Cliff Notes – Zelda: The Wind Waker is still an amazing game that can inspire future sequels
- The Wind Waker’s ocean setting enhances narrative depth, transforming traditional quests into odysseys filled with chance encounters.
- The absence of a central objective in the early game fosters exploration and surprise, contrasting with later titles that focus on a singular goal.
- The game’s themes of fate and chance, particularly illustrated through character interactions, offer a unique storytelling experience that could inspire future Zelda titles.
Zelda: The Wind Waker is still an amazing game that can inspire future sequels – Reader’s Feature
Controversial at the time but now accepted as a classic (Nintendo)
A reader enjoys The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker on Switch 2 and suggest its ocean odyssey could be template for a post-Tears Of The Kingdom game.
I’m sure I’m not the only mid-30s nostalgia hunter who bought a Nintendo Switch 2 at launch purely to replay The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Whether this says more about the dearth of launch titles or about how important The Wind Waker is to my generation of Zelda fans is hard to tell. But now that I’m more than halfway through the game, I’m reminded of what sets this game apart from all the other Zelda games: the sea.
I can still remember the controversy over this change in setting: no land means no horse and no horse means it’s not a Zelda game. Never mind that it was only the two previous games that featured a horse. Link was a land-based hero, plain and simple.
Once people played The Wind Waker the debate was quickly settled. The world seemed huge for the time, but to say the larger, more open world feel to the game is what makes the game immersive I think misses the point. This game doesn’t just trade land for water, the sea is what gives the game its narrative depth.
After all, what separates a medieval grail quest – the archetypal structure Zelda is built around – from an odyssey? Possibly nothing more than being on the water, that huge undulating canvas that The Wind Waker captures so beautifully. On land, we expect things to come down the road, but on the sea every meeting feels like a surprise – there are, after all, no roads, just silhouettes of distant land masses and whoever you spot rolling over the waves.
Of course, there’s nothing random about Zelda games – fate and repetition are pervasive themes – but more than any other Zelda the narrative plays on the idea of chance meetings, starting with a case of mistaken identity when Link’s little sister gets swooped up by a giant bird.
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It then runs with this idea, with odd outposts (Tingle’s Tower) populated by strange and humorous characters. But more than anything, it’s the feeling that you’ve only run into these characters by chance that amplifies the joy of the encounters.
The map also benefits from not having a spiritual centre for the first half of the game. In the latest Zelda titles, Hyrule Castle is perpetually shrouded in evil, and you can see it from almost anywhere on the map. This orients the entire game in one direction, towards one objective.
In Wind Waker the ultimate objective isn’t given to you, nor can you see it on the map. Then the game changes: the Tower of the Gods rises up and you descend down to flooded Hyrule – without a doubt a sequence that is a high point in the series. The world all of a sudden feels less random.
When you see a statue of another Link in the sunken castle, chance becomes fate. It’s this moment of realisation that many entries in the series miss out on, by spelling out that Link is the hero early on, and it’s a realisation that is only possible because the creators built the story around the sea.
When discussing the possibilities of where the series could go after 2023’s gargantuan Tears Of The Kingdom, there’s a running joke in the Zelda community that space seems as likely a setting as any other. As one who skews towards enjoying the traditional aspects of the series, I used to balk at this idea, but now that I’m replaying The Wind Waker, I’m not so sure. What is space after all, but a very large ocean?
By reader Robert Yurchesyn
The Wind Waker HD never did get ported to the Switch (Nintendo)
The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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