It’s Your Legend

Table of Contents:

Introduction

I often hear the phrase “show, don’t tell,” applied to the mediums of film and literature as an essential principle in regards to storytelling. Consequently, I notice the guideline frequently ends up being applied to video game-based storytelling as well. But as I have come to understand more recently, games have the ability to not only show their narrative, but also to directly provide the experience of that narrative. This is known as ludonarrative. Ludo being the Latin word for game, ludonarrative essentially refers to the portion of a game’s narrative told through gameplay rather than a cutscene or other non-interactive means. While many other storytelling mediums must rely on traditional forms of narrative conveyance, ludonarrative is a major component of what sets video games apart.

I feel that The Legend of Zelda exemplifies the aforementioned trait particularly well. Ironically, I also think ludonarrative may be one of the main sources of confusion when discussing the style and quality of Zelda’s stories. Often these discussions will compare Zelda’s story to games like Kingdom Hearts, Tales of Symphonia, or other Action-Adventures, Action-RPGs, and JRPGs. However, I do not think these are apt comparisons.

Like I said, The Legend of Zelda employs a highly experiential method of storytelling. In other words, Zelda does not so much “convey” a story as it allows you to take part in one. This is an important distinction because it drastically changes the structuring of the narrative. By being experiential, Zelda’s story ceases to be structured around plot points because every action you take is a plot point. You actively live through the legend; each moment you are playing the game is a part of the narrative. While the other games I mentioned above may have gameplay which reflects the story being told, they ask you to listen to and observe their narratives, rather than actively participating in them. In other words, Zelda has a heavy emphasis on ludonarrative, so the scales on which we judge it must be unique.

There is another narrative “law” of sorts I learned from my English III teacher during my junior year of high school. “The author is always in control,” he would tell the class. His rule, at the time being used in reference to the author of a novel, meant that whenever an event could have occurred in multiple but equally viable ways, author probably had a specific reason to write it that way. He would say that if you, the reader, wanted to better understand a story, then thinking about why the author chose to present his or her narrative in the way he or she did was key.

So I pose two questions: what are the paramount ideas, many of which have maintained their existence over several entries in the franchise, of The Legend of Zelda? Furthermore, why are they so important?

I believe that the key to answering these questions lies in finding these ideas and then analyzing them through the lens of ludonarrative.

How You View the World

I am a strong advocate of the idea that the mechanics of a game, in this case Zelda‘s player-controlled camera, can strongly affect the story of the game, especially in how you perceive the story, and I believe this principle accounts for several of the differences between the method of storytelling in a Zelda game as opposed to the method of, say, a Tales of game. That is why I believe the camera is as it is in Zelda.

There are tons of unique camera perspectives and predetermined camera tricks which can strongly affect your experience of a given game. However, in relation to Zelda, the distinction between a fully player-controlled camera versus one which is manipulated at scripted points by the game itself is the most important. Outside of a few very specific areas, Zelda games always feature cameras which follow you in a consistent manner and give you personal control over all of their functions. What this camera setup communicates is that you guide your own actions in the world; you decide where you are going; you are not just following a predetermined path.

For a frame of reference, how about we look at another example of the important role camera placement can play in a game, using the PlayStation 2 puzzle-adventure classic, ICO. ICO features a camera which constantly changes perspectives to show you a part of the area that the developers felt was the most important for you to see. While it does offer a bit of player-controlled panning, the camera is largely manipulated by the game itself; it might become parallel with the ground to show you the entire length of an underground corridor, it could be looking down on the player-character from a bird’s-eye-view, or maybe it would turn to show you an important structure as you walked toward it.

What ICO’s camera communicates to you is “Here is what you will need to interact with, now move your character around and figure out how.” ICO needed a camera like that because it was almost entirely a puzzle game, yet it had level designs which were trying to pose as real structures. Thus the game was faced with the dilemma of needing a way to communicate which buildings and walls were important without breaking the sense that you were indeed guiding your character through a realistic environment.

While ICO’s choice of a scripted camera position was for the sake of giving you information, Zelda’s behind-view, player-centric camera is used to make you feel like you are freely choosing where to go and what to look at in the game world. Zelda’s perspective better allows you to step into the role of Link, which is a stark contrast to ICO’s perspective, which is there to help you more efficiently guide your on-screen character.

Zelda’s attempt to put you in Link’s shoes can even be seen in the way many of the game’s cutscenes play out. Especially in the Nintendo 64 titles, cutscenes rarely show you something before it would become apparent to Link. The astral observatory scene in Majora’s Mask exemplifies this best. In the scene you are prompted to look into the observatory’s telescope and observe Skull Kid standing atop the Clock Tower. Upon finding him and zooming in, the game seizes control of the camera, holding it in place so you can view a cutscene without losing the feeling that what you are seeing is all happening in real-time, right before your eyes. A similar event featuring a telescope occurs in one of the opening scenes for The Wind Waker. Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, on the other hand, sometimes move the camera for you during cutscenes, which is a step away from the player-to-character connection that the earlier games accomplished. Even Ocarina of Time, which does not make any attempt to simulate literal player-control like Majora‘s observatory scene during what is actually a cutscene, does not usually have anything important on-screen for the you to see before Link would see it.

The Manner of Introduction

Each time, when the world is blanketed in evil, a young boy and girl will be born.
— Shigeru Miyamoto, Hyrule Historia

Back when it was released in 1998, Ocarina of Time was effectively the origin story of the series — nowadays Skyward Sword has become the official “first” game in the chronology. But since Ocarina of Time still serves as an origin story in its own context, I am going to be treating it as if it were one. Ocarina of Time established some basic lore, introduced us to the series’ primary antagonist Ganondorf, and told the story of the Hylian-born Kokiri-raised child’s growth into the Hero of Time. Up until the point you assume the role of the chosen hero, the child has yet to truly make any decisions of his own. He has been born, he has been whisked away from Hyrule by his fleeing mother to the forest to be put under the protection of the Great Deku Tree, and he has been living in the Kokiri Forest ever since. The point is that all of those events happened to him; he has not really made any of his own choices yet.

This falls right into line with the idea that you are the hero. You begin the game as a child who has lived a sheltered life in Kokiri Forest. All of the meaningful decisions the child makes come after you take control. The child’s decisions are made by you; you, the player, are the child — a concept better exemplified by Ocarina of Time than any other Zelda game since.

This concept can be related back to much of the rest of the introduction sequence as well. A dream sequence was chosen for the opening because dreams are something people experience firsthand, while a simple expository cutscene is something a person would watch. Likewise, when exposition is given to you, it is done by the Great Deku Tree actually telling a story. Ocarina of Time does not want you to just be given the background information on the game’s setting. So, in order to still get across the necessary exposition, it chose to provide you with the experience of being a child learning about his newfound destiny. Thus, the opening sequence of Ocarina of Time was able to provide the level of exposition necessary in an origin story, while still acquiring a first-hand experience approach with which to tell it.

Released less than two years after Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask had very little in the way of spare time. Consequently, many art assets were recycled from Ocarina of Time and the game was made shorter than its predecessor, featuring only four full dungeons next to Ocarina’s eight. But, as is often the case, limitations led to innovations and Majora’s Mask managed to do a fantastic job setting itself apart from its older brother. Paramount among the variations was the atmospheric dissonance between Majora’s Mask’s Termina and Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule. The shift was so large that even though practically all the surface elements were the same, reused character models and identical combat engine, Majora’s Mask was a totally different experience for a lot of people, and the perpendicular introductory sequences of the two Nintendo 64 games summarize these differences beautifully.

Ocarina of Time’s introduction gave you plenty of time to get acquainted with its controls before sending you out onto Hyrule Field or even into the first minor dungeon. Majora’s Mask, on the other hand, shows the player-character get mugged, and then proceeds to grant you control so you can chase after the thief. Then you fall down a pit while dozens of fluorescent outlines dance around you. Majora’s Mask even takes it a step further and transforms you into a Deku Scrub just before telling you that you have three days to complete a task or it is “Game Over.” Where Ocarina of Time had been successful in its attempt to ease you into the new game, Majora’s Mask found its success in being disorienting and rapid in pacing. From the very beginning of the game, we knew that Majora’s Mask was going to be a very urgent and anxiety-provoking game, and if you had already played Ocarina of Time, the disunion between the opening sequences of the two games put you even further on edge. That was all communicated through your experience of the introduction. It was not told or shown; it was experienced firsthand, by you: the player.

Handling Time Travel

As anyone who has played either Ocarina of Time or Majora’s Mask can tell, the time travel in Zelda is more than just background noise. In those two games, time travel is a real, active element in both the stories and the gameplay. Time travel is so ingrained into our understanding of The Legend of Zelda that it seems strange to even ask, “why is it there?”; it just is, right? As you may have realized by now, no, it is not just present for the sake of being present. Following the theme of this essay, time travel allows for portions of the story, which would otherwise necessitate relegation to cutscenes or time lapses, to be accurately experienced by you.

Remember in Ocarina of Time, just after earning the Master Sword, stepping out of the Temple of Time into the once bustling Hyrule Castle town, and immediately understanding the horrible events that must have transpired while you were safely locked away in the Sacred Realm? Ocarina of Time had now undergone an enormous shift in tone: Hyrule had gone from the cheery and wonderful land you had once known as a child to the dark and desolate landscape you then knew as an adult.

Anyone who played up to that part of the game picked up on it instantly. The sages did not need to describe or illustrate Ganon’s takeover of the kingdom. The minute we noticed ReDeads lumbering about the blasted town square instead of jolly townsfolk, we knew exactly what had happened over the course of our seven-year slumber. By providing a comprehensible explanation for our uninterrupted leap into the future, time travel in Ocarina of Time was able to create one of the most vivid experiences a video game has yet to provide.

Majora’s Mask achieved a similar goal with its song-based form of in-game time travel, though the effect is not, nor was it meant to be, as spectacular as its sibling’s. Since it was expected that different players would play the game at different speeds and with different goals in mind, Majora’s Mask never knew precisely when a given player would decide to play the “Song of Time.” As a result of this uncertainty, the effect was much more subtle, yet still unmistakably felt. If playing the “Song of Time” did not ferry us back to exactly the same point in South Clock Town every single time we played it, or if we suddenly lost our one hundred percent control over when we played it, I can promise, to put it lightly, that we would notice.

Ocarina of Time also managed one more feat through its inclusion of time travel: having the protagonist grow up without creating a dissonance between you and your avatar. This was accomplished by choosing to have Link locked away for the time in-between the moment you uprooted the Master Sword until the sages woke you up seven years later. Because of Link’s complete inactivity over that time period, you never truly lost control of his actions; thus, Link never took any actions on his own, and you were still able to be Link.

The Master Sword

Why is the Master Sword always a part of the story? Why is it given to us partway into the game rather than at the beginning? Why is it so overpowered in some of the games? Yes, The Master Sword is what is given to you when you reach the Pedestal of Time in Ocarina of Time, literally signifying your readiness to be the hero, but it is more than that. It is also a tangible representation of your growth. On the mechanical level, attaining the Master Sword means a boost in your attack power. But on another level, you actually feel the boost. In fact, perhaps the best example of its power is the fact that this boost has actually caused some players to complain about the lack of difficulty present in the later sections of The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.

Does that mean the ease with which you dispatch foes in those two games is a good thing? Not entirely. The titles in question probably took it too far and may have even been too easy to begin with. But on a visceral level, some experience of triumph and empowerment was felt with your newfound strength. And I would contend that the empowerment we feel upon fighting our foes with the Master Sword for the first time is just as much a part of the narrative as when we pulled it from the pedestal in the first place.

There is also one small, easily overlooked detail that springs to mind when discussing the Master Sword. The instance I am referring to, while still present to some degree in the later games, is the added “Grab” prompt given to you in Ocarina of Time just before you draw the Master Sword from its pedestal. While it is only a simple press of the “A” button, the outcome is a sense of ownership towards the deed. Ocarina of Time could have continued the cutscene which started with you opening the Door of Time, and in doing so be able to add a bit of extra affectation to Link’s stepping up to the pedestal. But instead it opted to have you take those steps, with the same graphics, using the same running animation, and allowing the same camera controls as you would have had in nearly every area of the game. Ocarina of Time deferred what many would consider the pivotal point of its story to you. And as a result, it is one of the best and most memorable moments of the entire Legend of Zelda series.

Simplicity in Side Characters

We named the protagonist Link because he connects people together. He was supposed to spread the scattered energy of the world through the ages. — Shigeru Miyamoto, Hyrule Historia

I have often found many of the characters in Zelda to be rather shallow. I do not mean to state that necessarily as a bad thing, but rather another instance in which Zelda games have chosen to defy the norm in regards to storytelling for the sake of a more player-focused experience. Instead of simply being present for their own drama or developmental arc, Zelda characters usually serve a different purpose, and that purpose is almost always directly related to the way in which they impact you.

One strong example of this trend is Princess Zelda from Ocarina of Time, or more importantly, Sheik, who — for all her beloved monologues throughout Ocarina of Time — never really develops as a three-dimensional character. I do not criticize the game at all for this; in fact, Sheik’s scenes in Ocarina of Time are some of my absolute favorite moments in any game, period. But what makes me love them has nothing to do with the character arc of Princess Zelda or any plot developments implied by Sheik’s presence. As far as meaning is concerned, my love for these events is brought about by what they say about your journey, your growth into the person worthy of the title “Hero of Time.”

Even Majora’s Mask, the entry in the franchise which many people — myself included — would say contains the most emotional character arcs of any Zelda title, still keeps the focus of its many fantastic side stories on their themes and overall significance to the story, rather than the NPCs themselves. A large part of what makes the side quests in Majora’s Mask so memorable is that they are tied into the story going on around you. They give weight to the situation at hand; the moon is falling and everyone is facing their death. Some people try to make a run for it, others hide themselves away to cry, a few do their best to protect the feelings of the ones they love, and still others convince themselves there is no danger at all. But in the end, the only person who can save any of them is you, the player. Only you can save the boastful Swordsman, only you can save the innocent child Romani, only you can save the elderly bomb salesman, and only you can save Termina. The faces in the Bomber Notebook are fleshed out characters not for their own sake, but for the sake of you, the player, experiencing a genuine yearning to save them.

By no means am I trying to indicate that characters in Zelda games cannot have fleshed out personalities, backstories, or development — I think Skull Kid is a fantastically well-made character that fits into his role nearly perfectly. I am simply affirming that those things should only exist in relevance to you because Zelda titles have stories which you are meant to experience for yourself. Think about the civilians of Hyrule Castle Town in Ocarina of Time. Some of them may have distinct quirks, some of them might elicit a specific emotion, or some of them might be taking part in a specific activity that says something about them. But none of the random townspeople are fully developed or have dynamic traits we have to watch grow over time. And within the bounds of the already made Ocarina of Time, it would be a bad thing if they did, because it would begin to draw the focus of the narrative away from you and onto that townsperson. Those townspeople exist only to convince us that Hyrule is an actual city, inhabited by actual civilians. And to that end, the townsfolk can serve their purpose without the need for any sort of in-depth characterization. In the case of Majora’s Mask, however, the game’s particular tone and story setup gave it valid reasons to further develop many of Termina’s inhabitants.

A Link to Link

I said the name Link came from his role as a connector, but Link is you, the player. The series
has been so successful because the player must solve puzzles and defeat tough enemies
in order to ultimately save the world. — Shigeru Miyamoto, Hyrule Historia

I still strongly support my relative muteness when I journey across Hyrule. I do not want a voice actor, I do not want an explicit demeanor, and I do not want my dialogue options to go far beyond a simple “yes or no.” To add any of those features would begin to shift the style of the narrative from “experiencing” to “conveying.” On the flip side, I feel that the often underestimated and at times misused “silent protagonist” works very well for the Zelda series’ experiential storytelling.

I understand the complaints that are often leveled against Zelda’s use of a silent protagonist: that it does not make sense during cutscenes, that it is a missed opportunity to explore Link’s character, or that we cannot empathize as well with a character who indiscriminately does not speak. The issue I take with these arguments is that while they may be correct in one sense, they do not address the possible success of the silent protagonist’s often missed goal, player projection, which I believe Link achieves. I do not need to empathize with Link because I am Link; however I feel about a situation is how he feels because he is me and I am him. As many pointed out with Skyward Sword, heightened levels of expressiveness and a further pre-determined backstory actually made it difficult for us to understand Link. That is because we never had to before; we only had to understand what we were feeling.

The issues with cutscenes only arise when the game begins to create characters for their own sake, which is what I discussed in the previous section. Consider Ocarina of Time. Is it really a problem when Ganondorf’s menacing speech goes unanswered at the top floor of his castle? Or when Sheik appeared playing the Bolero of Fire with her golden harp, was it a mistake to let her words be the only ones exchanged? No. What Sheik said may have meant a lot to you, but your words would have meant little to her. So I would say it stands to reason that Link’s mouth should be kept shut rather than be forced to say unnecessary things.

Awkwardness in cutscenes only began to become a problem in the most recent few Zelda games, when the side characters began to develop and act for their own sake rather than yours. If these characters had continued to develop only as far as was needed to fill whatever role was necessary for them to fill towards you, then Link’s silence would not have been such an issue.

Beyond simply being silent, Zelda‘s handling of its protagonist also succeeds because it features the same protagonist every single game. To go along with the idea that you are supposed to “be” the hero of legend, Nintendo was smart to choose that each entry in the series would feature Link as the player character. Literally speaking, no, Link is not the exact same person each game, what with all the reincarnation lore, but then why is it that Nintendo has insisted on making a Link the protagonist in each game? Couldn’t they just as easily drawn up a new successor to adventure across Hyrule in each game? No. Link is more than just a random vessel through which we see Hyrule. What makes Link unique is his connection to you.

Whether you like to think of it as “the Spirit of the Hero” or simply reincarnations of the same person, the unique aspect which makes Link the hero instead of just another random protagonist is you. You are always involved. No matter the era of Hylian history, no matter the location on land, sea, or air, you are always the one participating in the story. Link’s body may be on screen, but your consciousness is what gives him any semblance of being. Link is famous for being reincarnated in every installment in the Zelda series, but the thread of life that strings these different heroes together is you.

Conclusion


The Legend of Zelda is not really the kind of legend to which we are accustomed. It is not even really Zelda’s legend at all, and neither is it Link’s. It is yours. Virtually every mechanic and narrative device — especially within Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask — from the introductory sequences, to the time travel, and even to the camera controls is there to immerse you in your legend. The Legend of Zelda neither tells you a story nor shows you a story, but rather lets you experience a story. If most stories are windows through which we can see other worlds, then The Legend of Zelda is an open door through which we can step into another world.

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