Pikmin 2 on the Wii, like the Wii release of the original Pikmin before it, is invigorated by its new control scheme. The pointer adds a level of immediacy to your ability to aim that greatly increases the game's pace, and even extends the range of Olimar's ability to gather Pikmin to the fringes of the screen. However much of an improvement the pointer is over the traditional analog-stick aiming, though, the rest of the controls suffer a bit from being crammed into a controller that they weren't originally conceived around. With the announcement of Pikmin 3 for the Wii U at this year's E3, we can finally see how Nintendo has addressed the challenge of building a pointer-based Pikmin control scheme from the ground up.
Pikmin 3 actually began development several years ago on the vanilla Wii. You'd be forgiven for noticing that just by looking at screens, which while wonderfully crisp and lovely, do seem like upgraded Wii assets. What this means, though, is that it was designed around Wii controls. With its migration to the Wii U, very little was actually changed.
Fundamentally I would say that the game didn't change all that much. Rather, we saw the CPU power and HD resolution offered by the Wii U and simply thought that was the best platform possible for that game, allowing you to see the whole map at one time and things like that.
The Wii U Game Pad is indeed made available as a primary input, but while its screen may allow for some better map management, I think it's pretty clear that the game was built around the traditional Remote/Nunchuk combo. You actually can't even aim your cursor with the Wii U pad without tilting it around in space, solidifying that traditional aiming control was just never in the cards.
What we're interested in, though, is how they've tweaked the pointer-centric control scheme from the Wii releases of Pikmin and Pikmin 2. Aiming seems similar, with the IR-camera moving the cursor around the screen... or so it would appear. Shigeru Miyamoto in his E3 demonstration referenced the use of Wii MotionPlus in Pikmin 3's controls, and when you consider that the Game Pad aims with similar technology, the Remote may actually be using MotionPlus to move that cursor around, ala The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I haven't had a chance to try it out myself so I can't truthfully confirm that it's one method or the other, but Nintendo has long been extolling the virtues of Skyward Sword's motion-based aiming (though I don't necessarily agree with their assessment that it's superior to the standard IR aiming). I wouldn't be surprised if aiming in Pikmin 3 is MotionPlus-enhanced, or at least supports the technology for aiming if you have it available.
The aiming in Pikmin 2 on the Wii was dual-reticuled. One cursor would show where a Pikmin, when thrown, would land. The other showed where you could initiate a Pikmin-summoning call. These would overlap as long as you kept the cursors within a certain radius of Olimar, but would decouple and let you move the calling-cursor without limit if you aimed far enough away. In the footage I've seen of Pikmin 3, the cursor moves without physical restraint, but is just one solid cursor. I'm not sure if that means you can throw Pikmin ludicrously far away or what, but it may play off another change: the cursor turning into a target if it's placed on something the Pikmin can interact with. Instead of trying to figure out the arc of your throw to get a Pikmin to land on an object, you can now just point at what you want them to hit, and they'll be thrown exactly there. That targeting cursor might just not appear if the object is farther than you can reach with a throw.
I'm starting to wish I attended E3 this year so I could do more than just speculate based on video and third-party reports, but what are you gonna do!
Some genuine motion controls we know are included involve flicking the Remote to toss a Pikmin, and shaking the Nunchuk to cause them to "charge." I can't imagine anyone actually utilizing that first motion, considering how rapidly you regularly need to throw Pikmin in these games (A-button throwing is still supported), but the latter seems like it could be a streamlining of the directed Pikmin motion present in the previous titles. The GameCube originals would allow you to direct your swarm of 'min with the C-stick to mob opponents, hug walls, or evade danger. You could do this in the Wii editions by holding down on the Remote's d-pad, and aiming the swarm with the cursor. It worked, but could be difficult to manage, and often resulted in you hitting left or right on the d-pad at the same time, causing the in-game camera to zoom in and out wildly. It's an indispensable technique, though, giving you the fine motor control necessary to maneuver a hundred little 'min through countless dangers.
Being able to "charge" at a target with the Nunchuk sounds like it could be an improvement over C-stick-style enemy-swarming, since that old technique could sometimes connect only the front half of your swarm with their target. This new motion doesn't compensate for the previous scheme's ability to move your Pikmin out of danger, hug walls, or thin the herd out when crossing narrow platforms, though. If these functions are actually missing in Pikmin 3, it would have to imply a significant alteration in how the game expects you to be able to control your swarm, and accordingly, would affect the design of levels and enemy encounters. Things don't look that different in the footage, so either you still have this kind of control via means that haven't been properly communicated to the press, or... well, I don't know what. It'd be pretty dang weird if if you couldn't do that stuff any more.
There is a new move that may help compensate, though. Hitting left or right on the d-pad in Pikmin 3 will cause Olimar and the entire Pikmin swarm to quickly roll to the side. It seems to be built as an evasive technique, so this combined with the "charge" move may make up for the lack of directional swarm-control to a degree, if it is indeed missing. It doesn't allow for the herd-thinning or wall-hugging, but we'll have to see how it all hashes out in execution.
There's one last tweak-of-interest that I noticed while poking through Pikmin 3 footage. Pikmin 2 improved on 'min-management by adding the ability to swap between the Pikmin in your swarm on the fly. In the GameCube version you would hit left or right on the d-pad while holding a Pikmin with A to reshuffle the colors in your group and put another type in your hand. On the Wii version you tap the B trigger while holding the A button to cycle through the types in order. It proves quite invaluable for when you need to quickly swap to a type that has a particular advantage in a combat situation, but it can be difficult to know how much swapping is necessary in order to get to the particular group you wanted.
It looks like Pikmin 3 dedicates the C button on the Nunchuk to this task. If you look at the HUD, you'll see that each Pikmin type in the group actually has their own little bubble (with a Pikmin count), and that bubble is focused when you're controlling that particular type. In Pikmin 2 there was just one bubble, and it showed the currently-selected type. I suspect that in the final version of the game, each type in your swarm will have their own bubble at the bottom of the screen, and you'll be able to see your counts and toggle with that visual reference quite easily. It's an improvement really brought on by the Wii U's "High Definition Graphics," since the old Pikmin HUD would never be able to fit 6+ Pikmin bubbles down there.
While there may be some suspicious decisions being made around your ability to direct a Pikmin swarm in Pikmin 3, the majority of the control tweaks are definite improvements over what we saw in Pikmin and Pikmin 2 on the Wii. The real question is whether the Game Pad controls will be worth exploring. Yeah you have the map on there, and the right-stick gives you greater camera control, but the motion aiming reeks of the scheme playing second-fiddle to the original Remote controls. I'll definitely be giving both their fair shake when I get my hands on it, but I have the feeling that in the end I'll return to the newly-refined Remote/Nunchuk combo that served me so well in my previous Pikmin adventures.