A boy. A girl. An outsider.
A warrior. A princess. A sorcerer.
Courage. Wisdom. Power.
Earth. Water. Fire.
Since The Legend of Zelda was released for the Famicom Disk System in 1986, nearly every game in the series has involved these elements. Youād think a series that relies so heavily on remixing and repeating its core elements would get stale, but every new Zelda is a major event, a defining title for its console.
Why are we so captivated by a series whose fundamentals barely change across 40 years? Nearly every Zelda follows a similar structure and gameplay loop: travel to a dungeon, find an item, use the item to progress in the dungeon and defeat the boss, repeat. The mechanical differences between games are subtle and often revolve around a pivotal adjustment to the formula, e.g., turning into a 2D painting, controlling the wind, or shifting between two different time periods.
The significant changes are visual. The Legend of Zelda on the NES is primitive but colorful and easy to read. Its sequel, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, flips the perspective from top-down to a sidescroller. The series returned to top-down with A Link to the Past on the SNES and a handful of Game Boy games. The next major installment, Ocarina of Time, featured the most dramatic shift yet: the jump to full 3D.
Lots of franchises jumped to 3D in the ā90s and never looked back, but Zelda would continue to mess around in 2D up to the Linkās Awakening remake on Nintendo Switch, a beloved and super weird title that had been trapped on the Game Boy.
If youāre reading an article on Zelda, you smiled somewhere in those paragraphs. Or youāre disappointed I didnāt mention your favorite ā but I bet you have a favorite. Itās like having a favorite food or Ninja Turtle, something that was declared when you were younger that youāve carried around as a fact your whole life.
Iāll also bet that your favorite Zelda is the first you played for any length of time. I was a PC kid. I played A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time at friendsā houses for a few minutes here and there, but Zelda is different from Mario Kart or Halo. It takes time to get its hooks in, but once it does, it sticks with you for life.
The Zelda that I first played on my own, the one that got its hooks into me, was The Wind Waker.
I canāt pin down what I love about Wind Waker like I canāt pin down what I love about my childhood bedroom. Itās ethereal, beyond fact. I can show you the expressive characters, the lighting, the music that plays when the sun rises on the open ocean, and hope you appreciate it the way I do, but thereās so much of it I canāt show you. I canāt show you why Wind Waker makes me feel safe or why I still find it exciting even though Iāve been playing it consistently for 20 years.
Itās not just nostalgia. Everyone has a video game golden age, usually in your teens and early twenties when you have a little disposable income and a lot of free time, and Wind Waker came out right in the middle of mine. But so did Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Halo, Splinter Cell, and Psychonauts. I love all those games. Theyāre some of the best games ever made, but theyāre not Wind Waker.
Wind Waker nails the feeling of adventure, and a big part of this is because youāre playing a younger character. The Link that appears in Wind Waker has ācome of ageā at the beginning of the story, which suggests heās about 12, but his design skews much younger; I always think of him as 9 or 10. His excitement, his curiosity, and his courage are infectious. What was the last game you played with a main character who was flat-out stoked to be going on an adventure? Itās rare.
At the time, there was a lot of backlash against Wind Wakerās cartoon look and focus on a young Link. After Ocarina of Time, and a famous E3 video that showed an adult Link squaring off against Ganon with GameCube graphics, fans expected Zelda to grow up with them.
But Zelda doesnāt age. It evolves, and that evolution is as non-linear as its famously convoluted (and irrelevant) timeline. Itās a perfect way to approach a game that is as close to a storybook as video games get. Each Zelda has big changes but also many things that stay the same. Bedtime stories donāt change. The details change, but the fundamentals remain the same ā nostalgia as design.
That storybook quality, high stakes but low seriousness, is what I go to Zelda for. The calls for a ādarker, more matureā Zelda never made sense to me in a world stuffed with ādark, matureā action adventure games, some of which, like Darksiders, gleefully riff on the Zelda formula.
Someone has probably made a āwhat your favorite Zelda says about youā quiz. Each one has its vibe, sense of humor, and personality. There are repeated elements, but each has its flavor, like how every comic book artistās interpretation of Batman is unique to them within the classic silhouette.
Does my love of Zeldaās more boyish tone stem from Wind Waker being my first experience with the series? Maybe, but itās always felt right to me. Wind Waker has some bleak stuff: The gods created the overworld ocean when they drowned the world to stop Ganon. Thatās pretty dark! Something about exploring this world as a kid who never loses his sense of joy and wonder, despite the post-apocalyptic setting and the massive responsibility on his shoulders, is very compelling.
Does Wind Waker inform what I value in stories now? Look at the contemporaries mentioned above: Knights of the Old Republic has a grand sense of adventure and colorful characters, Splinter Cell manages to poke fun at itself despite its political technothriller ambitions, Halo is bursting with personality from chatty Marines to cowardly Grunts, and Psychonauts is about a young boy stoked to be going on an adventure! One of my favorite games of the last few years, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, is high-stakes and high-drama but still finds moments of levity and wonder.
The key to Zeldaās ability to redefine itself is never better explained than by Wind Wakerās very first line: āThis is but one of the legends of which the people speakā¦ā
The Legend of Zelda isnāt about history, lore, or complex politics. Itās about whatever it needs to be about, whatever story the creators want to tell at that moment. Itās a bedtime story about an adventure, and every adventure needs a hero. Who better than a young boy dressed in green?