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

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Figure 16 – The overworld map – one of several charts available in the game – plots each island group to a rectangular section. (The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Nintendo, 2002) does effectively call upon the established mythos of adventure stories like Treasure Island. Wind Waker also fosters exploration on a smaller scale. Players are not only encouraged, but are also required to search out the nooks, crannies, and secret subspaces of each localized environment. Especially in the dungeons, players must carefully pour over each room in order to find the multitude of keys, switches, items, and passages that will lead them to the Dungeon Boss. Even on Link’s small hometown Outset Island, players can discover a trove of places over the course of the game. Many of these places, like the hilltop Forest of Fairies and the Savage Labyrinth, must eventually be visited in order to complete the game. Like the rest of the gameworld, Outset Island is also full of 46
less formalized microspaces. For example, players can find rupees in a variety of quirky locations: under houses, on rooftops, in breakable pots, and in grassy fields. Additionally, Wind Waker provides a number of special “bonus” places. One particularly notable example is the hard-to-access Nintendo Gallery, in which players can build a collection of virtual figurines modeled after the game’s characters. Frequently, bonus spaces take the form of hidden caves or ledges that reward players with Heart Container pieces or Treasure Charts. More than the incentive of a specific prize, however, the appeal of these bonus places is that they lay outside the main flow of the game; only the keenest, most thorough explorers will find them (that is, without outside help). In this way, Wind Waker directly links the act of exploration with a sense of tangible accomplishment. To facilitate the exploration of these more localized, immediate surroundings, players are given a variety of navigational aides. The Grappling Hook, for example, allows Link to swing from branches and bars over otherwise impassable crevasses. The Hookshot – a retractable chain projectile – lets Link pull himself up to certain ledges and, occasionally, across wide chasms. The Deku Leaf, a new addition to the Zelda series, acts as a wind-guided parachute that Link can use to hang-glide from ledge to ledge, tree to tree, and in some cases even island to island. More indirectly, some of Link’s navigational tools provide additional views of the environment. Aryll’s Telescope, the most iconographic of these tools, allows players to enter an ocular first-person view with an adjustable, far-reaching zoom. But the Telescope serves more than just a gameplay purpose. Significantly, the Telescope is the very first item that Link receives, even before any weapon. Despite its potential utility, use of the Telescope is never strictly required after the very beginning of the game. 47
Page 1 and 2: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Page 3 and 4: Contents Acknowledgements 4 I. Intr
Page 5 and 6: shaped the reading list for this th
Page 7 and 8: A storm that needed a mountain met
Page 9 and 10: to heighten my experience of the
Page 11 and 12: II. Terminology: Place, Presence, V
Page 13 and 14: III. Early History of the Zelda Ser
Page 15 and 16: enjoyed worldwide success, and is o
Page 17 and 18: linearly forward. Although Mario co
Page 19 and 20: Figure 4 - Zelda II: The Adventure
Page 21 and 22: IV. Nintendo’s Jump to 3D “Some
Page 23 and 24: Figure 7 - To travel between worlds
Page 25 and 26: V. Poetic Experience of Space and O
Page 27 and 28: Ocarina of Time relied on the visce
Page 29 and 30: embodied in the virtual world as in
Page 31 and 32: Figure 10 - Top: Doom (id Software,
Page 33 and 34: our ability to detect sudden moveme
Page 35 and 36: our avatar (e.g. Mario) is so visua
Page 37 and 38: VII. The Controversial Arrival of W
Page 39 and 40: adult, and the entire game was rend
Page 41 and 42: Time. At least in the eyes of the m
Page 43 and 44: narrative plausibility to make cert
Page 45: Figure 15 - After using the Wind Wa
Page 49 and 50: Figure 18 - Through the use of a Hy
Page 51 and 52: somewhere. We want the ‘pullulati
Page 53 and 54: Figure 19 - Walking down a corridor
Page 55 and 56: Figure 20 - Hang-gliding over Outse
Page 57 and 58: More recently, hypertext authors St
Page 59 and 60: Figure 21 - Myst (Cyan Worlds, 1993
Page 61 and 62: popular appeal of World of Warcraft
Page 63 and 64: a central part of their appeal); bu
Page 65 and 66: In theory, players could simply cho
Page 67 and 68: side, or pounce forward with an ove
Page 69 and 70: cathartic nature of these reactions
Page 71 and 72: down a giant flower using the Boome
Page 73 and 74: XI. Outgrowing the Playground Metap
Page 75 and 76: The most egregious example of overd
Page 77 and 78: canvas for us to fill with our own
Page 79 and 80: The designers themselves seem to ac
Page 81 and 82: 44. Ibid., 120. 45. Atkins, More Th
Page 83 and 84: Bibliography Print Abrams, M.H. The
Page 85 and 86: Vestal, Andrew, Cliff O'Neill, Brad

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

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