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Aonuma talks about the lack of a certain character in Skyward Sword, series' traditions
If you don't want to read more spoilers on Skyward Sword, I suggest you skip over this article. There are some details that you might not want to learn prior to playing Skyward Sword!
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"From early on we were thinking that this was going to be the earliest story in the Zelda series, and it didn't really make sense for us to have Ganon appear in this game. Obviously he makes his first appearance later and that would kind of confuse things, and so in terms of determining, 'well then what are we going to do with who the antagonist in this game is,' the answer that we came up with is this kind of strange character, Ghirahim, somebody who you can't really tell is a man or a woman. So he's sort of this character throughout the game that you're fighting against who plays the antagonist role but his ultimate goal is trying to revive a greater more evil being than himself. So, you know, that's perhaps something that might later have connections to Ganon and things like that, but from early on in this game, we knew that that wasn't going to be the focus with this story." - Eiji Aonuma
Aonuma also talked about the role of tradition in Zelda games...
"After we released Twilight Princess, I really started to sit and wonder whether or not we really should move forward by continuing to use sort of the same processes, and the same style, to create a Zelda game that we have used for some of the more recent titles. In the case of Skyward Sword, I'm a producer on the title and the director of the game is somebody who is directing a console Zelda game for his very first time - Mr. Fujibayashi. We sat down very early on and I said to him that in creating a Zelda game, what's important is to really try to maintain the uniqueness of a Zelda game that gives it that Zelda feel, but for this game in particular, I told him there wasn't a need to follow the same sort of processes and structures that we've used in creating past Zelda games. I said instead he should feel like he has the freedom to look at it and if he sees anything in there that he felt he needed to change, to go ahead and change it.
So from the very early on we were really thinking proactively about what we could do to change the game and make it feel different. Ultimately what's resulted from all of this is a game that has sort of found that unique Zelda element but at the same time has a number of new ideas. Those elements are both going to make the game feel fresh and at the same time make it something that is I think easy and natural for people to pick up and play - perhaps it will be even easier for them to immerse themselves in the adventure."
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"From early on we were thinking that this was going to be the earliest story in the Zelda series, and it didn't really make sense for us to have Ganon appear in this game. Obviously he makes his first appearance later and that would kind of confuse things, and so in terms of determining, 'well then what are we going to do with who the antagonist in this game is,' the answer that we came up with is this kind of strange character, Ghirahim, somebody who you can't really tell is a man or a woman. So he's sort of this character throughout the game that you're fighting against who plays the antagonist role but his ultimate goal is trying to revive a greater more evil being than himself. So, you know, that's perhaps something that might later have connections to Ganon and things like that, but from early on in this game, we knew that that wasn't going to be the focus with this story." - Eiji Aonuma
Aonuma also talked about the role of tradition in Zelda games...
"After we released Twilight Princess, I really started to sit and wonder whether or not we really should move forward by continuing to use sort of the same processes, and the same style, to create a Zelda game that we have used for some of the more recent titles. In the case of Skyward Sword, I'm a producer on the title and the director of the game is somebody who is directing a console Zelda game for his very first time - Mr. Fujibayashi. We sat down very early on and I said to him that in creating a Zelda game, what's important is to really try to maintain the uniqueness of a Zelda game that gives it that Zelda feel, but for this game in particular, I told him there wasn't a need to follow the same sort of processes and structures that we've used in creating past Zelda games. I said instead he should feel like he has the freedom to look at it and if he sees anything in there that he felt he needed to change, to go ahead and change it.
So from the very early on we were really thinking proactively about what we could do to change the game and make it feel different. Ultimately what's resulted from all of this is a game that has sort of found that unique Zelda element but at the same time has a number of new ideas. Those elements are both going to make the game feel fresh and at the same time make it something that is I think easy and natural for people to pick up and play - perhaps it will be even easier for them to immerse themselves in the adventure."
Link