Zelda in her natural stateYou have a very important mission ahead of you… I will wait here. That’s what we princesses have always done. From what I understand, it’s kind of a family tradition.
– Princess Zelda (Spirit Tracks)

If it were to be told as a legend, The Legend of Zelda is pretty much always the tale of a princess in peril rescued by a brave hero in green who vanquishes evil and restores her to her rightful throne. A few times she’s kidnapped later into the game, and only once does she aid in her own rescue. But will Zelda Wii U do things differently, or will Zelda spend some more time trapped inside a crystal? Read on after the jump!

Let’s be honest: as far as plots go, rescuing the princess (or rescuing women in general) is not the most interesting of plots. But in the Zelda series it’s something of a tradition to bail out royalty in need – of the core series only in Link’s Awakening and Majora’s Mask you are not required to save Zelda. And while the Oracle games themselves did not have you rescue Zelda, she did get into trouble in a linked game and required Link’s help (and that’s glossing over your rescue of Queen Ambi in Oracle of Ages). Rescuing royalty happens all over the place in the series, with Twilight Princess having an especially high density of royals whom Link helps in some way (three princesses and a prince). But at the end of the day it’s still the legend of Zelda, so rescuing Zelda it is.

Of course, the formula is not exactly the same for all games. Yet by far the most common formula is where Zelda is kidnapped at the beginning of the game (or is pre-kidnapped for your convenience) and it’s up to you to rescue her. The original Legend of Zelda, Adventure of Link, A Link to the Past, a linked Oracle game, the Four Swords games, The Minish Cap, Twilight Princess, Phantom Hourglass, Skyward Sword and A Link Between Worlds all work like this: rescuing the princess is either the last thing you do in the game or it happens right before the final boss fight. This effectively has her out of the way for the largest part of the game. And while you visit Zelda twice over the course of Twilight Princess, it is not to rescue her and she remains kidnapped for most of the game.

Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker handle the issue in similar ways. While the game is not upfront with Zelda’s identity, she helps Link on his quest in various ways until the reveal of her identity and her subsequent kidnapping. Link has to bail her out once again, but gets help from Zelda during the final fight.

Zelda goes with LinkSpirit Tracks, however, did something completely different. Instead of having Zelda being kidnapped once again, the villain tears her spirit out of her body and takes Zelda’s physical form (much to the princess’ distress in a hilarious cutscene). Aside from being something of an inversion of the events of Phantom Hourglass, where in a way Zelda’s consciousness is separated from her physical form as well, except that in that game you recover her physical form before you un-petrify her and have her back to normal, this game has Zelda break with what she calls sort of a family tradition and team up with Link, where she becomes more or less his sidekick and proves to be instrumental to getting through the Spirit Tower and even in the final battle, dealing the killing blow on the villain.

Finally, there are Link’s Awakening and Majora’s Mask, where Zelda either is mentioned in or has a short appearance in a cutscene, but in the greater scheme of things she’s not all that important to the plot and as such does not get into trouble.

So, in short, Zelda appeared in four different categories: distressed, helpful, sidekick and not-appearing-in-this-game. There are, of course, the non-canon games where she’s a full-on playable character like Hyrule Warriors, Wand of Gamelon and Zelda’s Adventure, but she is not the main playable character in the first, and the latter two are not spoken of in polite company (and not at all by Nintendo). This would add a fifth category: Zelda as a playable character. She could replace Link entirely as the main character, turning him into the sidekick, a non-entity, or, as a twist, have Zelda rescue Link for a change. This would certainly be refreshing, but it would almost certainly cause much friction with the fans, no matter how great a game it is.

An alternative would be to mix the playable Zelda with how it was done in Spirit Tracks and make Zelda playable alongside Link. Instead of her replacing him, she is Link’s equal, adventuring with him and hunting for treasure, new weapons to use, items to advance the plot and more. This could work in either single player, where the player can switch between the two with the press of a button (much like it did in the Spirit Tower segments of Spirit Tracks), or spiced up with an optional two player mode with split screen. Exactly how this would affect gameplay is a mystery for another time, but it is not outside the realm of possibility to pull this off.

What do you think is the ideal role for Zelda in the upcoming Wii U game? Should we have her in a more traditional role as distressed damsel, have her guide Link all the way through the game until the end, where she teams up with Link to defeat the final boss, or perhaps put her in a situation where she dropkicks Ganondorf off the walls of Hyrule Castle and Link has to dodge him as he’s coming to Zelda’s aid (albeit a bit late)? Or perhaps she should become the hero herself?

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