Zelda: A Link to The Past, Present and Future
Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and is seeing the much anticipated launch of Skyward Sword this weekend, was born from Shigeru Miyamoto’s passion for adventure.
Like many children, the talented video game designer enjoyed wandering through hillsides and forests, where his obsession with discovery led him to a mysterious cave.
Armed with a lantern, an apprehensive Miyamoto ventured inside, unaware that each step would inspire him to create a young hero named Link, a beautiful princess and a vast kingdom filled with memorable allies and monsters
Had he remained outside that cave entrance:
Comedian and actor, Robin Williams, would not have named his daughter, Zelda, after the series’ princess.
WWE superstar, Cody Rhodes, wouldn’t have placed the iconic Triforce symbol on his boots, while taking a break from his grueling schedule to make playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past an annual tradition.
Most importantly, an untold number of video game writers, developers and artists, also diehard Zelda fans, may not have drawn the necessary inspiration to follow their dreams.
For these talented individuals, The Legend of Zelda is more than a video game, though as we discovered, the series means different things to a wide range of talented people.
Risk versus reward
“I'd never been interested in Zelda before, but playing Link’s Awakening blew my mind,” said Ben Kosmina.
“The opening cinematic was gripping and mysterious, there was the strange owl that kept popping up to guide you, while the funny and weird cast were essential in tempting me to play a little more.”
Currently a designer and writer for Brawsome, Kosmina fondly recalls elements from Zelda to enrich the company’s current project, MacGuffin's Curse.
“One thing that I talked about was to make sure that you reward the player, not just by getting prizes, but also in small visual and audio cues.”
“Every Nintendo player,” Kosmina continued, “knows the dungeon room solve jingle, and Link's holding an item over his head in triumph. These little moments remind you that you really achieved something, rather than progressing without acknowledgement.”
Players can definitely see this influence in MacGuffin’s Curse, a title that casts them as a magician-turned-thief-turned-werewolf that causes a citywide lockdown, tasking gamers with unlocking doors to escape different rooms.
“It's always great fun to explore, to discover, to find things, and the Zelda games have always had this as their foundation.”
“As Lucas, you can perform sneaky tasks, like slipping through windows, operating control panels and picking locks to open doors, while Wolf Lucas can push and pull heavy objects, smash debris to get it out of the way and dig up piles of dirt. By swapping between the two, Lucas can restore power to the locked doors and then open them to escape. Nearly every room in the game is its own self-contained puzzle.”
While inspired by other games, namely the obscure Game Boy title, Mole Mania, and LucasArts’ classic Tales of Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle, you can see shades of Zelda in MacGuffin.
How big?
“Well,” Kosmina said, “the Link's Awakening strategy guide is sitting on my desk.”
Quest for perfection
“Strangely enough, there are not that many Zelda copycats, and the reason is simple: making a game that smart is not easy,” said Emeric Thoa.
Thoa, a former Ubisoft employee, worked on some of the company’s most respected franchises, including Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia and Rainbow Six. Today, he’s owner and creative director of The Game Bakers, where he spends most of his days polishing the company’s upcoming action RPG, SQUIDS.
“Zelda had a major impact on my career when I joined Ubisoft and worked with the head office. I could almost say that they trained me to learn and understand the beauty and cleverness of Zelda games.”
“Everything in the Zelda recipe is smart and greatly executed. It’s a design and polish benchmark, and the game structure is brilliant. You’ll progressively explore the world, but the world doesn’t open up artificially thanks to the story or some level design twist. It’s all planned from the beginning, where you unlock abilities that work like keys throughout the game.”
“[Nintendo] also includes tutorials within the main storyline in a very elegant way that feels completely natural. This is the Holy Grail for a designer: making the user learn the game by having fun playing it, without noticing he or she completed a tutorial.”
To that end, Thoa applauds Nintendo for continuing to achieve what he feels is a rare feat within the gaming industry.
“Few companies invest that much development time to polish the accessibility and the game mechanics. They usually prefer to invest in more features and production values.”
As for Thoa’s favorite Zelda adventure, the answer shouldn’t surprise longtime fans.
“A Link to the Past is flawless. It had no 'points', no 'stats', not even 'XP'. Still, your character was evolving, getting stronger and gaining new abilities to explore the world. It delivered what I was looking for in role-playing games with a completely different formula than other Action RPGs. Instead of leveling up, you gained ability-items, and instead of repetitive battles, you had puzzles to solve. Even today, few games offer this kind of mixed challenge.”
A fairy tale paradise
Zelda was not Lauren Wood’s chief inspiration to become a game designer, yet Nintendo’s franchise still made a big impact on her life.
“I still froth at the mouth at the prospect of a new Zelda game, even as an adult with a family of my own.”
Wood admits she was a latecomer to the series. In fact, the first Zelda she played was the Nintendo 64 hit, Ocarina of Time.
“[Ocarina] hit upon a neatly balanced formula of player-led exploration and clever designer-led puzzles that could keep me happy forever, in true fairy tale style. It was light on the combat, exquisitely paced and presented with all the charm and magical stirrings of old English folklore.”
A former Radical Entertainment employee, whose credits include Prototype, Crash of the Titans and Scarface: The World is Yours, Wood currently works for Silicon Sisters Interactive, the industry’s first female driven studio, and the brains behind School 26: Summer of Secrets.
She still reflects upon Ocarina and the series’ critically acclaimed blueprint for success.
“I didn’t feel like I wanted or needed anything to change. Just give me more of the same. More puzzles, more fairy tale, more escapism. The Zelda series is often criticized for its propensity to be unchanging, but for a long-time satisfied customer, it firmly falls in the 'if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it' category.”
“It was this aspect of design that really captured my attention: Zelda’s timeless high quality gameplay.”
Wood clearly sees Zelda’s influence within gaming, though for other studios, successfully mimicking the classic formula is quite a challenge.
“I certainly recall a good deal of feverish analysis of the production process on Zelda and how we might apply that model to create better games ourselves. If only we were afforded a fairy tale budget. It stood as a standard to aspire to and undoubtedly contributed to the higher quality aspects of some of the products to which I have contributed over the years.”
“I don’t think there’s a game I’ve worked on where there hasn’t at some point been mention of Zelda as a design reference. In many ways, it was a standard example of ‘how it’s done’. I say ‘was’ because game design is changing so rapidly as social platforms come to the fore. It will be interesting to see how much the legacy of Zelda’s benchmark design will affect such a radically distinct approach to gameplay.”
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