﻿A few months ago, we dove deep into the mechanics of Skyward Sword’s motion controls on Wii,
and how the gameplay experience might differ on Switch, primarily due to the lack of a sensor
bar. Well… Skyward Sword HD is finally here, and let me say right off the bat… man, button
controls are nice. I know - call me lazy, but the truth is, they make the game way more accessible.
And for that reason alone, Skyward Sword HD is a massive improvement on Switch.
But let’s be real: the game was made for motion controls back in 2011, which meant the tech had
to be reliable, and let’s just say... it wasn’t, at least not always - which begged the question:
Could Skyward Sword’s motion controls have used just a few more years for the tech to improve…
like, say… 1, 2… 10 years? Hey, now we can find out! Because Skyward Sword
HD on Switch has updated motion controls, using tech that’s almost a decade newer - giving us
the perfect opportunity to do something that can’t be done very often, and that is: compare 2 heavily
motion-control-reliant games from completely different technological eras. This is actually
kinda huge! - Giving us a glimpse not only into the improvements of this game in particular,
but also motion and gyro controls in general, from the company that practically invented them.
So, will the differences be night and day, or will Skyward Sword HD’s motion
controls perform the same as, or dare I say, even worse than before? Well,
it’s time for a comparison... a motion controls comparison! And for that, we’ll be using…
Okay, silly? Yes… But bear with me. In case you missed our deep dive into the motion
controls of Skyward Sword on Wii, we examined the sensor bar’s subtle but important role in creating
seamless motion-controlled sword combat. Get ready for a bit of an info dump, but don’t worry: I’ll
keep it concise. The sensor bar essentially worked as a backup for the new WiiMotion+ technology,
automatically recalibrating the Wii Remote’s gyro sensor whenever the sensor bar was in view of the
controller's IR camera, helping to mitigate the gyroscopes’ tendency to drift over time,
by providing a consistent reference point for it to know as “center” . With that in mind,
we unplugged the sensor bar to mimic how the JoyCon might perform on Switch without it,
since the system doesn't have a sensor bar equivalent (also keeping in mind,
of course, the 10 extra years of technological developments to come). The results? Well,
they were mixed. Over time, the inputs during sword combat became less and less reliable,
and without the sensor bar to fix those inconsistencies,
the controller eventually thought I was facing a completely different direction, or even worse,
at one point reversed my motions entirely. I still don’t even know how that happened!
Well fear not, because today we’re keeping the sensor bar plugged in
to compare both games side by side, and also find out if the JoyCons eventually run into
the same issues as the Wii Remote did without the sensor bar. To ensure we have the most accurate
comparisons possible, the input movements have to be identical, which hopefully explains—
This monstrosity! By tethering the controllers together, we can be certain that in situations
like this, one game is interpreting the exact same movement differently than the other!
Side note, that’s the Switch version… So yeah, this won’t be as simple as you might think.
Right away, I could tell something was off when Link pulled out his sword on Switch. As I
casually waved the connected controllers, he never crossed the sword over the left side of his body.
Clearly, I already needed to recalibrate, even after I had only left my JoyCons resting for a
few minutes - which made the sensor bar’s absence on Switch pretty apparent from the get-go.
Thankfully, manually recentering your sword is easier on Switch than it ever was before - well,
kind of. The Wii’s sensor bar would automatically recalibrate your controller,
but it wasn’t perfect, especially depending on your room’s setup, where stray IR sources could
be mistaken for the sensor bar, which sometimes necessitated a manual recalibration requiring you
to go into the pause menu. On Switch you only have to press the Y button to recalibrate. Ah, much
simpler. But again, with a properly setup sensor bar on Wii, in theory you’d also never have to do
the whole pause menu thing. And to clarify, all of this only applies to sword combat, as on Wii
you actually were able to reset with the press of a button while aiming items and navigating menus.
Essentially whenever the Wii Remote was used as more of a pointer. So, Pressing Y to recenter
the sword on Switch works (and I honestly don’t know how else they could do it) but much like
other Switch games that mimic the Wii’s pointer, such as Super Mario Galaxy and Pikmin 3 Deluxe,
it will drift over time and can hinder the immersion if you have to recalibrate too often.
So, how often do you have to press it? Let’s keep that question in mind and continue.
I swung my sword around some more and realized that, although most games remained
mostly synced up, it did seem like the JoyCon suffered a few more hiccups,
even after recalibrating pretty often… which had me thinking,
maybe there’s more to this than just how long the JoyCon can stay centered.
To settle this confusion, I took things to the Sparring Hall to see how many correct hits each
controller could pull off, or how many “points” they could get, in 3 rounds through all the
targets - well, except this one since both of my Links kept getting completely pummeled by it…
In the end, the Wii Remote managed to nail every single swing with 15 out of 15 points.
The Switch JoyCon on the other hand ended with 11 points. I even re-centered the JoyCon a few times,
but it kept specifically struggling on the diagonal strikes. Now remember,
these were the exact same sword motions, so clearly, each controller read my motions
differently - either that, or you might just have to swing slightly differently on Switch.
Considering that, I performed the same challenge but with each game one at a time,
and with 5 rounds instead of 3 to collect just a bit more data. The Wii Remote landed 24 out
of 25 correct swings, and the JoyCon landed 20, this time struggling with horizontal strikes too.
Sure, there was more of a chance for human error this time, since I wasn’t playing both games at
once - but I promise I was not doing anything suspicious on Switch! In fact, once I knew it
was obvious the Wii would come out on top, I even tried being sloppier with my swings, and the Wii
Remote still interpreted my movements correctly. And you want to know the most shocking part? I
didn’t even have the sensor bar plugged in! Now that’s a twist... At this point, I discovered
a big reason why the JoyCons’ inputs were inconsistent with the Wii Remote: it has a much,
much tighter margin of error. In other words, it seems that your motions have to be even more
precise than on Wii to register correctly. I ran into a striking example of this when
testing out the skyward strike, which is actually something I struggled with more on Switch than
on Wii. On my first test strike, both games interpreted my motion differently. On Wii,
Link struck downward, whereas on Switch, he struck downward and to the right. Now,
taking a closer look at my movement, I can see how the diagonal motion was interpreted on Switch
due to this slight rightward nudge around mid-way through my swing.
Okay, this was a small mishap and it might’ve even had to do with calibration
(as a lot of these issues might, since I was avoiding pressing Y as much as possible,
since that is the whole point of this.) But, it led me to what might be another reason
(and a big one, potentially) for the Switch game’s smaller margin of error: The JoyCons themselves
are much smaller. Therefore, it would make sense that subtler rotations and movements would be
more sensitive than on the Wii Remote, which is much bigger and has more heft to it. Granted,
issues like the one I just explained did happen on both sides, but noticeably more-so on Switch.
I kept Skyward Striking like it was nobody’s business until I ran into the actual issue I
encountered in my playthrough: pointing upward to initiate the strike was surprisingly difficult. I
never recalled having this issue on Wii, but on Switch, to point the JoyCon “Skyward”, sometimes
I had to angle it beyond 90 degrees vertically, rotating it further away from the TV screen to
hit the right angle. At first I thought this was due to how I calibrated - and sometimes it was,
as I occasionally didn’t point the JoyCon downard enough while recentering. But then
I noticed this issue would present itself if I didn’t recalibrate for a few minutes;
the JoyCon’s perception of “upward” drifted backwards slightly. Again though,
nothing a simple recalibration couldn’t fix. I also ran a few tests to see if it’s possible
to have the same problem on Wii, and if so, make sure I hadn’t just forgotten about it.
And even without the sensor bar, the Wii Remote held its own. Over time, the issue might come
into effect on Wii, but based on what I tested, it doesn’t happen nearly as fast as on Switch.
Let’s pause on sword combat and take to the skies! … With the Beetle!
If you played Skyward Sword on both Wii and Switch, then you might have already picked
up on one interesting adjustment made to the HD remaster when it comes to aiming items. Or maybe
you didn’t notice it, but are wondering why it feels so weird compared to what you’re used to.
On Wii, the cursor automatically acts as less of direct pointer, as it always begins
in the center of the screen when you first start aiming, no matter where you’re actually facing,
and relying entirely on the gyroscope to aim from there - whereas on Switch, the cursor does treat
it as more of a pointer, treating “forward” as whatever direction you had it calibrated to.
So, if you pull out an item and your JoyCon isn’t facing forward,
the camera will immediately drift off in whatever direction you’re pointing… Which,
in this case, had it especially confused in the first few seconds, spinning off to the
right and then left for a reason that I’ll get to momentarily. This was an interesting change that
certainly took some getting used to, and also many immersion-breaking presses of the Y button.
Another strange discovery I ran into on Switch was that if you aim the controller far enough to the
left or right, Link will spin in the opposite direction. Now, this was less of an issue
(because who would rotate their JoyCon that far anyways?) and more of an odd discovery, since as
I mentioned, it only happened on Switch. On Wii, Link kept spinning the same direction, even though
the Wii Remote was pointed well out of the range of the sensor bar. Similar issues occurred when
trying this with the sword. Though weird things happened on both ends, on Switch, Link would react
in an especially awkward way. Again, nothing that would harm normal gameplay, but an interesting
difference between the 2 controllers, especially coming from the one with newer tech.
Now, we can really take to the skies because it’s time to compare the motion controls of
flying on your loftwing! And let me just say, we probably won’t be here for long,
because this was somehow the absolute smoothest part of my whole experience.
After a good 5 minutes of flying and no JoyCon recalibrating, both controllers stayed in sync
nearly flawlessly. Once about 3 minutes had passed, the JoyCon had shifted its calibration
downward a bit (similarly to what caused skyward strikes to become inconsistent earlier) so I was
picking up just a bit more speed on Switch, and as you can see, I ended up much lower in the sky
than I was on Wii. But that’s pretty much it for flight! Other than that it was smooth sailing…
or should I say, smooth Loftwinging! That wasn’t even a pun. That was just bad.
So from everything we’ve gathered so far, it’s clear the odds aren’t quite in the JoyCons’ favor.
To be honest, even after kinda theorizing that this might happen in our previous video,
I still had my hopes up. Trust me, I wanted the motion controls to be better on Switch - even
after I came to the realization in hindsight that they weren’t as bad as I remembered on Wii.
But, Skyward Sword HD was coming in with a major disadvantage, one that even 10 years couldn’t fix
because it relied on something that was exclusive to the Wii version. And although pressing the Y
button to recalibrate isn’t an ideal alternative to the sensor bar, it also isn’t the end
of the world, as the game is still perfectly playable without it--you might just be hitting
Y a little more often than you expect. What I found more troubling though was the
tighter margin of error, evident especially during sword combat when swinging diagonally
and charging up Skyward Strikes. It also made the new adjustment to aiming items even more baffling
and frustrating, as my aim would often start by drifting, which forced me to use the Y button to
recalibrate - thus reminding me how good we had it back in Skyward Sword on the Wii… Wow, that’s
something I never thought I would say. The fact that the motion controls aren’t a huge
step up is disappointing, sure, but it also says a lot about the original game and what
they were able to accomplish at the time. And the best news is, you can ignore the motion controls
entirely and switch over to button controls instead… and there is no shame in that.
So, thank you for watching this deep dive into my experience comparing the motion controls of
Skyward Sword and Skyward Sword HD. What are your thoughts on the motion controls on Switch and how
they compare to your memories of the original? Let us know down below and subscribe to GameXplain
for more on The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD and other things gaming too. Check out the
videos on the right for more content you might be interested in, and until next time, bye!