Upon playing through Zelda 1 again recently quite thoroughly and reading every bit of text, I found myself wondering the question in the title. What enemies are considered "Ganon's henchmen" in Zelda 1? How do we know they are his henchmen, etc.
There are likely easy explanations given the context of additional Zelda games, but I am curious what explanations there are if this was 1986 and Zelda 1 was simply the only title out.
Here is what I know of the game from my playing/reading, and what has lead me to confusion. Initially, for whatever reason, I jumped to the idea that anything within the dungeons could be considered working for Ganon. Clearly, that doesn't make much sense considering Zelda split the Triforce into 8 shards and hid them specifically within these dungeons -- she would not hide them FROM Ganon in a dungeon under Ganon's control. This begs the question, are the enemies present in the first 8 dungeons suddenly null and void from being considered Ganon's henchmen?
Well, how bout Level 9, where Ganon resides? Is this dungeon under Ganon's control, are the enemies within allied with Ganon, or does he simply reside there?
Also, upon reading the instruction manual's bestiary, I found not a single enemy description mentioned an affiliation with Ganon. The closest anything came was a Lynel, which says (paraphrasing) it's a "guardian of Death Mountain," and that's a weak connection to Ganon at best.
There are more points to make to cover more angles, but for the sake of brevity I'm going to cut things there as I feel the basic question is there: "is there any way to discern which enemies within Zelda 1 are allied with Ganon, without resorting to assumption"
There are likely easy explanations given the context of additional Zelda games, but I am curious what explanations there are if this was 1986 and Zelda 1 was simply the only title out.
Here is what I know of the game from my playing/reading, and what has lead me to confusion. Initially, for whatever reason, I jumped to the idea that anything within the dungeons could be considered working for Ganon. Clearly, that doesn't make much sense considering Zelda split the Triforce into 8 shards and hid them specifically within these dungeons -- she would not hide them FROM Ganon in a dungeon under Ganon's control. This begs the question, are the enemies present in the first 8 dungeons suddenly null and void from being considered Ganon's henchmen?
Well, how bout Level 9, where Ganon resides? Is this dungeon under Ganon's control, are the enemies within allied with Ganon, or does he simply reside there?
Also, upon reading the instruction manual's bestiary, I found not a single enemy description mentioned an affiliation with Ganon. The closest anything came was a Lynel, which says (paraphrasing) it's a "guardian of Death Mountain," and that's a weak connection to Ganon at best.
There are more points to make to cover more angles, but for the sake of brevity I'm going to cut things there as I feel the basic question is there: "is there any way to discern which enemies within Zelda 1 are allied with Ganon, without resorting to assumption"