The Legend of Zelda: Setting Sail On a New Voyage

The Legend of Zelda: Setting Sail On a New Voyage

Hyrule Historia, the Holy Grail for Zelda fans that was recently released in Japan, is full of interesting facts. One such interesting fact is a confirmation of a new Zelda game under development. Now, that isn’t exactly startling, considering things that certain Nintendo employees have said recently. What caught my attention, however, is what Eiji Aonuma said that confirmed the development of the new game:

Now, allow me to include some tall talk here: I feel that developing such large scale games as those from The Legend of Zelda is very similar to what it was like to venture into the mighty ocean in ancient times. Each game of the franchise has its own theme, as I mentioned above. I think that’s a system that no one has challenged so far and at the same time it’s like looking for a “continent” no one has ever visited.

When leaving the port, you don’t have a single nautical chart. You only have with you very few crew members, and all the guidance is based on which direction looks good, so at first it’s like boarding and sailing a ship with an aim you don’t even know yet. Sometimes you just drift about, or you may suffer a shipwreck because of a storm. Or you may see what you think is a new continent, but when you rush towards it, you find out it actually is a tiny desolate island. And it’s then that you get lost.

However, as long as you don’t stand still in the same spot, you can continue to advance little by little, and that continent you aimed at will get barely within sight on the far away horizon. At that point you can add more people to your crew, and get all together to push forward ahead towards the continent. That’s a very fun process, so fun you even forget the times when you encountered a storm and you were hoping to get away from it. And if you manage to get safely to that “continent,” people around the world will surely get happy… That’s the biggest pleasure of creating Zelda games.

The long sailing time of creating Skyward Sword, a game to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Zelda series, has just come to an end. The voices of those who’ve played it from around the world reach us. We hear their admiration comments, and their criticism too. All those voices become energy for the next voyage. Well, to tell the truth, we’ve already set sail in a new voyage.

This is quite an inspiring thing to hear, but I see it also as an allusion to the content of the new Zelda. Now, keep in mind that this is just pure speculation and is my own opinion, but I think that Aonuma’s speech is an allusion to a new Wind Waker sequel (fanboy squeal). Why do I think that? Well, for one, he talks about boarding a ship and sailing across the ocean, looking for a new continent. That kind of sounds like the plot of a story, although you can say that is what happened between Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. He also mentions a ship with a crew, which (in my overactive mind) means that maybe Link is the captain of a ship. Of course, I may be overthinking this too much; there is still the possibility that this is just a really inspiring statement from Eiji Aonuma. But what fun is there in that?

So, what do you think? Is this an allusion to a new Wind Waker sequel, or am I just overthinking?

Source: Zelda Informer

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