Played on Nintendo Gamecube/Wii U

Released in 2003/13 by Nintendo 

Enjoy some complimentary music that I love from the game!

The Never-ending Story

The age-old question always comes into play when discussing your all-time favorites for something. Why do you love it and in this why do I love video games? I could sit here and probably type out the longest and most incomprehensible post possible if I wanted to truly tackle all the emotions and ideas at play for why I feel the way I do about something. In truth, there really is no succinct and comfortable way to accurately break down my experiences with words alone, as something will always be lacking that I just won’t be able to convey. That being said, what I do want to touch on, and have mentioned numerous times throughout my entire countdown to this point, is my favorite thing in all of video games. A sense of adventure being blanketed over me that creates pure unrivaled kid-like joy in my heart at the very prospect of the possibility alone. This almost abstract, but seemingly tangible euphoria consumes me wholly as I experience media that deftly slaps me across the face with it. No single piece of media in any shape or form defines this quite like The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for me.

Just a boy on a boat with the wind at his back. It’s novel sure, but the effectiveness is grandiose. The humble beginnings of starting on your island, as an unassuming sleepy head who gets whisked into a story of trying to save his sister from peril. The journey commences with a personal stake at hand, and as you see more of the world, you learn of many others who have faced similar struggles. In essence, from the get-go, The Wind Waker wants you to see the world, explore at your own leisure, and really understand the vast sea all around you. As you travel from key location to key location, you learn about new cultures, save those who need your aid, and grow stronger. All the while, still being just an ordinary boy who wants to simply be brave and help those he cares about. Wind Waker is straightforward, and simple in that regard, and quickly lands the player in a world of possibilities that empower and excite. Do you decide to go straight to your goal or instead go off that beaten path and find some untold treasure that benefits you? It really is up to you as you slowly become accustomed to the shadowy outlines of islands miles in front of you, and plunge forth upon the Great Sea.

The Legend of Zelda as a franchise is one of the, if not the best video game series at forging a believable and palpable sense of adventure through its world and characters. This especially became noticeable with the leap into 3D. Things such as Hyrule Field in Ocarina of Time, or the complex interwoven schedule of the denizens of Clock Town make for such a wondrous experience. This idea that you can go out into the world and know not of what you might come across, yet you can bet it will be something worth talking about later to someone else. Zelda has always managed to make finding treasure a rewarding time or discovering some oddball person a defining and memorable experience. Wind Waker takes the blueprints established by its predecessors and goes another step forward into crafting a rousing time for players as they discover new places and people. Places like Wind Fall island feel even more like a real-life town than anything we had seen before, and the massive ocean filled with sunken treasure and small islands is a bounty of treasure never seen on that scale. All of it culminates in the most lifelike and charming world of adventure that titillates the curiosity of the mind almost endlessly.

 

Treasure Island

You know, the sense of constant and enticing adventure is surely present, but how does it function within the gameplay loop itself? Quite wonderfully if you were to ask, this totally unbiased person right here. The slow and steady hype built upon gaining new techniques and skills as you discover new lands and eventually try and conquer their dungeons is ever-present. Thanks to the improvements of the Gamecube hardware, Wind Waker is able to perfect the classic Z-targeting camera, and lock-on system originated from the 64 games. No longer are you constrained by slightly stiff camera issues and animations. Instead, the combat is as smooth as it can possibly be, and this would be the basis that all future Zelda games would use for their own 3D combat styles and variations. Dungeons are more distinctive than ever as well thanks to the crisp and gorgeous cel-shaded art style. They create dashes of timeless visuals and colors that make the dungeons feel more ominous and memorable than the older hardware was capable of. The gracious technical improvements use what already worked so fantastically and elevate them to new heights because of it. This allows Wind Waker to truly feel like a timeless game in game feel and audio/visual design.

I rather love the dungeons themselves as well. While not quite as challenging as the 64 games at some instances, more often than not it wasn’t due to a lack of design toughness. The older games were a little more tedious to traverse and harder to make out what was useful so more trial and error took place as a result. With the far clearer and cleaner cut of rooms and key interactable objects, Wind Waker makes for a smoother and generally more enjoyable puzzle-solving experience. While not my all-time favorite in the franchise, I do find them undeniably enjoyable on every revisit, while I can think of one dungeon in almost every other 3D game I always groan at having to go through it again during my replays. The items you gain within the dungeons also are far more useful than prior games in just general play and combat. The Deku leaf itself is maybe the best traversal item ever created in Zelda, and it was fully perfected in the most recent game to show why. Many side items or masks just weren’t worth using over your sword in the 64 games, but ever since Wind Waker each Zelda game tends to give the player more options for movement, and combat than ever creating a more robust and varied experience depending on player preference. Although, I do miss rolling around like a Goron and Zora swimming, so I wouldn’t mind seeing those come back with modern tech Nintendo!

At its core though, this is a Zelda game through and through. You take on evil by getting a variety of weapons, and you solve puzzles as they block your path. Bosses are epic set pieces and usually fairly easy to take down, but super enjoyable nonetheless. I will say though, this game has my favorite incarnation of Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf. I find their personalities to be the most enjoyable and it comes down to the expressive art style and nuance in parts of the writing. This is a surprisingly dark game despite the joyful art direction. Ganondorf is almost Shakespearean in philosophy, and it makes it a truly interesting antagonist rather than just a big scary bad man with a little bit of a past. Whoever helped write Mask Kid in Majora must have played a part here as well, because both of them are tremendously interesting characters with how they are presented. Zelda or Tetra in this case is just a true scamp throughout the duration of the game, and her snarky but lovable persona is something that makes her stand out from her fellow princesses. I do wish we got more of her in the last leg of the game, but she is still present way more often than any other incarnation of Zelda and her relationship with Link is sweet. Link is just a goofy kid with funny expressions, so that’s why I like him more. His connection to his sister and Grandma make him feel like he has truly lived a life before the events of the game, and the people you meet along the way like Makar or Medli feel like true friends as you grow close to them. The make for a captivating trio of the triforce, and the best group of 3 in the entire franchise for me.

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

Harboring back to the beginning of it all, Wind Waker is more than just the perfect adventure. It is the game that made me fall in love with my favorite hobby. Before playing Zelda, I had never experienced anything that would impact me in even close to the same way. Much of what I am today stems from the things that put me on that path to start. The Wind Waker is the icon of that idealogy, and one of the reasons, even to this day, I am always searching with deep-engrained passion for the next video game to truly shake my very soul. It doesn’t happen all that often, but the adventure that is diving deep into the complex spiraling world of games is just too exhilarating to step away from. This hobby has become one of my very own great stories to tell, share, and compare with others. Like the Wind Waker was and still is for me, this hobby has transcended just being a trivial usage of my time to pass the hours for a little spare entertainment. It has become so much more, and it beckons me to endlessly discover the next surprise.

That would be my best attempt at conveying even a micro-sliver of why I love video games. Wind Waker opened all the doors, and I’ve not yet found a reason to keep going through them all. I’m happily unsatisfied with being drowned with options for continuing my adventure. Wind Waker was not the first game I ever played, but it was damn well sure the most defining of them all. A story of cycles endlessly at play, and you are the chosen hero to break that and create something new for the future. What you make of that future is an endless flowchart of choices, none of which are wrong. The greatest adventure we all embark on is life itself, and to enjoy it to the fullest we need to find elements to incorporate that make the best of it. Our hobbies are one of the possible keys to that lock, and if you can open it up nice and cleanly, a bountiful future awaits. Video games are definitely a massive boon to personal happiness levels, and Wind Waker is the game that created that part of me. I love games, I love Wind Waker, and I love the fact that while that adventure is closed, mine is still being written. I will find the strength to persevere through the hardest obstacles before me. I will gain much wisdom through the collective experiences I go through as I age. All I need is the courage to believe that everything I want is possible and that I will achieve it. After all, I’m just an ordinary kid too, so why not just be brave and try my best if nothing else? I may not be the chosen one of legend, but I am able to choose what I make of what I do have.

 

That’s number one finished!. Huge credit to my Raphael for producing the drawing used as the cover picture. He did so so so so much for this overall last leg of the project, and I will be eternally grateful for all he contributed. That’s all for games for now though everyone! Look forward to early December time for the November Challenge post and some lists coming your way!