Zelda is an institution and it’s gone through quite a few changes over the years. In 2002, Nintendo released The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. The game was great. It had loads of personality, an interesting setting, and a few fun dungeons. But it was pretty cartoony-looking. The game utilized a cel-shaded rendering style and deformed character models. People hated it. Hardcore gamers didn’t want to play this kiddie-game, they wanted a mature game where Link struts about swinging his man-dong around and maybe he could shoot some people and jack nearby cars too. And so, fuming from the negative reception, Miyamoto and company went back into the lab to create the most realistic-looking, mature Zelda ever. And at the turn of the Wii’s launch, what popped out was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
The Legend Continues
Twilight Princess is set in the land of Hyrule, where farm-boy Link is enjoying a life of herding cattle and throwing eagles at beehives. But one day, some bokoblins raid the village, knock Link out, and steal all his village friends. After waking up, he tries to follow the assailants but ends up running into a sinister-looking wall and being pulled into the Twilight Realm. And also he turns into a wolf. You then meet a little imp creature named Midna who decides to offer a little give-and-take; she’ll help you get back to normal and find your friends. But in return, you have to go around and collect some maguffins for her in order to take out Zant, this shitter who’s causing the Twilight Realm to spill over into the real world and who’s generally a pretty nasty dude. The story takes quite a few turns from there, but this initial premise is compelling enough. The game gives you enough time to start to care about the villagers and experience the calm before the storm. This helps you become more invested when the story starts to twist around later.
A lot has been made about Twilight Princess being too “safe” for a Zelda title, and there’s an argument there to be made. You’re back in Hyrule, for one. And once on your journey, you do go to a forest temple, a volcano temple, and a water temple. It’s retracing a lot of the same steps that Ocarina of Time laid down years ago and I don’t think the game is trying to hide that. You even start the game out in a treehouse for Chrissake. So while the framework of Twilight Princess isn’t anything too innovative, the game takes an old concept and looks at it a different way. Because while Ocarina of Time had themes of growing up, responsibility, and perseverance, Twilight Princess is keen to show you a hopeful situation and then kick you in the gut for thinking the real world worked like that, snowflake.
More Grimm Than Disney
The tone of Twilight Princess is one that really gets you in your feelings if you sit and think about it for too long. Everything, from the color scheme to the side plots, is made to beat you down. This Hyrule is one that’s built on regret and fear. You’ll meet many characters who are struggling with situations that they think are hopeless. There’s a Zora prince grieving over his mother’s death and dreading his sudden ascendance to the throne. There’s a Goron stuck with an unsuccessful business, who spends his time sulking in isolation instead of with his son. Some of these characters overcome these trials. Others don’t. When it comes to emotional Zelda titles, Majora’s Mask usually gets the spotlight over all other games. But while everything is dead, dying, or about to die in that game, the main theme is hope. Everyone struggles forward to live and enjoy their time, however fleeting. The stakes in Twilight Princess aren’t as outwardly high as something like Majora’s Mask but the interpersonal drama is much more real. Characters frequently struggle forward and still fail. Emotions really get the better of quite a few characters and most simply continue on, without a big redemption arc. There are very few characters who escape from this story without a few scars. And after the gut-punch Nintendo decided to call an ending, it’s questionable whether or not all characters involved are better off.
Every Zelda title has an assistant character. Whether it’s Ocarina of Time’s Navi or Skyward Sword’s Fi, you always have someone close by you can chat with. But the thing is, most people hate these characters. They’re annoying, constantly chirping away about a new type of seed you picked up or buzzing around you like a lonely gnat. Midna is different. She’s a deeply complex character who you’ll have plenty of conflicting thoughts about during your adventure. She’ll change and learn and grow all throughout your journey, but it doesn’t come off as cheesy because, by the end of the game, she’s still susceptible to the same flaws she started out with. Character development in Twilight Princess isn’t a linear line with a goal at the end; it stretches and wavers and sometimes doesn’t end in a satisfying way. Twilight Princess really gets characters right by making them more human than the series has ever seen before. Even Link is deeper than usual in this game. Though he doesn’t emote very much, watching his progression through the game and seeing his priorities subtly shift is decidedly not the norm for the various Links across the series.
Tiptoe Through The Twili
Since it was made in direct response to the reception to Wind Waker, I feel it’s important to get this out of the way up front: Twilight Princess looks bad. The game strives for a realistic and naturalistic style but falls short due to some confusing artistic decisions. Character models and designs all look great and have some really creative work put into them. Locations are also really interesting and act as great-looking backdrops. But the game’s overreliance on a hazy bloom filter makes the dull color scheme bleed together. Whether this filter was put in to cover up the lacking graphical fidelity or not, who knows, but it doesn’t look great. Twilight Princess suffers from trying to push graphical boundaries on consoles that were never all that powerful in the first place. There’s a reason that subsequent entries into the Zelda franchise use much more exaggerated graphical styles. Twilight Princess was made as a statement. And now we can look back with hindsight and say that, in this case, realism was highly overrated.
Music, a staple of Zelda titles, is pretty good in Twilight Princess, but its implementation is sort of a mixed bag. Longtime-composer Koji Kondo was accompanied by Toru Minegishi and Asuka Ohta who all tried shifting toward a more orchestrated Zelda title. With Twilight Princess, there was a much greater focus on dynamically shifting music. Now, the soundscape would change based on events in the story, which lead to a lot of variations on the same songs. While there are some good themes here, there was a much greater emphasis on score rather than tunes. This lends itself well to cutscenes, but it results in a lot of the tunes sounding either the same or just unmemorable in general. You can tell they were experimenting with a way to incorporate the soundscape organically into gameplay, but this first stab leaves a lot to be desired.
Someone Has To Sew These Tunics, Right?
Being a Wii launch title, there was a conscious effort to implement a whole host of waggling opportunities. Twilight Princess also released on the Gamecube around the same time and is obviously safe from waggle, but more people bought it on the Wii, so I’m going to keep talking about that version. Whenever you want to hit something, you gotta waggle. Equipment like the bow and hookshot require you to aim with the Wii-mote’s infrared sensor. If you want to fish, you better start praying. I mean, use the Wii-mote if you want, but it’s so aggravating wrestling with the controller’s orientation that it’s just not worth it. And that sort of sums up the control issues across the board. When it works, like in the case of bow-aiming, it feels great and you can pull off some slick moves. But when it’s unresponsive, you can’t help but wonder why we couldn’t just have buttons. It seems like Nintendo saw these issues as well because the game was created to be very forgiving. There are very few combat encounters that require you to really be precise with your attacks or to input commands quickly. Even with the addition of motion control, Twilight Princess is mostly a straight-forward Zelda romp. Z-targeting and jumping slashes are your bread and butter here. The gameplay in that regard feels as solid as ever and any player familiar with the other titles will feel right at home here.
Aside from the standard Zelda gameplay, Twilight Princess brings wolf-Link to the table. Entering the realm of Twilight turns our boy into a good boy and gameplay becomes more limited. When you’re turned into a wolf, you obviously don’t have access to your sword or equipment, but you can now talk to cats so there’s that. You can bite and leap on opponents and also have access to a “sense” that allows you to track scents and see otherwise-invisible spirits. Gameplay segments that have you play as the wolf generally involve tracking down a target or finding enough light orbs to dispel twilight from a segment of the world. These orb-search segments kind of act as puzzle platforming segments, where you have to find a way to get around obstacles and collect the orb. These wolf segments never last too long, but it serves as a nice change of pace from dungeon-spelunking. Even though the orb-collecting can be kind of tedious after a while, wolf-Link is a fun addition and slowing down with Midna for a half hour isn’t so bad.
A Stroll Through A Monkey Cave
A big part of what we all enjoy about a Zelda title lies within its dungeon design. In my opinion, Zelda has always been at its best when there’s a nice balance between just casually strolling through a dungeon and beating your head against the wall, trying to come up with a reason why this game won’t give you another small key. Nintendo has a shaky track record when it comes to this balance. You don’t often see obtuse mind-benders like Majora’s Mask’s Great Bay Temple from the lads in Kyoto. But brain-dead temples like Wind Waker’s Dragon Roost Cavern can put you in auto-pilot mode. So when it comes to Twilight Princess and its place in the balance, it has to be said that the game is mostly unchallenging, though it has brief spikes of difficulty. Let me explain.
Here’s an example of one of Twilight Princess’ dungeons: The City in the Sky. This late-game dungeon is built around the concept of grabbing Cuckoo-like creatures and using them to float around. It sucks. Not only is this tedious, but you hardly have to think about where you’re going in the dungeon. It’s pretty clear the direction you’re supposed to fly them since they constantly lose altitude and can only land on platforms below you. Plus, their squawking is annoying. But then after getting the dungeon’s main equipment item, a double-hookshot, it becomes one of the best dungeons the series has ever seen. It requires you to make quick decisions and really pay attention to your surroundings, utilizing verticality in ways I haven’t seen other Zelda titles even attempt. I feel like a lot of Twilight Princess is summed up in the duality of this one dungeon.
Dungeons in Twilight Princess don’t often tax you too heavily mentally but they’re not insultingly easy. There aren’t any especially difficult dungeons but every once in a while, there will be some test thrown at you to keep you on your toes. The dungeon tools are all pretty creative and are generally used in interesting and fun ways, though they definitely vary in usefulness. But all of the cool stuff Twilight Princess sets up is almost immediately toppled by one key item: the compass. You’re essentially thrown the map and compass as soon as you enter a dungeon. Most of the time, you’ll find these two items in the first handful of rooms you enter and from that point on, the game practically tells you what rooms to pay attention to and which ones to safely proceed through obliviously. This does a lot to kill the mystery and critical thinking that Zelda players may be used to from other titles. So while the dungeon design in Twilight Princess may be pretty creative and well-designed, the game gives you tools you need to surgically dismantle it before you even get the chance to think too hard.
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Exploration is highly encouraged in Twilight Princess and there’s plenty out there to discover if you’re so inclined. Although it’s a smaller scale than Wind Waker’s Great Sea, the fields of Hyrule are much more densely packed with secrets. You can hardly go a few steps without tripping over a boulder. And then if you decide to take out your aggression on it with a well-placed bomb, you’ll probably find one of the many hidden caves in the overworld. These treasures are oftentimes just Rupees but sometimes you can luck out and find a heart piece. Although Hyrule Field holds the most secrets, the other areas also have goodies tucked away for inquisitive minds. You can come back to areas with new tools and find chests that you previously couldn’t get to. When you’re in wolf form, you can also find digging spots littered everywhere, with spare change hidden just underground. There’s a lot of content spread out across the world of Twilight Princess. And even though not all of it is satisfying to find, it’s there to find, all the same.
There’s also tons of optional content to explore as well. You can find fishing spots, shoot targets while floating downstream, and pop balloons while flying on the back of a giant fuck-off bird. There are so many minigames packed into this title that it gets pretty silly. They’re not all great because of the Wii-mote’s wonky controls, but there’s such an assortment of them that you can find something you like. Hyrule really feels alive in this game, with plenty of NPCs willing to give you plenty to do. Go hunt disgusting bugs for the disgusting bug girl. Go hunt Poe ghosts for this golden cat-head guy. You even have the opportunity to invest in a little kid’s startup shop, steadily increasing his presence across Hyrule and eventually being able to purchase the game’s ultimate armor from him. More than any title before, Twilight Princess fills your play session with fun stuff to do besides saving the world.
No Tingle, But We Do Have Some Clown Guys Instead
So that’s Twilight Princess. The gameplay is fun and there are some clever ideas thrown around. Dungeons never get too crazy, but they still manage to engage a player on some level. In terms of being a Zelda game, it’s a good, if not overly safe, entry into the series. But taken as a narrative vehicle, this game is a masterclass. Very few entries in the series attempt as much character-driven depth as Twilight Princess does. While the overall story is bog-standard, the motivations and emotions swirling around that framework bring the whole adventure to life. And when all this is paired alongside fun gadgets, a snowboarding segment, and the ability to talk to cats, you have a pretty great game on your hands.
If you want to pick it up, do it. You can find it here for the Wii and here for the Gamecube. If you’ve got the machine for it, the Wii U version tweaks the graphics to be much crisper but it’s a bit more pricey.