Many SPOILERS are contained throughout these posts. You have been warned!

Friday, February 3, 2012

How to make Skyward Sword 10 times less annoying

I've just recently stumbled onto a hack that removes the most hated and annoying aspect of Skyward Sword.

Remove Fi+Clothes Modifier [Anarion]
285FC88A 00000200
00955D4D 0000000F
CC000000 00000000
00955D5D 000000FF
E0000000 80008000

Press 2 to switch on & off.
If skyloft clothes is used, you will not have Fi, which means you can complete temples without ever being annoyed by her if you activate code before you enter the temple. If used on Skyloft, Skyloft current day will be set to the day of the Goddess Ceremony, which means you can do the sky race again. Switch to Knight Tunic by turning code off, enter a house to have Skyloft reset to its current day.

Does... does this mean what I think it means? Fi was the worst thing Nintendo has ever done to a Zelda game. SS's main problem wasn't that it held your hand too much, it's that it guided the player in the most BORING and TEDIOUS way possible. Every time you reached a new plot point, or you had a new destination to go to, Fi would come out, basically interrupting all gameplay, and explain to you in detail exactly what is going on. This would be fine if it were optional, but most of the time it feels like you are forced to read part of a walkthrough before continuing on with the game.

Good game design follows the mantra of "show, don't tell". It should let the player feel like they are figuring stuff out on their own, and provide clues in the form of optional character interactions. There's no reason a less experienced player couldn't just be like:
"Hmm I just found a suspicious item, I wonder if Fi has something important to say about this."
Instead the game assumes that is always the case and forces Fi's instructions onto you. There are many other ways of guiding the player besides just flat-out telling them what to do every step of the way.

With this code it seems you can actually play through the game with the majority of Fi's interruptions removed! I'd imagine she would still show up in all the cutscenes, and maybe certain story events won't trigger until you disable the cheat and let her come out and talk... Still, this code sounds like a godsend. I have yet to test this. I haven't played through Hero Mode yet, so I'll definitely use this code the next time I play.

Skyward Sword is a great game but this one flaw just really stands out... Fi didn't spoil any of the puzzles or mazes, so you still had to figure out a lot of stuff on your own, but it was mostly the obvious and not-so-obvious story objectives where the game relied too much on Fi to instruct the player. When I play through Hero Mode I'll see how much better the game is without Fi's instructions.

For those who don't know how to use cheats with Wii games:
- you need to softmod your Wii and install the Homebrew channel
The Homebrew Channel
- then put the Gecko app onto an SD card or USB, load the cheat onto it, and use it to launch the game
Wii Hack - How to Add Cheat Codes to Gecko OS - YouTube

2 comments:

  1. I have a similar complaint about Golden Sun 3 and it's need to instruct me as if I'm too stupid to even play the game. I haven't tried Skyward Sword, yet, but I'm grateful for the warning. As for the worst thing Nintendo has ever done to a Zelda game, traveling everywhere by train and having to always watch the screen to keep an eye out for attackers on Spirit Tracks was a pretty shitty feature.

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