A Link Between Worlds is one of the strangest
Zelda games thus far; and no, these still don't count, for all of the smartasses in the comments.
This game is as much a sequel as it is a remake, and that's already a pretty damn odd concession.
In order to better understand why it is this way, though, we'll have to delve into a bit of its
surprisingly turbulent history. I promise this won't be too long, I know these can be a little
boring. After the release of Spirit Tracks, most of that team was transferred to work on
the newest Zelda project, which at the time was Skyward Sword. Three of the remaining members
set to work on an entirely different Zelda for the soon to be released 3DS. Using Spirit Tracks'
framework and six months of planning, they presented it to Miyamoto under the core theme of
"communication," which he dubbed too outdated.
It was at this point that the team thought
up a new idea: allowing Link to merge with his environment to solve puzzles and traverse
the world. Miyamoto accepted the prototype for this idea, but soon after the entire team was
set to work on Wii U launch titles, which meant that development ceased entirely. After Skyward
Sword, Aonuma revisited this abandoned idea, and gathered a team to make a game out of it.
They presented several concepts to Miyamoto, which he swiftly declined; however, he brought
up the possibility of using this new mechanic to remake A Link to the Past. See, the 3D effect of
the 3DS was, at the time, best marketed through remakes. Ocarina of Time 3D and Star Fox 64 3D
only really exist because of this. So, the idea of remaking A Link to the Past on the 3DS wasn't
too out there an idea, but that original mechanic still remained. What we got was an original game,
a sequel, and a remake. It's really weird; though, the results are strangely reassuring. This is
the Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds.
--
Link, now an apprentice blacksmith, sets off to deliver a forgotten sword to the
Captain of the guard. Through a series of unfortunate events, a sorcerer named Yuga casts a
spell on the priest's daughter that turns her into a painting. After Link fails to stop the sorcerer,
he meets Ravio, who hands him a bracelet, sends him off to Hyrule Castle to warn Zelda of
the coming threat, and you go on a macguffin hunt similar to the one in the original. Three items,
master sword, hyrule castle dungeon, seven sages in Lorule, a fight with Yuga and Ganon, the end.
What initially seems like a similar structure is quickly differentiated by A Link Between World's
open progression. Those three initial macguffins can be sought after in any order the player
chooses, and even more interestingly, the seven sages can be saved in any order the player
chooses. Necessary items can be rented from Ravio, and you lose those rented items whenever you
die. You can later purchase those items to keep them permanently for a higher fee, but either
way: you are not locked out of any potential progression paths. Both Hyrule and Lorule are
yours to explore. This is perhaps the reason why this game is so beloved, and at the time it was a
fairly radical shift for the franchise. You have to remember this was before Breath of the Wild,
when the hottest new Zelda game was Skyward Sword: this was a pretty damn radical change.
With such a radical change came a host of new issues to consider: how do you properly flesh
out a story on a canvas with so many colors? How do you efficiently balance dungeons that have
no preset order? How do you balance difficulty in such an open game? If you'll recall, one of
the reasons Zelda moved away from a more open structure was to avoid these very questions. It
was simply a lot easier to tell a conventional narrative and maintain a steady difficulty
curve when the player was on a straight track, which is why Zelda came to be defined by its
linearity over the years; however, that never quite eliminated the core conceit of the original,
and it was inevitable that these questions would be tackled head on using more powerful hardware
and years of development expertise. You're told a narrative in set chunks and at set intervals,
meaning you won't miss out on anything important. After saving a few sages of any kind, Hilda
(Lorule's Zelda equivalent) will drop a few hints about the fate of their kingdom. Each sage
is also plot relevant, so their areas are a bit more memorable. The blacksmith's son Gulley, goes
missing early on; it turns out that because he was a descendant of one of the sages, Yuga turned him
into a painting and stuck him in the Dark Palace. It's a small touch, but it already makes for a
more interesting story when you save him. His character is clearly a reference to the flute
boy that goes missing in A Link to the Past, except this time he has direct story relevance
and a more involved link to the player. He's even the first character you see in the game,
waking you up after you've clearly overslept.
Sometimes it's just done as a gag: Irene, your
fast travel system, turns out to be one of the sages. When she's absent, the broom will follow
you without a rider and take you where you need to go. Neat touch. Even the grandson of Sahasrahla is
in this game, and he seems like a bit of a dick. I mean, these aren't exactly grade-A Zelda
characters, but looking at a picture of them standing next to each other, they seem far more
inspired than the random maidens in A Link to the Past, and your interactions with them after each
dungeon are reminiscent of Ocarina of Time. This structure ensures that something interesting
will happen no matter where you decide to go: Rosso goes missing so you have to brave his mine
to find him. Queen Oren is gone, the Zoras freak out and they ask you to save her. Again, nothing
groundbreaking, but I like how the world changes over time and that your choices as a player don't
ultimately affect the quality of the storytelling. I suppose it's harder to tell a linear set of
events, so a lot of the main plot is sparse until the middle and end of the game; but this
is also a Zelda story on a much smaller scale, and that ending twist is enough to shoot it past
anything A Link to the Past was trying to do.
There's a hell of a lot to take in here. Yuga,
clearly a stand-in for Agahnim from the original, was working under the orders of Hilda. Lorule's
triforce was destroyed long ago in order to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands, but
that also had a ripple effect that left the entire kingdom unprotected. Hyrule only ever sealed
its triforce, which meant that the legendary hero could use its power when necessary. Lorule
had lost that luxury, and so it fell to ruin. Seeing this twisted, more desperate reflection of
Zelda is fascinating: one who has been driven to such dark depths that would see her stealing the
Triforce from another world. It's a little scary to think that Zelda could have ended up like this
if the same fate were to befall Hyrule. Of course, Link is there to snap her out of it. Finding
out that Ravio was this dimension's equivalent of Link, that he failed in his mission, is one
of those twists that is almost impossible to see coming. I’m sure some of you out there called it,
I’m not doubting anyone. It’s just so well masked, even though in retrospect it seems really
obvious. It strengthens a second playthrough, since you can comb through Ravio's dialogue
for hints. It's also just really cool that your biggest helper is actually a different,
dejected version of you attempting to avert a second tragedy; and it further bolsters
the parallels between the two dimensions.
One of my favorite elements of the original
was the light vs. dark world traversal, and how it made you rethink previous areas. For
as much as it added, though, the two worlds did feel a little too disconnected for their own good,
and the crossover that did exist was very slight. Lorule is a more literal depiction of what would
happen if the world fell to ruin. Some of the same cheery characters in Hyrule are dreary and cynical
in Lorule, and it's hard not to blame them. I think the direct parallels between specific
characters is what sells me on the idea the most: it retains that wonderful feeling of travelling
to Lorule and seeing the direct contrast, while also littering it with subtle links to
connect them. Previously hospitable characters, like the blacksmith and his wife, are now cruel
and unwelcoming. Hilda is a bit of a brooder, a stark contrast to the playful and naive Zelda;
the captain is now a bitter drunk, (well as drunk as you can get in a milk bar) ranting about the
pitiful state of his kingdom. The Masked Elder, Sahasrahla's Lorule equivalent, is the leader of
a cult who put masks on to escape the corruption. Lorule is bleak and oppressive, which sets
it apart from the more overt terror of the dark world. The best part about it all,
though, is that come the end of the game, Lorule might now have a Triforce, but it’s not
like it’s cured of everything wrong with it. These people are gonna have to repair their very deep
wounds over time. They were forced into some very dark and defeating places, and climbing out of
it won’t be simple: all you did was give them the tools to climb out of that depression. A chance to
start over, even if it’s gonna take a lot of work, which feels like a disturbingly appropriate
message for our very damaged world.
Exploring Hyrule and Lorule is done at set
points throughout the world, like the original, except now there are a lot more travel points, and
each area is broken up into distinct sections. You still have to find the right portals, like the
original, but its even more segmented. That's fine, though, because a lot of your exploration
will simply be done in Hyrule: you'll often be trying to find a way to a new section of Lorule,
one you otherwise can't access due to gaping holes in the ground or giant mountains. It's yet
another thing A Link to the Past also did. This is why it's hard for me to call this
a straight up sequel and be done with it, because it feels eerily similar to the original in
every way, despite the story clearly taking place after the original. It has incredibly similar
dungeon and overworld design, but with subtle (sometimes obvious) changes to set it apart.
You've still got a town of thieves, a dark palace, a big tower, a water palace, turtle rock, the
usual; but now there's a Desert Temple for some reason. This extends to your available items:
you've got the returning bow, hookshot, boomerang, hammer, fire rod, ice rod, and all of them with
basically the same use case as before; but you've also got entirely new items like the Sand Rod
and Tornado Rod just for fun. Additionally, the layout of each dungeon is completely different,
except for a few callbacks here and there.
But, see: these differences start to resemble
straight up improvements the further you look. Each of the dungeon items can be permanently
upgraded once owned, provided you've saved enough of the Maimais throughout both Hyrule and Lorule.
A Link Between Worlds has an upgrade for every single major dungeon item, one that makes it more
effective in combat. Now, you have to upgrade the Hookshot into the Longshot… well, it's actually
called the Nice Hookshot, but you get what I mean. It'll have an extended range, while also being
able to damage enemies instead of only stunning them. The Nice Bow allows you to shoot three
arrows at once in a shotgun spread; the Nice Bombs are twice as large and twice as powerful; the Nice
Hammer hits a larger area and does more damage: these upgrades change how you approach combat in
a pretty substantial way. Ten Maimais will get you an upgrade, so the pace at which you get
rewards is never too slow. This is on top of returning sword and shield upgrades. Also, since
you can choose which items you want and when, you have more control over your combat repertoire
than ever before. You can rent the Hookshot for reliable stuns instead of the boomerang if you
want, or you can go for the Bow and Hammer early for powerful ranged and melee options. Hell, if
you're a madman you can even rent out his entire arsenal, which is a bit of a rupee drain but
nothing you can't ultimately handle. However, a single death will see all of those items removed,
forcing you to rent them again from Ravio. It's a wonderful way to encourage players to carry a more
limited arsenal, and you never have to worry about running out of resources in a dungeon and getting
stuck, since every single item is tied to the same stamina bar. It retains the pros of magic in Zelda
games, which is meant to limit your item usage, but eliminates the need to keep refilling the
bar in often annoying ways. Being overpowered has been turned into a risk-reward mechanic, which
is almost always a good thing in my book. Thus, exploration feels consistently gratifying.
Your rupees feed back into the rental mechanic, meaning that they'll be useful for a majority of
your playthrough depending on your skill level, so it's almost always worth it to just fumble
about the world and see what's around the corner. Pretty much everything is worth doing in this
game: avoiding cuckoos, racing across Hyrule with the Pegasus Boots, boss and enemy gauntlets, rupee
rushes… okay maybe the baseball mini game sucks, but oh well. We always gotta have one dud in
there, eh? It’s some kind of universal law.
Unfortunately, that incentive to explore is
diminished a bit by the game's relative lack of difficulty, especially compared to A Link
to the Past. A Link Between Worlds is fairly forgiving overall, which means that death is
a rare occurrence. It still happened to me, but not nearly enough to prevent me from
renting out Ravio's entire shop all the time. You just take much less damage overall, and
paired with a less limited sense of movement, you can coast through the main adventure without a
care in the world. Bosses and enemies don't scale with you, they just get harder with each story
checkpoint. In the beginning they're pretty easy, and then they get a little harder once you reach
Lorule, and then they get harder once you're at the final dungeon. This means that dungeon
difficulty is more or less the same for most of your playthrough. Maybe you'll struggle with your
first or second Lorule dungeon, but beyond that you'll already have so many heart containers that
progress will be no problem at all. I feel like this could have been remedied by a more adaptive
scaling system, though I'm not sure how much work it would take to implement or if it would have
even been possible. Skyrim fixed Oblivion's scaling issues, so hey: it was definitely possible
at the time on consoles at least. I guess the game does technically scale, but only at specific choke
points. The final dungeon is obviously gonna be harder than the rest because you're forced into
it last. It just means that, for whichever of the seven dungeons you choose to tackle near the end,
you'll probably carry on without a care in the world. Thankfully, Hero Mode is an option here,
where enemies do 4x more damage. Hearts do still appear, and paired with the ability to collect a
ton of bottles with potions and fairies, late game can still feel a little too easy for my liking.
It largely fulfills its purpose and makes Ravio a more risky mechanic, even if it isn't as effective
as future Hero Modes would eventually be.
I'm not extremely bothered by its difficulty,
though, because unlike A Link to the Past, the dungeons focus more on puzzle solving and
traversal. I wouldn’t consider any of them a personal favorite, but the fact that they’re all
so consistently solid is pretty rare for this series. The Tower of Hera makes good use of the
hammer to play with multiple floors, and utilizes the wall merging mechanic to explore both the
inside and outside of the tower. One cool thing about the 2.5D perspective is that you get much
more depth than you did in A Link to the Past. Where bottomless pits in that game were solid
colors with deathboxes, A Link Between Worlds makes it feel like you’re constantly looking
over a cliff. As someone who’s afraid of heights, I cringe a little whenever you’re exploring
the outside of a dungeon. They do make for some beautiful landscapes, though. The Ice Ruins look
incredible, and exploring their outskirts is a lot more interesting than simply being in a dank cave.
The Ice Ruins are probably my favorite dungeon in this game. There are some tricky traversal puzzles
on the outskirts, some moments where you have to play with the perspective to light torches above
you, and multiple floor traversal that makes you consider all of the dungeon at once. It’s nothing
extraordinary, but all I really need is one or two moments where I’m a bit lost and I’ll be
satisfied. I think it’s worse to have a bunch of dungeons that don’t test you in any satisfying
way, rather than a full, solid set of dungeons that at least felt thought provoking in some way.
My prime example of this game’s dungeon design is the Swamp Palace. When compared to other water
dungeons, there isn’t nearly as much going on. Previous games forced you to think about how the
water level would affect every single room in the dungeon, meaning that it was easy to get lost
at every turn. Swamp Palace isn’t really like that. You do have to notice what changing the
water level will do to the dungeon as a whole, but there aren’t nearly as many rooms or floors,
and they’re all bunched together in a way that makes it a lot more straightforward to figure out.
However, I also wouldn’t call it an easy dungeon, since I did still have to think about where I
needed the water level to be, and where I had to end up, at various points. It’s certainly more
interesting to me than the Swamp Palace in A Link to the Past, where changing the water level was
used mostly to progress, rather than as a puzzle solving tool. I enjoy that A Link Between Worlds
has a set of dungeons with mechanical personality, and that don’t merely focus on sending waves of
enemies at you. That shit got a little silly near the end of A Link to the Past. Lorule Castle still
has a lot more enemies than usual (it is the final dungeon), but it isn’t just a neverending
gauntlet of them, you have to solve a lot of room puzzles along the way. Lorule Castle is
interesting because it feels like a culmination of every kind of puzzle, enemy, or boss you’ve
completed up to this point. You push statues, navigate dark labyrinths, trick floormasters into
breaking walls, hookshot on a raft to sail around pools of lava: sometimes all of the above at
once. It’s a really solid final dungeon.
The dungeon bosses also feel thematically
relevant. Desert Palace is centered around the Sand Rod, where you create bridges to
navigate higher floors. Since you have to merge with the pillars you create, there always
has to be a safe place for Link to drop off at, and the rod can only create pillars in a
straight line, leading to tricky puzzles. Its boss has you doing that exact same thing:
creating pillars to wall merge your way past holes in the ground and play a game of whack a
mole. It’s easy to accuse dungeon bosses like this of being simple since you’ve already been
using the dungeon item you need to beat them. I understand why that can feel underwhelming, but I
think it really only applies when the actual boss isn’t fun to fight on its own. Like, sure: the
way to beat Dharkstare is to throw fire at him, but he’s also encasing you in weird triangles
that you have to dodge on slippery terrain. Even though you kinda already know how to beat
him, it’s still hard to reach that point, and he gets more aggressive as the fight goes on.
The Gemesaur King is weak to bombs and you need to light torches, but when he turns the room pitch
black and starts sprinting around everywhere, yeah it does feel like a pretty intense fight.
In this way, I feel like A Link Between Worlds maintains the intensity of the boss fights in
A Link to the Past, while also managing to make them fit in with the dungeons they’re at the end
of. After all, the final bosses usually fill the traditional boss role fairly well. Yuga Ganon
is a straight up duel, reminiscent of the Ganon fight in A Link to the Past where you have to
avoid his trident throws and magic. Though, there’s a unique twist with the wall merging
mechanic where you kinda need to shoot him in the back through the cylinder, and I always
thought that was a clever use of the gimmick.
I guess it’s worth discussing the crux of this
game’s progression in more detail, considering it was such a huge deal at the time. After a series
had so thoroughly explored the realm of linearity and tightly focused narratives, returning to the
style of the original Zelda was pretty refreshing. Past Zelda games, of course, had their elements of
exploration through side content like heart pieces and upgrades, but the main stories were rarely,
if ever, deviant. A lot of your exploration would be done outside the context of the main story. In
A Link Between Worlds, you are essentially asked to explore everything at once, with virtually
zero roadblocks. This can affect both a first playthrough and a repeat playthrough
differently. On your first playthrough, the main progression is less a question of where
you have to go, and more a question of where you want to go. It’s a tight balance, since you have
to make everything in the world worth doing for that exploration to feel gratifying on such a
small screen. I think Breath of the Wild gets away with a lot of filler content due to the
size and scope of its world. There is so much wonder packed into every crevice, and you’ll be
spending such an insane amount of time in it, that stumbling across a dud here and there won’t
register as strongly in your mind as it would in A Link Between Worlds, where the size of the
world is comparable to other Zelda releases.
Oddly enough, I think the wall merging mechanic
is a genius way to get more mileage out of the world itself. This is a mechanic that feels
distinct from other Zelda items. They usually feel like a key for a world lock, where you simply
fire an arrow or light a torch to open the way to a secret. Wall merging, though, often asks you
to consider every single interactable wall and where it might lead. There are secrets hidden atop
ledges, or Maimais stuck where the camera wouldn’t usually illuminate, and clever wall merging is the
secret to them all. Since you can technically have every tool at your disposal using Ravio, it loses
that feeling of a metroidvania that past titles championed, and instead is more about charting
your path and remembering points of interest, which you can mark on your map if you like.
It’s a more fundamental shift than you might initially imagine, since it makes the player feel
more like they’re exploring uncharted territory, rather than hunting for a series of locks that
you might be able to exploit later. Neither approach is inherently better than the other, but
I believe the approach of something like A Link Between Worlds fits an open air progression much
better. Again, Breath of the Wild would also give the players all of the necessary tools to explore
the world as they saw fit. However, that game also had a sense of difficulty and adaptive scaling on
its side to create areas that players might save for later, like a coliseum with a particularly
difficult Lynel, or a camp full of high level enemies. A Link Between Worlds, disregarding the
fact that it’s a pretty easy game on the surface, is still built to be like a Zelda of old, so
although there are some tough puzzles here and there, about the only time you’ll be ignoring a
challenge is when you don’t have the correct item from Ravio. Enemies are pretty rudimentary, and
since they scale with your story progress, you’ll be running up against a pretty consistent level
of difficulty no matter where you explore.
When you do revisit the game, though, it becomes
a whole different beast, since you’re allowed to tackle each dungeon in an order that makes sense
to you. You can plan out what items to rent for which stretches of gametime, since you’ll have
that information to work with. You can decide which dungeons you want to tackle first: do
you want to get the risky ones out of the way, or do you want to stockpile a ton of items
and play it safe in the dungeons you know best? I know it sounds kinda silly, but even
just the ability to pick whichever dungeons you want to visit first, coming back to play
this game again for the first time in several years felt like such a fresh experience. Since
that initial playthrough was so unpredictable, so was a revisit later down the line, where
I carved out an entirely new path through the world. In fact, since the scaling isn’t super
in depth, it potentially means that you can make your own difficulty by picking dungeons
that might have been easier to brute force with more heart containers, and do them first on
another playthrough. I would still like to see a more thorough scaling system for future games of
this type, but it’s perhaps an underappreciated byproduct of not having one. Kinda reminds
me of how Pokemon handles its gyms.
I do wonder, in that sense, just how effective its
freeform nature is when compared to Breath of the Wild. A Link Between Worlds, in many ways, is far
more of a compromise than the newest 3D adventure. It builds its story, dungeons, overworld,
and items in basically the exact same way, except it tweaks those past elements to fit in an
open progression. Breath of the Wild completely uprooted the previous formula, leading to
dungeons that were constructed very differently, a completely new way to traverse the world, and
a new set of physics-based items that set it far apart from previous games, to the point where
not all longtime fans were big on the changes. Personally, there are parts of both approaches
that bother me a bit. A Link Between Worlds was very special at release, since it was really the
only game since the first Zelda title that allowed for such a wide degree of freedom, and I’m willing
to bet a lot of its acclaim was based on that long held desire from fans to see a more open Zelda
title. Nowadays, however, I think it’s easier to see that, without a more fundamental shift, you’ll
run into issues trying to balance difficulty in the same way, or even create interesting dungeons.
For as solid as the dungeons are in A Link Between Worlds, their locations are still signposted
by the game, and at the end of the day, they’re recycling the same bag of tricks that Zelda
had been using for years up to that point.
Meanwhile, Breath of the Wild was a game that went
a little too far in some places. In abandoning so many Zelda traditions, there are only a
handful of dungeons, and those dungeons pale in comparison to the best of series past, even
though they try to feel unique in the freeform approach that’s required to solve them. It has
an incredible grasp on freeform puzzle solving, with physics based movement and multiple
approaches to many of its problems. But in an effort to fill out the world, a lot of those
puzzles will be solved in very small increments, and you don’t get that same feeling of conquering
an incredibly tough series of puzzles all at once. One approach feels like a half-step, and the other
feels like a step too far. Both are admirable in the ways they attempted to switch up the formula,
but I feel like a middle ground between them would be ideal. It is refreshing to play A Link Between
Worlds, for as rudimentary as it might feel, it does still feel like Zelda at its core, since
it doesn’t abandon absolutely everything that made the series great. In this sense, A Link Between
Worlds is a solid Zelda title. I had a lot of fun with it, no doubt, but there’s also a little
more going on here, especially when compared to A Link to the Past. The original game is as iconic
as it gets, frankly. It was an influential game, loved by Zelda fans the world over, and has been
cemented as a true classic in the eyes of many. I have my own thoughts on that which I’ve already
expressed, and it’s safe to say not many people were fond of what I had to say. I think maybe, by
praising A Link Between Worlds, I can try to get across what I was saying in that video better.
A Link to the Past was the progenitor of many ideas that the series would expand upon in future
titles. It is a fairly standard Zelda adventure where you’re trying to stop Ganon and hunting
for magical macguffins across Hyrule. In my view, Ocarina of Time was an evolution of this, and
so was Twilight Princess. Ocarina of Time, in my opinion, made each dungeon more memorable
from a mechanical and a visual standpoint. Three dimensions gave Zelda a unique atmosphere that A
Link to the Past never quite managed. It also told a more interesting story. It had themes of growing
up, Ganon took over the world, and you had to stop him in the post apocalypse. It wasn’t without its
own set of extensive problems, but the way I see it, it took what A Link to the Past established
into the next level. Twilight Princess was another step in that line for me, telling a story that is
entirely unique, with a set of dungeons drenched in visual variety and atmosphere, and delivering
a true epic the likes of which A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time could never quite reach. So,
yeah: when I go back to play A Link to the Past, it does feel underwhelming to me. I recognize
that Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess would not exist without A Link to the Past, but that
doesn’t make the game anymore fun to play in a world where it has been outdone, in my opinion.
Isn’t it fun that I have to keep qualifying every single statement I make with (in my opinion) so
no one gets the wrong idea and thinks I’m trying to objectively quantify my opinions on a video
game which, by their very nature, are subjective? *ahem* sorry, it gets to me sometimes.
I feel like the reason it didn’t really go over well is because I was approaching the argument
backwards, which people don’t tend to do. Usually someone will look at a sequel and say “this was
better than the original” which is basically what I was saying, except I approached it from the
angle of “this game isn’t as special anymore because it has been outdone by its sequels.”
If that isn’t an argument you’re fond of, let’s look at it like this. A Link Between Worlds
sets out to do many of the same things A Link to the Past did, but in ways that I find to be far
more effective. The narrative is more intriguing, the game utilizes the dark and light world
concept to get more mileage out of its world and characters, it has a set of visually interesting
and mechanically rich dungeons, and has a lower focus on combat overall, likely due in part to its
lower difficulty. A Link Between Worlds achieves a similar set of goals in a more successful fashion.
Is that a fine thing to assert? Maybe not, who knows. I really don’t have any agenda towards
A Link to the Past, I just think that it was such a solid springboard for the future of the series
to jump off of, that I have very little reason to travel back anymore. While I’m no longer fond
of saying that remakes can replace an original, A Link Between Worlds is such an ambitious
project that it almost transcends into the realm of a reimagining, one that I happen to prefer to
that original, while also acknowledging that it wouldn’t exist without the original. Acknowledging
that it was important, but never lying to anyone and saying that I enjoy playing a game that I
really just don’t have much passion for.
I’m sorry if this video was shorter
than average, but I’ve gotta be honest: I think I’ve just about exhausted this series. I
know I haven’t covered the original or Zelda 2, but I might be done talking about Zelda for
a long while. Near the end of this thing, I kinda realized there are only so many ways
I can talk about the same mechanics without sounding repetitive and like I’ve done this
14 other times, because I kinda have. I dug as deep into this game as I could, but at the end of
the day, many of the dungeons in this series are so similar that I’d just be repeating myself over
and over if I went into them with even more depth. I’ve talked my ear off about every story beat,
item, sidequest, world layout, music, atmosphere: I’ve reached my critical limit with Zelda. I’m not
sick of the series or anything, I’m just sick of writing about it. When Breath of the Wild 2 comes
out, you know I’ll be there to talk about it, but in the meantime: I’m just gonna let the
series rest. I’ve discussed, in depth: A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Wind
Waker, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild, Link’s Awakening, the Oracle games,
Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, and A Link Between Worlds, plus every single
one of their remakes and little bits of Zelda 1 sprinkled in there for good measure. I feel like
I have torn this series apart six ways to Sunday, and I certainly hope you enjoyed my perspective
on a series I absolutely adore. This series is one of many highs and lows, with a metric fuck ton
of ideas I can’t even list in a single script. It has traveled to so many different places that
almost any Zelda game could be someone’s favorite, and for good reason! It is a series that defies
imagination through every one of its iterations. At the end of the day, it’s a series of legends
that won’t all appeal to everyone: but I respect it so damn much for never taking the easy road
and attempting to appeal to everyone. Wii Motion Plus swordplay to spice up combat? A story about
impending death and the meaning of life? An epic adventure with a hint of melancholy? A seafaring
pirate adventure? A time traveling apocalypse? It’s a series that I’ve never been disappointed
by. Even if some titles didn’t resonate as strongly with me, I know that there are millions
of people across the globe who loved it, because there’s a level of passion poured into these
games that defy expectation. It’s a truly wondrous series, one that’s never let me down, one that’s
been with me for my entire life, and one that made the success of this channel a possibility.
I’ll always be here to cover future games, Zelda will always be a part of this channel, but
for now: rest easy, Link. You’ve earned it.
