#in a sort of parallel to OOT where he was left in the care of the Deku Tree. falls over

[heros-shade-fanclub]

He found a baby in the wreckage of a wagon train

Thanks for your requests, @waroferas and @dragkbluire !! I love getting to see you guys in my notes bdjshjsjdjd

[karaloza]

The Master Sword

The Master Sword is Link's signature weapon, and acquiring it is a major plot event in every game where it appears. The events leading up to it are typically framed as some sort of test of the Hero's worthiness, but it's what comes after that tells us what that worthiness actually means.

In OoT, Link acquires the Master Sword after collecting three gemstones and the magical item from which the game takes its name, which grant him entrance into a sealed chamber where the sword is kept. Only...he wasn't worthy after all, because he was too young. The Master Sword senses this and puts him in a kind of stasis for seven years, until he is old enough to wield it properly. It apparently knows what the characters in the game do not: Link is only a child and he should not have to do this. He is not ready. However, upon waking up fully grown, Link still is not ready, not really. His mind was asleep; it has not grown with his body. Now adults take him seriously and expect him to make good on promises he made in ignorance during the first phase of his adventure, but his maturity is an illusion. He still relies on Navi to guide him: he is still the same child who left Kokiri Forest as instructed by the Great Deku Tree.

This occurrence--the slumber imposed by the Master Sword--is the event in the game that most plainly illustrates the theme of traumatic premature adulthood. Link wakes to find himself suddenly (from his perspective) with an adult body, fully expected by society to perform adult responsibilities...and the world has also ended. With no Hero available to stop him, Ganondorf has taken over. He has demolished Hyrule Castle Town and turned the castle itself into his grim fortress, decimated the friendly peoples of Hyrule, and sent monsters to overrun Link's childhood home. Adulthood, in this game, is synonymous with ruin, and all because Link tried to take it on too soon.

The text of WW does not tell us precisely how old Link is (the game's creators eventually settled on 12 years old), but his short stature and high-pitched voice clips indicate prepubescence. If the Master Sword were going strictly by age, one would assume it would send him to sleep for at least a few years. But it doesn't--he draws it from its resting place and immediately uses it to clear Hyrule Castle of a horde of awakened monsters. Indeed, in this game it is the Master Sword that is not quite ready for the task at hand. Centuries spent untended have drained it of most of its power and Link must restore it, facilitating its literal growth--the first stage of the sword's re-empowerment has its crossguard sprouting into the familiar winged shape. (The parallel with the Rito in the same game earning their actual wings as a rite of passage should not be understated.) It is arguably Link who is the master, and the Master Sword is the pupil.

The Triforce of Courage

More MacGuffin than genuine source of power, the Triforce of Courage is not what makes Link the Hero so much as what proves that he already is the Hero. How he comes into possession of it varies considerably from game to game.

In OoT, Link receives the Triforce of Courage almost by accident. He inadvertently lets Ganondorf into the Sacred Realm, where the entire Triforce was kept, but because Ganondorf cares only for Power, the other two pieces of the Triforce find other hosts. Link does genuinely merit the Triforce of Courage, but it is Ganondorf's actions that directly bestow it upon him--actions that are only possible because, to put it bluntly, Link (and Zelda) effed up. Once again, his agency in the situation is limited.

In WW, by contrast, the Triforce of Power has been split into eight shards specifically in order to hide it from Ganondorf or another like him, and Link must track it down, piece by piece. Depending on the version of the game, either the shards themselves or the charts indicating their locations are scattered across the world, guarded by monsters and tricky puzzles. It takes a great deal of moxie, cleverness, and (in the original version) captured treasure for Link to retrieve all eight pieces and claim the mark of the Hero. He doesn't "receive" it--he takes it. More importantly, he takes initiative.

Next time: All things must come to an end, and the game's respective endings, with the departure of the guiding companions, have a lot to say.

I swear I could write a whole. Um. Essay. About the contrasts between OoT and WW in how they portray the process of growing up.

[gascon-en-exil]

The Not Really Definitive Ranking of the Zelda Series: #4

#11-19 (link to #11, with further links to each of the others)

#10 - Tri Force Heroes

#9 - The Wind Waker

#8 - The Minish Cap

#7 - A Link to the Past

#6 - Link’s Awakening

#5 - Ocarina of Time

#4 - The Legend of Zelda; Twilight Princess (including the Wii U remake)

a.k.a. that time this series tried to show us its idea of gritty realism and gave us a snarky imp, a monkey with an oversized red ass, some guy with a bird nesting in his afro, a yeti couple of vastly disparate sizes, a man turned into a golden statue with his cat petrified atop his head, a “princess” who enjoys doing suggestive things with insects, the spirit of unbridled capitalism incarnated in the body of a toddler, a race of unholy abominations with humanoid heads on chicken bodies, and a pair of ambiguously gay clowns who make a living by shooting people out of an enormous cannon. Never change, Nintendo.

I’ve never been very fond of what is usually thought of as realism in gaming - comes with being a Nintendo fanboy and all - in large part because it’s almost always a shallow definition of realism: guns, blood, dull colors, and unemotional and aggressively straight alpha male protagonists. Quite a few of the games I’ve already discussed in this ranking tackle mature themes that belie their outward whimsy, and Twilight Princess is no different. Of course, nowadays I think TP is best remembered as that game that slavishly imitated the formula of Ocarina of Time, though there doesn’t seem to be a consensus as to whether or not it succeeded in the attempt. Clearly I’m of the opinion that it surpassed its predecessor, but the reasons for that are probably not the most obvious ones. The combat is indeed more complex (though the Wii version’s sword controls feel flailing and silly now that Skyward Sword has taken that concept so much farther), the story beats are bigger and come more regularly, and the dungeons are longer, more complicated, and nearly as numerous, but those aren’t the improvements I want to focus on.

Instead, I think it’s important to talk about narrative and characters (again - this is plainly a Thing in this ranking). Midna is without question the best companion character in the series to date; she has an actual character arc and visibly connects with the other characters in the story, and she’s useful without ever really becoming a nuisance. I also appreciate that she’s never entirely “good,” that even after she learns to care about others and value the world of the light she’s still talking back to Ganon and popping Zant like a balloon. It’s arguable that her development might be a tad weakened because it’s implied that she was possessed by Zelda or something like that, but if the game is incredibly vague on that point I can’t be expected to do any better. The gradual revelation that TP is not really Link’s or even Zelda’s story but Midna’s is handled excellently all the same; I even like the fake-out title drop followed by the actual title drop near the end, as slightly cheesy as they may be. There’s also Link/Midna, which overtook the shipping culture of TP so thoroughly that we didn’t have to suffer through (much of) a repeat of OoT on that score. Hooray.

Midna is not the only standout in this cast, though. I might be the only person on the internet to say this, but Zant is an intriguing villain even after he’s exposed as a tantrum-throwing nobody playing at being an evil overlord. It’s not foreshadowed at all, but it’s not really that hard to reconcile the two sides of the character, the dumbstruck sycophant of Ganondorf who gets some kind of metaphysical vengeance in the end and the figurative (and literal) mask of a ruthless tyrant. And who knows - Ganondorf could have easily been giving him pointers the whole time, which is hilarious to envision. All of it culminates in a wacky and chaotic boss fight against Zant that comes completely out of left field and is entirely the better for it. That it props up perhaps the weakest dungeon in the game is just icing on the cake.

Midna and Zant represent the central conflict of TP that runs parallel to - and arguably supersedes, in an interesting twist on how plot hijackings in Zelda usually go - the usual mythic pageantry of Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf and their struggle for the here-unnamed Triforce. But TP goes beyond that and offers a third narrative level, that of the assorted common people of Hyrule just trying to survive in the face of the advancing twilight. Many of this game’s NPCs really stand out for their strange designs and even stranger behavior, but in addition to those oddballs Link’s quest is grounded in his connection with the children of his home village (including another not-quite-girlfriend), the sole survivors of an implicitly horrific massacre in Kakariko Village, and the members of an underground resistance group who...admittedly don’t do all that much resisting over the course of the story, but I suppose it’s the thought that counts. Also, one of them has a bazooka somehow.

These NPC groups fill out the world of Hyrule, to say nothing of their frequent additions to the story between dungeons. Except for the part where restoring the amnesiac Ilia’s memory initiates a sequence of events that leads to Link being shot into the heavens by one of the aforementioned gay clowns, it’s all dealt with rather organically too. This is more than can be said for the Tears of Light segments early in the game, which force Link to collect plot coupons in his extremely limited wolf form. Though these segments were shortened slightly in the HD version, my problem with them stems more from their presentation. You have to first explore three major sections of the map when they’re covered in twilight - in other words, bathed in oversaturated lighting and dreary, monotonous music. They’re never something I look forward to, though mercifully after the third one the twilight leaves Hyrule and the world opens up fully.

Speaking of Wolf Link, there’s the matter of the Wii U version. Unlike with The Wind Waker, TP’s remake made no really noticeable gameplay improvements, and the only additions I can recall are bigger wallets and Miiverse stamps. The real new fun comes in the form of the Wolf Link amiibo, which opens up the new Cave of Shadows area. It may be just a rehash of the concept for the Cave of Ordeals only with Wolf Link, but since most players including myself don’t really use the wolf form for combat in the main game the place offered quite a challenge the first time I attempted it. It’s a lackluster remake to be sure, but I consider that a testament to just how solid TP was in its original version. In my opinion this is linear, story-driven Zelda at its absolute best, putting fresh spins on the traditional story and keeping the gameplay engaging and diverse. Really, even the sidequests and optional collection never really become too frustrating or tedious, and that pleases my completionist self to no end. The remaining three games all set aside linearity and/or the classic Zelda story, but under those constraints TP is absolutely as good as it gets.

Next time: a sequel that’s also kind of sort of a remake that’s also very definitely amazing.