Blueprints for Wii Zelda

The old reliable bow & arrow gains a whole new range of abilities. Some are more useful than others, but they're all based on the same basic movement: move the cursor over the thing you wish to fire at, hold B, pull the Remote back away from the screen, and finally release B to let the arrow fly.

The motion of pulling the Remote back is the basis for a few new things one can do with the bow. Drawing the Remote back just a little bit will fire off a soft shot; such a shot would be lucky to down a Keese but could be useful when trying to get by enemies with sharp hearing. Drawing the arrow back as far as you can will fire a power shot, which could strike an enemy harder, pierce the armor of certain enemies, or even fly through multiple enemies. Be careful, though; too far will snap the bow and waste an arrow. (The cursor and the bow itself would change color depending on whether you were in soft, normal, or the danger-zone power shot range.)


In addition, the tilt of the Remote while you're pulling it back determines the arc of the arrow's flight. Pull it downward in addition to backward and your shot will fly upward, arcing down to hit the target—sailing over obstructions. Whether you tilt it or not, the arrow's eventual target is where you've locked it at the beginning of the shot.


The old, reliable boomerang will have two modes of operation, one familiar and one that evokes old memories but offers new capabilities.

We'll keep the multi-targeting boomerang that appeared in Wind Waker and was refined control-wise in Twilight Princess. Hold B to take out the boomerang and point at the targets you want it to hit; locking in each with a press of the A button. Releasing B sends the boomerang on its way.


Additionally, since the boomerang has long been blessed with the ability to pick things up and bring them back to you, it seems the next logical step is to use it to rearrange unreachable objects. In addition to painting pick-uppable targets with the boomerang, you'd also be able to lock in immovable features of the landscape, where the boomerang would deposit its cargo before returning back to you. (We saw a taste of this mechanic in Twilight Princess, using it to deliver bombs to an unreachable enemy.)

For free-throwing the iconic chunk of wood, though, we'll use a new scheme, inspired the Magical Boomerang from the Oracle games. In this mode, you'll start by aiming the Remote in a general direction and tapping B, sending it flying. Now, once you've released it, you can influence the direction it will fly in by holding B again and moving the pointer around on the screen. Such a setup could be used, for example, to strike a switch on the other side of a wall that Link can't see and therefore can't lock on to.


Bombs are another classic Zelda item that will make a reappearance, only this time with a new twist, inspired by The Minish Cap.

Holding B will have Link get a bomb ready to go, lit and burning away. (Holding too long will find it exploding in his hands, so don't take too long.) Move your cursor over your target and release B to toss the bomb. You can also just hover over your target and tap B if you wish to get one out and throw it immediately, of course.

Where it gets interesting is with the reintroduction of a mechanic introduced in Minish Cap: remote bombs. These gray wonders would sit quietly until triggered, one at a time: Link could alternate dropping one and exploding one with his item button. Now that we've got a pointer, though, we can expand on this idea.


Selecting the remote bombs will let Link toss a number of unexploded bombs (presumably with a reasonable limit, of course.) To make any remote bomb explode, you simply point at it and tap B again. The cursor color will change before you tap B to indicate you're making one blow up instead of tossing another potential round ball of fiery death. If you feel the need, you can pick up an unexploded bomb and toss it elsewhere.

One interesting direction this could go is fighting an enemy who might also have the ability to toss out remote bombs. If we give Link and the enemy both the ability to explode each others' bombs, fighting this enemy becomes a game of explody chess.


Before I knew of the existence of the Double Clawshot, I found myself inspired by how Link would hang off hookshot points in Twilight Princess, wondering if perhaps there was a way to use the hookshot in ways other than simply pulling Link from one point to another. While the Double Clawshot was in no way disappointing—it was one of my favorite items from the game—I thought it could do more.

To use the new hookshot, one simply needs to point at his destination and press B. Tapping B will fire off the hookshot and have it immediately retract as usual, but holding B instead will keep it from retracting until you release the button.

While attached to a point and holding an unretracted hookshot, Link (since he's still on foot) has the ability to walk around a bit. The chain will stay taut regardless of Link's distance from the hookshot point, but it won't always be in a straight line; it can wrap around walls as well. To see how this is useful, visualize a hookshot point blocked by a wall of fire. Off to the left, the wall of fire stops, but the hookshot point is blocked by a wall. Link can latch onto the point, sidestep the wall of fire, and retract the hookshot to go around the fire, over the edge of the wall (saving himself from mortal injury by running along it Prince of Persia-style), and ride the chain the rest of the way to the hookshot point.


An unretracted hookshot could also be used as a tripwire against certain enemies not defeatable in any other fashion. As a counter to frustrate Link's new ability, some enemies might attack the chain or the hookshot point itself, detaching it before it could be used for its intended purpose, and introducing a sense of urgency to its use.

Link would default to hanging off the wall when the hookshot has retracted all the way, mapping the d-pad-down action command to release the hookshot and drop to the ground. However, he might not want to do so; once the hookshot chain has retracted, the camera will swing behind Link and grant him access to any item he can use one-handed—pretty much anything besides the bow and arrow.


While I'd like to think I've come up with a few neat ideas here that could make the game more fun to play, the Zelda franchise itself is in need of a little more than just a control shakeup. I hope that any rethinking that leads up to a true Wii Zelda installment will be accompanied by some ideas to shake up the core game itself, much like Majora's Mask once did. Phantom Hourglass, above and beyond its control scheme, tried just this, but I don't feel it went far enough.

Regardless of what the future holds for the series' structure, though, I hope that Nintendo takes the time to properly think out the possibilities that Wii control offers for any upcoming entries in the franchise. Embracing Wii thinking—and not in the cheap way that many developers seem to be taking today—is how you truly create a memorable classic. I'm looking forward to seeing what they do.