The Zelda series has always been a fairly varied mix of both heartwarming and bone-chilling. From the soothing comfort of going to a familiar town to the outright nightmarish horrors that wait at the bottom of a well, the series has always done an excellent job of being diverse in its presentations of both joyfulness and pure terror.
The Wind Waker in particular is no stranger to these sorts of moments. Whether it be the unsettling nature of the Ghost Ship, the hidden dungeon beneath Ms. Marie’s cabana, or the Big Octo that shows up during your seafaring journey and drags you into a life-or-death battle, this game has no shortage of scary encounters. Though, for me, while those were all certainly unsettling, they were not the worst that the game had to throw at me.
No. What scared me most were these horrific monstrosities of nature.
Meet the Seahat. Move aside Big Octos and ReDeads, these eldritch horrors are the most terrifying things in The Wind Waker, bar none. Imagine being an eight-year-old, getting the last Goddess Pearl from Jabun, and setting off to find the three Triangle Islands in order to resurface the Tower of Gods. You begin to approach the Din Triangle Island, and off in the distance, you see these weird-looking shadows.
You think to yourself, “Huh, those look kind of weird, what are those?” Since you have to go to that island to progress the story and these things are completely surrounding it, you get closer just to see their huge, toothy, ugly grinning mugs. Just their appearances alone are unsettling enough, but you think that maybe they won’t bother you if you just leave them be. Wishful thinking.
No, the second that you get a pixel too close, they make horrendously loud helicopter noises and crash through the water as they beeline right towards you, crashing into your boat and catapulting you into the water. I mean, look at them. Look at them! They showed these to kids!
Thankfully, despite how terrifying and big they are, they actually aren’t that difficult to defeat. All you have to do is throw your Boomerang at them to cut off their leaf fans and then attack with your sword or bow. But even still, when you’re a little kid and you see these things, you’re not going to be thinking rationally about how to kill these things: you’re going to want to get away. Even to this day I still get a slight jump when these things come after me. Thanks, Nintendo.
