The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is a 2002 action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube, the tenth main installment of The Legend of Zelda series and the first entry on the GameCube.¹³¹¹ It was released in Japan on December 13, 2002, in North America on March 24, 2003, in South Korea on April 16, 2003, in Europe on May 2, 2003, and in Australia on May 7, 2003.¹³ The Japanese version is titled The Legend of Zelda: Baton of Wind.¹³

The game places the player in the role of Link, a boy from a tiny island on a vast ocean whose sister, Aryll, is kidnapped by a monstrous bird moments into the story, setting off a quest to rescue her and eventually confront a returning evil.¹¹¹⁸ Link is aided by a talking sailboat, the King of Red Lions, who guides his voyage across the Great Sea while pursuing an ulterior purpose of its own.¹¹¹⁵ He falls in with a band of pirates led by Tetra, whose ship had chased the bird that abducted his sister.¹¹¹ In a rescue attempt Link nearly drowns after falling into the Great Sea before the King of Red Lions rescues him and sets him on his quest.¹⁵

Setting and story

The Wind Waker is an indirect sequel to Ocarina of Time, set several hundred years after the events of the Nintendo 64 installments.¹³ Director Eiji Aonuma stated the game takes place 100 years after Ocarina of Time, and that its opening explains some of that earlier game’s events.⁸ The world is a flooded ruin of the kingdom of Hyrule, submerged by the gods in a cataclysm after Ganon escaped his imprisonment and no hero appeared to stop him; the survivors cling to scattered islands and the ocean itself.¹²¹⁵ It occupies the branch of the series known as the “Adult Timeline,” in which Link vanishes after Ocarina of Time and Ganon seizes Hyrule, prompting the gods to submerge the kingdom to keep part of the Triforce beyond his reach.¹⁵²⁴ The game’s manual frames this in legend, telling of a “Hero of Time” who once sealed away a great evil, and of a day when “a fell wind” brought that evil forth again while no hero came.¹ On one island it became customary to clothe boys in green when they come of age, in emulation of the hero of legend.¹ Aonuma has said that, in his view, every Zelda game features a new Link, “a new hero named Link” who rises to fight evil.⁸

Gameplay

The game is an action-adventure in which a monstrous ocean, the Great Sea, serves as the overworld, dotted with dozens of islands to explore and dungeons to conquer.¹¹ Link is given a ship early on together with the ability to control the wind, allowing free exploration of the open ocean.¹¹ Its central item, the Wind Waker, is a conductor’s baton that controls the winds through musical commands.¹⁸²¹ The Great Sea is charted across 49 puzzle-filled islands, with watchtowers, mini-games, and minor dungeons breaking up the sailing.¹⁷¹⁴ Once the ability to warp is acquired travel quickens, though a good deal of sailing remains.¹⁴

There are roughly seven main dungeons, filled with puzzles, enemies, and boss fights that blend platforming, combat, and stealth.¹¹ Reviewers ranged over haunted forests, spewing volcanoes, and a tower themed after classical Greece, and later dungeons let the player switch between two characters.¹¹ Combat introduced a new parry attack and combo moves, with successful strikes accompanied by musical cues; reviewers judged the fighting among the best in the series.¹⁴¹¹ Weapons such as the Deku Leaf can disarm enemies and steal items, hearts, and rupees, which may be traded for upgrades.¹⁴ Many key items lie outside the traditional dungeon structures, obtained through island quests requiring sleuthing and eavesdropping.¹¹ The original GameCube version supported Game Boy Advance connectivity: freeing the character Tingle grants the “Tingle Tuner,” letting a second player assist by bombing areas, uncovering secrets, and supplying items, hints, maps, and story updates.¹⁴

Aonuma’s team, rushing the game toward release, cut two planned dungeons and replaced them with a hunt for Triforce shards that required finding and translating eight charts, paying Tingle 201 Rupees per translation.⁵⁹ Aonuma later said the cut dungeons’ features were folded into later titles’ dungeons and no longer exist as standalone areas.⁵ A completionist run pursuing side quests, heart pieces, and treasure could exceed 70 hours.¹⁴

Development and reception

Development began after Majora’s Mask, once Nintendo knew the GameCube would be its next platform, and the game was completed in about two and a half years from scratch with entirely new graphics and gameplay.⁸ Shigeru Miyamoto, who had directed earlier entries, served as producer while Aonuma directed.⁴ Aonuma said the decision to set the game on an ocean drove the wind-and-sailing concept, since a sailboat was the natural way to travel the sea, and Miyamoto noted that expressing wind visually had been a long-held ambition finally realized on GameCube hardware.⁸ Miyamoto also credited the disc medium’s storage with giving characters far richer animation, each with independent AI, than had been possible on cartridges.⁸

At Space World 2000, Nintendo showed a realistic-looking demo of Link facing Ganondorf in the style of Ocarina of Time, which fans took to signal a “mature” Zelda.¹²²⁰ The demo was only a technical demonstration and never an announced product.¹²²⁰ When the actual game was unveiled at Space World 2001 with cartoonish, cel-shaded visuals, fans reacted with hostility, derisively dubbing it “Celda”.¹²²⁰ The Wind Waker was the first game in the series to use cel-shading, a technique giving it a cartoon-like appearance.¹³ Aonuma himself disliked the earlier realistic demo, saying “this isn’t Zelda at all,” and he later argued the stylistic change was a good turning point that helped the game endure.⁵ Miyamoto said he was “startled by the response we got from the press” and disputed that Nintendo was aiming the series only at children.¹²

Critical reception was strong: on Metacritic the GameCube version holds a Metascore of 96 based on 80 critic reviews, and it received a perfect 40/40 from Weekly Famitsu, only the fourth game to earn that score.¹⁹²⁰ Eurogamer called it “simply a stunning, magical game,” and Nintendo World Report’s reviewer, after more than 70 hours across the Japanese and U.S. versions, judged it one of the finest Zelda games, challenging Ocarina of Time for the best in the series.¹⁹¹⁴ It became the fourth best-selling GameCube game of all time, with pre-orders boosted by a bonus disc containing Ocarina of Time and its Master Quest, an altered port with redesigned, more difficult dungeons.¹³ A direct sequel, Phantom Hourglass?, followed on the Nintendo DS? in 2007.¹³

An enhanced remaster, The Wind Waker HD, was announced during a Nintendo Direct on January 23, 2013, and released for the Wii U.¹³ It upgraded the visuals to 1080p with new lighting, added off-screen play and a drag-and-drop interface via the Wii U GamePad, introduced a “swift sail” that speeds ocean travel regardless of wind direction, added a Hero Mode in which enemies hit harder and health regenerates only through potions, and streamlined the Triforce hunt so that five shards could be obtained directly.³⁹ The Tingle Tuner was replaced by a “Tingle Bottle” tied to Nintendo’s Miiverse service, and the Picto Box camera could take self-portraits shareable online.⁹¹⁵ Polygon called the HD version “the definitive version of a modern classic”.³ The original GameCube version was later made playable through the Nintendo Switch Online Expansion Pack on Nintendo Switch 2.²⁰¹⁷

Wii U - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD Launch TrailerNintendo of America

Later designers have cited the game as an influence; Respawn’s Stig Asmussen said The Wind Waker was an inspiration for Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order?.²²