 So I have a couple great reasons today to talk about Skyward Sword HD. First is that we're giving away two copies of the game, head down to the description to enter for that, good luck. Secondly is that Nintendo today decided to finally give us the information we've been begging for for months, information that I wish we would have got back at E3. And that is, what exactly are the quality of life improvements that were referenced on the official website out in the Skyward Sword UK website? What are these improvements beyond the amiibo stuff? Because it suggested there was more. Well today Nintendo finally told us, so I'm gonna go over those improvements, I'm gonna give my thoughts on those improvements, and then we have to revisit an age-old question at this point, is Skyward Sword HD worth $60? I mean, if you want to give away, it's free, so that's obviously worth it. But for you to go out day one and spend 60 bucks, for you to go out in three years and spend 60 bucks because Nintendo doesn't lower prices, will the game be worth it? Well, let's talk about that. All right, so today Nintendo put out about a minute and 38 second, I believe is the exact amount of time, trailer that was specifically targeted at quality of life enhancements. And they went over a bunch of stuff. Some stuff I've actually mentioned in the past would be good to improve upon, and they went there. So let's get into this. So they start off the trailer and they say, hey, Phi Phi Fo Fum, their help is optional. Her help is optional. So this is a big character in the game, I don't wanna spoil too much. But yeah, essentially what happens throughout the game is there'll be times, kind of like with Navi back in Ocarina of Time, that you get a little notification that, hey, she's here and can help you, and it will make your hilt glow on the back of your character and make the master sword hilt glow. So if you decide to then hit the button prompt that brings that person up just like with Navi, you will end up getting four different options. Those options are objective, which I presume is just showing whatever your current mainline quest objective is. Advice, analysis, and then nevermind, which is obviously how you back out. If you do select advice, which they do show, gives you four more options, including a summary, a hint, nevermind, again, to exit, and then rumors. Now rumors are part of this game. It's usually something you had to go all the way back to Skyloft in order to get access to the rumors. The rumors sometimes give you hints. Sometimes the rumors are also fake. It's pretty interesting. The whole rumors system built into this game that Nintendo hasn't even advertised, but it is part of the game. So that's something to keep in mind. And obviously in the video, they do show them selecting hints, but they don't show you what the hints are. So I'm not sure if this is a new hint system they've put into the game, or if this is just the same little advice that V5oFum used to give you before. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens with this hint system. And if it's completely new, or if it's just repurposing advice and hints already given by that character. Then they go on to say that advanced control options, which we already knew about. This means motion or buttons. They also talk about how the gameplay is smoother, aka 60 FPS. Again, these are a couple things we already knew about, but they're just reminding you, hey look, there are button controls. I'm gonna remind you of the button controls at every turn. And they're gonna remind you that this is a 60 FPS, which factually is a smoother gameplay experience and is a quality of life improvement. I mean, if you've ever, I don't know if you have, but if you've ever had a chance to experience Breath of the Wild on PC at 60 FPS, you'll know that it's just that extra bit of crispness and smoothness to the gameplay that hopefully a certain unannounced system might bring. All right, next up, they talk about fast forwarding dialogue by pressing A. This is like a basic feature in modern games today, being able to just fast forward through dialogue, especially if it's like, you know, it's sitting at a shop right and there's that little shop preamble before you can buy something, just being able to fast forward through that by just pressing A, which is the same button to move on to the next thing. Yeah, that to me is basic, but I'm glad that they decided to include it because they obviously didn't have to. That's gonna make the gameplay experience just a smidge better, especially for repeated dialogue sequences, like I mentioned in a shop. They also streamlined item information. This to me is one of the biggest changes they've done is one of the things that was really frustrating about Skyward Sword back in the day is you would run into something, whether it's a heart piece or a stamina blob or whatever it is, right? A bug and it would like tell you the information on it the first time you run into it, and then you'd be fine the rest of your gameplay session, but if you saved and came back into it and reloaded the save file, it would have to tell you that information again and it was quite annoying, especially for some of the basic things like the stamina stuff, like we obviously know after just a few times that that's the stamina thing, we don't need to be told what it is every single time and it would interrupt gameplay and it was kind of annoying. And they didn't have this problem in Breath of the Wild, but it was a problem in Skyward Sword and it was really weird since it wasn't a problem in prior Zelda games before it, so I didn't know why this was just like, it almost felt like a bug to be honest, but they have streamlined it as they said and they do show running into the stamina item and then saving, quitting, reloading your save file and showing them running into that same stamina item and having it not pop up by telling you what it is. Obviously, you're always able to go into the menu and figure that stuff out as well if you do happen to forget, but yeah, duh. Like this is something they needed to do. If they didn't do it, that would have been very disappointing. So thank you. And obviously all this stuff, by the way, well, we're getting into the cinema. Sorry, let's get into the rest of the stuff they mentioned. Skippable cutscenes. Again, I don't think first playthrough that matters much for people. Skyward Sword veterans that have played it four, five, six times. I've only played through it twice, but four, five, six times and you don't care about the story per se, you just like the gameplay because you already know everything. Cool. Skippable cutscenes, hit the minus button. You know, I think the Skippable cutscenes should be in every game anyways as an option for those that just don't care. On Twitter though, they do note that these tweaks, the tweaks in this video and more have been added. Now they don't go over the amiibo functionality, so it's possible that that's what the and more means or there's possibly even more quality of life improvement tweaks. If you guys remember, we didn't know about the reduction in the tiers of light quest in Twilight Princess HD until we actually played Twilight Princess HD and saw it in the previews and reviews. So it's possible there might be something like that in this game that we're just not made aware of. So this gets to the massive looming question. Knowing all this, is Skyward Sword HD worth $60? Now look, as with anything, the value of any product is in the eye of the beholder. So Skyward Sword HD might have already been worth $60 to some fans without any of these quality of life improvements. And even with it, for other people, including these improvements, it still might not be worth $60, but here's what I will say. This is obviously a step beyond what they did with say, Super Mario 3D All-Stars. No, they did pack three games in, but basically Super Mario 3D All-Stars didn't really include very many improvements. All they really did was ran the games in an emulator and HDed them where they could. And that was kind of it. They didn't make, you know, was it Sunshine? They made it widescreen, but outside of that, they really didn't make any changes. And in fact, because of the bugs from emulation, some ways you could argue some of the games were worse. Obviously like Super Mario 64, really didn't look that great. Obviously it's better than the original, but you know, some people were saying they even liked the 3DS version better or whatever. So I don't know. The point is that, yeah, this game has had more work put into it than those. Now, has it had the same amount of work put into it as the Wind Waker? I'd probably say no, because it looked like they actually messed with the graphics engine in the Wind Waker HD, but remember, that was also done by the main Zelda team. And I got an idea that Skyward Sword HD is not. I think Skyward Sword HD is probably created by Tantalus or some similar Grezzo or something like that, not made by the core Zelda team. So I got a feeling that obviously when that happens, you don't get the same amount of detail in the editing. And when they were doing the Wind Waker HD to Nintendo's credit, it was the first time the Zelda team experimented with HD Zelda. So yeah, they obviously were experimenting on a lot of graphics engines and all that. So now look, these are more improvements than any of those games. So you could argue, if you want to break down each of those games in Super Mario 3D, All Stars is worth 20 bucks each, which some don't think that's fair, but let's just say for the sake of argument, it is. And then you compare that to Skyward Sword, Skyward Sword HD clearly has had more work put into it, clearly has had more changes put into it, and clearly is probably worth more than 20 bucks. Is it worth 60? I don't know. This is the thing. I put out a meme yesterday. It was just a little meme joke about comparing Breath of the Wild and Skyward Sword to having carnal relations with another person, having an adult relationship, typically in a bedroom with another person, and how Breath of the Wild could be like having the absolute greatest experience in that moment, but even when that experience is quote unquote bad, and then it showed Skyward Sword, it's still pretty damn good, right? So the idea was even a bad Zelda game is still a really good Zelda game. Even a bad, you know what, for an adult, is still actually probably a really damn good time in comparison to just not having an adult, right? Like you'd rather have this than not, right? That's kind of what it was saying, but the thing is, I didn't make that meme. I just thought it was kind of funny as I posted it up. I do think Breath of the Wild is better than Skyward Sword still in my top five, top six Zelda games. I love Skyward Sword. I think it's an amazing game. I think it's massively underrated. I think that game, Zelda II and the Oracle games and the Minish Cap. Like those are kind of like my four or five games that are in the Zelda series that I feel like are massively underrated. Although Triforce Heroes is probably up there now too. I think Triforce Heroes got a bad rap, an unfair rap, but that's besides the point. I don't, doesn't mean that I think Triforce Heroes is top five or something, but still, Skyward Sword HD is a very good Zelda game. It's just a very different Zelda game. It's different from your contemporary Zelda games, but it's also different from, say, Breath of the Wild. It's very much its own thing. And now a lot of that stem from the fact that it was motion controlled and not just motion control, but when you did get to the Kornocore Overworld, which the Overworld itself is actually probably the sky that you can freely fly around the sky, but to do anything, you got to follow through specific spots in the clouds or use the amiibo to transport back. What's interesting is that once you're on the ground, you're very, you're really restricted and they did something different in this game where the ground is basically all a dungeon. The entire thing's a dungeon. From the very beginning, all the way up to the dungeon is its own dungeon and then the dungeon itself is a dungeon. It's basically a game that, if you love dungeons, it's like the polar ops that are Breath of the Wild, right? Because people consider Breath of the Wild to not really have traditional dungeons, right? Oh, it does, technically. It has four traditional dungeons, but those dungeons aren't the very samey feeling, mostly from an aesthetic thing, not necessarily from puzzles, and obviously the boss fights from an aesthetic reason, not necessarily because they're factually the same, but yeah, there's a lot of sameness feel to it. To the point that it feels like there's really only one dungeon maybe, and then a bunch of mini dungeons. Well, this game is the polar opposite. It's dungeon heaven. It's just dungeon, the Overworld, the dungeon, the dungeons are a dungeon, dungeon, dungeon, dungeon, dungeon, dungeon, you're just, if you love dungeons, this is the game for you. There are some parts that I think could be fixed. I don't wanna get into it because then I might get the story spoilers, but there's a certain fight in the game. Couple fights actually that are repeated several times, and one of them in particular really feels like the same sort of fight every single time and kind of pointless. Maybe that is something they fixed up. The other one that's repeated, at least the fight's a little different every time, so you could argue it kinda makes sense, but I don't know, I don't wanna spoil it too much. All I know is to me, Skyward Sword HD was already worth $60, but I'm also biased to not just Nintendo, but to Zelda because while you can argue that this game is not as good as say, the Spyro trilogy, not as good as the Crash Bandicoot stuff, that stuff that other companies have done, not as good as, you know, the Last of Us remastered or whatever the case may be, whatever other remaster remake, obviously Final Fantasy VII remake being on a whole different level, you could argue that, yeah, I mean, even when you look at Xenoblade Chronicles, the Finnered of Edition, right? Like that looks like it's on a whole other level. I get it, okay? I get that there are levels to this, but ultimately, to me, Zelda is my favorite IP. It's my favorite franchise. It contains my favorite game of all time. No, not every single Zelda game is, you know, on my favorites list. As an example, my second favorite game of all time is Secret of Mana, so you're already literally at number two going outside of even Nintendo themselves, right? That's a Square Enix property. So, yeah, there's a lot of variance in, you know, if I ever made like a top 10 games of all time for myself, be a very, there'd be a lot of variety in that top 10. You'd be surprised at the wide breadth of games I actually enjoy and the various types of IPs I actually enjoy, let alone the genres and gameplay styles. But the thing is, when it comes to Zelda, I am biased, and Skyward Sword to me, I don't have a way to play it right now. I don't own a Wii, and I don't own a Wii U. So even if I bought a secondhand copy of Skyward Sword for cheaper, I can't really play it anyways. And in addition, it doesn't look that good on the TV because on the TV, even on the Wii U, it's still just a 480p output. So it's still that blown up, which doesn't look good to me. What I like the most about these trailers, the more and more they show is just, damn, the game looks crisp, it looks good in HD, and it's 60 FPS. 60 FPS, and actually being at 1080p while docked, that to me is the selling point. All this other stuff is fluff to me. I don't need it to justify 60 bucks to me, because I don't have another way to play it. And it's gonna cost me more than 60 bucks to play because I gotta buy the system and I gotta buy the game. Well, if I already have a system and I wanna replay a Skyward Sword, it's much cheaper just to buy it for the system I already have, right? That's just reality. Now you can say, well, go emulate it, Nate. That's fine, but the emulation's not perfect anyways. Because you gotta use motion controls and remap them the buttons, and it's a little bit cumbersome, it is possible. It has been done by fans, but it is more cumbersome than just using the official version of it. Why go through all that when I can, you know, one, I'm playing it illegally since I don't own a copy, and two, what the hell? I'm obviously illegally downloading it around because I don't own a copy. I'm not making it myself. So I'm just dabbling in lots of illegal territory when, honestly, I could just literally, literally buy the game for 60 bucks and be done with it. I'm giving away two copies. I'm gonna spend 180 bucks on the Skyward Sword, just the games, before it was all said, actually I gave away a copy during E3 as well, so that's a 180, that's $240 in Skyward Sword. I've given, you know, I'm buying in terms of four copies of games, three that I'm giving away, one for me, and then you got the Amiibo that I gave away, the Skyloft Amiibo, then you got, you know, obviously, just, there's the Skyward Sword, Joy-Cons, gave away two of those. Like, there's just a lot here. So my grand takeaway is this. I think Skyward Sword HG was already worth $60 for me. For the mass consumer, I think the biggest argument for Skyward Sword HG at 60 bucks is that it didn't sell very well the first time around, so a majority of people who played Breath of the Wild haven't played this game, and it will feel like a brand new Zelda game to them. The big concern there is, well, it's not Breath of the Wild 2, and if people go in expecting that, it's gonna be a disappointing. But then, people that feel disappointed are after Link's Awakening came back out, and they didn't even put HD in front of that, even though it was basically the same game, but they HDed it and put new graphics. Like, it was more of a remake or remaster than this is. So, I think that this game was already worth 60 to me. To the general consumer, I think if you are someone who's already played the game, man, you know, it can be a tough sell either way, and if you're someone who hasn't played the game, I think just being able to play the game, again, on a system you own, was already a selling point for 60. Again, compared to other stuff, I get it, okay? I'm not saying that this is good. I'm not saying I don't want Nintendo to do more. It's just for me, with my bias, and how much I enjoy this game, and the fact I can't play it in any other way right now, you know, I don't mind plopping down 60. Apparently, I don't mind plopping down 240, plus the Joy-Cons, plus the amiibo given away, and that's not even buying a set for myself, which I'd like to do. So, my conclusion is worth the money, for me. But I understand it's totally not worth it for you. Give me your thoughts on these quality of life improvements to have they finally done enough for you to buy this game down in the description, and if they haven't, what more can they do to convince you? I think besides adding new content, I think if Nintendo themselves isn't making it, we can kind of rule out the potential for new content. Obviously, new content's always a selling point. You can argue that's what made Bowser's Fury, you know, Super Mario 3D World worth it at 60, was the Bowser's Fury mode. Like, yeah, that might've been worth 40 bucks on its own, and then you're paying 20 for the other game. That's actually a nice combo. They're not doing that this time. So that's another point you can say, hey, look at what they did for the last game they brought out, and they didn't do it for this. So again, I'm very interested in this debate. It's not gonna change my mind, because my mind was already sold the moment they unveiled it. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. I'm Nintendo RoboJens from Nintendo Prime, and I'll get ready for all the click, clack, shill comments down in the comments below, even though I literally said I understand why people might not think it's worth the money. Sorry, I can't help the way that I am. I'm buying it, and I'm gonna love it, and I'm gonna be streaming it on this channel, probably day one.