By John (@Crono_Maniac)
The Games We Played is a year end round up of thoughts about games we spent time with.
When you put it into the context of the series as a whole, the original Legend of Zelda was something of an anomaly. From A Link to the Past onwards, the games were all interested in telling rich stories, full of intrigue, characters, mysteries, and climactic battles. The Hyrule in the first game feels almost barren in comparison. There aren’t really other characters or even a plot. It’s nothing but you, the monsters, and the mystery of the open wilderness.
The real story of The Legend of Zelda is the unfolding sense of darkness as you delve deeper into its world. It starts you off in a wide open and safe space with lots of room to maneuver. You explore and happen upon the early dungeons, which are all tightly-paced, simple challenges. But as you collect more items and upgrades, the world broadens into more frightening locales. The dungeons grow more claustrophobic and confusing. The enemies grow more lethal. But you always retreat back to the safety of the overworld, with its unenclosed spaces and relatively harmless enemies. It’s this contrast between the relaxed overworld and the taxing dungeons that gives the game its dramatic rhythm. It’s what differentiates the shape of The Legend of Zelda from the straightforward crescendo of Super Mario Bros.
The first Zelda is a taxing game, perhaps too taxing. A Link to the Past made the series much more accessible by downplaying the combat and making dungeons more puzzle-y. Later Zelda games would follow in A Link to the Past’s footsteps, often times to great effect, but in the process Zelda became something very different. The first game still has a unique appeal, one that was only really expounded upon in its immediate sequel.
For better or for worse, Zelda II feels the most like a true successor to The Legend of Zelda. It explores many of same ideas, but it’s more grown-up. The world is larger in scale, with different islands to explore and plenty of people to talk to. The dungeons are scarier and more closed-in thanks to the new perspective; instead of exploring flat planes like in first game, Zelda II sends you deep, deep underground. Even the music feels shaky and unstable, thanks to its constant use of vibrato.
Like its predecessor, Zelda II starts the player off in complete safety. After leaving the first palace, you can walk all the way to the first town without encountering a single enemy, as long as you stay on the road. The second you step into the grass or the woods, you’re instantly hounded by Ganon’s minions. It’s a shocking moment when it first happens, and you learn to rely on the roads when your health is dangerously low. Zelda II is a tough game, and the roads are one of its few havens of safety.
Your other sources of refuge are the towns. They have healers who can recharge your health and magic for free. They have magicians who share powerful new spells with you. And they have a number of citizens roaming around dispensing hints and flavor text. There are no monsters, just valuable tools and secrets. Again, in a rough game like Zelda II, it’s nice to have all of these little sanctuaries. The dungeons are immense and challenging, so pairing them with these relaxed areas gives the game a more interesting shape.
Like the roads, the towns start out as a safe haven from attack, and like the roads, this is no longer true by the journey’s end. The road eventually betrays you, revealing traps that take you to lengthy enemy encounters. Shortly afterwards you reach the abandoned town of Kasuto. You see its demolished buildings swarming with Ganon’s flying monsters.
After conquering the traps in the road, the secrets of Kasuto, the last of the six main dungeons, and a brutal gauntlet of caves and countless enemies, you arrive at the Great Palace. It’s the last dungeon of the game, and like Death Mountain in The Legend of Zelda, it’s the most taxing of them all. It’s baffling, huge, and filled to the brim with vicious creatures. And unlike the previous dungeons, receiving a game over doesn’t send you all the way back to Zelda’s palace. Instead it just plops you back at the beginning of the level. This is convenient of course, but it also means there’s absolutely no release in tension – once you arrive at The Great Palace, there’s no reason to leave until you’ve overcome it.
The story of the first game is its encroaching sense of darkness as navigation becomes more complex and combat becomes more challenging. Zelda II tells the same story, but expands its scope. It adds the towns and the roads that contrast with the darkness of the dungeons, and having those safe spaces torn away makes the darkness feel that much stronger. And at the very end, after all of those challenges, you don’t strike down an evil pig demon with a silver arror or battle a wicked sorcerer. You fight your own shadow. The final herald of darkness comes not from without, but from within.
Zelda II is very fun to play. Its sprawling dungeons are filled with intense, brilliantly-staged combat encounters, and its overworld is filled with fascinating little mysteries and puzzles and intrigue. More than that though, it’s a thoughtfully crafted story, one that examines and expounds upon the ideas of its predecessor. Many of the Zelda games are in essence about growing up, and its arguable that Zelda II is where this theme was truly codified.
I find myself thinking about the story to the fourth Zelda game, Link’s Awakening. The beginning drops you into a pleasant little fantasy world, an island named Koholint, and surrounds you with endearing characters. You go to the beach on a date with a girl named Marin. You stare out into the ocean with her. She wonders what’s out beyond the ocean, and wishes she were a seagull so she could fly far far away and see for herself.
The game shares its “twist” early on: Koholint isn’t real. It really is just a pleasant little fantasy, a simple dream. And yet it makes you fall in love with its characters anyway. You keep fighting through dungeons and exploring the island, until you finally confront the darkness at the heart of Koholint. Then the only thing that can happen happens: you wake up, and all of it disappears. You leave the fantasy and you’re alone in the ocean.
There are glimpses of an ocean in a few areas of the first Zelda. But in Zelda II we explore all of Hyrule, and the oceans stretch out to the edge of the screen.