There isn’t a single The Legend of Zelda game that doesn’t deal with adult themes. Previous games had already dealt with grim themes: Ocarina of Time shows Hyrule destroyed by Ganon’s evil influence Majora’s Mask traps the player in an apocalyptic time loop even the “childish” The Wind Waker takes place in a Hyrule flooded by the Gods. There’s nothing bright and happy to look at while wandering Hyrule. In Twilight Princess, all the regions of Hyrule seem to be covered by the same dim lights, and all the characters in the game are suffering all the time. Nevertheless, the emptiness of Twilight Princess is a lot more perceptible because the world is too dull. However, this is not exclusive to Twilight Princess since the same could be said of The Wind Waker or even Ocarina of the Time.
Twilight Princess has many empty spaces the player takes too long to traverse this is a problem pointed out several times by players and critics alike. Nintendo’s strategy paid off Twilight Princess sold 8.8 million copies in its initial release but at the price of creating a version of Hyrule that’s just not really fun to explore. Adults cannot have fun, so Hyrule needed to be the saddest place in the universe for Twilight Princess to work. It was decided that Link could no longer smile, the world should be drained of color, and everything would be covered in fog and darkness. Trying to boost the sales of Twilight Princess, Nintendo listened to the fans and removed everything that made The Wind Waker special. RELATED: ‘The Legend of Zelda’: The 10 Best Bosses in the Franchise, Ranked Their next big 3D Zelda game abandoned anything that could be considered childish. Since fans were not pleased with the aesthetic choice of Wind Waker, Nintendo took a hard turn back. Even so, remembering its divisive reception is key to understanding why Twilight Princess was built the way it was.
There’s no need to defend The Wind Waker, already established as a classic of the franchise.
Fortunately, since then, the game has received the praise it deserves, with the launch of the HD version helping to boost the Wii U sales by more than 600%. The iconic *** Official Zelda Bitch Thread*** on IGN’s forums is an historical document that helps us to understand the general feeling towards The Wind Waker, with fans hoping the trailer was “a cruel joke” since Nintendo made a game that looks “like a frigging puppet show for 5-year-olds.” It’s no wonder, then, that The Wind Waker sold only 4.4 million copies on the Game Cube, against 7.6 million copies of Ocarina of the Time sold on the N64. Instead, Nintendo decided to change the art direction of the franchise altogether, using cel-shading to build a cartoonish world. At the time, fans were expecting the higher processing power of the Game Cube to deliver graphics that were even more realistic than those on the Nintendo 64. The history of Twilight Princess starts way before the game was officially announced: The year is 2001, and Nintendo just released the first footage for The Wind Waker, a departure from Ocarina of Time’s and Majora Mask’s somewhat realistic style.