My siblings and I loved Link, talked about him like he was one of us. We loved unearthing increasingly nonsensical masks for him to wear and completing what were, in retrospect, incredibly moving side quests. (In one notable and complicated example, Link helps a young couple named Anju and Kafei reunite after Kafei has been robbed and turned into a child. He's still a child when they meet again at last, but Anju doesn't seem to mind? It's really actually sweet and not creepy, I promise.) We would stay up way too late and wake up way too early in order to complete dungeons, and always chorused "But we need to find a saving spot!" to our mother when she tried to make us stop. (One of the many blessings/curses of Majora was how difficult it was to save when you were in the middle of something.) Link was like this pleasant, puzzling Greek myth of a family friend who gave the three of us something in common even with our seven-year age spread.

I played the most recent Zelda game by myself, on a Nintendo 3DS, mostly underground on the subway. It was the exact opposite of my parents' cozy sunroom. In A Link Between Worlds (get it?), Link is now unstuck in space as well as time. He's given the ability to merge with flat surfaces and slip in and out of different worlds through tiny cracks, totally upending the sacred inviolable Zelda wall (with the notable bomb nook exception).

Even the game's narrative itself has been reoriented: Unlike in previous iterations, where you were required to play through dungeons and pick up crucial items in a predetermined order, here you can play however you want. All items are available for rent from an impish squatter named Ravio (who's basically overtaken Link's entire house) and every area is therefore open to you whenever you feel like facing it. This lack of linear forward motion is three parts liberating and two parts unsettling. You can't help but feel a little like Link, fumbling through time without a sense of direction, at frustrating moments in the game's action (although the beauty of its totally laid-out structure is that you can always abandon a tough spot and go work on another). I found myself wishing that my brother, with his single-minded teenage boy perseverance, or my sister, with her insane sense of humor and instinct for where to go next, were playing with me.