The Wind Waker Awakened My Love For The Zelda Series And Reminded Me of The Joy of Adventure

My journey with the Zelda series began with Ocarina of Time, and that was the only Zelda game I played for about a decade. To be fair, Ocarina of Time was (and is) my favorite game ever made, but I did not have any real connection to the rest of the Zelda series. I never owned the Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak required for Majora’s Mask. In the mid-to-late 2000s, I played video games with my brothers on a PlayStation 2 instead of a Nintendo GameCube. I only bought a Wii in 2012 after I started working my first real job as a cashier. While I knew about games like Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess through friends who owned them, I never really got to experience them first hand. Fortunately, an incredible Zelda game entered my life at the perfect time. Thanks to a close high school friend, who generously let me borrow his GameCube and his Wavebird controller, I got access to one of my all-time favorite games: The Wind Waker.

Despite its flaws (some of which have been fixed for The Wind Waker HD) and the passage of time since my initial playthrough, I remain enthralled with Nintendo’s epic seafaring adventure. With The Wind Waker, Nintendo crafted a one-of-a-kind adventure that has very few peers. With a beautiful art style, an emotional story, and a wonderous world, The Wind Waker holds a special place in my heart. It is a game that I am deeply grateful for, one that connected me back to my past while also pointing me towards my future. The Wind Waker fully pushed me into exploring the Zelda series, and it is the game that rekindled my love for adventure games.

Oceans… Oceans… Oceans As Far As The Eye Can See

The water-based setting of The Wind Waker is one of the elements that has always drawn me to the game. The ocean and other bodies of water have rarely been given the type of attention in adventure games that forests, mountains, and deserts have received. As a kid, I had my own special connection to the water through pirate stories like Treasure Island and Pirates of the Caribbean, as well as yearly family vacations to beaches and lakes. Every summer as a child and teenager, my family would take a trip from Ohio to Pennsylvania to visit the large lake that is a part of Pymatuning State Park. My family would stay in a relative’s cottage, and we had access to a Pontoon boat that we used to explore on the lake. Throughout the week, we spent hours exploring the small islands that dotted the lake, and my family had our own names for all the different islands that we explored. I have so many fond memories of my years spent on the lake with my family. There is nothing quite like the feeling of sitting on the edge of a boat with the wind in your hair and the waves crashing underneath you.

Overall, The Wind Waker does a great job of capturing the excitement and thrill of exploring on the water, even if it is not a realistic depiction of sailing. To this day, sailing the Great Sea remains one of my favorite experiences in video games. As a teenager playing the game for the first time, I was completely overwhelmed by the sense of scale of the Great Sea and the game’s expansive map. While some players may criticize the empty space in between islands, the time spent sailing is an important part of what makes The Wind Waker a special experience. Sailing requires the player to exercise patience, and the journeys between islands give the player the opportunity to enjoy the game’s incredible art design and environmental effects. Not only does the game capture the thrill of sailing, but it also captures another important part of pirate stories: treasure! Finding treasure charts and tracking down their in-game locations is a fun mechanic that encourages the player to fill in every blank space on the map. Even in my later playthroughs with Wind Waker HD, I still spend hours hunting down treasure charts, fighting Big Octos, and exploring submarines.

A Great Story And Wonderful Characters

The Zelda series has always excelled at forging a connection between the player and the game’s world and characters. The set up of each Zelda game gives the player enough reasons to latch on to its characters without getting bogged down in overly complex storylines. By focusing the opening of the game on the challenges of leaving home and the quest to save his sister, the team behind the game creates builds a strong empathetic connection between Toon Link and the player. The scene where Link waves goodbye to his comfortable home on Outset Island, with the young boy straining for one last view of his kindly Grandmother, stands as one of the most moving and evocative scenes in the series. Even as a teenager still enjoying the comforts of home, I felt a deep connection with the experience of setting out into the wonderful and terrifying unknown. It is impossible not to root for Link as he confronts challenges and obstacles on the quest to save his sister and eventually the world.

In addition to Toon Link, The Wind Waker builds out its world with a great collection of secondary characters who would all fit perfectly in a Saturday morning cartoon. Tetra (who is unfortunately sidelined for the final third of the game) is the quintessential swashbuckling pirate: clever, charismatic, a little gruff, but extremely loyal to her crew and friends. Niko, the low man in Tetra’s crew, is adorably excited to have his own “swabbie” he can show the ropes to. The Wind Waker also introduced the Koroks and Rito to the Zelda series, two tribes that would be critical to Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. The game also features a host of lovable shopkeepers like Salvatore, Doc Bandam, and the legendary Beedle! Overall, The Wind Waker is filled with a cast of comic characters that you can’t help but enjoy sharing your adventure with.

An Evocative Art Style And A Magnificent Musical Score

In terms of art design, I would argue that The Wind Waker‘s art style is still the most interesting in the series. The choice to use a more cartoon cel-shaded art style opened up many design ideas that would not have been possible for a game using a more photo-realistic style. The environmental effects that appear while the player is sailing are absolutely spectacular. Whether it is watching the sun light spread over the ocean at dawn or flashes of lightning that herald an approaching thunderstorm, The Wind Waker is absolutely beautiful. More than ten years after first playing the game, I still take time to spin the camera around to watch the magnificent sunrises and sunsets. The cartoon smoke effects and trails of wind that flow across the world are more wonderful touches that make the game feel distinct from other Zelda titles.

No journey on the high seas would be complete without some great sea shanties, and composers Kenta Nagata, Hajime Wakai, Toru Minegishi, and Koji Kondo crafted a musical score that captures the thrills and wonder of adventure. Inspired by Celtic music, the soundtrack for The Wind Waker matches the joyful tone of the game’s expressive art style, and it immediately draws the player into Link’s wild journey. Playing the game for the first time, I was absolutely enraptured with the rich and diverse soundtrack including songs like “Dragon Roost Island,” “The Great Sea,” “Molgera,” and “Farewell Hyrule King.” One of my favorite secrets from the soundtrack is that the melodies played by Makar and Medli after becoming sages form the game’s beautiful title theme. When I attended the Symphony of the Goddesses in 2015, my two biggest highlights were songs from The Wind Waker: “The Wind Waker Symphonic Movement” and “Dragon Roost Island.”

Conclusion – If You Seek An Adventure… Set Sail On The Great Sea

The Wind Waker holds a special place in my heart. Every time I get a chance to sail the sea, to hear the beautiful music, to experience the grand adventure, I am taken back to the special feeling of joy I felt the first time I played through the game. While The Wind Waker may be not be as mechanically precise as Breath of the Wild or have the collection of dungeons that A Link To The Past has, every player should be grateful for the bold risks that the game took in terms of art style and setting.

Personally, I am so grateful that I got the opportunity to play The Wind Waker at the time I did. It was the right game at the right time for me. The Wind Waker was the start of a chain reaction for me. Without The Wind Waker, I may have never played Twilight Princess or Skyward Sword. Without The Wind Waker, I may have never gone to the Symphony of the Goddesses concerts. Without The Wind Waker, I may have never volunteered as a writer at Zelda Dungeon. The Wind Waker is the game that helped me really become a fan of the Zelda series, and my life is incalculably richer because of my experiences sailing the Great Sea.

What do you think? What are your favorite memories from or special connections to The Wind Waker? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!

Featured Art: Sail Towards the Storm and Embrace Your Courage by KitlingLD