Nintendo jokes about the original Zelda: Skyward Sword’s over-tutorializing

‘Listen?! I heard you the first 10 times!’

We know that Zelda: Skyward Sword HD will have a number of quality of life enhancements when it hits the Switch, but Nintendo is nipping a few very early. First they hit Fi’s over-tutorializing, and now they’re addressing the extreme amount of menu/tutorial prompts in the original game.

Originally, each session you played, the Wii game had a penchant for explaining items to you. Zelda: Skyward Sword HD appears to eliminate this. This is straight from an official tweet from Nintendo: “Information about collectible items in The Legend of Zelda: #SkywardSwordHD now only appears the first time you collect something. Of course you know what a heart is!”

Information about collectible items in The Legend of Zelda: #SkywardSwordHD now only appears the first time you collect something. Of course you know what a heart is! pic.twitter.com/afpBg6TsDm

— Nintendo of Europe (@NintendoEurope) July 9, 2021

To be clear, the video shows the original Wii edition of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD first, then the Switch changes. Even in different game sessions, item explanations seem to be gone for good after you’ve experienced your first one.

That last bit of the tweet (“of course you know”) is incredibly cheeky; to see an official Nintendo arm clown on the original game, even light-heartedly and in jest. While Skyward Sword had plenty to like on Wii, the over-tutorializing got so bad that it culminated in a puzzle being ruined for me in the final dungeon of the game. It was so surreal that I still remember where I was and what the room looked like when I came across it.

In any case, it’s great to see that Nintendo learned from this, and removed the extreme hand-holding from Zelda: Breath of the Wild. While that game has its own issues for many people (Skyward Sword quality dungeons inside of a Breath of the Wild world would be pretty insane), I loved the return to the original, wandering, exploration-based self-discovery of the first Zelda on NES.

Nintendo has gone a step further and removed even more “mandatory advice” from the opening! See for yourself:

Some changes have been made to the opening hours of The Legend of #Zelda: #SkywardSwordHD to make for a smoother play experience, and to get you on your grand adventure to the surface world sooner! Here’s one example where mandatory advice from Horwell has been adjusted. pic.twitter.com/KofowPZwn4

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) July 11, 2021