Yeah, we’re going on some recent ground for this topic. With the announcement of Super Smash Bros. for the Wii U and 3DS, many were quick to notice Link’s “new” design, which many suspect is similar to how his design in his latest outing will look. Truth be told it’s not a new design, not even in the slightest. It is in fact Twilight Princess Link’s design but with “a bright color palette,” which in all actuality is just a simple and flat color with slightly different hues in certain spots, mainly folds or stitches.

The truth is that he only appears brighter because of the lighting in the game and because of his normal mapping, which tells the game where to capture light and shadows relative to each other and creates an illusion of depth where there is none. Had the tech demo for the Wii U that featured Link been done properly, Link would’ve probably had a very similar color palette. Instead, the tech demo used what I would say are normal maps made in Photoshop and placed on a pre-shaded model. Honestly, it’s a really beautiful combination in the tech demo that creates some beautiful lighting effects.

Had the development team used unpainted shadows the color palette would probably have looked very similar, but this is not the case. It’s clear at many points that his tech-demo model is his Twilight Princess/Brawl model with a higher polygon count, mainly noticeable in his face, sleeves, and hair. But you surely already know all this considering how many people have analyzed his Tech Demo model.

But if the colors on his Smash for Wii U model are so bright and supposedly taken from his Twilight Princess model, why does he look so much more vivid in terms of colors? It’s mainly because of unified lighting. In my opinion, just looking at Link’s model in the new Smash shows off some pretty shitty ordinary lighting on his character model. The thing with Link’s Twilight Princess and Brawl model is that it used impossible lighting that was painted onto his character model and not really affected by lighting at all. With stronger and better lighting now being used with the Wii U, Link’s clothes can properly capture lighting in a realistic way. It just so happens that it resulted in more highlighted parts than shadowed ones.

While the Wii and GameCube are capable of using normal mapping to create fake depth, they can’t use it to its fullest capabilities like the Wii U can. This is noticeable on StarFox’s ship in Adventures and Sonic’s fur in certain scenes of Sonic Colors. While the system can use normal mapping it can’t use it at a setting as high as the ones featured in current/next gen systems, resulting in them being almost pointless in Wii games, instead leaving models with hand-painted textures with preset shadows. If you’re confused by how much depth can be faked by normal mapping, I’d suggest you watch this video and this other one which show off some amazing normal mapping.

What makes the lighting in Smash stand out so much is that it appears to be a standard white light with a slight yellow hue for more “realistic” lighting. Every part of Link’s character model is capturing this light, and it ends up creating a smooth shading/lighting the keeps it looking the same. If you look at Link’s Twilight Princess model it captures almost no light, instead only using shadows for a more realistic appearance.

However if you look at Link’s official artwork for Twilight Princess the artist has taken the time to include highlights, and they are very similar in color to that of Link’s Smash model. But in the artwork heavy shadows are used to make it appear darker in spots where it should in fact be much brighter. A comparison between the artwork and his Smash for Wii U model show just how similar the two are.

So now you know! But wait… I forgot about his Smash for Nintendo 3DS model, didn’t I? Honestly this is a bit of the same deal. Link’s model is clearly taken out of Twilight Princess, but unlike his Wii U counterpart the 3DS model is using fully pre-painted textures, creating a dramatic difference in appearance, with what looks like minimal normal mapping due to the 3DS’s relatively weaker power.

Like his Wii U counterpart, 3DS Link uses yellow tinted lighting; in fact, it seems to use an even brighter setting for it but with a shorter range of effect, which clearly contradicts the white light that affects Toon Link on the Spirit Tracks stage — meaning it’s probably set to only affect the playable Link. The 3DS can pull off great lighting, as evidenced by Kid Icarus Uprising and Resident Evil Revelations, but the normal mapping is still held back quite a bit and is used almost exclusively on characters or enemies.

Here is one more tidbit regarding Link’s Twilight Princess character model and its multiple iterations throughout the Smash Bros. series: in any instance where the shadows and highlights are painted on, Link seemingly uses three different lighting colors on his model. Assuming you were to use a normal white and yellow tinted light on Link, as shown in Smash Bros. for Wii U, you would get his depicted colors.

This next part mainly applies to his Brawl and 3DS models, but Link’s hair, clothes, and chainmail seem to capture white with yellow tinted lighting. Link’s boots, arm guards, and straps seem to use a stronger sense of yellow/red lighting that creates a slight crimson highlight effect that is noticeable on Link’s shield, which carries a faint red hue (this could have been done to fake a rusting effect); if there was a yellow light his boots would appear more orange than red. The final part is Link’s sword and Scabbard which carry no sense of yellow or red lighting and instead opt for plain white light.

To reiterate myself once more, the unified lighting in Link’s Smash for Wii U model results in different colors. Because there is only one lighting color — white with a yellow tint — Link’s boots instead look more like a light beige color as opposed to a crimson color.

But enough of that. What most fans are wondering about is if Link’s Smash for Wii U model is somehow influenced by his upcoming appearance in Zelda U, and I will state this right now: not a chance. There are good reasons for this and it all comes down to Style, something in which Zelda is ever changing.

Eiji Aonuma recently stated that they want Zelda to be unique in every aspect in both visuals and gameplay, something that is nowhere else. We know we won’t return to the cartoon styling of The Wind Waker or the semi-realism of Twilight Princess, and it’s doubtful we’ll see Skyward Sword’s style. As a result, many have speculated it will be somewhere in between Link’s Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess appearance, something similar to his Smash appearance.

I wouldn’t get my hopes up when it comes to Zelda U looking like Smash U because the style used is actually a rather common one used for Namco’s games, most notably Tekken and Soul Calibur.

Let’s take a look at Tekken’s Jin Kazama in Tekken 5, 6, and hell, even his movie appearance. The style used is highly similar to that of Smash for Wii U because Namco has shitty lighting and can’t render for shit. Hell, Namco even uses the same style of art and character models for Soul Calibur, so when I heard Namco was working on Smash I actually expected Link to look similar to them; lo and behold he does. If you put together official art from all three of these games and told me they were all in the same game, I would believe you. Granted there are small differences between them, but still, they look largely the same.

If you don’t believe me, there is one obvious detail about each of these character models share. They used detailed textures but don’t use strong normal mapping to give depth to these details, making them look relatively flat. Look at Link’s boots in Smash for Wii U: there are noticeable folds, stitches, and cracks, but only the folds have depth, not the cracks, giving it a smooth look.

Even the character models don’t use normal mapping to the same extreme as other games like Crysis 3 and Mass Effect, which use active normal mapping at a high setting for fake depth in pores. Namco’s in-game characters generally have smooth lighting on their faces, even with older characters like Heihachi who are riddled with wrinkles. When compared, it’s clear that Namco has a pretty dead-set style for their fighting games. Luckily this actually works with Nintendo’s many art styles. Only a few of their titles use true realism, so characters like Link, Mario, Samus, and Pikachu, all of which use a cartoony/anime style, do not need normal maps that depict pores. However, should Snake return in Smash for Wii U, it would not be fitting for him to have a smooth normal map for his face.

So, should you expect Link to look similar to his Smash for Wii U design in his next outing on Zelda U? Well if Eiji Aonuma truly wants to go down a unique visual route, then the chances are zero at best, due to it basically being Namco’s art style for fighting games. However, I wouldn’t count out a mix between his Tech Demo and Smash/Skyward Sword/Ocarina of Time/Majora’s Mask or any other Zelda style for his Wii U appearance, albeit with some modified weapon, cloth, and hair designs like normal, but with the same overall shape. Hell, for all we know it could be a completely different art style all together, similar to how A Link Between Worlds uses a more vivid and heavily modified style from A Link to the Past.

On one final note, I would like to bring one thing up with you all that most of us have surely noticed. Link’s official high-poly CG render for Smash has hand-painted hair. It’s not really anything major, but I thought it would be interesting to share with those who were unaware. And now that we’re done over analyzing for the sake of over analyzing, I leave you with this.