It’s Time to Save the Princess
Words by Amy Louise
This article contains spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
I’ve been trapped in the Water Temple for months. Located at the pit of a lake, composed of mounds and mounds of stone and filled with a wild assortment of creatures that will bite my face off at any opportunity, I don’t even remember who I am or why I’m here in the first place. To get out, I need to carefully manipulate water levels, raising and draining them in a variety of ways to reveal new nooks and crannies; a secret passage, another spider that wants to kill me, a map, please god a map! I am completely lost, every corridor looks the same, I have iron boots that I’m supposed to wear sometimes but not all of the time and I have no idea what I am supposed to do next. “Alright, fuck this” I say, as I throw my Nintendo 3DS down and immediately google ZeldaDungeon.net for yet another walkthrough.
My first initial experience of The Legend of Zelda came in June 2011 by way of the remastered edition of Ocarina of Time. The Japanese fantasy-adventure series has released 19 games to-date, and is one of Nintendo’s most successful IPs, spawning various spin-offs, books, multiple manga series, an ill-fated American cartoon, and much more. Having never owned any Nintendo consoles besides the portable DS family and the Wii, the Legend of Zelda series and its various iterations were always relatively unknown to me. I was a Super Mario girl through-and-through. I knew enough to avoid the dreaded name flub, “the pretty blonde person is Link, the other pretty blonde person is Zelda”, and was familiar with the relative mechanics of the game, picturing pixelated top down dungeons, a yellow triangle that was important for whatever reason and a “duh duh duh DUHHHHH” when someone opens a treasure chest. However, I had never actually played it so, naturally, I took the first opportunity I could once I got my 3DS.
I googled a walkthrough open after twenty minutes.
As I frantically hopped from puzzle to boss, puzzle to boss, watching my hearts plummet from the barest interaction from the various enemies, I couldn’t help but look at the legions of adoring Zelda fans on the internet and think “damn, seriously, you like this?”. Possessing not a single ounce of logic in my head, every puzzle was a chore. The dungeons, with their sparse save points and endless enemies, were suffocating. More used to game formats that allowed me to save whenever I wanted, I would cry in frustration every time a boss death sent me back to a certain point, which happened countless times because obviously, I was terrible.
It wasn’t like I had any lack of games to play, I had Pokémon, Animal Crossing and an unhealthy Sims addiction. Later that year, The Elder Scrolls VI: Skyrim would be released, and I’d get my high-fantasy kick from yet another avenue - this time one with autosaves, easier boss fights (yes, you read that correctly) and blissfully, no puzzles. However, every few weeks I’d still return to Ocarina of Time to try yet again to finally beat the game.
Why, you ask? Well along the way, as a I hopped through a seamlessly never-ending cycle of dungeon-field-dungeon and got lost in the appropriately-named Lost Woods for about three weeks, I had become very quickly enveloped and obsessed with the main goal of the game, the main goal of nearly every Zelda game in fact. I had to save the titular princess.
The last time I’d seen Zelda, she was being carted away by her bodyguard, Impa, after fleeing the dreaded Ganondorf and his brutal takeover of Hyrule Castle. Desperately, she threw the Ocarina of Time at my feet and that was that, I never saw her again. After that, life comes at you fast (very literally in a game with time travel), the previously 10-year old Link was now 17, and I still needed to save Zelda in whatever way I could.
So as I set out on this arduous quest, I quickly became acquainted with the quirky world of Hyrule. In-between dungeons (me when I discovered I had to find Seven Sages), I bickered with my fairy companion, explored a desolated Hyrule town, assisted a cross-country runner in finding the perfect mask, and raced to win back a ranch for the sake of a kind girl and her father. I got engaged, somehow. I reunited with a long-lost childhood friend who stayed young while I grew and met a mysterious Sheikah warrior who helped me along the way.
Through playing Ocarina of Time, I quickly realised that the Zelda games were not what I expected at all. While still naturally following a “save the princess” narrative, I soon learned that there was more than that, more to Princess Zelda in fact. As a character, she is intelligent, analytical and troubled, bravely holding a kingdom on her shoulders and accepting her fate as wielder of the triforce of wisdom with a level of grace and bravery beyond her years. In The Legend of Zelda series, while Link certainly supplies the brute force and strength to get the job done, you always feel like you are helping Zelda, rather than just saving her. The triforce has three-parts after all, and it needs all three to work. Link is but a cog in the wheel that is the endless battle against Ganon.
February 2012, I finally defeated Ganondorf and finished Ocarina of Time. Sometimes confusing, always complicated, to this day, I still consider it to be my finest gaming achievement. The ending is bittersweet, as Zelda bids farewell to Link and sends him back to his original time, but gratifying, truly feeling like the culmination of a grand adventure, which I suppose it was. Since then, The Legend of Zelda has held a special place in my heart. I’ve since played more games from the series, abandoning each in frustration multiple times, but I’m getting better at puzzles and boss fights, and I’d like to think the series has a part to play in that. 2017’s Breath of the Wild controversially abandoned the long, complicated dungeons in favour of smaller puzzles that you could walk away from at any time. Whether or not that stays for future titles remains to be seen. Either way, I’m excited to see what adventures our Hero and Princess get up to next.
