JacobMccannT17@Outlook.com

February 1, 2016 – February 2, 2016

Let’s Play Zelda Wind Waker #01

by Jacob Mccann of

UnchartedGrid.Wordpress.com

The following is a Let’s Play-style article with the occaional screenshot and copious amounts of descriptions taken from the video game The Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker HD for the Wii U. This article is best read with a mostly full understanding of how the game works and the overall story of the Zelda saga.

This Let’s Play series will mostly feature analytical pieces of yours truly describing what makes The Wind Waker HD a beautiful game by any and all standards and why it is personally one of my all time favorite games.

With this knowledge, you may read on!

The Legend of Zelda franchise has been defining childhoods for thirty years now! This is defintiely cause for celebration and I, for one, will be showing my gratitude towards this epic by providing a series of analytical posts about one of my favorite games in the saga: The Wind Waker (the screenshots you will be seeing throughout the articles as reference points are from The Wind Waker HD on Wii U because it looks really nice and I don’t feel like going through a few boxes to find my original gamecube copy).

I have a somewhat personal history with The Wind Waker. Go back to the year of around 2005 and you would find me and my family living on Maui, Hawaii. A small island in tha Pacific Ocean with a space thing on it that my dad was stationed at during his time in the Air Force.

During the time that he decided to retire and just before we moved to the Lower 48 where I would spend the rest of my childhood years and early adult years, he was given a gag-gift by a fellow Air Force Co-worker: a Nintendo GameCube!

My brother and I had only played a few video games up until that point like Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 and Toy Story 2 (we were a big fan of sequels apparently) but we had never seen nor heard of the name Nintendo. During this time my bro and I weren’t even teenagers. We were given two games with the system… And neither of them were The Wind Waker!

Long story short, I discovered Zelda from a babysitter and then I fell in love. My mom bought my brother and I a copy of The Wind Waker that we still have today, and off we went!

I think the better part of 500 words is enough explanation to describe my personal history with the game. However, it is blatantly obvious that I have several biases towards this game and towards the franchise as a whole. This will be mostly a praising of the game and what it did great along with my personal wishes for improvement for the game.

The sun is the only dot in the otherwise empty blue sky. Within seconds, we are taken to a landscape shot of the beginning area of the game, what we will come to know as Outset Island.

After some file creation, we are treated to a wonderful series of what appear to be tapestries depicting events in an ancient, long fogotten kingdom. These depictions lay the backstory for this game: an evil man attained great power and used it to bring destruction to a peaceful kingdom, but was stopped by a young man dressed in green with “the sword of evil’s bane” by his side. (Fun Fact, the entirety of the tapestry can be seen on the intial boot up screen on the Wii U version).

Being introduced to the world through this strange sequence makes sense in the game’s narrative. In the beginning of the game, the main character (which will be referred to as Link for the entirety of my Zelda posts) is asleep. This is a premonition of what is to come, little does Link know.

Greeted by his loving little sister Aryll, Link goes off back home to speak with his grandmother, whom has a birthday present for our hero. Again, we are met with symbolism with that dream/tapestry from earlier, as Link is given the Hero’s Clothes, the iconic green tunic that has been seen in every Zelda game to date.

It is made apparent that it is tradition to give the young boys this tunic when they are old enough to be seen as men by the rest of the island’s people.

So, as Link is shown taking the first steps to becoming a man, disaster strikes. A monstrously large bird-like creature flies over the island, being chased by a band of priates! These pirates manage to shoot the bird down using a catapult and some boulders (who knows how many they had in reserve), causing it to drop a girl that it had been carrying onto the summit of Outset.

This is the first task, Link’s and the Player’s first steps together to becoming a true Hero!

Link goes off to the village elder Orca and learns the way of the sword before continuing into the Forest of Faries in order to retrieve the kidnapped girl.

During this time, Link is faced down by terrifying creatures that had been carried into the forest by other large bird-like creatures. After dispatching them, our hero finds the girl, whom quickly recovers.

When all seems at ease, when the way seems to be clear, the monstrous bird comes in once more to abduct Aryll! Link tries in vain to go after her and shortly thereafter demands that the pirate girl Tetra take him aboard her ship to persue the beast.

A strange looking man with the features of a bird, a Rito, goes on to describe the situation. The bird monster had mistaken Aryll for Tetra due to their similar looks and large ears, and therefore the incident could very well be considered Tetra’s fault.

This is also when we learn of the destination of the monster: The Forsaken Fortress.

Link goes off to find a shield in order to be accepted by Tetra and the crew and taken to the seas. But first, Link must break the news to his Grandmother.

She weeps and gives Link the shield he needs to proceed.

In this piece of gameplay, the player has already been given a motive for adventure: Aryll. They befriend Aryll during the beginning sequence of the game and are heartbroken due to her loss and the reaction of the Grandmother. The player and Link have a common ground to go and rescue Aryll, no matter what the cost.

This and the music keep the player invested enough to start their journey, to leave what is familiar to them and to step into a fantastical world filled with danger and adventure. Onwards they go, to save Aryll!

Dynamic music changes really go a long way in helping to form a sense of wonder and mistique within the player. Things like having the music fade when the player is climbing to the summit helps add to the immersion of how high up you are. Whenever you land an attack on an enemy, the music spikes, giving a sense of satisfaction as well. As always, the music in the Zelda series helps add to the experience with wonderful tracks that can also have some other well known tracks derived from them, the key example here being the Kokiri Forest theme from Ocarina of Time.

This piece is getting faily long, approaching 1,300 words, so I’ll leave you with the promise that the graphical fedelity will be discussed in a later installment, along with the new gameplay elements like the sailing mechanics.

Until then, stay safe and have a good one!