IGN: At your developer roundtable this week, you showed off a single piece of artwork from the next Wii Zelda game. This piece of art has not yet been released publicly, but we noticed that Link appears to have grown to full adulthood. He looks older than he did in Twilight Princess. Is that a correct assumption?
Shigeru Miyamoto: Well, the story setting for this Zelda is, of course, in a completely different era and Link is older than he was previously. More approaching adulthood. There is one hint. Maybe from the art work you can see that he's not holding a sword.
IGN: Has he lost his Master Sword?
Shigeru Miyamoto: [Laughing] I just wanted to make sure that you understand we are making it. That's all I'm going to say on that subject.
IGN: Does the game follow the story progression of Twilight Princess or is it something completely different?
Shigeru Miyamoto: I can't go into details except to say that it's something completely different.
IGN: You just mentioned that the game audience is shrinking and that Nintendo is always looking for ways to entice new players. Is this something that you're thinking about for the new Zelda, too, or is there a separation where that's off limits because the franchise is traditionally hardcore?
Shigeru Miyamoto: I think we do this with Mario and Zelda as well. When we are working on the plans for them, we are trying to come up with ways where we can satisfy our longtime fans and bring new players into the franchises as well. That's something we're always looking at. However, when I get involved in a title, I focus a lot on more experience and the more advanced gameplay elements. If I get into it, there's a tendency for difficulty levels to ramp up so that's something I really have to watch for myself to make sure that I don't do that.
IGN: Twilight Princess obviously started on GameCube and then came to Wii. We remember you saying that the team wanted to do more visually with the game for Wii, but ran out of time. So can we assume the visuals for this new game will set a new bar for Wii graphics?
Shigeru Miyamoto: Well, yeah, again I can't say anything in detail about the graphics in-game or anything like that. But I can tell you, as you just pointed out, that Twilight Princess was developed and ran on both hardwares while this new game will be only on Wii, so I think there are some expectations as to what it will be since we are focused on this console.
http://wii.ign.com/articles/991/991714p1.html
I'm still reading the interview. Sorry if old or unneeded.
Edit: So there you have it. Link has no sword, maybe that's a new part of the gameplay, sword fighting and non-sword fighting. xD AWESOOOOME! HYPE HYPE! This game is totally starting the series from scratch. The Zelda development team is working on a whole bunch of new things! So excited about not knowing what the heck is going on! (BTW the tiny leaked blurry picture is real)