(AfroGamers.com) The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a masterpiece of gameplay and became one of Nintendo’s truly legendary titles. It took players on an adventure that crossed time, the elements, and nations all through the perspective of a young boy who is actually leaving him hometown for the first time.
As with the questions I had about the Super Mario games, I’ve got some questions for another of Nintendo’s heavy hitters.
How Could Link Go Back to Everyday Life After ‘Legend of Zelda’ Games?
Now, The Legend of Zelda typically has some sort of work-around to this question. Since the series plays with time travel, chronomancy, and lost time, something such as being in suspended animation, memory wiping, or memory loss is enough to get Link on his feet and going. It does nothing to answer the question of how Link ended up where he was or where he actually came from but it doesn’t matter.
In some games such as The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Time/Oracle of Seasons, there is some link to previous adventures at least for the games on GameBoy.
For the most part, we don’t know what the hell happens to Link after this big adventure. Part of this is because of the scale of the journey. Link always has to do a ton and this results in multiple adventures. Link’s job is adventurer. He pays taxes on rupees gained from adventuring.
He gets to travel around and see the kingdom in both the present and future as well as in different states of peace and disorder. Honestly, he’s always in the role of lone adventurer in games. Zelda games will have knights but we don’t know if they’re ever sent out to deal with all the monsters in the fields and on travel routes.
Link’s definitely dealing with them but that’s mainly so that he can get from point A to point B safely. Monster control is a government issue. That’s not the important thing here, folks. Once Link is done with all of this…how does he just go back home and live peacefully?
Sure, he’ll miss home after so many dangers but it seems like wonderlust would kick in early. There had to be more adventures for the kid. The world just didn’t revert to being absolutely peaceful when Ganon or whatever big bad was defeated. C’mon, now.
Princess Zelda’s Family Lived in Opulence Despite Such a Sparse Kingdom in ‘Ocarina of Time’. How?
In Ocarina of Time, there’s a maze puzzle that can be frustrating if you’re 12 years old with zero patience. You’re able to see parts of Hyrule Castle’s big courtyard and interior and it truly deserves its spot looming over the city. It’s more impressive than the Temple of Time and way more impressive than Princess Peach’s castle in Super Mario 64.
However, her castle in Super Mario RPG was pretty damn impressive. That aside, the Hyrule Royal Family really put taxpayer money to good use architecturally. But what taxpayers? Hyrule Kingdom is extremely sparse in OoT. It’s something I always bring up when mentioning a remake for the game.
Hyrule Kingdom is a pretty empty land with big green fields. However, the emptiness stands out when you realize how big the kingdom is in relation to future open world games or even future Zelda games. The kingdom had a castle town, a mountain town, a fishing spot, a farm, and several peoples who couldn’t be taxed either because they were their own recognized kingdoms or they’re protected or something.
The point is that Hyrule is a kingdom that shouldn’t be able operational but not only is it operational, it houses the powerful world-saving weapon. This is why you don’t think too much about fictional worlds as a fan.
How Did Nintendo Decide On the Timelines for ‘Zelda’ Games?
The Hyrule Historia has the entire canonical timeline of the franchise and shows where each game fits in with different timelines. Now, the timelines each make sense once the games are put into place and explained by the developers. Remember, some of these games dropped when the technology wasn’t as flexible as it would become for storytelling.
This resulted in Nintendo taking the approach of leaving things up to the players’ imaginations. The thing is that eventually, diehard fans want the canonical lore of all of this. We want it all tied up in timelines, events to be explained since they were mentioned, and we want to know more about other places touched on in the franchise.
It raised the question of how did the developers decide on the timeline? Were the games made with this progression in mind or did the developers look at the games and figure “We have to tie this all up somehow. Like is this the same Link or different Links?”
It’s a problem that is present in a lot of Nintendo titles because of the company’s vagueness with storyline links and making everything mostly standalone adventures.
Staff Writer; M. Swift
This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.