legend of zelda link becomes a monster story

The game is only recognizable as a dream because the player knows that it is not “real” for a Chain Chomp to inhabit the same world as Link.HazyMirage Fandoms: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom

Zelda is among those gaming franchises storied enough to have established a sense of what is commonplace to the series - themes, rules, and conceits that reoccur from game to game - and thus what is “real.” To play Link’s Awakening, especially in 2023, with Zelda upon Zelda stacked on top of it, is to be in conversation with what you know about the series. What’s remarkable about Link’s Awakening is not that it is a dream narrative, but that it can be recognized as a dream narrative in the first place. What makes Link’s Awakening so unique in the Zelda series is its commitment to being a dream, to messing with the player’s expectations from screen one, then piling on the weird, mislabeled pictures of Princess Peach and characters who are just straight-up pulled from other series. Games, like dreams, have their own set of rules to be followed. “It was all a dream” is just another way of saying “You wasted your time.”Įxcept, games are not fiction, and players are not readers. At worst, they feel frustrated, even angry. At best, the reader will feel hollowed out by this revelation. The dream ending upends the reader’s investment, telling them that everything they thought mattered actually doesn’t. Simply put, when a reader (sticking with writing terms for the moment) invests their time and attention in a story, they have the reasonable expectation that said time and attention will be respected and rewarded. Or is it Link’s dream? Or is it real? Part of the reason that young writers are encouraged to avoid the “it was all a dream” ending is that those questions aren’t a satisfying conclusion to a story. In the Switch remake, the edges of the screen are aggressively blurred, which underscores the dreamy in-between nature of Koholint: an island that is the dream of the Wind Fish, whom you must awaken to end the dream that is the game. A harried father named Papahl has somehow divined that he will be lost later in the game and asks Link to look after him once that happens. At one point, you must dream within the dream to get an ocarina that will allow you to resurrect a dead rooster via a song given to you by Mamu, who is just Wart from Super Mario Bros.

Legend of zelda link becomes a monster story