Gamestorming: Zelda III

We just recently wrapped up the latest issue of Nintendo Force magazine, which is all about “The Rule of Three” — basically, looking at some of the best and worst third installments of video game series to ever exist — or in some cases, should exist, such as with my bit about Mega Man Legends 3 (among other contributions).

If you’d like to take a moment to go order a copy, that would be cool. I’ll wait. Done? Okay, then. Moving on…

I don’t quite remember how it came up, but somewhere in all the discussions of three, I mentioned one such threequel that I’ve always wanted. It didn’t make the cut for the magazine (not everything does, that’s just how it goes), but looking back at it gave me enough motivation to finally kick off a column I’ve long been looking at doing here, but never pulled the trigger on. It’s a little something I like to call “Gamestorming.”

So, here’s the long and the short of it: For a good chunk of my life, I had dreams, ambitions. I wanted to work in video games. Not writing about them in books and magazines and websites, but to actually be involved in the creative process. But I didn’t want to be just any game developer, I wanted to be a Nintendo game developer.

At some point, life caught up to me, bringing with it the realization: that is probably never going to happen. Not like I imagined it, anyway. I’m not going to get to direct my dream Zelda or Mario titles.

So rather than let my ideas gather dust in the furthest recesses of my brain, I figured I’d share what sorts of things I wanted to accomplish here, where maybe they’ll at least amuse and entertain, and not be a total waste.

This is an idea that goes back, way back. I want to say around 2006 or so — the Wii era, certainly. So some things may clash with Zelda releases that have come since.

One game I’ve long wanted to see, and endeavoured to make if no one else would, is “Zelda III.”

Now, I know what you’re probably thinking: “But they already made a ‘Zelda III,’ it’s called “A Link to the Past.” Not at all what I mean.

While the two pre-Ocarina of Time games in the Zelda series were known as “Zelda III” and “Zelda IV” at some point in their development (at the very least, that’s what Nintendo Power called them), A Link to the Past established the series’ tendency to look further backward than forward by being a prequel to the original two Nintendo Entertainment System titles.

And though I love A Link to the Past, The Legend of Zelda and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link were not just my, but the introduction to the series. For years, when people said “Link,” you thought of only one guy — this guy. And I wanted to see what happened next.

Plus, “3” is kind of a running theme in Zelda games, so making the original games into an actual trilogy just kind of makes sense.

The game, of course, takes place after Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Ganon has long since been vanquished, the Triforce reunited, and the land of Hyrule is at peace.

Also, there are now two Princess Zeldas.

Yeah, that’s something I felt should be acknowledged/addressed. In the first game, we free one Princess Zelda from Ganon’s clutches. In the second game, we awaken the Princess Zelda who was put under a sleeping spell many years before the events of the first game. What do you do with two Zeldas? We’ll come back to that.

In addition to having two Zeldas, the big driver of the story is that we’ve also got two Links as well.

The first Link, the one we play as, is the same one we know from the NES games. Brown hair, brown tights, and wields the Magical Sword (which would more closely resemble the version seen on the Zelda II box art than the simpler design featured in the game’s other artwork, as seen at right).

The other Link might seem a little more familiar to fans who got into the series a bit later on. Blonde hair, white tights, and an overall more bishounen anime look. Oh, and one other thing: He appears wielding the Master Sword.

See, this Link has a bit of a problem with the Link you play as. He believes himself to be the Hero, destined to destroy Ganon and bring peace back to the land. And you, well, you kind of took that from him. Believing he’s been robbed of his destiny, he’s got a bone to pick with you, but he also has a plan: revive Ganon, so he can kill the Prince of Darkness himself and realize his destiny after all.

To this end, he shatters the Triforce of Power, and intends to take them to eight shrines built by Ganon’s followers, situated across the land of Hyrule. By placing the Triforce pieces in these shrines, Ganon can be revived. Naturally, your Link (and the Princesses Zelda) have a problem with this, and so must set out to stop this demented doppelganger from resurrecting the Demon King. And to do that, he’ll have to find these shrines and navigate them in order to retrieve the pieces of the Triforce of Power.

Once you reach the final ninth shrine — the holding place for Ganon’s ashes, of course — and confront the other Link, whose plan you’ve ruined. However, there’s another way to revive Ganon. Remember that whole thing in Zelda II about sprinkling Link’s blood over Ganon’s ashes? Guess what “Plan B” is.

On a related note, I thought that maybe if you tried taking the shrines out of order, you might be able to effectively “cut off” the other Link and face him at various points throughout the game. If he kills the NES Link before placing the pieces of the Triforce of Power, then hey, that just makes his job a whole lot easier.

The two Links clash, and when he’s defeated, his Master Sword shatters, revealed to be a fake. It would turn out he was not the Hero, but rather, a pawn of Ganon himself who bore a false Mark of the Triforce on his hand, who led Link into bringing the Triforce of Power into his sanctum to revive the Prince of Darkness.

Plus, this raises the question of where the real Master Sword is. In real life, the Master Sword was conceived for A Link to the Past, which took place before the NES games, and so it never appeared in either of them. Some have tried to say that the Magical Sword is the Master Sword, but I never liked nor bought into that. With the Magical Sword gaining more of a distinct identity for itself in the likes of SoulCalibur II and Hyrule Warriors, I’m inclined to believe I’m not alone in this.

Oh, and I don’t know if there would have been a good way to fit this in, but as for the other Link’s Master Sword? Well, remember all those fakes scattered about the Lost Woods? Bingo.

Anyway, Link and Ganon fight, like they do, but Link can’t get the upper-hand, as he doesn’t have the Silver Arrow needed to finish the job. Without it, any wound Link creates, Ganon can simply heal.

Enter: Zelda II.

No, not the game. The second princess. Or would that be the first? The sleeping one.

She shows up, wearing an attire not unlike what was seen across various media back in the day — The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, Valiant’s Nintendo Comics System, Archway’s Nintendo Adventure Books, and so forth. Oh, and that nifty folder/card art I wrote about once upon a time (go check it out!).

Also? She’s wielding a bow. With silver arrows, Ganon’s one-time sole weakness.

We’ve seen it before, Link and Zelda teaming up to take on Ganon, and so we see it here again. What it basically comes down to is that Link has to use the Magical Sword to create an opening so that Zelda can strike with her silver arrows, bringing Ganon down once again.

Thus the adventure ends… and the Second Quest is unlocked. Only this time, you don’t play as Link, oh no. Now it’s time to see what Zelda was doing that brought her to that final confrontation.

With Princess Zelda from the first game ruling Hyrule, there’s really little need for Zelda II to stay at North Castle and run the kingdom. So while Link is in pursuit of his doppelganger, Zelda tries to get to the bottom of what’s really going on. She’d play similarly to Link at a basic level, but with a greater emphasis on ranged attacks and magic.

So that’s the story, but there’s more to a game than that. How would it play?

At the time I thought of this, the Wii was still pretty fresh, and there hadn’t been a regular top-down Zelda in a while, most notably on a console. (There was The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, but that’s kinda different.) My idea was to try to have the best of both worlds, a game that could be played from a top-down perspective, or bring the camera in so that it’s more like a 3D adventure.

Plus motion controls. Hey, they were the style at the time. But for what it’s worth, given how they worked in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, I figured an alternate, more traditional button control scheme would be a good idea as well, to say nothing of being more inclusive.

One idea I had for sword combat involved combining the slashing of A Link to the Past with the stabbing of the original NES game. Slashes would have a wider range and could hit multiple enemies at once, while a stab would be a more powerful, precision strike at a single enemy. Plus, you could charge power into your blade so that instead of a whirling slash, you could strike with an even more powerful stab.

Oh, and you can shoot beams from your sword, too. To me, Zelda games which don’t allow you to shoot beams from your sword are missing something fundamental. I’d also look into making sure that you can still use the sword beams after being hit for a small percentage of your health meter, but as that percentage drops, so does the beams’ power.

The land of Hyrule would be much like what we see in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, only this time, we’d get a much closer look at a much larger Hyrule.

It’s always felt to me like Nintendo has squandered what they created in Zelda II. In that game, one could see that the Death Mountain Area — the setting of the first Zelda — was but a tiny part of the greater land of Hyrule. But rather than further flesh out and explore this vast world that had been laid out before us, most Zelda games seem content to take place in that tiny square.

For “Zelda III,” though, I wanted to basically do the same thing with the Zelda II map, but in reverse. To take that enormous world map, and blow it up into something bigger, full of various secrets and places to discover.

To that end, I wanted to do more with the towns spread across the land. In Zelda II on the NES, they all largely looked the same, and had the same people occupying them. In “Zelda III,” I wanted to distinguish them a bit more, give each its own since of theme and culture, their own aesthetics and people. Perhaps, for instance, one town could take cues from medieval Europe, while another has hints of feudal Japan instead. Or maybe borrow from older Hyrulean races that weren’t present in the NES games, like the Gorons and Kokiri.

Visually, I wanted the game to incorporate cel shaded 3D models, to evoke the look of the cartoon-like scenes found in the manuals from back in the day. Finally bring what we only received glimpses of to life. Looking at them back then, it felt like there must have been Zelda movies we weren’t privy to, but now the tech is at a point where we can actually make games that look like the very art which helped fuel our imaginations.

No doubt, probably the most controversial thing I wanted to include was voice acting. But not just any voice acting, oh no. I wanted the voice actors from the old DiC cartoons to reprise their roles, with Jonathan Potts as Link and Cyndy Preston as the Princesses Zelda (perhaps with a different sound to differentiate them?). Rather than the portrayals seen on Fridays in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, I’d have gone for the slightly more matured and badass versions from Captain N: The Game Master (which took place, fittingly enough, around/after Zelda II).

I’d also have loved to have Len Carlson reprise the role of Ganon, perhaps with a voice more befitting the video game versions of the character. He had range, playing both Ganon and the Moblins, so I’m sure he could come up with something that would work. Sadly, though, he passed early in 2006, so that never would have worked out, anyway.

While going with stuff from the classic cartoons, I’d also consider borrowing a few design elements from the Captain N version of Link, like the elbow pads and cuffs, stitching and other details. At the same time, the core aesthetic of the character models would still look very much like the art from those NES manuals, making it a hybrid of designs (sort of like Zelda was in that folder/card art I mentioned earlier).

Finally, for a reveal trailer on what was once the grandest stage of them all, E3, I imagined it opening with Link engaged in some sort of battle at North Castle against some various goons. Some classic Moblins, Goriyas, that sort of thing. It ends up spilling into the throne room, with Link landing before the throne. He looks up to the figure standing there, Princess Zelda, and says — in a straightforward manner — “Excuse me, Princess,” before his head turns with the camera and we see the other Zelda, and he adds another “Princess” before getting back into the fight. Cue gameplay footage and all that fun.

How much of this would still hold up today? Honestly, I have no idea, but I like to think that the overall vision is solid, even if some of the finer details might need to be tweaked.

—

Oh, and before anyone says anything — I know there’s a lot more that goes into making a video game. This is basically just the start, and I’m already at over 2,000 words, so that’s all that we’re getting here for this. It’s not happening anyway, so I’m not going to kill myself over every last detail here, but I hope it’s enough to give you an idea of the vision I had in mind, and make for some enjoyable reading. Who knows, maybe it’ll inspire someone (if it does, just don’t announce anything before you’re done, lest you face Nintendo’s wrath).

This is far from my only idea, though only time will tell if they all run on for this long.

Thanks for reading!

Official art images via Zelda Wiki. Map via Retbit. Nintendo Force image via Nintendo Force magazine. DiC Princess Zelda via Nintendo Power magazine.

—

David Oxford is a freelance writer of many varied interests. If you’re interested in hiring him, please drop him a line at david.oxford (at) nyteworks.net.