The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Divided opinions
Although Mario may be Nintendo’s most popular franchise, many players still value one series even more: The Legend of Zelda. Like Super Mario series, the Zelda franchise also begun on the NES. Both the Legend Of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link were technological masterpieces back then, with a large world and multiple dungeons to explore. Ever since then Zelda games have set the standards for adventure games, always improving. Nintendo 64′s The Ocarina of Time was a huge leap which brought the series to 3D and Nintendo faced a huge challenge with the next installment.
First images for GameCube Zelda were very realistic and detailed, showing Link fighting with his arch nemesis Ganondorf. People were very pleased with what they saw and liked the look. That’s why the showing of Zelda in last year’s E3 show came as quite a shock for most people. While designer of the series, Shigeru Miyamoto was confident with the new, cell shaded, approach, the gaming community wasn’t sold. “They’ve ruined Zelda”, “It looks like a kids game!”, “What’s Miyamoto been smoking?”, “That won’t sell.” were lines many people said. At this point what they saw was mostly just screens from very early versions of the game.
Seeing the game progress made many skeptics change their opinions. The new style turned out quite nice and Zelda is as popular as ever. Perhaps the cell shaded approach Nintendo took wasn’t as stupid as it seemed to be.
One of the main reasons for the new appearance was that cell-shading allowed Nintendo to add easily recognizable facial impressions for the characters, to make them feel more ‘alive’. This feature is used throughout the game and in many points you can spot the important details by just looking at Link’s eyes.
The much criticized graphics are actually excellent. The game looks like a cartoon come alive. It’s simply stunning how much detail Nintendo has managed to add into the game. Grass waves according to the wind, lighting and shadows look great, you even see butterflies fly and clouds go by. The transition from night to day is also worth mentioning. You can see the first rays of the sun slowly appearing as the new day comes.
One of the wonderful things in the game is that if you see something in the horizon, you can travel there and explore it. There are no invisible barriers blocking your way, you can travel as you will. In fact, most of the time in Wind Waker goes while sailing around the massive world. This is a change from traditional Zeldas, as dungeons have always been the focus. This change is a welcome one, I always preferred exploring the world instead of dungeon crawling.
Unlike the most Zeldas, WW’s story has some continuity to previous games. In Wind Waker’s world the events of Ocarina of Time have become a legend. There is a tradition in Outset Island that when a boy comes of age, it’s customary to dress him in green tunic in memory of a legendary hero. To our main character, Link, this tradition is soon becoming reality. Things don’t go as planned, though, as a huge bird spoils the party by kidnapping Link’s sister, Aryll. Something must be done, so Link decides to accompany a pirate ship and travel to rescue his sister.
Wind Waker is much more story driven than other Zeldas. While in Ocarina of Time you got to roam freely and the main quest stayed in the background, Wind Waker has story events throughout the game, instead of something happening only after you’ve gathered all three talismans, for example. While this certainly helps the storytelling, it does take away some of the freedom usual to Zelda series, however.
Strangely I found that the Wind Waker lacked some things that were very traditional for Zelda games. Even though the game world is filled with water, you can’t dive (or swim very far). This is a bit weird, considering that in almost every Zelda you can. Although the huge task to add all the things underneath the surface could be a reasonable explanation for this. More peculiar thing is the complete absence of Zoras. You’d think that from all the races in in Zelda games, the water people would be in Wind Waker, but apparently not. Guess they’ve gone deep deep underwater.
The different colored tunics are also absent, as well as finding secret doors by bombing cracks in walls. Spells are no go too, magic meter is strictly for item use. Iron boots make a comeback but the hover ones or the running shoes are nowhere to be found. Hookshot is accompanied by a newcomer, the grappling hook, which does basically the same thing, except that it clings on to slightly different objects. The shovel is gone (aww, no digging…) but boomerang, bow and arrows do return, alongside with The Most Useful Tool Ever, hammer (It is much bigger than before, but still as slow as ever). Deku leaf is the most interesting new item. It allows Link to hover across the air for short distances (It consumes the magic meter rapidly, though). The leaf can be also used on the ground, where it makes small wind breezes (which are useful mostly on solving puzzles).
Looks good, sounds good
The music is done by Koji Kondo (who has been the main composer of both Zelda and Mario series ever since their beginning), with help from Kenta Nagata (Mario Kart 64), Hajime Wakai (Star Fox 64) and Toru Minegishi (Majora’s Mask). While there’s plenty of new stuff to listen to, fans haven’t been forgotten. Some of the classic Zelda-themes make a comeback in new arrangements. Overall the soundtrack maintains the adventurous feel throughout the game and the music reacts well to game’s events. Like on all Zelda games, the overall quality is high, although I still rank Ocarina of Time’s soundtrack a bit higher.
Music changes dynamically during the game. When night changes to day, the music reacts to that. This goes for battles as well, so when you’re near enemies, the music becomes more intense. When you strike an enemy, music tempo increases and more aggressive chords are played. The bigger combo gets, the more chords you hear. Sounds amazing.
The biggest music-related aspect of the game is the Wind Waker, a magical conductors baton that Link uses to control the wind. It works the same way as the ocarina did. To conduct a melody, you push buttons according to notes of the song. After that Link plays the rest of the song (Ocarina sounded better, by the way), and the magic kicks in. Since most of the game is spent on sailing, the song you get to play most is, surprise, the one that lets you control the direction of the wind. You’ll play it a lot throughout the game.
Controls are similar to Ocarina of Time. Locking on to enemies is done with L-button (opposed to Z-targeting in N64), R-button handles the shield, A is the main action button, B is for sword and Y, Z & X are devoted to item use. C-stick is used for camera control. Jumps are done automatically, so no worries about screwing them up.
The difficulty level isn’t very high. While the Wind Waker isn’t a pushover, only few bosses offer a real challenge. Fortunately the world is vast, there’s plenty to explore and the dungeons are filled with puzzles. Since the game allows you to sail freely, there’s so much to do that the lack of difficulty really isn’t an issue.
Like in most of Nintendo’s GameCube games, Wind Waker uses the GameCube / Game Boy Advance connectivity. At certain point in the game you get an item called the Tingle Tuner which allows you to use GBA to control Tingle. Tingle helps you by dropping bombs on enemies, selling items, giving advice, etc.
ink’s first adventure on GameCube is a successful one, just like its predecessors on Nintendo 64, SNES & NES. There’s a good reason why Zelda is considered to be perhaps the best game franchise ever. Wind Waker proves this. Although the series is more than ten years old, it still has capability to renew itself and always offer something new and exciting for the fans.
While the cell shaded look isn’t for everyone, it’s part of the reason why Wind Waker is such a great game. Many of the things Nintendo has been able to do with it just wouldn’t be possible on realistically styled graphics. If you don’t choke on the graphics, Wind Waker is a must buy for every GameCube owner. It might be a long time before you see another adventure like this one. In fact, you might have to wait for the next Zelda game, so better not pass by Wind Waker.