The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [52]
Until recently, the die-hard Zelda fan base was firmly split into two opposing camps concerning the relationship between different games in the series. On the one side were those who felt that all the stories in the Zelda universe could be treated as taking place in a single linear timeline and on the other side were those who felt that the conclusion to Ocarina of Time split the timeline into two parallel tracks, one following from the “adult ending” and one following from the “child ending.” Both sides of the issue produced elaborate explanations of how the different games fit together by drawing up various bits of evidence from within the games, and from comments by developers.
The battle between the “splitists” and “linearists” was fierce until it was finally laid to rest by an interview comment from director Eiji Aonuma in the December 2006 issue of Japan’s Nintendo Dream Magazine. In the interview, Aonuma states that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess story lines should be seen as taking place in parallel worlds branching out of the time traveling ending of Ocarina of Time. Fan reaction to the interview was intense, and though many fans questioned the quality of the translation for the interview or even the authority of Aonuma, in the end, group opinion came around, and now the split timeline is widely (if grudgingly) accepted as the consensus view of the history of the Zelda universe.
This debate raises several interesting questions. Why do fans expect that the games of the Legend of Zelda series can be placed into any kind of unified framework at all? Why are fans driven to make complex charts explaining how they see the various games linking up? Why do they scour in-game text and developer interviews for clues about the relationship between the games? Can it be that by going to these elaborate lengths, Zelda fans have created a new game on top of the Zelda series that is filled with puzzles almost as rich and complex as those found in the games themselves?
Why Should We Think the Zelda Games Can Be Linked Anyway?
Before thinking about how the games should be linked, let’s note that there are numerous problems with supposing that there even is a coherent interpretation of the Zelda universe out there for us to find.
To begin with, if we’re to take the series seriously as a story there are a lot of plot holes to which we must turn a blind eye.
• How do the towns and villages in Hyrule support themselves economically with so few people in them?
• How does the Hylian royal family manage to live in a castle that apparently lacks toilets? (Perhaps the toilets are revealed by a lighting of torches in a particular pattern?)
• Why do all the keys in Hyrule seem to break after one use?
• Where do monsters’ carcasses go after they are slain, and why do they often leave behind bombs, arrows, or rupees?
• Why do Ganon’s evil minions always arrange their dungeons in order of increasing difficulty and so that earlier dungeons can be beaten without the specialized tools found in later dungeons?
• Who hides the rupees in the grass?
• How do heart pieces work? (It would be a powerful medical technology if it could be adapted to our world!)
• Can the non-playable characters in the game hear Link saying things, or do they just not find his near constant silence bizarre?
And on and on goes the list of points where suspension of disbelief comes into play …
However, those questions about the series aren’t actually all that bad as far as understanding the stories goes. An audience will accept fantastical, impossible details like talking animals or enchanted objects in a story, so long as the story has a consistent internal logic describing the way that the world of the story works, even if that logic is quite removed