 Hi everyone and welcome to Zelda Informer's mail bag number two. It's been about a month since our last mail bag and we're going to try to make this a more weekly feature. Our starting member, starting staff member of the mail bag, Alex Plant, has a lot on his plate right now with his life and with his work that he does on Zelda Informer. So as you'll love the owner of Webmaster, I decided, hey, I'm going to bring it all back together and we'll try to make this mail bag something you guys can look forward to every weekend. So since the last mail bag was a month old, a lot of the questions that were asked for the new mail bag have already been answered. So I'm going to kind of avoid all that stuff and just get to what looks like one, two, three, five questions that I think are worth discussing in this mail bag. So without further ado, Zelda Informer mail bag numeral dose. So Mike73 from the comment section asks, how much fan service and nods to past games do you think Skyward Sword will get? I think a lot. We've already seen so many references that we could point to previous games. I mean, even the, you know, you have the sword being back, that's clearly a kick back to Majora's Mask and even further back to the very first game, The Legend of Zelda. You've got item upgrades. You can argue that's kind of a kickback to some sort of upgrade, minor upgrading systems that we've had. Oh, you got the dash, you know, that obviously brings you back to a link to the past. So a lot of the mechanics in the game already are nods to previous games, but I think more so what you're asking is more on the fan service, more like what sort of subtle things will be in the game that don't necessarily have anything to do with the story or the game mechanics or the gameplay, but just really kick you back. You know, a lot of symbolism, I guess is what I'm looking for here. I think there's going to be quite a bit of it. You know, we already know that, you know, potentially a potential spoiler, or the book of Majora might actually be in the game, don't know if we can read it. We don't, you know, it'd be awesome if it could read it, but we do know that it's potentially in the game. So you know, there's just a lot of stuff like that I think is going to be really packed in. I think this is going to be one of the most full worlds in terms of details that we're ever experienced in Zelda, so I think there's going to be a lot of nods and kickbacks and fan service things to please the old fans and to introduce new fans since Skyward Sword is the first game in the series to the entire Zelda mythos that they can experience in all the other games. So yes, I think there's going to be a lot of fan service. In fact, I think that's what's got so many people excited right now is just all the little things coming together from all the different games. Question number two from Zelda fan 1414 is, who do you think the new characters shown in Skyward Sword is? They're referring to the blonde character in the one cinematic. If you haven't seen it, let me just say that everything discussed with this question is a big spoiler. Anyways, so the new character shown is clearly a Sheikah. There's a lot of resemblances to what we have seen of the Sheikah in the past, and there's a lot of Sheikah symbols on the clothing, you know, tattooed on her. So it's obvious there's the Sheikah, it's likely not Zelda. The face is way too different for it to be Zelda, but it's obviously an important character. I mean, Link is chasing her, so who knows what it really means, but hey, it's a Sheikah. Go ahead and speculate that all you want. Question number three also comes from Zelda fan 1414, and this also relates to Skyward Sword. Big surprise. So what do you think of Beetle making an appearance? I think Beetle making an appearance is obviously a kickback to the Wind Waker where Beetle originated, and I think it's mostly just to show that this game connects to all the Zelda games, including characters. We've already seen some other characters, so yep, Beetle's in the game. I don't really think that's spoiler worthy, that's why I didn't spoil the whole question, but I don't really know what Beetle does. We will find out as the game progresses next month. Question number four is from Lucas, and he asks, do you think the Mirror Shield and Hover Boots will make an appearance in Skyward Sword? I think the Mirror Shield will make an appearance. It's just, it fits really nicely into the whole item upgrade. We already know the shields can be upgraded, and we know there's a shield before the Hylian Shield, so there definitely should be a shield after the Hylian Shield, you would think. And the Mirror Shield, why not? I think there could be some interesting Wii Motion Plus mechanics involving it, reflections and everything, playing with light, you know, all that great stuff that we've seen in past Zelda games would really, I think, work well in a game with Skyward Sword. I think it's a high probability that it's in the game. Moving on, the Hover Boots, I think it fits well with the item upgrade system again, and the magical and whimsical way, but we've actually haven't seen anything that suggests the boots can be upgraded. We know in the past there's been Iron Boots and stuff like that, so very likely there could be, but I'm going to go with no. We just don't see the Hover Boots in a lot of Zelda games, and I don't really know if Skyward Sword is the right game to bring the Hover Boots back in, despite the fact that it takes place in the sky and on the ground, and there's gliding and falling and flying, and hovering would just make sense to go with it all, but I just, I don't see it happening, so in short, Mirror Shield, yes, Hover Boots, no. And finally we get to our last question, question five, and it's finally not a Zelda related question, as much as we love Zelda at Zelda Informer, it's nice to get our horizons expanded. And this one comes from Subrosion asking, how awesome would it be if Nintendo made a huge online multiplayer Star Fox for the Wii U? I think this is obviously something that everyone doesn't really expect, but would be awesome if it happened. Nintendo has had really, really poor online support for video games in this generation, and they keep saying they want to improve that for next generation, and personally that has to go beyond just helping third parties get their content to work online on your system. Nintendo themselves needs to make a serious commitment to online gaming, and Star Fox, I think it's a great way to do this. We haven't seen a new Star Fox 64 type game since Star Fox 64, so, you know, the remake's all great on the 3DS, but it has to get a new fresh experience that expands on what Star Fox 64's created, and you got to think about it using the Wii U screen with this could just add a whole new dimension to the gameplay. And then being able to do it online against other players would be great. I think it'd be also great if they had an achievement system for this, but Nintendo stated they're not really big into achievement systems, but they've kind of had them, they have them in brawl, you know, and you can argue that Star collecting in Mario is basically one giant achievement for the whole game. So I don't really know. I think that it would be really cool if they do it. I think Nintendo should do it. I think they should commit resources to making Star Fox become mainstream again. Obviously, it can't just be a multiplayer game. There has to be a single player campaign, despite the fact that a lot of multiplayer games, single player campaigns aren't very good. Nintendo is great with single player experiences. So I think they should, especially with like 25. I mean, this is a massive disc. We're talking 25 gigabytes. They really need to have a full on campaign that stands alone and then tack the multiplayer on top of it, but not just like added on as, oh, hey, you can also play it on. Make it a full experience just like the campaign is. I think if Nintendo can do that and make it entertaining and maybe add some achievements in, Star Fox 64 would do or Star Fox, I'm sorry, period would do great in an online atmosphere. It's just it's just the type of online experience that can really capture the crowd that they're trying to get back. All that being said, that brings this mailbag number two to a close. We will be bringing the mailbag back every single weekend from here until the day we all die. You call me an apocalypse. So you could submit more questions for next weekend's mailbag below in the comment section type type type type. You can also if it's something you would rather ask personally and maybe not have your name revealed with it, you can email Alex at Zeldinformer.com or Nathan at Zeldinformer.com. It doesn't really matter which one you email because all the questions will be combined in private. So as for who's doing next week's mailbag, it's either me or Alex. Don't know who yet. Alex is working on getting a new mic out to have one. So we will see you guys.