When last we left our hero Link, he had, fresh from his astonishing victory in the Wing Ceremony, bravely descended from Skyloft to the mysterious Surface, whereupon he ran fearlessly into the Faron Woods, risking life and limb; valiantly battled Deku Babas and Bokoblins and rescued Kikwis; after which he returned to Skyloft and went shopping.
Okay, that last item screams which-one-of-these-is-not-like-the other, but really, the shopping – we bought a bug net – was an important capstone activity in a very full day.
There was one more important matter that Link, slowcoach that he is, did not attend to that first day: our hero did not locate the local pub.
Naturally, correcting that omission was high on our list of Day Two SSHD play.
But first, it must be noted that Itzal has a tendency to blame Link when aught goes awry. (Sometimes he blames Demelza, too.) If Link falls from a tightrope stretched across a chasm, is it Itzal’s fault? Why, no. It is Link’s clumsiness. If our noble hero plummets into a bottomless pit – he falls rather often– is it operator error? No, no. It’s that idiot Link, you see. And when Link is supposed to be slicing and dicing with his trusty sword and instead pauses to climb a tree, well, you can imagine the response. It’s all “stop messing around, Link!” from Itzal.
This blame-deflecting tendency, readily apparent in BOTW, has been taken to new heights, pardon the pun, in Skyward Sword HD.
But perhaps, it must be admitted, with some cause. (It must also be admitted, but likely won’t be, that sometimes Demelza is to blame every bit as much as the ne’er do well, Link. Poor Itzal, always shouldering the responsibility and the blame!)
(Ahem, back to the subject, please.)
Flying in Skyward Sword HD
When playing games on a Nintendo Wii, for which Skyward Sword was first designed, the console’s remote – the Wiimote – was designed to mimic the player’s actions. Playing a round of golf? Swing the Wiimote like a club! Attacking with a sword? Brandish the Wiimote this way and that! Soaring on a Loftwing? Er….
Flying in Skyward Sword with joy-cons is not the 180-degree improvement from the Wii that we’d hoped. Yes, it’s better. But intuitive flying it’s not.
If the joy-con emulates IRL motions (not that we’re a bird, or a plane, or for that matter, Superman), and the on-screen instructions say, and oh, we do quote:
“Tilt the Joy-Con (R) to turn. Swing it up and down to gain altitude. To speed up, glide down at a sharp angle.”
…then parsing those two sentences, or rather combining them and then parsing like the OCD literals we are, we concluded that to descend to increase flight speed, naturally one would dip the right joy-con, in a north to south motion. Isn’t that what one thinks of, with up and down? Why else put these two instructions together? But no. In fact, you must, now and again, flap your wings to gain altitude. That is what is meant by “swing [the joy-con] up and down to gain altitude.” Swinging up and down is what we would call a right-to-left motion of the joy-con rather than an up-and-down. But maybe it’s all in how you hold the joy-con.
(Demelza, who is writing this section, pauses to waggle her hand back and forth and murmur righty-tighty lefty-loosie; she has no spatial relations and considers whatever direction she’s facing to be north, so honestly righty-tighty could just as easily be lefty-loosie. But she’s pretty sure that flying requires a right-to-left motion of the joy-con. Then again, she also told Itzal to slash vertically on the horizontal Deku Babas, so…all is suspect.)
If, after that parenthetical disclaimer, you doubt Demelza . . .see that thingy on the left of the game screen, with what looks to be a bird sliding up and down? Consider that your altimeter. Flap your wings, righty-lefty, and see if you don’t go up, at least until the sky’s the limit. Stop flapping, and watch your altimeter (and your Loftwing) slowly drift down.
Oh! Speaking of down. After barreling off into nothingness, remember to summon your Loftwing with a whistle, lest you continue floating downward like a skydiver forgetting to deploy your chute. (Not that we did this. ) To whistle, push the down button on the D-Pad, located on the left joy-con.[1]
Finally – as if one doesn’t have enough to keep track of – hitting X causes the bird to speed up and B slows it down.
Ready to fly, everyone?
Now, Itzal had opportunity aplenty to practice with the joy-con in preparation for and during the Wing Ceremony. We are chagrined to admit that we did not practice as much as we might have. (“I’m good, I got it, let’s move on,” was heard more than once.) (“Don’t talk to me while I’m researching and why doesn’t this book have an interactive map?!” was plaintively wailed more than once in reply.)
However, there’s nothing like pursuit of a bar to make Itzal focus and, in the process, get the training he should have gotten when finding the his childhood friend Zelda and saving the day proved to be insufficient incentive.
Demelza to Itzal, start of day two, SSHD: Do you remember how to fly?
Itzal: Does it look like it?
Demelza: . . .
The lefty-righty, uppy-downy thing, coupled with ascending and descending and let’s not forget steering, is really awful, whether it’s flying to the ground or to the bar – or after leaving the bar, makes no difference. In any scenario, the Loftwing (a) steers like a pig, and (b) well, still steers like a pig, even using a joy-con instead of a Wii remote. Bottom line is that We Are Not A Bird, and no amount of game engineering is going to make us so.
Nonetheless, having more or less mastered flight, we headed off to find the renowned local drinkery, the Lumpy Pumpkin, on an island near Skyloft. Reportedly the tavern looked like a pumpkin, but when you’re flying around a bunch of clouds littered with sky islands, you can fancy just about anything looks like a pumpkin. (Remember stretching out on the lawn during summer, imagining what the clouds resembled? One person’s rabbit is another person’s elephant and yet another’s pumpkin, if that last person does graphics work for Nintendo.)
Eventually, we found the sky island in question. Itzal declined to get in the requisite barroom brawl to earn a piece of a heart (methinks we’ll return for it one day, when we’re one heart slice short) (the other methinks not).
We bellied up to the bar but were offered pumpkin soup. Not being in the mood for hearty and nutritious, and pining for the canteen in BOTW, we opted instead for something bubbly and mildly intoxicating, a splashy blue Juan Ho Royale from the highly recommended Smuggler’s Cove book of tiki drinks.
Indeed, we are pretty sure we spied a blue bottle on the shelves behind the Lumpy Pumpkin bartop. . . although that may have been AFTER we drank a couple Juan Hos and we were lefty-righty flying home and mentally filling out worker’s compensation injury forms.
Accidental Zelder Tip: During the course of our, um, remedial flight training, we discovered that soaring through certain rings in the sky makes the Loftwing go super fast. This would be helpful if we could fly through them by design, not by accident.
(Really) Accidental Zelder Tip: Don’t try to take a sip of your Juan Ho Royale with the joy-con still strapped to your wrist.
[1] Why is it called a D-Pad? It does not resemble a D, we submit. But it apparently stands for directional pad, which makes sense since the four buttons that constitute the D-pad have four little arrows pointing in different directions. But don’t get us going on why it’s called a pad, when clearly the little buttons are not connected. Have we mentioned we’re very literal?