things to discover each time the game required you to revisit an area. In that respect, it felt closer to the old 2D overworlds than they have ever really achieved -- but the hub-like function of the sky worked against the game to break up that illusion. Maybe with better hardware and much more RAM, they could go with a similar approach and make the game feel more connected & 'open world'.
I hope that in returning to Link to the Past and Wind Waker, before making the true Wii U game, the staff now have a feel for how confidently prior teams used to shake things up and how timeless a game can be when real colour, care, animation and love is put in. The Zelda team need their Mario Galaxy... something brave, like Wind Waker was at the time. It wasn't appreciated back then, but I think being a little bolder with the new game would go down well now.
LttP2 looks uninspired. I said it. The original was my favorite game for a long long time but the new one looks... bland. I want it to be good but billing yourself as a sequel to the best 2D Zelda is not a good way to avoid high expectations.
I'm unsure about it. I finally played the same demo the press have been playing for months, but in 3D, and I love what's going on with the vertical level design and visual depth -- but I also think it looks kind of ugly. Nowhere near as ugly as the DS games, obviously...
The new footage in the Nintendo Direct did give me some hope. While the new item rental system could be crap, it could equally make things more interesting. I was glad to see there are new character and enemy designs now in addition to old ones. They have the old royal guards, the same octoroks, characters like Sahasrahla returning -- but they have Hilda, the Zora Queen, Ravio, Dampe the gravekeeper, Irene the witch, and (what looks like) Impa based off the old artwork... so hopefully, although the light world overworld looks exactly the same as LTTP, there are plenty of new faces and things to do.
