The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

The Legend of Zelda franchise is one of the most cherished and highly reputed in all of electronic gaming. If one has never heard of it, he must have lived in a cave or on a remote island for the past several years. If he has electricity, a requirement for reading this article, and video games, the subject of this very publication, where he lives, it would be very odd if he has never heard of this series. But if he has never heard of it, The Wind Waker is a good game for him to begin to familiarize himself to the franchise with.

Even the remote Zelda fanatic will notice the striking new image this latest installment has brought to the series. At a time in which Zelda fans were looking for a mature title with detailed landscapes and characters, complex puzzles, and an intricate storyline, Nintendo unveils protagonist Link in his most childish concept to date. The cel-shaded visuals were initially looked down upon as a cartoon image only sustaining the idea of Nintendo being a "kiddie" company adamant not only to bringing new and refreshing ideas to gaming but also to pleasing a younger audience. The company seemed ignorant of those who had been following this series from its inception. Those individuals were ten years old maybe at the series' inception, but they certainly are not ten years old now. It seemed as though much of the momentum generated by the series’ three-dimensional debut, Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64, had been eradicated; but the truth of the matter was and is quite the contrary. Looking past the once jaw-dropping, realistic style divulged at Los Angeles’ Space World convention in 2000 (where the GameCube was unveiled) and all the hopes for what the first GameCube installment of Zelda might add to the franchise, one will find a completely detailed and well-thought-out world engulfed by a cel-shaded facade with a lighthearted yet engaging plot and intricate connections to preceeding titles and themes far more complex than the game’s cartoon aura would suggest.

In the series’ impressive and relatively long-withstanding history, each individual game seems to relate to at least one other game in the series in an often-blatant fashion. Majora’s Mask, for instance, shares the same main character with and takes place months after the conclusion of Ocarina of Time. Likewise, The Wind Waker has several references to the proceedings of one particular preceding game, Ocarina of Time itself, arguably in the most arrant fashion the series has ever seen. In a world far removed with time and natural progress from the Hyrule Nintendo developed with Ocarina of Time, the exploits of the Link from that title survived in legend; and their agent became known as the "Hero of Time." In The Wind Waker, the sole evident remnants of the Hyrule of old in terms of land is a collection of islands spread out across a vast sea. On one particular island, it has become tradition to clad boys in the hero’s favorite garb on their coming of age, with the sole hope that these young men may come to know bravery as the hero did and forge a similar path with their lives.

The aforementioned island, appropriately named Outset Island, is our current hero’s place of origin and the setting for the beginning of this game. In absolutely yet not disappointingly predictable fashion, this latest installment opens on protagonist Link’s birthday, the day he comes of age. In an enigmatic sequence of events, a large bird of prey appears flying in the airspace surrounding Outset Island and drops a captive girl into a forest on the top of the land mass by mistake; and the bird subsequently confuses Link's sister with the girl he had captured earlier and takes her captive. Following a thwarted rescue attempt, Link adds to his acquaintances an anthropomorphic talking ship known as the King of Red Lions; and succeeding this coincidental, fortunate union, the two set off to vanquish the heinous villain behind Link's sister's kidnaping and unveil the ambiguous nature of his schemes.

The Zelda tradition, especially succeeding its sixteen-bit installment on the Super Nintendo, A Link to the Past, and only magnified after the series became three-dimensional on home consoles, has consistently amplified the role of the land outside the towns and dungeons and how it contributes to the overall immersion of the player. Hyrule and Termina's fields--and even the countryside of those worlds explored on the different Game Boy iterations--housed irascible adversaries that often proved comical in addition to interesting characters and hidden items to discover; and these qualities, although often subtle, elevate the developers to a level of extolment for the overall completeness and homogeneous fascination of the universe they created.