I think with the darker and more mature change in the series a more in-depth combat control system would be needed and I’ve had a few ideas on how this could be done. We don’t know what type of controller the Next Gen System will have but I’d imagine it would be an evolution on the Wii Remote. That being said I’m still not sure how effective the remote can be as a sword, because when you think about it, say you swung with the remote and your character swung their sword in game but the attack was blocked, the sword on screen would stop but you would keep swinging the remote, so it wouldn’t and probably can’t be 1:1. I won’t really go into this further for the reason that we still don’t know what the controls will be.

For the moment let’s assign the control scheme to four buttons, we’ll call them A, B, X and Y (I know, very original). Let’s say that A is Attack, B is Block, X is Special and Y is Melee. This is going to be a bit hard to explain but I’ll do my best.
The key will be to string together each of these moves into a combo and with Next Gen technology, one button will be context sensitive so say for example an enemy runs at you swinging their sword, you press block just in time and you will automatically block in a direction or move that corresponds to how the enemy is attacking. So if he’s cutting downwards you hold the sword up in front of you, if he’s slicing sideways you bring your sword down vertically to parry it etc.

The same kind of thing works for attacking, pressing the button over and over won’t make you slice across continuously in an unrealistic way, you will swing right and then left and then up and then down depending on the situation and this will be done in a natural and realistic manner as though you were actually wielding a sword in real life. So just with block and attack you can engage in a battle with an enemy in a simple and realistic way but because of all the different sword moves that would be assigned to one button, no fight would ever be quite the same.
I hope you’re following me so far, I can picture it in my head but it’s kind of hard to explain.

So then you have the Special and Melee buttons. Melee would correspond to attacks like hitting and enemy over the head with the but of your sword or shield, pushing or shoving them, kicking etc, again all depending on the context of what you and the enemy are doing. The special button would then kind of be similar to taunting, for example pressing Special might make you twirl your sword in your hand (Think Lightsaber fights in Star Wars with all their fancy moves) or other moves like that, again context sensitive depending on where your sword is, if you’ve just been blocking, attacking etc it will affect what kind of special move you do.
Now for each press of the button you would only do one short slice or block or whatever, but if you held down the attack or Melee button you’d charge up an attack, if you held down block you would hold your block position for longer or if you hold down special you’d perform an extended move.

Okay, so now imagine combining all of these moves in a battle. An enemy runs towards you, swinging his sword downwards, you quickly press block to counter his attack, swinging your sword up to hit his, then pressing attack quickly you slice at his legs but he blocks but is put off balance slightly allowing you to hit him with a melee attack, then by pressing special and then attack you could spin around twirling your sword to hold it backwards and stab the enemy.
Or perhaps you could block an attack, whilst still blocking press the special button, which would cause you to spin your sword and flick the enemy’s sword out of their hands, allowing you to execute a Melee kick which knocks them to the ground after which you could press special or attack to perform a downwards finishing move (I hope that kind of makes sense).

I’d say at the beginning of the game you’d be limited to the moves assigned to each button, but you could find instructors throughout the game who teach you new and special moves (The spin attack anyone?) some of which you may need to battle a particular enemy. At first this battle system may seem easy but what I have in mind would require a lot of precise timing to get the moves right. For example let’s say you block a downward strike but press attack before the enemy pulls his sword back away it could still move downward and strike you.
Of course it’s a Zelda game and you’d have a health meter so it’s not like you’re going to just get killed in one hit. But it would be a lot more realistic than the “hack’n’slash” experience in most previous titles. It would also be nice for the camera to kind of flow into a more cinematic angle as the fight ensues, maybe almost similar to a Soul Caliber game and then it moves seamlessly back to the behind view when the fight is finished.

Bear in mind that these are all just ideas, I don’t know how well they’d work in practise but in my head it seems like a seemingly simple, yet complex and rewarding battle system. Just think of all the special and different moves that you could unlock and learn from people all over Hyrule!

I don’t know if this would necessarily work for Zelda but I think it would definitely be cool in a similar kind of game.