A Quick Look at Zelda in HD

Nintendo hasn't announced any actual games for Wii U yet, but it's dangling a few tasty tidbits in front of gamers. The most savory of these just might be a brief snippet of what a Legend of Zelda game could look like in HD. As you can see in the video above, I've "played" Zelda HD, although "play" is a bit of an overstatement. The Zelda HD Experience, as Nintendo is calling it, is a barely interactive demo which consists of Link walking into a temple and being confronted by a massive spider.

This is not a Skyward Sword HD port, for those expecting Nintendo to pull a Twilight Princess with the next game in the series and pushing it back to be a Wii U launch title. In fact, Zelda HD uses Twilight Princess' art style and that game's Link, but here it's far more detailed and sumptuous than it appeared on Wii or GameCube. All the niceties you'd expect from an HD system are present: reflections, HDR lighting, water effects, and so on and so forth. The game looks stupendous. Of course, it's not really interactive or a game, just a boss intro demo, so there's no AI or input physics for the demo to worry about managing. Even so, it's nice to see a Zelda game looking this pretty; demo users can control the camera angle and toggle lighting between night and day.

Equally impressive is the role the Wii U's unique controller plays in the demo. The game action can be displayed either on the main TV screen or the Wii U controller, and swapping between the two formats doesn't inflict an appreciable drop in visual quality thanks to the size and pixel density of the controller screen. When the main action is set to the TV screen, the controller functions as a map and interface menu; when the focus is reversed, the TV displays a windowed view of the action and a map. Not only is a neat idea on an abstract level, it promises tangible gameplay benefits as well.

Skyward Sword launches later this year, and the Wii U arrives in 2012. It'll probably be a few years before we actual do see Zelda in HD, but based on today's pie-in-the-sky demo, fans will likely be very happy with the results. (Unless Nintendo goes all Wind Waker again, just for laughs.)

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