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Still, Zelda lets her guard down with Link, asking whether he believes people would choose the same future for themselves if they were born into different roles. She has trouble using the powers that are her birthright and resents the fact that a knight has been assigned to protect her.
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It’s a daunting task, especially for Zelda, who bears more responsibility because of her royal blood, and constantly expresses doubts about both her assigned path and her competence. This year’s Breath of the Wild features Link and Zelda grappling with their respective roles as knight and princess, much in the way teenagers must take on new, or more demanding, obligations. And so, it’s dawned on me: With its young characters, its longevity, its accessibility, and the evolution of its gameplay, The Legend of Zelda is hands-down the best franchise about the joys and frustrations of leaving youth and facing the challenges of adulthood. And they’re given the burden of having to save the world before they’re necessarily ready for it, let alone capable of ruling a kingdom or living on their own.Įvery installment sees them struggle with decisions and mature (in ways big and small) over the course of the game’s story-they’re stuck in a perpetual, precarious state of “growing up.” They navigate spaces that over time have become more difficult to traverse and more populated, just as the real world expands as one ages. And yet Link and Zelda are always reincarnated as teenagers, if not children. When I was younger, I always assumed these protagonists were adults-they would have to be, I figured, to take on that kind of responsibility. In each game, the story is roughly the same: A hero named Link (played by you) must be awoken to help the Princess Zelda defeat a great evil. The Legend of Zelda games have offered plenty of lessons, from the obvious moral of the importance of kindness to the darker idea of the inevitability of death, but it’s only with the latest installment, Breath of the Wild, that I realized exactly what Zelda has given me. But it stuck with me for how tender and real it felt, from the memorable musical score to the detail it paid to even the most minor characters, and I’ve followed the franchise religiously in the years since. I couldn’t have been more than 10 years old, arguably too young to fully appreciate the game for what it was. One of the first video games I ever played-if not the first-was The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.