My beginning with the Legend of Zelda franchise! (The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker in retrospect)

     For my 10th birthday, my best friend gave me The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. He had already played through the game (possibly more than once) and figured that I would like it too. He was already huge on the Legend of Zelda series, even getting the collector's edition disc (with the original game, Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask) as a preorder bonus for the game, so he had played significantly more games in the series than I had. At that point the only one that I had tried was the original for the Nintendo Entertainment System, and I wasn't super fond of its complete lack of waymarkers telling you how to get through. I don't know why my friend got this game for me, but I'm sure glad he did! This was my introduction to the 3D version of this iconic series, and though I had a rough start with it (the Forsaken Fortress really freaked me out as a kid), I played it to the end and absolutely loved it. To this day, I consider this among my favorite games of all time, and the HD version for Wii U made an already good looking game look even better! Since we're in the last week before the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, I thought it would be fitting to talk a bit about probably my favorite game in this franchise. Of course, when you're reading this, the game will already be out, but I unfortunately must live in the present where we are still a few days away. No time to bemoan my state of affairs, though! It's time to board the King of Red Lions as I talk a bit today about how much I love this game.

The Adventure Begins!

    The game begins with a young boy on an island with a great tradition. According to legend, a hero clothed in green defeated an ancient evil once, but disappeared when the evil returned, which then destroyed the kingdom, flooding the world and leaving the last bits of civilization confined to the mountaintops. For this reason, on a certain island, known as Outset, boys who turn 10 are given their own tunic for their birthday, and made to wear it for the whole day. Your character begins the tale on his 10th birthday, and so he is given this tunic, but then a whole adventure unfolds. A girl is being carried through the sky by a giant bird, which is being chased by a pirate ship. The bird is hit by a cannonball, and drops the girl into the woods on Outset Island. Your character, Link (or whatever you choose to name him), runs to the rescue with the assistance of the shield that your grandma gives him, and a sword from the swordsman who lives next door. He saves the girl from the woods, only to have his dear little sister, Aryll, be kidnapped by the giant bird instead. The bird flies away with her in its clutches, and Link has no way to get her back. The girl Link saved, named Tetra, is the leader of the group of pirates that he saw earlier. They agree to let Link come with them to the Forsaken Fortress to rescue his sister, since Tetra feels like she's partially responsible for the girl's capture. The story really takes off from there, Link says goodbye to his grandma and the only island he's ever known, and sails off with the pirates.

    I won't tell you anymore of the major plot moments, because I could easily be here all day recounting all of the plot threads and it truly deserves to be played if you have any way to access it. This is the perfect beginning and call to adventure, in my opinion. So many games have you rescuing a princess, Zelda games included, but the stakes seem so much higher when your sister is the one to be kidnapped. Along the way to rescue his sister, Link realizes that he has gotten himself into a much more serious plot than he ever could have realized. People are not always who they seem, sometimes a talking boat is a much bigger deal than you could imagine, and sometimes... wait, what did I just say?

A Talking Boat?!

    Yes, Link's constant companion in this game is a talking boat named the King of Red Lions. He's a really interesting character, and a constant catalyst for this game, even giving you the titular Wind Waker, which is a conductor's baton that allows Link to control the winds by conducting certain magical melodies, similar to how the Ocarina of Time worked back in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. It's here that we can finally get into one of the bigger elements of this game, the open world exploration. I've never been huge on giant maps where it's easy to get lost in, but something about this game makes me so excited to explore. Every time I saw treehouses out in the middle of the ocean, I needed to pull off my best pirating moves to take out whatever enemies stood in my way to get whatever insignificant treasure was up there. Just getting more and more things in this game was exhilarating, and that went double for the submarines, some of which had extra bottles or other treasures of those sorts. Treasure charts allowed you to search the seas for sunken treasure with the assistance of the grappling hook which could haul treasures up from the depths, and those acted like little puzzles which you could really only figure out if you had already charted out much of the sea, and were very aware of what the islands looked like. I think they changed that in the HD remaster for Wii U, where they just put them on the sea chart after a while, but either way, they were always really exciting to find.

    The secrets in this game were also fantastic, whether it was Grandma's Elixir Soup, or Mother and Child Isle, there were constantly new places to explore. I've played through the game so many times at this point, that I'm no longer able to look at the game in an objective lens. I have so much nostalgia from the long days on the Great Sea that I can remember so many hidden secrets that the people playing for the first time would certainly not know, but I was definitely lost the first time that I played. I will say that it's pretty amazing that even though the world is so big, the islands themselves are pretty small for the most part. The islands you have to go to for the story were always really big, but other than that, there weren't a lot of big islands. the evolution of the world throughout the game was always crazy for me though, huge set pieces show up after crazy things happen. Out of all the islands that count though, there are a few that really stick out.

Oh, The Places You'll Go!

    The Wind Waker has some of the classic types of areas from the 3D Zelda games, but incorporated entirely new species here. We still have a forest area, a volcano area, an earth temple (somewhat reminiscent of the Shadow Temple from Ocarina of Time), but we don't see any Kokiri, Gorons, or Zoras in this game. Since the world changed to be flooded by water, there isn't a water temple to speak of, but not only that, the world's species evolved in different ways. Dragon Roost Island is the home of the Rito, bird people who grew wings to allow them to get around more easily over time, as well as Valoo, a dragon who has gotten pretty grumpy once the game starts. It's also the home of one of the most catchy tunes in the game, but we'll get to that later on. Forest Haven is home to the Koroks as well as the Great Deku tree, which is a descendant of the one from Ocarina of Time. Outset Island, as I said before, is where you begin the game (which is a fitting title for sure). Windfall island is like Kakariko village in a sense, complete with some musical cues which come from the classic towns in A Link to the Past as well as Ocarina of Time. Windfall is definitely the most populated island, full of merchants and villagers all going about their business, and you start your business here by buying a sail for the King of Red Lions, since what good would a sailboat be without a sail? Greatfish island... poor Greatfish island is actually destroyed before you get to it, and it's serious because that's where one of three mcguffins from the beginning of the game is supposed to be, but it's luckily saved by Lord Jabun (no relation to Lord Jabu-Jabu from Ocarina of Time, even though both are big fish that speak Hylian and protect an orb or jewel). The Tower of the Gods rises from the sea once you get about half way through the game, which blew me away when I first saw it, even though I wasn't a huge fan of most of the puzzles in that dungeon, but you do get the bow and the Command Melody here, which are both great! Of course, the Tower of the Gods also leads to a new world beneath the waves, Hyrule. Along with all these interesting and varied places, Link gets quite a cast of characters to interact with.

New friends to meet!

    It should come as no surprise that the game with a talking boat as your companion has some wacky characters, right? Of course, there are the normal characters like Aryll, Link's little sister who has a real way with seagulls, and his grandmother, who becomes sick shortly after Link leaves home (And then gets the saddest theme in the game inside her house), but there are many off the walls characters. There's the whole pirate crew, chief among them being Tetra, a sassy pirate lady who definitely has no more secrets to hide I promise, Niko, who declares himself as Link's rival and makes him run obstacle courses, and a few others. On Dragon Roost Island, we meet the Rito tribe, most importantly Medli (who is very important in the latter half of this game), and Prince Komali, the son of the Rito chieftain. In Forest Haven, we meet Makar, who is a bit too adventurous for his own good, but eventually also finds his place in the world. I won't give away the big twist of the game, but I do have to mention that there's a very important character that I can't really talk about once you've gotten to Hyrule under the waves, which was a twist that blew my mind as a small child. Of course, our heroes would be nothing without a villain to stand against them, and this time we have Ganondorf, showing up in only his second appearance after Ocarina of Time. This Ganondorf is pretty intimidating I think, especially since Link is a literal 10 year old child for the entirety of the game's runtime.While this version of Ganondorf himself never actually turns into the giant pig Ganon, the puppet version which you fight in the final act always creeped me out a ton as a kid (especially since I have always been afraid of puppets). 

    Though I love these characters and the world that they live in, this game was actually quite divisive, with many people seeing the Spaceworld demo footage of a more realistic-looking Link and Ganondorf fighting. What was eventually revealed to be the Gamecube's first game was clearly much more cartoony and cell-shaded than many were hoping for, and even came to call the game "Cellda" since they felt that the series should be much darker and more serious after Ocarina of Time landed that aesthetic so well. The years went by though, and even though the game led to some angry fans and harsh words for the artstyle, the game came out and became loved by nearly all. Granted, the part of the game where you slowly had to find Triforce charts, decode them by paying Tingle an exorbitant amount of money, and finding just where in the Great Sea they were hiding was definitely a bit tedious, but other than that, I think the game was loved across the board. In addition, the people who wanted a more realistic Zelda game would get one in the form of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Wii and Gamecube, which is a story for another day. All in all, the Legend of Zelda franchise had a third 3D title, first on the Gamecube's improved hardware, and it was a magical game.

    Thanks so much for reading, friends. I'm so excited for Tears of the Kingdom coming out in just a few days, but I wouldn't be here writing about Zelda if it weren't for The Wind Waker catching my attention all those years ago. I really hope they'll bring this game to the Switch in one form or another, but we'll just have to see where the cards fall on that matter. I hope you're as excited as I am about the newest game in the franchise, and I hope to see you in the land of Hyrule once again in just a few days time. Have a great week, everyone, and until next time, I'm Jonathan, a Self-Proclaimed Hero of Hyrule. May the winds always be at your back and fill the sails of your adventure.