Hello everyone!
It's been almost 4 weeks since E3, and we're all glad to be back and getting into the swing of things here at Zelda Reorchestrated. But first, regarding Skyward Sword from the Team:
BIG NEWS, if you've not heard, Skyward Sword will be (sorta/maybe) orchestrated, and we are ecstatic about that (kinda)! Its (slightly) bittersweet that we won't (might?) get to work on it (seeing as there's no reason to (or maybe there will?)), however, we don't know for SURE that ALL of it will be orchestrated. We're thinking that perhaps just cut scenes will be orchestrated, and the looping background music will be MIDI (like what we heard playing for the demo at the show). If that's the case, we'll work on the MIDI music, and leave the orchestrated songs for the orchestra.
FireGS: "I wanted to throw my net book against a wall. When I saw Link being cartoon-y - I was just so mad. However, once I could see the game in action at the show, my feelings changed. The game is awesome in person, but really feels unfinished, and not polished. It feels like a beta, and the Nintendo reps said so, too. I'm seriously looking forward to this and any more developments. Oh yeah - OoT 3DS? Hell yes."
Mycro_chip: "First initial reaction of seeing the graphics was highly disappointing. Especially after Nintendo commenting on Monster Hunter Tri's impressive graphics, I was expecting equal or better but I never thought that they would take a step back. Apparently it's due to artistic purposes but that saying can only go so far. The Wii is clearly lacking in its hardware. I hope that the story and gameplay will compensate for the lack of decent graphics. At least I'm glad about live orchestrated recordings. This is much deserved for the series, however it is sad to think that we will be limited to what we can reorchestrate. Ocarina of Time is also nice to have on the 3DS. I'm struggling on deciding to either get the new Xbox 360 or the 3DS."
ebuch: "This new graphic style looks BEAUTIFUL in person. It's not exactly cel-shaded like Wind Waker.. To me it looks like a much brighter Twilight Princess, which is awesome. Controls with the shield were a bit iffy, but look back at how bad Twilight Princess's controls were at it's E3 demo.. I'm very confident that the game will come out in top condition! I'm very happy Nintendo stepped away from trying to achieve realism.. It shows they're still willing to create a game that is unique from the inside out. Can't wait to hear me some musick! Also - 3DS is awesome."
Vruliic: "I must admit, at first (I'm sure like many of you) I felt Nintendo had beaten me like an abused wife after promising never to hit me again. Why, Nintendo, WHY!! But be honest with yourself. Didn't Twilight Princess feel awkward? Really. It's ok to admit it. TP's realistic shading hardly matched the oddly shaped characters and objects they skinned, and the "dark" theme they envisioned unfortunately stumbled over lively camera movement and character animations. In just about every way, the dress just didn't fit the girl, so the girl looked like a whore because it tried to please too many people with a sexy dress. Is that what you want again for Skyward Sword??? While I completely disagree with those who believe Zelda is just meant to be bright and colorful and there's no place for an epic, photo-realistic Zelda because millions of fans don't know what they're talking about (and go fuck yourselves btw), I do feel that with the current hardware and development team, this art style is the correct decision. Seriously, those npc's in TP looked like they had down syndrome...or something...
Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about Skyward Sword. So I dig the one to one sword-hand movement, the run button, and the kinda jump. These are important steps forward. The shield unfortunately is huge pain in the ass, and I sincerely hope they have enough common sense to realize it by the time the game goes gold. To be honest a LOT regarding the controls needs to be refined before they release it. I swear to god if one more booth babe told me to "do it harder" one more time (...) I was going to throw the controller through the screen, so contrary to Gamestop's computers, don't expect this thing to come out November 2010. Many of the rumors I've heard about the flow of the levels and the openness of the world and the integration of the dungeons into the overworld and orchestrated music for christ's sake all has me giddy. I guess I'll have to wait and see how much of it stands true when it finally comes out. No matter what, it would seem that the Zelda team is making a huge effort to eliminate the stale flavor its accrued in our mouths over the past few console titles. If I'm to overcome my fears and bear the triforce of courage, I first have to feel fear - very difficult to do when I can predict the game's formula all damn day. So thank you, Nintendo."
Now comes more bittersweet news: unfortunately, as you may have noticed, we are halting weekly updates for an indeterminate amount of time to allow the ENTIRE team to plow through and make significant progress and finish up Twilight Symphony. We will not be leaving you all in the dark during this time, and there may or may not be a periodic song added - just don't count on it. Please know that it both tears us apart to stop doing updates, but also fills us with joy knowing that we're spending all of our efforts on Twilight Symphony. This means that the awesomesauce of TPS will be out to you sooner rather than later. (We even have a tentative release date picked but more on that at a later date.)
From all of us at Zelda Reorchestrated - Thank you for your continued support, and fanaticism. We love you.
~FireGS & the ZREO Team