The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker tries to differentiate itself from its predecessors by adopting a unique art style – a cel-shaded look that simulates a cartoon – and by delivering an adventure that is much lighter in tone than the previous ones. However, its simple and repetitive design makes it the weakest 3D installment in the series to date.

The story begins the day Link is about to receive the green robes that symbolize his passage into adulthood. The festivities on his island, however, are interrupted when a group of pirates arrives in pursuit of a gigantic bird. After helping the pirates rescue their leader, Tetra, Link watches his sister being kidnapped by the same bird and realizes he now needs to travel with Tetra to free her.

The game’s narrative structure is its main strength. The affection that Link feels for his sister, for example, is the first element to be established when the character wakes up, which makes the kidnapping more dramatically effective. In the same way, the protagonist’s goal, which starts being personal in nature, quickly evolves into the epic undertones expected of the franchise. Containing some twists and turns that, although expected, still work very well by reinforcing the narrative role of certain characters, the story in The Wind Waker is more agile and busier than that of Ocarina of Time, although it doesn’t even attempt to have the complexity of something like Majora’s Mask: there is nothing here that compares to the themes discussed in the previous game and the nuances that can lead to different interpretations.

Although the story is simpler and blunter, it remains properly developed. Link’s character arc, for example, is a well-developed coming-of-age story. The game begins by interrupting the preparations for his transition into adulthood, and his journey serves to complete the process: if at first, the characters see the boy’s courage as foolishness because of his age and appearance, near the end, they already respect him and understand that he is able to fulfill his destiny. Benefited also by being one of the few installments in the series that tries to humanize, even if just briefly, its most iconic villain, The Wind Waker‘s story also makes great use of the mythology built up so far, bringing the Triforce to the center of the stage, which has the potential to thrill longtime fans.

The art style used in the game, based on the cel-shading technique – which renders 3D images in a way that gives them a 2D animation look – is also effective in conveying the characters’ emotions, especially Link’s, with his big, expressive eyes, besides being responsible for giving a light and comical tone to the events. The exaggerated expressions that the protagonist makes when he is about to be “thrown” into a certain fortress, for example, are funny precisely because they are able to capture the absurdity of the scene. And the instant that a fairy reveals that Link is her type, the expression on the boy’s face becomes an amusing mixture of embarrassment and a confident look of “Yeah, I can’t help it” that makes the moment stand out.

The Wind Waker also innovates when it comes to its setting: the horse-riding fields of Hyrule and Termina go away in favor of a great open ocean. Using a baton, Link can command wind directions and use his mysterious sailing boat – which speaks – to explore the countless islands and lost ships that populate the place. Nintendo tries to develop this theme to the fullest, placing pirates as central characters in the narrative and a ghost ship haunting certain waters, introducing battles at sea with cannons, and even guiding the exploration through treasure maps that mark with an X the place where the treasures are hidden.

However, if the story and art style in The Wind Waker certainly work, the same cannot be said about most of its dungeons. The first two suffer from being too simple and linear. In Dragon Roost Cavern, for example, there is only one path to follow until the very end. Whenever Link returns to a room that he has been before, he still manages to be walking in a straight line, which means that the player rarely needs to worry about the design of the dungeons: after winning a challenge, a shortcut opens that takes the player by the hands back to the rooms that they need to go. Shortcuts are useful in complex spaces that invite exploration, making it both rewarding and practical. In The Wind Waker, however, they are used to prevent the player from leaving the pre-established path. Instead of being a reward for exploration, shortcuts become a tool to produce linearity: they make the way to an earlier room the only logical way to go. One of the last challenges of this temple, therefore, becomes silly in its simplicity: when the player finally gets to a dead-end, what they need to figure out is that they need just to turn around to get to the boss’s room. Meanwhile, back at the Deku Tree in Ocarina of Time, the player needed to understand both the layout of the place and the mechanics introduced so far to figure out how to clear the way to the place’s underground area.

On the other hand, the third temple, called Tower of the Gods, stands out for abandoning linearity on its first floor. The player is free to explore the place, as the map, the compass, and the key can be acquired in any order. Its puzzles, in turn, are well-designed, introducing two different elements and then combining them in one final challenge: at one point, it is necessary to position blocks to be used as platforms whenever the water level rises, at another, the player has to use wooden sticks to light torches, and, at a third, use the blocks to pass with the flaming sticks over the water. On the second floor, Link needs to take statues up to certain switches. Initially, he needs to pick them up and carry them with him. Later, the statues start to follow him, and then they have to be commanded from a distance. It is only a pity to note that there is no dynamic between these two floors: when players arrive at the second one, they can forget that the first ever existed, as the logic of the puzzles also changes between them, making the floors mechanically disconnected.

The last two dungeons, in turn, present some problems in their use of a companion. Link’s partner in the Earth Temple at least has a purpose when solving puzzles, as they redirect rays of light, and when moving around the place, as they provide a way to reach distant platforms without spending magic. Link’s companion in the Wind Temple, on the other hand, is completely useless: they only create trees in predetermined places so that they can be targeted by the Hookshot, and they even spend most of the time trapped in a cage. The key problem of these companions, however, is that they don’t compensate for the fact that Link needs to spend a great deal of time playing a song to control them from a distance, which pauses the action constantly. If this happened only in the Earth Temple, it would have been acceptable, but this song is also used in the Tower of the Gods and in the Wind Temple without any change to its design, which shows a lack of creativity from the part of the developers. The Temple of the Earth, in particular, also suffers from being thematically displaced. It is artistically bland, with no striking features in its design justifying its name: it would have made even more sense if the temple was called Shadow or Light Temple instead, since its specific mechanic involves both elements.

In addition, there is no need for the Wind Temple to be solved after the Earth one. The game could have opened its structure and let the player choose which of the two to explore first, but, in an arbitrary decision, it forces the Earth Temple to be solved earlier. One final detail about dungeons is that they usually have one or two optional rooms containing treasure maps. This is a setback in comparison to the several fairies available in Majora’s Mask, but it’s still better than nothing, serving to break, even if briefly, the exacerbated linearity of the dungeon design.

However, the main problem afflicting The Wind Waker is the absurd focus on its combat system. While previous games offered a number of secondary activities, such as solving puzzles, protecting caravans, preventing alien abductions, betting in races, and target practicing, The Wind Waker continually puts “defeat all enemies” as the goal for the player without any special context. Whenever Link finds a boat, he must defeat all the enemies inside. Whenever he climbs into a lookout post, he must defeat all enemies up there. Whenever he finds an island shaped like the face of a die, he must destroy all the cannons around the place. Almost every time he enters a cave, he must destroy all the enemies there. Sometimes the cave looks like a sanctuary, sometimes it looks like a cave, but that doesn’t make the objective different from killing all the enemies in there. The climax of this design is a cave with more than thirty levels in which the challenge in each of them is… to kill all the enemies. As an extra task in the midst of many different ones, this cave would have worked, but coming after many other battles it’s just tiresome.

As The Wind Waker is not an action game, but one about adventure, its combat system is not nearly as complex enough to sustain so much repetition. Yes, in comparison to its predecessors, it is enhanced, containing a kind of counterattack by pressing the A button at the right time, and giving the possibility of using a few weapons dropped by enemies. These additions, however, don’t change the fact that it remains extremely simple with just one attack button, with some variations depending on the direction of the analog stick and whether the enemy is locked on or not. Enemies, in turn, may have a striking design but rarely need some strategy to be beaten: Darknuts need to take an initial counterattack, while Moblins are easier to hit from behind and that’s it. This coupled with the fact that the difficulty of the game is not high – although it can be increased in the Wii U version – makes The Wind Waker’s hundreds of battles a chore. After all, the first five Darknuts that the player faces will provide the same challenge as the other twenty. Just as the first five Bokoblins will be identical to the subsequent fifty.

Even the missions surrounding the secondary characters are tied to combat. Each monster, when defeated, can drop a specific item: Moblins drop collars, while Bokoblins, pendants. By delivering a certain amount of these items to certain characters, Link gets rewards. There’s a teacher, for example, that loves pendants and her students decide to hire Link to present her with twenty of them. Unlike Majora’s Mask, few minor characters in the game have any semblance of a narrative arc or even personality. The teacher, for example, likes pendants, and that’s it. A frustrated boy sitting on a ladder just needs a random photo to be happy for the rest of the game. While Majora’s Mask had a love story that encompassed many missions and had a strong tragic nature, the one present here is resolved quickly and without major consequences.

The Wind Waker also doesn’t show a lot of care with language, making all the characters speak with the same voice: a feat, considering that some of them are pirates. In the game, the dialogue always gets straight to the point, being much more concerned with transmitting information to the player than reflecting the personality of the speaker. While the fairy Tat’l in Majora’s Mask differs from the Na’vi in Ocarina of Time because of the harshness of her comments, Link’s accompanying ship in The Wind Waker cannot differentiate itself even from its fellow companions in the game. Some characters, as is customary in the franchise, are in fact eccentric, as evidenced by the naval battle minigame attendant, who simulates a children’s story with pictures, reproducing the sounds of the confrontations, but the few traits they have are due to their outlandish design and not to a particular voice or interesting character arc.

The game even fails to make most of its rewards relevant. Some maps purchased near the end, for example, tell you where to get treasure maps that lead to pieces of heart, as well as the location of hidden caves and lookouts. However, they don’t point out which treasure maps have already been obtained or which caves have already been explored by the player, rendering them useless. One, for example, says there are five treasure maps leading to pieces of heart on Windfall Island. If players have not marked somewhere how many they have picked up at each location over the course of the twenty-five hours adventure, this information will be of no use at all.

Finally, the Wii U version of The Wind Waker deserves some additional comments. It expands the limit of photos that can be taken from three to twelve, making its secondary mission less unbearable, and decreases the waiting time to pull treasures from the seabed and the number of maps that need to be deciphered by a certain character at the end of the game. On the other hand, the new lighting system used, although effective in open places, makes Link look like a plastic doll in various situations, such as when opening chests. It is also worth mentioning that the HD version available for Wii U contains a sail that doubles the speed of Link’s boat, making exploration faster.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker may have innovated with its unusual art style and told an exciting story, but because of its boring dungeons, repetitive combat, and bland quest design, it never manages to reach the same highs as its predecessors.

December 14, 2018.

Originally published in Portuguese on February 17, 2017.