Gossip Stone: Should animal companions from the Oracle games return?

Having an animal companion with Link is a rather common theme in the Zelda games: while Epona is by far the most used and beloved of them all Link has had some different animals with him on his quest. In Skyward Sword he had his Loftwing, but in the Oracle games he was accompanied by three animal companions. These were met during the course of the games to traverse certain obstacles, and one of them could be recruited to become a full-on companion and accompany Link all over Labrynna and Holodrum. Dimitri, Ricky and Moosh all have their own special abilities and weaknesses, and whoever became your companion even changed how the world looked. But could they still work in a modern Zelda game? Read more after the break!

The first thing to notice about them is that none of the trio replaces Epona: while she was meant to bridge large distances (and jump over some obstacles) Epona has more difficulty with unusual obstacles. Dimitri is a Dodongo and a rather unusual one at that: he is friendly to Link, is capable of speech and is an apt swimmer, going where Link would need specialized swimming equipment for and can even swim up waterfalls, which is impossible for Link. Dimitri can also devour enemies in a single gulp, making him a formidable combatant and can be picked up by Link using the Power Bracelet to both help him over gaps and make for a potent weapon. Curiously though, unlike many other Dodongos in the series Dimitri cannot stand heat and is unable to breathe fire, possibly suggesting that he is some kind of Dodongo sub-species.

Ricky is the only kangaroo in the entire series and can hop around with Link in his pouch. He is capable of jumping great heights on par with the Roc’s Cape and can scale cliffs that Link can normally only jump down from. He likes boxing and can deal powerful blows to deal with enemies. He can also charge his attack up for a powerful tornado punch for even more damage. He has a sensitive nose though and does not like strong smells: the scent of something that he does not like is enough to keep him away from that place, as Link discovers in Oracle of Seasons.

Moosh is the only of three bears found in The Legend of Zelda (the other two appear in Animal Village in Link’s Awakening). He is a big fluffy blue bear with a pair of small feathered wings on his back. Despite their sized compared to a creature so big, Moosh can fly with them for a short amount of time and allow him to easily traverse holes that would be difficult to cross with even the Roc’s Cape. He can also sacrifice some of his air time to do a ground pound, dealing significant damage to nearby enemies. Moosh’s big weakness is water: because he will not float he will stay away from it and will not even float over small patches of deep water.

While these three animals were helpful and fun to ride around with in the Oracle games, using them in a 3D Zelda game might give some interesting problems to solve. In the Oracle games you could only have one of the three of them as your on-call companion with the game’s music item, the Flute. Both of the games had their own special locations that changed according to whoever was your companion at the time, which meant three different ways to explore the same area over different playthroughs. This was more of a limit inherent to the games: in the large game worlds that can be made with today’s technology there should be no problems making interesting areas for all three of them.

Getting the most out of Dimitri’s swimming abilities would require bodies of water that Link cannot traverse with either his regular swimming gear or donning the Iron Boots and walking his way to the other side. Another option would be to make this the way to cross large bodies of water faster than Link would be able to on his own accord: navigating Lake Hylia in Twilight Princess was rather slow compared to riding around on Epona, even with the Zora Armor. It would be like being able to deploy a monster-eating dinosaur boat wherever you wanted, which is always a nice thing to do.

Ricky faces a common difference between the 2D and 3D games: jumping. In the 2D games jumping has been used as a tool to avoid falling into pits, but in a 3D environment there is no excuse for it to not be used to gain height. This would require significant thought put into his areas if vertical sections do not appear elsewhere in the game, and the regular areas need to be made in such a way that Ricky cannot just circumvent them. They could cheapen out on this by making the jumping sections like they were in Twilight Princess where you followed Midna in a series of quick-time events, but that would be massively under using the boxing-glove wearing kangaroo.

Moosh would face problems much like Ricky, but in a more horizontal sense: the world would have to be designed in such a way that Link cannot just call on Moosh and have him fly past all sorts of obstacles. In a 3D environment this could be translated into him having a gliding move in addition to his regular flying: He can fly for a short while, but after that he goes into a glide that he cannot recover from until he has some time on the ground to recharge his flying. And while gliding might not be very useful on flat ground, such a move can be handy around large open areas like cliffs or places with lots of sinkholes.

But the most obvious issue with the trio would be what kind of game they should appear in. Having a rideable blue bear might have worked great for the Oracle games, but in a game with a style comparable to Twilight Princess it would stand out like a sore thumb, even with an upgraded design. Putting them in the cel-shaded games might be more fitting: the cartoony style of the Oracle games matches the design of the cel-shaded games a lot more, and the concept of having a talking kangaroo would not be entirely out of place in the overall more lighthearted post-flood timeline. The abilities of the animals could be expanded too: the earlier mentioned faster swimming on Dimitri, Ricky’s tornado punch can be used to power certain objects (like the Gale Boomerang) and there could be buttons for Moosh to ground stomp. And while they were summoned using one of three flutes you obtain in a playthrough of one of the Oracle games, giving all of them a summoning song on the game’s musical instrument should be feasible.

Do you think that there is another place the animal companions in the Zelda series? Maybe just in the cel-shaded games, only in a 2D Zelda game or should they be left in the Oracle games and should there be more focus on Epona? Or should there be entirely new animal companions to ride around?

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