“The Legend of Celda”: Critical Analysis of The Wind Waker’s Art Style and Philosophy (Conclusion: On Happiness and Hope)

This concludes my 4-part series on The Wind Waker. A quick warning: this article is a bit on the heavy side, as it’s very personal. Please keep this in mind. Thank you for reading. 

The Wind Waker is not a game about happiness.

Even with these last three articles trying to prove this statement true, I’m sure there are readers who disagree with it, because as many who have played The Wind Waker have mentioned in other articles scattered across the internet, The Wind Waker‘s spirit has made players happy.

I am also sure that there are those reading this who wonder why I have gone to such great lengths to prove this statement. The answer lies not only in my own fascination with the graphical style and how it expresses the themes of the game, but also in my own experience with The Wind Waker. 

Indeed, I must agree with those who have written personal essays on this game. The Wind Waker made me happy, too — or, in more specific terms, The Wind Waker saved my life.

~

I had never quite thought of suicide in the sense that I wanted to commit it. However, stuck in rock bottom with seemingly no way out of it other than to finish my 6th grade year and move out of the school I was in that made my life into one that I had no desire to live, I grew completely apathetic to the thought of staying on this earth. I can honestly say that even at the young age of 11, I knew that if life had thrown a curveball that hit my chest and stopped my heart from beating, I would not have even cared. I had no intention of ending my own life, but if life had intended to give up on me completely, I wouldn’t have even wondered why. As tragic as it is even now to think of, in 6th grade, I had nothing left to live for.

One day, I asked a friend out of the blue if I could borrow The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. I had no idea where this notion came from or what the title in question was about. I just knew that I wanted to play it suddenly.

3 months later, any suicide notes I had mentally written were erased from memory in favor of memorizing all the Wind Waker baton melodies. I used a burned CD and an old clock radio to wake me up to the rousing notes of “Journey” (the track that plays right as Link sets off with the pirates at the beginning of the game), and every walk home from school contained a song from the Wind Waker official soundtrack. I grew totally attached to each character: they were my best friends. I played violin as much as I could so one day I could be the next Makar. I loved it all. The Wind Waker did not help me “escape reality.” The Wind Waker became my life.

At the very least, it was one worth living.

2 years later, I had not passed the Earth Temple because I thought I lost Medli back in 6th grade. The very friend I had borrowed the game from two years previously did the honors, completing both the Earth and Wind temples for me in a day and giving me the opportunity to finally finish the title. My life had changed within two years, with on-and-off battles with depression and disappointment causing my road to be a bit rocky still. Knowing I needed this more than anything, I completed the game two months later, at the end of my 8th grade year.

To this day, I have not cried as hard as I did on June 10, 2011.

Once the credits rolled and I watched the wind guide Link and Tetra towards brighter horizons, I felt heartbroken and, if I may, a bit dead inside. I realized the wind was not behind me anymore. It was over, and I did not feel happy. I was not relieved in any way. I loved The Wind Waker for what it did to me, but its reign on my life ended there, and I knew it could never quite “love me” the way I did. It could not make me truly happy, and even though I tried as hard as I could, I could not move on.

~

The Wind Waker is not a game about happiness.

The Great Sea is hopeless, holding nothing for its inhabitants, whether Rito, Hylian, or human. It is not only a hostile environment, full of monsters of every shape and size, but a barren one. It is uncaring and unloving.

The cel-shading helps mask the true nature of the world, giving it a nice, bright look even when everything is everything but.

But why? Why does it lie to us? Why are we forced to perceive the world in such a light when this light completely contrasts it?

~

I felt lied to by this game until May 12, 2013.

It was the first time since June 10 that I had picked up The Wind Waker and played it again. It was two years later still, and I was in the same rut I had been in before, racked with disappointment and unhappiness.

Then I played the ending again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v10lERDBCI

“I want you to live for the future. There may be nothing left for you… But despite that, you must look forward and walk a path of hope, trusting that it will sustain you when darkness comes.”

It was a quote I had memorized a few months before, but my feelings on the game had not changed then. I still felt cheated, betrayed, like I had returned to the water’s surface from Hyrule and left to drown out in The Great Sea instead.

But as I listened to the King speak to me one more time, for the first time since the 10th of June, 2011, I realized the true intention of his words.

I finally felt the wind on my back again.

~

The Wind Waker is not a game about happiness.

The Wind Waker is about hope.

The graphical style of The Wind Waker does not lie to us. It moves us forward. It helps us realize that even in this wasteland, even in a place where there is nothing there for us, we can have hope in the form of bright colors and whimsical gusts of wind that, with the help of our baton, will always be behind us. Without the spirit of adventure we feel sailing along the barren, dangerous waters, we would have no reason to hold our tillers steady. If we saw The Great Sea through negative lenses, we would believe wholeheartedly that it holds no promise. The sun coming up over a non-cel-shaded horizon would mean nothing to us, the stars in the sky completely worthless.

The Wind Waker is a game about optimism. The Wind Waker is a game about looking forward.

“There may be nothing left for you…”

The Wind Waker is not about happiness. It cannot be about happiness: it is too realistic, too human to entertain the notion that happiness will always be in the air.

“…but despite that, you must look forward and walk a path of hope…”

Instead, The Wind Waker reminds us that even when happiness is nowhere to be found, even when darkness comes, we must look forward to seeing that sun rise. We must look forward and sail across the sea understanding that past every monster, there is a beautiful island just waiting to be explored.

“…trusting that it will sustain you when darkness comes.”

We must let the wind guide us, and we must always have hope.

~

Fin.

 

“The Legend of Celda”: Critical Analysis of The Wind Waker’s Art Style and Philosophy (Part III: Themes and Philosophy of The Wind Waker)

Thank you for putting up with my busy schedule. I just finished planning some big future things. This article is a long one though, and covers most of what I wanted to cover within this article series. Don’t tl;dr this one!

“Is The Wind Waker a happy game?”

On a personal level, part of why I long for these articles to be widespread is to show gamers that The Wind Waker is not as joyous as it may seem on the surface, but through exploring the themes and the messages found within, they may find that its tale is much deeper than even The Great Sea itself. In preparation for this article and the next, I would like to define “theme” and “philosophy” in this context.

The “themes” found in The Wind Waker are the core emotional elements of the game. These are brought to life through the dialogue and all other aspects of the game’s design that this article series analyzes, such as setting, graphical styles, and the characters. Because the themes are found in every piece of the game, they make up The Wind Waker as we know it and see it (or not), adding depth and layers to these design elements. They may not be keywords such as “sadness” or “adventure,” instead opting to be more abstract concepts. “Message” may be used interchangeably with or alongside the term “theme” for emphasis.

The “philosophy” of The Wind Waker is the overall message of the game when every theme is taken into consideration and mixed together. If the themes of the game are the foundational aspects of it, then the philosophy of the game is the game itself when all the themes and design elements are smashed together. To understand the “philosophy” of the game, the themes must be identified, and the philosophy of the game may be more easily defined in objective terms.

In short, the themes are the basic emotional elements that define most of the design aspects of the game, and the philosophy is the game’s overall message created using the themes found within.

~

It would be easy to list out plot points and point to “themes” like in a literary analysis. It would be easy to give specific examples of “bad things happening to the protagonist” in order to prove that The Wind Waker is not as happy as it seems.

For example, the reason Link sets off on this adventure across The Great Sea is because his sister was kidnapped by Ganondorf. From there, he is faced with numerous challenges and tests fitting a hero’s journey (such as getting the pearls by assisting the three spirits to open up the Tower of the Gods, rescuing his sister and awakening the Master Sword…), and must eventually kill Ganondorf to put Hyrule to rest forever.

But doing so would be undermining the importance of the more abstract “themes” found in design decisions. After all, the themes of the game manifest themselves in other ways.

It would be hard to argue against the fact that the cel-shaded graphics define the world and everyone we meet within it. The style makes The Wind Waker‘s surroundings inherently brighter, more colorful and vivid, and gives every location and character we meet more personality. The Great Sea is not an exception to this rule. With the cel-shading in place, The Great Sea is given an extra layer of personality, making sailing not just an exciting venture, but a “happy” one as well. When it is argued that The Wind Waker is a “happy game,” the graphical style is usually the reason cited, as it is the element that adds a happier aesthetic experience.

Yet the graphical style clashes with some of the game’s other main themes. The Great Sea is a wasteland, as previously established, but becomes something of a different nature through the cel-shading. One would be hard-pressed to immediately label The Great Sea as a wasteland with colors so bright and full of life — that is, until The Great Sea becomes cursed.

The Great Sea becoming cursed is the first time we are faced with the true colors of the world at large. The conversation the King of Red Lions and Jabun have supports the theory that The Great Sea and all its inhabitants are not safe anymore. Threatened by Ganondorf’s presence, the nature of the wasteland becomes apparent. We as players then realize that the road ahead will be much more perilous than we first suspected, as what we initially believed to be our goal (saving our sister) has expanded to saving the entire world as we know it.

From this moment onward, we are faced with challenges and realities greater than those seen at the beginning of our great journey. A feeling of dread superimposes many of our tasks after the encounter with Jabun as we realize that this world is not as perfect as we deemed it to be initially. Every major character feels this in the air, with even the all-powerful Valoo, after burning Ganondorf’s room in the Forsaken Fortress to a crisp, stating that Ganondorf will not be defeated “by such simple means as wrath and fire.”

The themes of the game take a dark turn after this point. We become aware of our grandmother, literally sick with worry for her two grandchildren. We go back to Windfall and learn of Mila and her father’s monetary situation. We find the Koroks and their trees, unable to grow. The world quickly loses the childlike innocence that we felt before fear settled into our hearts, a fear spawned from the prospect of a dark future brought upon by Ganondorf’s hand.

But if all of this is to be believed, why did the color of the land come back? Why has the wasteland’s facade returned when we know now that it holds nothing for us, and every character in this game understands that we are running out of time until it will be too late to wipe Ganonorf from this flooded land?

Do these design choices this mean anything at all?

Part 4.

“The Legend of Celda”: Critical Analysis of The Wind Waker’s Art Style and Philosophy (Part II: The Overworld and Atmosphere)

Warning: From here on out, this article series will contain major spoilers throughout. If you haven’t finished The Wind Waker, read at your own risk!

~

In order for me to analyze the overworld of The Wind Waker, the origins of it need to be established.

“None remain who know,” the prologue says of the ancient land of Hyrule, the people of which could not fight back against Ganon’s onslaught of evil. From the mouth of King Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule himself at a later point in the game, we hear the following:

Once, long ago, this land of Hyrule was turned 
into a world of shadows by Ganon, who sought to obtain the power of the gods 
for his own evil ends. My power alone could not stop the fiend, and our only 
choice was to leave the fate of the kingdom in the hands of the gods... When 
the gods heard our pleas, they chose to seal away not only Ganon, but Hyrule 
itself... and so, with a torrential downpour of rains from the heavens... Our 
fair kingdom was soon buried beneath the waves, forgotten at the bottom of the 
ocean. Yet all was not lost. For the gods knew that to seal away the people 
with the kingdom would be to grant Ganon's wish for the destruction of the 
land. So, before the sealing of the kingdom, the gods chose those who would 
build a new country and commanded them to take refuge on the mountaintops. 
Those people were your ancestors. Hundreds of years have passed since then... 
So long as Ganondorf was not revived, Hyrule would remained below never waking 
from its slumber.

In short, Hyrule could do nothing but pray for divine intervention, which came in the form of severe flooding. The gods let the highest peaks of Hyrule become islands for the people to rebuild their lives upon, and the flood created a body of water known as The Great Sea.

~

The Wind Waker takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

The word “wasteland” commonly evokes images of areas that are desolate, bleak, and barren: places that are not used by anyone, and cannot foster any more life.

Wastelands, by definition, hold nothing for anyone or anything.

We have seen wastelands in other video games and forms of fiction. Often, we see post-apocalyptic wastelands. The apocalypses causing these wastelands to form vary from zombies to nuclear fallouts, but the wastelands typically have common themes: dystopian societies, war-torn environments, dark clouds and hellish-looking landscapes. Clearly, they hold nothing for the survivors of whatever catastrophe created it.

And clearly, one of these things is not like the other.

However, as we look closer at The Great Sea, we begin to notice how it falls under the definition of the word “wasteland,” and how it contrasts with the tone of the game – at least on the surface.

~

From a design perspective, The Great Sea is perfect in giving players a great big sandbox (or, in this case, maybe a swimming pool) to explore. While lacking the “do whatever” traits of a traditional sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto, the vast overworld gives The Wind Waker the element of open exploration that many adventure games implement. Sea monsters and cyclones populate the high seas, and with the acquirement of bombs come intense battles between you and AI ships. The Great Sea also contains 49 islands chock full of treasure, mini-dungeons, and hack-n’-slash style challenges. To argue that this overworld is a wasteland – that is, it holds absolutely nothing – is tough.

Likewise, as many players attest, the unrestricted exploration creates a spirit of adventure. It’s also hard to argue that The Great Sea is a wasteland when the atmosphere is so blatantly bright and buoyant. This adventurous, optimistic tone also works perfectly with the cel shaded setting. With the whimsical style, sailing on across the high seas reinforces all of these emotions. In general, there’s nothing necessarily depressing or bleak about sailing in The Wind Waker from a conceptual, emotional perspective.

But why? What is significant about having a wasteland evoke optimistic feelings through the art style and overall adventurous atmosphere? Does it serve a purpose at all in respect to the story or theme?

These questions will begin to be answered in my next section, where we’ll sail into even deeper waters and explore the overarching themes of The Wind Waker!

Click here for part 3!

“The Legend of Celda”: Critical Analysis of The Wind Waker’s Art Style and Philosophy (Part I: Introduction)

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker has a history of intense controversy based on one of the more shallow topics one can argue about in the video game world: the graphics.

It all started at SpaceWorld 2000, a Nintendo game expo in Japan, where a Gamecube tech demo was released featuring Link and Ganondorf.

Though short, fans went crazy analyzing the video and were blown away by the technical power of the upcoming system. Nintendo made it very clear that the realistic graphical style and specific models were only used for the purposes of showing off, but fans at the time were absolutely convinced that this would be the new direction for Zelda games, and started drafting up ideas and spreading rumors about the new “Zelda GC.”

Fans were so adamant that “Zelda GC” was what they hoped and dreamed it would be that when SpaceWorld 2001 came around, they were expecting game details. The storyline and premise of the game were on fans’ minds, forgetting that the graphical style was not set in stone.

This proved to be rather problematic.

From the fans’ points of view, it was a slap in the face of epic proportions. The traditional 3D graphical style that Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask implemented was cut completely, and in its place Nintendo set what everyone believed to be one of the most childish styles possible thanks to cel shading and ridiculously cartoony facial expressions. Fans fostered so much hatred for the new look that describing the fans as “outraged” felt like an understatement.

The juvenile approach the trailer used can almost justify the reactions of the Zelda fans. Even with Shigeru Miyamoto reassuring everyone that the graphical style did not reflect the puerility within the actual game and that players will “really come to understand why [Nintendo] went with this graphic style,” the many months following the trailer were full of more complaints and fake rumors, most of which were simply wishful thinking on the perpetrators’ parts.

During the summer of 2002, more official statements came out, especially thanks in part to the year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, also known as E3.

The trailer was much more refined, and used a slightly less juvenile approach that many fans applauded literally and figuratively. For the next year, with the release date crawling ever closer, the talk of the fandom gradually turned away from arguments on the game’s graphics to slightly more important gameplay issues such as item usage and where the game itself would fall on the Zelda timeline.

In a sense, the fans’ arguments became less juvenile as they warmed up to the idea of the graphical overhaul. Shigeru Miyamoto’s words stating that the graphical style will be more of an afterthought came true for most fans.

Yet Shigeru Miyamoto’s interview regarding The Wind Waker shed some light on some other aspects of the game. “The more you play the game, the more you get sucked into the graphic style, kind of forgetting about it,” he claims. Miyamoto may be reassuring players that the graphical style may become less jarring or different, but taking his words literally, I have come to a different conclusion.

In this series of articles, I will be exploring the graphical style, themes, and philosophy of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and how they all work together to create an extraordinary narrative and gaming experience like no other. Join me next time for my first analytic piece, where I critically analyze and contrast the atmosphere of the overworld and undertones of The Wind Waker.

For now, happy sailing!

~

Click here for part 2!

Helpful sources:
http://www.zeldauniverse.net/zelda/tww-development-history/
http://nintendoenthusiast.com/forums/discussion/778/understanding-wind-wakers-controversy/p1
http://www.ign.com/articles/2002/12/04/miyamoto-and-aonuma-on-zelda?page=3
http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/08/24/zelda-on-gamecube