Opinion: Skyward Sword is Motion Control's Future

After half a decade of wild experimentation, the Wii seems to have found its summary masterwork in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, a long, story-heavy game that is impossible to imagine playing without motion controls. All the old arguments about processing power and short-term gimmickry can be put away now because Skyward Sword unequivocally proves motion controls work. They energize games in ways that button presses and analog sticks cannot.

That does not have to mean button presses and analog sticks will go away any more than the advent of 3D video games meant 2D puzzle games would disappear. They share an ecosystem now, one whose borders have expanded for the better.

Sony and Microsoft's versions of motion control have had a full year to make their case, and so far there have been a handful of qualified successes (e.g. Dance Central, Sports Champions, Child of Eden) and many more whiffs -- games that don't control as advertised or that only replace button commands with finicky gestures.

As was the case with Wii, these are not signs that motion controls can't work, but reminders that they work poorly when applied to old guard game designs. What follows are some of the essential principles embodied in Skyward Sword that are as relevant for Kinect and Move as they are for Wii.

Start From Scratch

We expect our first person shooters to have sprint, crouch, and aim-down-sight. Our action games should have combo-strings, giant bosses, and light and heavy attacks. Our sports games should take place from an overhead television-camera perspective that enables instantaneous switching between different players. These are fine traditions that evolved out of years of experimentation with button-based controllers. Carrying on their tradition with motion controls is like trying to incorporate dialogue cards into movies after the advent of the talkie. With Skyward Sword, Nintendo has retained the most general structure of an adventure game in which found items alter combat and unlock new paths and almost every significant mechanic in the game is enhanced by motion.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword Review

The central mechanic is sword fighting, which has a puzzle-like simplicity. The charm comes not from seeing how many attacks you can string together over a period of time, but instead from trying to understand whether a vertical, horizontal, or diagonal stroke will be most effective. The bow and arrow system is likewise completely reborn with gyroscopic nuance. Gone are the old days of automatically locking on to a distant target and pressing a button to draw an arrow, thread it against the bow string, pull the string back with sufficient tension, steady your aim, and set it loose. In Skyward Sword using your entire upper body to move a reticule around the screen is the primary pleasure and challenge, not the end result produced by the pleasure (e.g. hitting a distant switch or killing a moblin). Like Wii Sports before it, Skyward Sword's motion controls seem obvious in hindsight, a byproduct of a focused and laborious development process that begins with discarding all of the old mechanics and reincorporating only those that are made better by motion controls.

The World is Your Controller

Skyward Sword is a visually rich and beautiful game, but its entire approach to visuals are shaped by the selection of motion mechanics. Enemies are designed with exaggerated features that stand out against the background details. Likewise their weapons and armor are signposts for their weakspots, and as such too much ornamentation would begin to work against the charms of the controls.

Similarly rooms often appear bare, decorated only with a few tufts of grass, pots and one or two outstanding objects that are prompts for what item might be used to unlock it. Games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and Uncharted 3 overflow with environmental detail that adds a very real sense of charm and history to games that can nonetheless be reduced to running and shooting. Because motion controls expand the number of interactive variations, lavish environments can just as easily become a distracting clutter.


In Skyward Sword one marvels at the millimetric adjustments of the beetle's flight path that come from the surprising coordination of at-attention muscles from one's lower back all the way out to the fingertips. In older Zelda games the sprawling overworld was a place for naturalistic contemplation, but motion controls take much of that outward-facing wonderment and internalize it. Consequently the game world is a more tightly connected maze that regularly prompts players to return to those enthralling moments of bodily nuance.

Motion controls temper the need for on-screen spectacle because so much of the poetry and power of the experience comes from variable negotiation the player is having with the controller outside of the screen. Skyward Sword reminds us that motion controlled games work best when even the game's visuals and map design keep pointing the player back to the supple machine in their hands rather hypnotizing them with the illusion of an animated diorama world on the television screen.