Eiji Aonuma talks about Skyward Sword's plot, similarities to Majora's Mask and desires to have a simultaneous worldwide release.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the original Zelda and Nintendo is keen to celebrate it. Following on from the highly anticipated release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D earlier in the month Nintendo's next big Zelda release is the Wii's Skyward Sword, which is due out later in the year.

Producer Eiji Aonuma spoke to Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu all about the game and revealed a lot of new information, kindly supplied by Zelda Informer. One particularly promising bit of information to come from the interview is the fact that Skyward Sword is in the fine-tuning and localisation process and they are hoping to release the game simultaneously around the world. Ocarina of Time 3D was released within one week in Japan, Europe and America so hopefully the same will be true with Skyward Sword.

SPOILERS WARNING: The rest of this article contains details about the plot so anyone wishing to remain unspoilt please leave now.

Mr. Aonuma compared the game to the N64's Majora's Mask in regards to the focus on the main town,�Skyloft. During the course of Skyward Sword you will find yourself constantly coming back to Skyloft and interacting with the people within the town.

The plot of Skyward Sword appears to be quite different from previous Zelda games as well. In Skyward Sword Zelda isn't a princess, instead she is a childhood friend of Link and they both attend the same school. Apparently the school setting will be an important part of the game and Mr. Aonuma states the title is like a school drama, with Link the main character, Zelda his best friend and a bunch of classmates as a supporting cast. Of course no school drama is complete without a rival and Link certainly has that by the sounds of it.

Nintendo seem keen to make Skyward Sword a fresh experience and in addition to a new plot and gameplay mechanisms the timing of item acquisitions also seems to have been changed. Eiji Aonuma noted that in previous Zelda titles you tended to get the better items toward the end of the game but they have changed this for Skyward Sword:

With previous Zeldas the common pattern was that the really neat items wouldn't show up until later on in the game. You need to have the basic item set or it wouldn't be Zelda, so the new items tended to get shunted to the latter part of the game. Miyamoto said that had to change, like 'This is neat, let's bring it out from the start.' So a lot of neat new items will show up pretty early on.

While it was already known that Link, and the other residents of Skyloft, has a bird he can ride Mr. Aonuma confirmed that Link's red bird is a particularly special breed and one that is connected with the world below the clouds. The game takes place primarily above the clouds but when Zelda goes missing Link must explore the world below, a world not inhabited by humans.

Eiji Aonuma also reconfirms that the storyline in Skyward Sword is connected to Ocarina of Time, specifically in relation to the Master Sword and Ganondorf. He also states that Ghiraham, the boss seen in the E3 demo, is very different from previous villains as you can't just wildly attack and you must approach fighting him different from others.