Regardless of its slim lineup to date, Nintendo Change 2’s GameCube library already gives some nice titles, however the apparent spotlight is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Hyperlink’s seafaring journey was a daring and imaginative entry on the time of its unique launch, and whereas it will definitely can be touched up and dropped at the Wii U, this marks the primary time Nintendo has reissued the sport in its unique kind in over 20 years. What’s most gorgeous when revisiting the sport now, nevertheless, is its sense of boundless freedom, which gives a glimpse of the freeform path the Zelda collection would finally embrace with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
Although now broadly thought to be a traditional, The Wind Waker was hotly divisive when it arrived again in 2003. Its sunny, cartoonish visuals particularly stirred up fairly a little bit of controversy for deviating so dramatically from the 2000 Zelda tech demo, however the ultimate recreation was not the unconventional departure it initially seemed to be. Beneath its unconventional floor, The Wind Waker stays firmly rooted in collection traditions. The framework underpinning the journey is usually untouched, following the identical formulation pioneered by A Hyperlink to the Previous and later codified by Ocarina of Time. However regardless of this, the sport manages to carve out some notable adjustments inside this template to fully recolor the expertise.
The boldest is the shift in setting. The Wind Waker trades the rolling fields and misty forests of Hyrule for the limitless blue waves and sun-bleached islands of the Nice Sea. Your journey nonetheless follows the acquainted contours of earlier video games; you may scour the far edges of the world gathering three magical relics, acquiring the Grasp Sword, and plumbing one other handful of dungeons earlier than finally confronting the evil Ganon. However the alluring, high-seas backdrop evokes a way of mystique and journey that no different Zelda title as much as that time may elicit.
It is out on this huge seascape that we are able to glean early traces of the open-world path the collection would finally take. Previous Zelda overworlds have been equally expansive and arguably much more assorted, however all of them felt intentionally curated to an extent. The Hyrule of Ocarina of Time, as awe-inspiring because it was in 1998, was not a lot a world because it was a manicured backyard, nudging Hyperlink alongside a methodically laid path by means of interconnected however discrete environments. The recreation afforded you sufficient company to poke all over the world for treasure chests and different non-obligatory rewards, nevertheless it dictated your progress by means of the primary quest by gating entry to sure areas of Hyrule till you reached a particular level within the story or acquired a specific merchandise.
The Nice Sea has no such obstacles hemming gamers in. Though the primary leg of your journey is intentionally paced, along with your development from island to island guided somewhat strictly by the calls for of the plot, the sport opens up significantly by the point you retrieve the Grasp Sword. There may be nonetheless a agency narrative thread main you to your climactic confrontation with Ganon, and lots of the islands you come throughout en path to the ultimate battle cannot be totally explored till you have returned with the correct device. However you are given ample freedom to rove about as you please. As soon as you have absolutely acclimated to the rhythms of sea travel–plot a course, conduct the wind, elevate your sail, and set off–the recreation turns you free, permitting you to indulge your curiosity and discover the Nice Sea at your leisure.
It is way more open-ended than different Zelda video games on the time, and the designers take full benefit of this looser construction, encouraging you to enterprise off the proverbial crushed path with a myriad of engaging diversions. Outdoors of the primary story, your journey is essentially guided by whispers and rumors you overhear amid your travels–of a useful treasure hidden inside a frozen island, or a peculiar touring service provider who was noticed off of a distant islet, or a cursed ship that stalks the seas when the moon is in a specific section.
Moderately than explicitly directing you to those factors of curiosity, The Wind Waker piques your curiosity with obscure tidbits and rumour, a lot in the way in which Breath of the Wild would finally current its aspect quests–not as a collection of missions to test off, however as small mysteries ready to be investigated. Many of those threads finally find yourself being very important to finishing the sport, however you by no means get the sense you are being ushered alongside a predetermined course by the builders; you search them out since you’re intrigued, and you are feeling a real sense of discovery whenever you observe a breadcrumb path of rumors to its supply.
Because of this unbound freedom, each journey throughout the Nice Sea evokes a way of marvel and journey, particularly within the early going. Save for a small handful of premarked islands, your sea chart is totally empty in the beginning of your journey, and you will need to progressively fill it in, sq. by sq., as you journey between locations. Moderately than being busywork, nevertheless, the act of mapping out the ocean additional accentuates the sensation of being an explorer. Setting off into uncharted waters and discovering what uncommon sights lay past the horizon is likely one of the most thrilling facets of the sport, and the hints and tidbits you hear from the unsettling fish-men who dwell beneath the waves add additional shade to the world.
The similar holds true for the numerous islands scattered in regards to the sea. Every sq. of the map incorporates some form of landmass to go to, from small reefs to bustling settlements. Although a few of these quantity to little greater than surroundings, many home some type of treasure or self-contained problem to beat, be it a small puzzle to untangle or a gauntlet of enemies to defeat. Which you could by no means fairly anticipate what you may encounter whenever you set sail makes every island you occur upon really feel like a discovery unto itself, they usually’re an apparent inspiration for the floating sky islands of Skyward Sword and particularly Tears of the Kingdom, which likewise beckon gamers with engaging challenges to finish or treasures to find.
It is in these broad strokes that Wind Waker’s affect on future titles is most clearly felt, however the recreation additionally presages Breath of the Wild in quite a lot of subtler methods. Whereas its exaggerated cartoon aesthetic would solely be revisited by a number of handheld entries and spin-offs, cel-shading would develop into part of the collection’ visible identification shifting ahead, permitting for a fair better diploma of expressiveness–particularly in enemy interactions.
Till this level within the collection, the monsters you encountered in Zelda all behaved in pretty rudimentary methods, patrolling set paths and pursuing Hyperlink single-mindedly. In crafting The Wind Waker, the designers harnessed GameCube’s further energy to make foes not solely extra clever, however extra expressive as nicely. Enemies right here behave in shocking and infrequently humorous methods, which in flip makes them really feel extra alive. The second of panic that flashes throughout a Moblin’s face when it drops its weapon in the midst of a combat and rapidly scrambles to search out one other one stays a delight, and Nintendo would additional construct upon this dynamism with the expressive and resourceful monsters that roam the fields in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
For all of its daring concepts, The Wind Waker doesn’t all the time match as much as its ambitions. As alluring because the Nice Sea usually is, it will also be sparse and repetitive, the sense of journey sometimes diminished by too many moments of empty downtime. Nintendo would finally deliver the collection again to the acquainted, verdant confines of Hyrule, making the Nice Sea an outlier amongst Zelda settings, solely revisited within the DS sequel Phantom Hourglass. However its freeform spirit survives within the sprawling, open-ended design of Breath of the Wild’s Hyrule, which channels the identical sense of marvel and discovery that made Hyperlink’s high-seas journey such a memorable expertise.