Zelda’s too romantic

Gaming is too romantic on the whole, and The Legend of Zelda is no different. Now, I can imagine the faces that all of you are pulling at this moment in time. You’re all a little on the confused side, I mean, seriously, The Legend of Zelda – romantic? Of course it’s not. We could argue many things in this world, but that’s one thing that it is most certainly not. There’s only ever one real incident where there could have been a kiss in the land of canon. Yet, I still stand by my point that The Legend of Zelda is far too romantic.Well, when I say romantic, I mean romanticism. For those of you who aren’t too clear on what this actually means, here’s a definition: Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that originated in late 18th century Western Europe. In part a revolt against aristocratic, social, and political norms of the Enlightenment period and a reaction against the rationalization of nature, in art and literature it stressed strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing new emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe experienced in confronting the sublimity of nature.Yet in reality, what does this actually mean? Well, the answer is actually clearer than you think. When you look at the romantic era, it’s simply defined by horror and strong emotion. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein could be described as a romantic novel, as it was the start of the full movement into the horror of the human psyche and it depicts incredibly strong emotion, in a very dark archetype. This archetype, simply put, is darkness.When we think of horror, or evil, we always see darkness. This is the standardised method of depicting a protagonist or anti-hero in foreboding and limiting situation. This is no different within The Legend of Zelda series; in fact, it’s no different in the majority of all video game industries. Although throughout time the typical romantic element of most horrors have left us, the basis remains for it. When a character is dark the character must be the evil one.This can be seen within The Legend of Zelda in every sense. All of the main ‘big’ enemies, Ganon, Ganondorf, Vaati and Agahnim are all in the literary sense, very romantic. Each of these characters are defined by their dark attitudes and how they go around making everything ‘dark’. The first real sense of romanticism within The Legend of Zelda video games is when Link becomes an Adult in Ocarina of Time. Although we may see that Ganondorf is a dark creature from the off, as The Great Deku Tree shows him to us, surrounded in darkness aside from flame, we truly see how the game has progressed when we see Ganon’s Tower. This tower is dark, in every sense of the word. In fact, some may even go as far as to call it Gothic, and not in architecture either.This classic form of making your character evil I feel is wearing a little on the thin side. I don’t want to know who’s the evil character from the off of the game, I want to take some time to work out who is evil within the game and who may be a friend, and yet in reality, turns out to be the main enemy of the game. What a twist would it have been in The Minish Cap, if Ezlo turned out to be the main evil character that you should have been destroying, and you were simply destroying one of his lesser enemies by removing Vaati? All the way through the game, the quirky little character would have been helping you, and then he’s actually the biggest evil in the world. However, he didn’t suddenly become the Dark Ezlo, like Dark Link but he would have retained the strong and somewhat irritating presence that he had created throughout the game. This would have been a remarkable twist.
The game that must be noted for it’s basic lack of romanticism is The Wind Waker. The irony of this game is that it is probably one of the most deepest and darkest storylines of all The Legend of Zelda games, and yet, it uses the brightly coloured, and the very controversial, chibi style of characterising all of the inhabitants of the world. This way of portraying the sense of evil within the game was missed by many people unfortunately. However, that being said, the game still used classic elements of romanticism by making the entire evil characters far darker than the rest of the characters, and by making The Foresaken Fortress and Underwater Hyrule’s Ganon’s Tower darker than dark.Yet, this is The Wind Waker still retained many elements that could easily have been removed, such as the darkness surrounding the evil of the game. After all, they went far enough to draw attention to the chibi style, and thus actually bringing more attention onto the storyline itself. We all know that to ignore something pushes more attention upon it, and as such, if we were to ignore the classic evil styles within The Legend of Zelda, there would be far more attention put upon the evil within the game.Yet, this is not what is happening. It would appear that Twilight Princess is heading down an even more romantic path! This is not necessarily a bad thing, as it appears to be going back to the classic routes of romanticism. Concentrating on the human emotions and the pure horror around the protagonist. From the official art alone we can see that there is a level of mourning from Princess Zelda, and the game looks very gothic in style and as such, this has brought about a new sense of romanticism that hasn’t really been seen in recent times. Aside from the up and coming Wii game Sadness.This move away from something unexpected and thought provoking enemies is a depressing one in my mind. I would like to see an enemy that I didn’t know would be an enemy until the very end of the game. Possibly a creature like Navi actually turning out to be the main enemy, as she is helpful and is not in anyway dark at all.