Why do a story analysis on the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker instead of a full-fledged review? Well, because I didn’t finish it, and have no plans to do so since the one of the narration beats in the game made me quit. Guys, I sorry, but the story of the Wind Waker is really bad, particular near the end. More so than that, for me at least, it’s bad enough to made walk away from the game completely. It’s largely because the logic of the story doesn’t make much sense or give any lasting weight to the experience. None of this is to say that Wind Waker is a bad game. It isn’t a bad game, it’s just a poorly paced game, and its story is part of the problem. And I don’t mean obvious inconsistencies that are contrived for fanservice; the Tetra/Zelda connection doesn’t gel, but a better story can recovery from that. Everything tying back to the big three of the series is tripe, but if it worked within the initial narrative, it wouldn’t have had matter as much. The shoehorned sister doesn’t work, not even as a plot device, but that speaks to a bigger problem I have with the game.
And if you’ve read my blog last month (and why haven’t you, unless you’re trying to hurt my feeling), you would know that I was actually a little more positive feeling towards it. I still contend that the game is touching on the ability to take on new challenges and learning about what you’re made of as an adult. Usually, my opinion on a game doesn’t chance that much, particularly while playing the game. Even if I play a bad game, I want to play through the whole thing to understand why it’s bad. If I can’t do that, I shouldn’t pursue a career in this. However, this is one of those game that caused me to consider the logic in what I’m doing in terms of the entire experience, and the deeper I got into the game, the less I like it. That isn’t a good sign, but it became a steady phenomenon. Regardless of the themes that the Wind Waker present, how it’s conveyed is sloppily handled, especially in the beginning of the third act; after Aryll is saved.
This is where the whole thing falls apart, because of the baffling info dumps that come soon after. I don’t necessary have a problem with Ganon still being an antagonist or the reveal of the King of Red Lions being the king of Hyrule, but Tetra turning out to be Zelda doesn’t work just in plain narrative terms. Hell, given that the game has pretty much treated the old Hyrule mostly as an afterthought until that point, there’s not much of a reason for Zelda to blatantly be in the game at all. Even if Ganon was spending the entire time looking for Zelda’s descendent, Link’s only beef with him was the fact the Aryll was kidnapped by his pet bird, the Helmaroc King (ha, ha, ha). From a narrative standpoint, especially consider that Link apparently doesn’t have a bloodline connection to Hero of Time Link, it makes sense the once Aryll is safe that his journey is over… right? One of the biggest complaints about the game is its final third, particular the Triforce fetch quest, where the player has to deal with an arbitrary ocean treasure tracking expedition to find eight shards of the Triforce of Courage (ha, ha, ha). The tasks sound dull enough taking on face value, but one can’t but the think that a small part of that criticism had with the narratives payoff being long since paid, making an already boring task more boring.
This Link being a chosen one doesn’t work either; I won’t go into too much since smarter men have already discussed why this narrative technique doesn’t work within a narrative where one isn’t needed. In Zelda games, Link has already been a chosen hero destined to save Hyrule, but if his initial quest is save a love one, you can’t just drop a destiny bomb in the middle of the game and make it your focus. Think about Twilight Princess’ narrative; despite the Hero of Twilight having a hero destiny, that’s not the main reason why he’s saving Hyrule. He wants to save Hyrule, and by extension the Twilight Realm, as a favor to his companion. When Midna decided to accompany Link in the first place, her deal with him was that he finds the fused shadows for her help. Then Zant steals them, and they have to find the piece of the Twilight mirror to go after him. Just like Wind Waker, Twilight Princess’ destiny gobbledygook is actually pretty perfunctory. Unlike Wind Waker, Twilight Princess never shoehorns it into the focus of the narrative; they bring it up a lot, but it’s not Link’s reason to save the kingdom. In the case of Wind Waker and off the top of my head, what if Aryll was Zelda instead? It makes her and Grandma’s roles feel more significant, it would the stakes even more personal, and it can provide a little fanservice without seeming dubious, even for the most perverted fans.
I’m not asking that every game adheres to some narrative standard all of the time; some of my all-time favorite games have narratives that always seem to fall apart near the middle. But it is something to think about, given that video games don’t even have good stories to tell more than half of the time. Narratively, Zelda can do better and has done better throughout its history. If you’ve enjoyed the Wind Waker regardless, that’s good, because other than that, it is a good time. The animation is liquid smooth, even for a fifteen-year-old game, the art style is vivid and vibrant, the combat mechanics are actually greatly refined to the point of making Ocarina of Time feel dated in comparison, the dungeon are well-constructed with the two standouts being the temple of the gods and the earth temple, the soundtrack is stellar (as always), it's genuinely funny, and the Wii U version, in particular, alleviates most of the padding. It’s a good 15+ hours spent. I just wish that its narrative was told better.