The dark implications of the story in A Link Between Worlds

A Link Between Worlds has a dark story. The darkest in all of the series, despite the fact that it doesn’t deal directly with “death” in the way that Majora’s Mask or Twilight Princess does. Rather, the idea that the story puts forward, in regard to fate and the cyclical nature of time, caused me to set my 3DS down and consider the sad implications. It is, perhaps outside of the Nintendo 64 entries, my favorite story from the Zelda series, mainly because of how miserable it all seems.

Background

Released in Japan as a direct sequel to A Link to the Past (with a literal 2 attached to the title), A Link Between Worlds plays a lot like a typical The Legend of Zelda game. You wake up, find out the princess and Hyrule is in danger, and then go and try to save the day. The story of A Link Between Worlds has little to do with A Link to the Past. Rather, it simply takes place in the same environment, set hundreds of years after the events that took place in the previous game. It’s worth noting that A Link Between Worlds, along with some elements from Skyward Sword, is where most modern Zelda games began to originate. The series-shattering concept that you could buy any weapon you wanted, as compared to finding them in dungeons, and thus tackle any dungeon in any order, went a long way to bridge the gap between, say, A Link to the Past and Breath of the Wild. When you look at A Link Between Worlds, it’s not that big of a stretch to connect to the two by gameplay.

Gameplay as Story

Due to the nature of the gameplay and being able to tackle it in any order, the story plays out in bits and pieces until the end when the answer to everything wallops you in the face. Essentially, Link is a blacksmith apprentice that is plagued by dreams of Princess Zelda being attacked by something. He is tasked with an assignment that requires him to go to the palace, a la, the opening of many a Zelda game. Eventually making it into the castle by way of the Sanctuary, he is knocked out by the evil wizard Yuga. Later, Link wakes up in his house and is greeted by Ravio. Ravio is a shopkeeper that will rent or sell his unique weapons to Link. Additionally, Ravio gives Link a bracelet. This bracet, we find, allows Link to turn into a 2D painting. During gameplay, Link can map himself to walls and explore areas as a painting. Link tries to warn Zelda about Yuga, but fails. Yuga has trapped her and the Seven Sages in paintings in order to bring back Ganon. Link must gain the Master Sword and free the Seven Sages before this can happen. His journey takes him to the land of Lorule.

Lorule replaces the Dark World from A Link to the Past in name only. It is a dark, horrid place where the residents live in squalor. It is not a happy place. As Link ventures through, freeing the Sages while he does, the player gets bits of story from the princess of Lorule, Hilda’s, perspective. It isn’t until Link has rescued the Seven Sages and is ready to take on Yuga that the full story comes to light: Princess Hilda wants a Triforce for herself and will do anything to get it.

This is not far off from Ganon, or really anyone when it comes to the Triforce. It is a mystical artifact, given by the Goddesses, that grants wishes. Who wouldn’t want it?

Here’s the rub and where A Link Between Worlds becomes even darker than the idea of a dark timeline: Lorule had a Triforce, but Princess Hilda’s ancestors destroyed it and their world fell into chaos. She, wanting to escape the dismal fate, attempts to steal Princess Zelda’s piece of the Triforce.

Why did they destroy it? To stop the horrible cycle of war and famine that the Triforce brought. If no one could be happy with it, they’d have to be happy without it. Without it, Lorule, which ostensibly was like Hyrule, fell into deep disrepair. Hilda used her own champion, Ravio, to try to get it back, but when he failed, she bent toward darker magic, trying to resurrect Ganon for her own gain.

Miserable Implications

It’s no secret that Hyrule is stuck in an awful cycle. Once every 100 years or so, evil tries to come back and conquer the land in search of the pieces of the Triforce. This. Always. Happens. Even if some of the players change, the story is the story. A story as old as time itself. Absolute evil wants to rule and it takes the sacrifices of the Hero and the princess to conquer it. These sacrifices are, ultimately, made by every resident of Hyrule as well.

Hyrule is a land of people who generationally are forced to suffer because of a cycle they couldn’t choose to break if they wanted to. Princess Hilda’s predecessors saw a way out of this. They could destroy the Triforce, thus breaking the cycle. No Triforce, no ultimate evil. But that didn’t work! Without the Triforce, the land fell into abandon.

The theory of the series as a whole could be summed up in that evil and sacrifice are necessary in order to live a good life. Hilda attempted to take control, but she couldn’t break the cycle, the cycle broke her. With the cycle broken, what does she do? She became the catalyst for someone else’s cycle, causing pain and suffering to those in another world. This makes her no better than Yuga, Vaati, or Ganondorf.

The most distressing point to this whole story is that you can’t change anything. Hilda’s intentions were good, nay, proactive compared to the intentions and rather passivity of the majority of Hyrule’s eras, but it didn’t matter. The worlds within the Zelda universe are going to force its inhabitants to suffer no matter what and, ultimately, nothing will ever change that.

Taken at face value, theoretically, Ganondorf could be born and be an overall good dude but still succumb to the ultimate powers that be. He will forever need to be the bad guy. Link will forever need to be the good guy, and Princess Zelda will forever be held by the chains that bind her to her destiny.

Developer’s Choice

The design choices of A Link Between Worlds play into the greater story on a meta-level. It’s the first entry in the series where the player has a greater choice of how the story can play out, which means the player ultimately has more control than anything that happens in Lorule. It could be contributed to the fact that you, Link, are from Hyrule, where a facade of choice remains. But does Link really have a choice, and is that what the creators are trying to say? We can’t know, but it would be a coincidence for those two concepts, choice and the inability of choice, to play off of each other as well as they do.

I believe, based on what we know about the refocus on story with the release of Skyward Sword in 2011, placing it squarely as the first game in the timeline, that the developers took the story seriously. It was not simply another entry with a throwaway tale (not that any modern Zelda has those). It was purposeful in how it relayed what it wanted to say, which is, unfortunately for the people of Lorule, that you can break the traditional Zelda gameplay, but you can’t break a Triforce.

All’s Well that Ends Well?

In the end, Link uses his one Triforce wish to restore Lorule’s Triforce. This is admirable of Link, as it should bring a certain peace back to the land. But, is it not also inviting ancient evil to resurrect? Is Link not just condemning the land of Lorule, the decedents of Hilda and Ravio to fight the same battles over and over? It’s a happy note, tinged with sadness, of reserved fate, inescapable. Link has trapped Princess Hilda and Ravio in the same cycle that they once lived in and the one that he and Zelda continue to experience. Those implications and weight are why I can’t help but love the story of A Link Between Worlds. It takes not only a well-traveled land but also a well-traveled story and turns them on their heads.