The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker From ... - Douglas Wilson

VIII. A Focus on Exploration
“Really, with Mario and Zelda, we have Mario being a game that people enjoy just
playing and enjoy the controller, and Zelda being the type of game where people enjoy an
adventure.” 61
– Shigeru Miyamoto, 2002
Zelda games have always tried to capture the thrill of adventure. Specifically, it is
the adventurous act of exploration – a journey of memorable places, rewarding in and of
itself – that lies at the heart of the series. Wind Waker retains this spirit, but radically
departs from its predecessors in re-imagining the overworld as a series of small isolated
islands in a vast ocean. As we later learn, the Hyrule we know from previous Zelda
games lies submerged beneath the waves, sealed away long ago by “the gods” in a state
of suspended animation. As a result, players spend much of their time traversing the
oceanic world in Link’s trusty sailboat.
In featuring seafaring as its dominant image, Wind Waker plays on our
romanticized conceptions of high-seas adventure and New World exploration. Evoking
notions of an undomesticated, primitive past, Link relies on the power of wind alone to
propel his modest vessel. However, Link can use the Wind Waker – a music-making
conducting baton based on the ocarina of previous Zelda games – to play the Wind
Requiem, a magical song that allows players to change the wind’s direction at will. It is
hardly surprising, then, that the Wind Waker serves as the game’s overarching symbol. As
the sole means of overworld navigation, the wind ties the act of exploration more closely
to the physics and structure of the virtual world. The knowledge that the wind stands at
our beck and call reinforces the liberating feeling that no destination is unreachable.
44