The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD’s time ship is still impressive

Sword to the sky has made a real comeback with its recent HD version, finally allowing motion control haters (like me) to enjoy the game. But one thing that was always good Sword to the sky It was the weather ship in the Lanayru desert, and it’s even better in HD.

In Link’s second visit to Lanayru in the back half of the game, he can travel in a boat back in time through a desert that was originally an ocean. It’s one of the coolest and most visually stunning moments in the Zelda series.

What the heck is a “time ship”?

Sword to the skyThe first two areas are quite typical for Zelda: we have a typical forest and a typical volcano. But the third area of ​​the game, the Lanayru Desert, is two areas in one. The Lanayru Desert of Link timeline in Sword to the sky it is a vast dead wasteland full of dry bones and powerless robots.

But there are also Timeshift Stones throughout the area; when activated, they drag a small area around them into the past. Hitting these Timeshift Stones allows Link to enter a bygone version of Lanayru, where pits of sand turn into cliffs and the dead ground is covered in grass.

Link uses the Timeshift Stones to solve a variety of puzzles, such as bringing nearby things to life or removing barriers that have fallen after years of neglect. The third dungeon in the game, Lanayru Mine, has Link use the Timeshift Stones to quickly move between timelines, powering and unplugging machines based on his current needs. Set up a mechanic that Link must master before he can defeat the boss and escape the dungeon.

But on a second visit to Lanayru, Sword to the sky It takes the familiar Timeshift mechanic and turns it into one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen in a Zelda game. After delving deeper into Lanayru on his second visit, Link comes across a vast sandy lake. To get to the fifth dungeon in the game, you need to find an ancient ship that sails through what used to be an ocean.

After finding a Timeshift stone embedded in a small boat, Link activates it, waking up the captain of the nearby boat and causing the sand near the boat to return to the water. The Timeshift Stone descends into the ship’s hull, and the captain and Link set out through the Lanayru Desert, navigating small patches of water.

When fun meets function

This section of Sword to the sky offers some of my favorite images from any game, even when Sword to the sky it’s muddy and difficult to interpret. The dungeon you finally navigate to is great, but the journey is even better. The Timeshift stone only extends to the area around the boat, so while everything below and around Link is beautiful, fresh water, the sand is always only a few feet away.

Link and his time ship traverse time one section of the desert at a time, and the sand instantly moves around them. Before Sword to the Sky HDWhen the game’s visuals were murky at best, it stood out beautifully as one of the clearest visuals in the game. With Sword to the Sky HD, everything looks better. So while the time ship is not such a clear comparison to the rest of the game, it benefits from the higher fidelity graphics as well.

Lanayru needed a sense of scale to really sell it as a vast ocean destroyed by time. The boat ride gives Sword to the sky its open world moment, like riding Epona through Hyrule Field. When you look out to sea, there is nothing but sand as far as you can see. The change of weather gives ground to the ocean, forcing you to maneuver through suddenly appearing rocks. But even while delicately navigating contained areas, the sand dunes around you give the feeling that this was once a huge area.

The navigation itself is fine, but it is the environment that the ship offers that really sells everything. It’s beautiful to see how the area around Link rapidly changes from lifeless to lifeless again as he navigates over it and passes it. Makes sailing the ocean in the King of the Red Lions in Wind Waker – no matter how beautiful the art style is – it seems unimpressive in comparison. At the moment, Sword to the sky It is doing more than just letting you sail on an ocean, it offers you an impressive and memorable visual treat.

The time ship is a perfect moment in Sword to the sky. It lasts only 30 minutes or so, but it impresses. It could easily have been overlooked for a simpler path to the dungeon, but Nintendo decided to re-implement the time travel that players were already familiar with. And it makes for one of the best moments in one of the oldest video game franchises.