An apocryphal story tells us that the inspiration for Zelda came when Miyamoto was exploring the woods outside his house and was awed by the rush that came from finding unknown caves and lakes. Whether or not this story is true, it fits perfectly with the reason many of us love the Zelda games: the thrill of exploration and discovery. The memories of Zelda games that stand out the most to me emotionally are those of finding little tricks and secrets scattered about the game world: digging up every square inch of ground in Link's Awakening because it was so exciting to find a hidden tunnel, a random island in the middle of the ocean in Wind Waker housing a heart piece, or finding out you get a blue rupee by jumping off the chains in Hyrule Castle in Ocarina of Time. All over the game world they hide incentives to poke around and experiment, laying out rewards for the curious like Aslan's table at the end of the world. These are the feelings I most strongly associate with Zelda.
Imagine my despair, then, upon starting Skyward Sword. After the introduction, I get on the bird you use to fly around the sky world. I know where the next objective is, but I can't resist the urge to fly around this beautifully painted world and see what's around. The first big rock I land on has nothing, so I fly to the next one. It only takes a few rocks containing either absolutely nothing or a locked treasure chest for my heart to begin to sink. There is next to no reason to go check out this world. Most of it is copy+pasted rocks with nothing on them, and the ones with locked chests on them light up when you've unlocked the chest. The game is telling you "don't bother; we'll mark it on your map when you need to come here." In a game universe that used to hide little goodies, this is an insult. "Get back to the plot" is fine in some games, but Zelda is not supposed to slap you on the wrist for getting distracted.
As if the empty shell of an overworld wasn't bad enough, the game seems to do everything in its power to make sure you never have to experiment and think outside the box when solving puzzles. Zelda puzzles are all about getting new items and figuring out how they fit together with your environment to move ahead. Sometimes the way you have to use them is unusual, but it's fun to experiment and it feels good when something finally clicks and you get to hear that wonderful "puzzle solved" jingle we've come to love so much. Skyward Sword does everything in its power to rob you of even these little victories, with either your new companion or a nearby sign spelling out exactly what to do. Clever solutions are set up, but it seems someone in development said "That's a good puzzle, but we agreed there would be no solving in this game, so just tell them how to do it."
I WOULD HAVE FIGURED THAT OUT, THANK YOU!
A particularly egregious example: the water dragon in charge of the whole water temple area lives in a giant basin of water. Later on in the game, there are these walls of fire that you close by pouring water from a bottle into the open mouth of nearby frog statues. The entrance to the fire temple is blocked by a giant wall of fire and there is a giant frog statue above it. A nearby character says something like "Gee, where are we going to get enough water for that?" Immediately after saying that, Fi (your companion) pops out and says "HEY, DIDN'T THE WATER DRAGON LIVE IN A BIG BUCKET?! LET'S USE THAT!" ruining a potentially great puzzling session. What could have been a great moment to allow the player to think back on what has happened so far and take another lap around the world to look closer at everything they've seen so far is turned into another pointless connect-the-dots chore by having the solution handed to you on a silver platter. So, needless to say, the part of me that was ready to have another world to explore and a new system of mechanics to experiment upon was extremely disappointed.
I spent some time being mad at this game. But as some time passed and I played other games (specifically the soulless shell of a game that Final Fantasy XIII-2 was,) I grew less hostile towards Skyward Sword. There were some beautiful things about Skyward Sword that were overshadowed by my initial hostility towards the death of exploration. While the beauty of discovery has always been the best-communicated theme in Zelda games, it is not the only one. Typical Zelda games are about you going from nobody to the chosen one who has the save the world whether he likes it or not. Different games have handled this theme of courage and growth with varying degrees of sincerity and effectiveness (it was more noticeable in Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess than in others) but it's never been particularly profound. I began to warm up to Skyward Sword when I realized that they had ignored the exploratory aspect in favor of improving the characters and combat to highlight these themes more than in any other Zelda.
This is most obvious in the characters, which are the best the Zelda series has ever seen. The side characters are entertaining and have more depth than your typical Zelda NPCs. Groose in particular is a great character, who goes from your typical jerk antagonist to being actually sympathetic and somewhat admirable. Princess Zelda herself is the best example though. Right from the start she exhibits more of a personality than she ever has, and thus I felt more involved the quest to save her. What's beautiful about what they've done with her is that she goes from the damsel in distress who is always in another castle to being arguably more important to the plot than Link himself. She has her own moment of realizing her role in this story and having to have some courage herself, and it results in possibly the most poignant scene in the series (I won't spoil it here.) This is a game about learning what needs to be done and finding the courage to overcome the external and internal obstacles to doing it, and for once there's a real artistic integrity to this theme. Even the combat, which is slower, more deliberate, and is much more of a focus than normal, serves this theme well. It's not a groundbreaking or original theme by any means, but it's handled with a unique sincerity and manages to make something beautiful in spite of sometimes questionable writing.
So even though exploration is no longer a focus, I have hope for the series because it still can communicate a theme and pull off something beautiful. This seems to be where the Zelda series is going, and if they can adjust and accept this as a team, then more wonderful things will continue to come from the series. What kept Skyward Sword from being truly great was that it kept so many mechanics from the days when these games were about the thrill of discovery, but they weren't committed to this theme. It would be a sad day to see a Zelda game without an expansive overworld or a hookshot, but I would rather them commit to a purpose and follow through than put these empty husks of mechanics to serve a traditional theme that no longer exists. Aonuma (the current director of the series,) said he is ready to re-think the Zelda series, and I imagine taking him on as the director was the beginning of the thematic shift. I think he'll have the guts to do what needs to be done, and not stick to old traditions just because you can't have a Zelda game without a torch-lighting puzzle. The themes may be changing, but there is still something undeniably beautiful about the Zelda games, and their future is bright.
