The Lore of The Legend of Zelda – Why Ignoring It Is Missing Out

The Legend of Zelda

When I was a child, there were three games I played for hours on end. Super Mario Bros., Mega Man, and The Legend of Zelda. The Mario franchise has stabilized into a familiar rut that it’ll never get out of, Mega Man as we knew it no longer exists except in a Kickstarter dream, and The Legend of Zelda has devolved away from the interesting, exploratory game it once was.

I’m going somewhere with this. I promise.

The thing about The Legend of Zelda is that it contains more background lore than any other early Nintendo franchise. While one could argue that stuff from the Mario RPG games such as Legend of the Seven Stars and the Paper Mario series contain a decent amount of lore, by and large Nintendo doesn’t treat those games as tentpole releases.

The Legend of Zelda game lore, however, is brought up in every single release. Three goddesses, Courage, Wisdom, Power — you know the drill. The problem is that Nintendo tells the same story every time, the story where Courage is ascendant.

Courage isn’t the only one who can win, nor is it the only one around whom a fun game can be created. According to the lore of The Legend of Zelda, when Power is ascendant it ushers in an age of darkness, when Courage is ascendant it ushers in an age of balance, but when Wisdom is ascendant, there’s an age of peace and prosperity the likes of which are beyond imagination. Wisdom ascendant is the time in which kingdoms are built, magical items are created, and the world becomes a safer place.

A Link to the Past

That being the case, why is there not a Legend of Zelda game in which you play as Zelda during an age of Wisdom? It could be a kingdom-building game, where you have to figure out how to maintain the peace that Wisdom promises. It could be a collect-a-thon, gathering resources to create wondrous magical items that help ensure the safety of your people from the monsters that might otherwise overrun.

There’s no reason this game doesn’t exist. It fits perfectly within The Legend of Zelda‘s lore, and it would be every bit as fun as any of the current Legend of Zelda games. Hell, it’d probably be a lot more fun than some of them.

I’m looking at you, Skyward Sword.

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