The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess offers a much more complex and cinematic version of the formula established by A Link to the Past. With a story marked by melancholy, and with more elaborate dungeons than its predecessor, the game impresses with its epic scope, although it lacks the element of mystery that used to encourage the exploration of the franchise’s fantastical worlds.

Twilight Princess introduces its protagonist, Link, when he is a simple farmer living in the bucolic Ordon Village, with his only concerns being tending to the local cattle and his horse, Epona. When he is assigned the task of carrying a shield for a ceremony in Hyrule, however, the young man is charged by monsters, who attack Epona and kidnap his friends. After waking up, Link finds himself trapped in a dungeon and, with astonishment, realizes that not only he is in another world entirely but has also been transformed into a wolf. His only chance to escape is with the aid of a mysterious being called Midna.

The game’s story has a melancholy tone, which is established early on by the very first sentence uttered by Link’s mentor: “Tell me … Do you ever feel a strange sadness when dusk falls?” he asks Link. And from there on, it is reinforced by the characters’ constant lamentations and by the desolate setting, which is mostly devoid of life: if Kakariko Village in Ocarina of Time, even in its future version, had its good share of people wandering around, here it emerges as a ghost town, inhabited only by two adults and a tiny group of children, who, at first, are even locked up inside a house, afraid of leaving. The other world visited by Link manages to have an even more sullen atmosphere, suggested by its particular desaturated color palette.

Link’s character arc in Twilight Princess involves the typical hero’s journey, with the character being forced out of his quiet life by an event that disrupts the order of things. In his quest to save his loved ones and defeat the villain, Link gradually becomes aware of his abilities to impact and transform the world around him.

It’s not a surprise, then, that the most fascinating character in Twilight Princess is not Link himself, but Midna. Her sinister appearance, which mixes childish and sexual traits with a monstrous aspect, is in direct contrast to her narrative function of serving as Link’s companion – perfectly encapsulating the doubt about whether she is a friend or foe. After all, if Midna guides Link initially, she does it for her own benefit, making it clear to the character that she has her own agenda. It is impossible, for example, not to notice her lack of sadness about Hyrule being overcome by the world of shadows, especially because she considers her universe more beautiful and inviting than that of the protagonist.

The other side characters, however, are not developed at all. Kakariko’s village leader, for example, has a suggested romance with another character, but that element is quickly forgotten by the narrative. A childhood friend of Link also spends too much time away to make an impression, while only one of the four major “adventurers” that Link finds in a bar has any personality. Twilight Princess, at least, shows special care with its writing. One of Ordon Village’s inhabitants, for example, speaks with an appropriate heavy accent (“Oh, an ‘if y’all get tired of ridin’ just go ahead an’ jump the gate to head back to the village“), and even an older Goron, instead of talking with the usual “brother”, refers to Link as “brudda“.

Twilight Princess is structured to alternate between dungeons packed with puzzles and exciting set pieces: after a dungeon, there is always a remarkable event that gives continuity to the story with a great action sequence. Between the Forest Temple and the Goron Mines, for example, some of Link’s colleagues are kidnapped and the rescue culminates in a horseback duel on a bridge. Sequences like that, accompanied by epic cutscenes – like the silhouette of monsters slowly rising at sunset in slow motion – are new to the franchise and give a cinematic tone to the events.

The game succeeds in punctuating the adventure with many unique moments. Unlike Ocarina of Time, which re-used various environments and not always in a different way, in Twilight Princess the player often visits new areas that, in turn, offers new activities: whether they are entering a ski competition with the Abominable Snowman, sumo wrestling with a Goron, or a going on a dizzying flight in the claws of a winged creature, the player is always finding new exciting things to do. Even the dungeons’ design is rightly varied, and there’s even one that it’s actually a manor, in which Link must talk to its inhabitants to get hints from them about what must be done.

The dungeons themselves also deserve many accolades, proving to be much more elegant than those present in The Wind Waker. While the first one visited in the previous title was hampered by its excessive linearity, the Forest Temple that opens this section in Twilight Princess allows the player to explore the place more freely by visiting rooms outside a defined order – which encourages them to memorize certain features of the rooms to get back to them when they get the right equipment. That is, while in The Wind Waker players were taken straight to the correct place after getting what they needed to progress, here they need to go back to thinking about the dungeon’s layout again.

Not only that, as the Forest Temple, in particular, also stands out by the way in which it prepares the player for the battle against the mini-boss. The baboon that Link confronts at a certain point is not only mentioned earlier by monkeys roaming the place, but also appears in an important scene where it destroys a passage inside the temple, forcing the player to take a large detour to get to where they need to be – which increases the animosity against the creature. The battle itself is also the culmination of the logic of the puzzles that needed to be solved far:  players first need to learn that they must hit a pillar to save a caged monkey; then hit a pillar to knock down a chest; and, finally, the action becomes the technique to topple the baboon. Before the end of the dungeon, the creature appears yet again, finishing that character’s arc.

Another dungeon that serves as a contrast to The Wind Waker is the Temple of Time. Here, the developers take one of the main concepts behind the Tower of the Gods – the ability to control statues – and develops it exceptionally better. The action became more practical, taking less time from the player: if it was necessary before to play a specific song every time you wanted to control the statues, now you just hit them with an energy beam to make them follow you. Not only that, but the puzzles that surround the idea are also more elaborate: instead of taking the statues only to the switch on the other side of the room or to the next room, as it was before, here it is necessary to escort one of them right to the beginning of the temple, in an exquisite example of folded level design.

Also worthy of praise is the attempt to make Link’s equipment few fresh again, either by incorporating new effects to them, such as the gust of wind that throwing the boomerang now causes, or by finding new ways to employ them: the iron boots not only make Link sink as they used to but now also serve to steady the character in sumo fights and move him with magnets. It’s only a shame, then, to verify that, just as was the case with Ocarina of Time, they are promptly discarded when their respective dungeons are completed. The ball and chain used to break and defeat ice enemies, for example, is used inside only a single cave while the spinner can be connected to only two sequences of rails in Hyrule Field.

The Hyrule map, in turn, is re-split into segments, resembling much more the field in Ocarina of Time than the ocean in The Wind Waker: its purpose is to function as a link between the regions and not serve as a proper setting for exploration. Yes, there are puzzles scattered along the roads, but they are few and far between and, in some cases, very artificial. The exploration element is secondary in Twilight Princess, becoming a mechanical action: after each temple, players will cycle through Hyrule Field in search of possibilities of using their new equipment. While Ocarina of Time had a mystical element around explorations, which as further amplified by the use of the ocarina to unlock secrets, exploration here is a basic process of acquiring an item and using it at a given place. There is no need for deduction and no mystery inserted into the proceedings; it is a mere action of finding the right key (the equipment) for each lock (the place to use it). Moreover, the inclusion of these puzzles in Hyrule Field is not organic, failing to appear to be a natural extension of the environment. Rails to use the Spinner are on the side of certain hills for no reason whatsoever, for example, whereas the only one cave in the entire Hyrule Field that is covered in ice is unlike the rest of the landscape, which doesn’t contain any trace of ice whatsoever.

Regarding its structure, the game also falters with an unnecessary linear design. There is no reason for the fifth, sixth, and seventh dungeons to be solved in that specific order, for example. If the game had opened its structure after the fourth temple – which marks an important point in the story – it would have given players the necessary freedom to make them feel like they are exploring that world and not simply going where they are told to.

Besides that, the ability to turn into a wolf turns out to be increasingly useless throughout the game, serving only to kill a certain type of enemy more easily; to smell certain scents; to reveal ghosts in the environment – which was once accomplished with the Lens of Truth – and dig holes in the ground. The franchise’s typical musical instrument has also been relegated to the wolf – its howling more specifically – but instead of being used on the exploration part of the game, it’s just a minigame activated at specific times.

Finally, the game’s most serious art style, with desaturated colors and slightly more realistic body characters, has not aged nearly as well as the one used in The Wind Waker, especially regarding the characters’ faces. On the other hand, the soundtrack remains as efficient as before, ranging from the epic tone, such as the great Hyrule Field theme, to the melancholic, like Midna’s, even flirting with the western in Kakariko Village’s theme.

As for the Wii U version, it is the most recommended one for several reasons, in addition to the slight graphical improvement. In this version, several rewards that were simply a specific amount rupees have been replaced by special stamps with certain images or letters of the Hylian alphabet – making it possible, by the time Miiverse was online at least, for example, to write “Let’s punch fascists in the face” in Hylian – which made the rewards more varied and socially important. The repeated message informing how much rupees are worth is also removed, only appearing once during the whole game and not during each play session, as it was before. And, more importantly, the player can increase the game’s difficulty, which fixes a major problem of the original, in which the epic scope of the adventure was sabotaged by the lack of punishment in combat, taking away the urgency of the fights. Here, being unable to regain health with hearts obtained from pots, grass or enemies makes every damage received – which can be doubled or even quadrupled with the Ganondorf amiibo – more significant, increasing the tension.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess may not be the franchise’s best title but, until today, it is certainly the one with the most epic and cinematic narrative. Although it has engaging dungeons, a decent story, and great pacing, the game, unfortunately, falters in the way it develops some of the secondary characters, structures the moments of exploration and gives little reason to use weapons and items after their dungeons are completed. In the end, Twilight Princess remains a memorable, even if imperfect, adventure.

December 18, 2018.

Originally published in Portuguese on July 07, 2017.