Rewriting Twilight Princess: Homeland of the Hero

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was a fantastic game, filled with epic battles, an enormous world, and a…horribly flawed storyline. Each week we’ll be looking at one of these flaws to determine what went wrong and why, as well as to discuss ideas of how the tale could have been rewritten to fix these problems and strengthen the story as a whole. …Preferably without drastically departing from the original storyline of the game, but I make no promises.

Standing on the outskirts of Hyrule, Ordon Village is Link’s home and, therefore, the first area you explore in the game. While this could have set it up to become a location of major importance as the story progressed, the developers decided to go an entirely different route: ignore it, forget about it, and hope that gamers do the same. I mean, it’s not like anyone actually pays any attention to storylines and arcs, especially not for a location…right?

*cracks knuckles* Heh, heh, heh… Well, Nintendo, actually…

The Game We Got

Ordon Village features prominently in the opening sequence of the game, as it is Link’s hometown and, therefore, the first area you visit and explore. The townsfolk are practically Link’s family, so when the other children of the village are kidnapped by the forces of evil he rushes after them. He later returns to Ordon to learn the secret to gaining the respect of the Gorons, which results in him getting the Iron Boots from Mayor Bo. And after that…

…

…

…nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The Problem

There are going to be plenty of people who have never seen this as a problem; indeed, many people probably did forget all about Ordon after the Iron Boots were retrieved. It’s no surprise – the game completely ignores the town’s existence, and since it keeps the focus on Hyrule Proper players will naturally focus most/all of their attention on that same area. And if this story was being told in a movie, a book, a TV show…any other type of medium, there would be absolutely no problem with this.

However, this is a video game, and one of the biggest differentiators between it and other types of media is that video games are interactive. Especially in Zelda games, with their focus on exploration and seeing the world, you can go anywhere you want at any time – and the world needs to hold up wherever you go, whenever you go there.

Fiction writers in the fantasy genre, like the sort that Zelda takes place in, often say that the most important character in the story is the world itself. It needs to feel complete, to feel alive, to feel real to those of us attempting to explore and learn about it. The interactivity of video games can be a boon or a bane in this regard: if you plan for players to go off the course of the main story, you can prepare extra content or interactions to show off a part of the world that they never would have seen if they’d just gone to the next big story event; on the other hand, if you fail to plan for it, you can shatter the immersion of the world and weaken the tale as a whole.

Ordon Village definitely falls into the latter category, as it enters a state of complete stagnation early in the game and never goes back. Nothing about the town changes; the region is never touched by the fierce battles in Hyrule Proper; in fact, aside from Rusl (who I already mentioned becomes more obstacle than annoyance), even the characters remain completely constant. As a result, though you could visit Ordon whenever you wanted, you rarely will – all you’ll find is the exact same people saying the exact same things and doing the exact same stuff as at the beginning of the game. With the initial portions of the tale focusing so heavily on them, this forgetability is a real shame.

This is painful enough on its own, but the issue is compounded when you realize that, as Link’s homeland – the place where he grew up and the source of all his memories and experiences pre-game – Ordon is the location Link should care most deeply about. And that’s an emotion that’s difficult for us players to share or sympathize with, as the game does little to make us care about the village or its occupants. Rather, as time goes on Ordon becomes more of a barrier between us and Link, another wall to keep us from getting into the silent protagonist’s shoes and feeling like we really are the Hero.

There needed to be some sort of event taking place in Ordon as the tale continued, something to bring us back here and see how things have changed while Link has been gone. We need to see that this part of the world is as alive and vibrant as all the rest of Hyrule – and we need to see and reiterate that throughout the game.

Proposed Solution

Ordon Village needed an additional role or purpose. There are signs that such things may have once been planned: in one trailer for Twilight Princess, Link is briefly seen rowing a canoe through Ordon’s river. The finished game’s village is so tiny that this would have been pointless, so perhaps Ordon Village was once intended to be much larger. Alternatively, it may have connected to hidden areas, or provided a secret path to other parts of the world – much like, for example, how the river of Ikana Canyon leads directly to the Southern Swamp in Majora’s Mask.

That hidden area idea sounds like the more interesting choice to me, though…especially since there’s a perfect location already included in the game.

We spoke before about the issues concerning Link’s motivations and actions, and one of the methods we used to better align them was to move the Forest Temple from its current location to a place directly along your path to Hyrule Field. Some of you may have wondered, though: how would we access the Lost Woods with the original entry point now moved far away?

This is the answer to that unasked question. If the path leading to the Lost Woods started in Ordon Village rather than Faron Woods, we suddenly have two additional points in the game where we have to visit Ordon – the first when Link is seeking the Master Sword, and again when he is searching for the Temple of Time’s Mirror Fragment. That’s two more chances the developers could have taken to expand the village’s cast, locales, experiences, etc. And the first chance excites me more than almost anything else, as that is when Link is searching for the Master Sword…because he’s stuck in Wolf form.

Return of the Beast

Link is forced to traverse the town once as a wolf early in the game, but a second time could have added a lot of extra character development to the citizens. By now the Ordonians have learned that the children are safe in Kakariko; who knows how they would react to the wolf’s return? Have they calmed down and wish to avoid him? Do they still seek revenge and attack him? Could some of them have realized that the wolf was actually Link, or at least that he meant them no harm?

And what if Wolf Link was in a position to save the villagers themselves this time?

In the article on Ganondorf, we proposed the idea that the Dark Lord’s beasts would attack the various regions of the world. Link would then have to return to each area and defend it from assault alongside the Light Spirits – but what if the first attack was on Ordon, and it took place while Link was stuck in Wolf form? The sheer magnitude of opportunities excites me: beasts invade the village, the people rise up to defend their homes, and then Wolf Link charges in and starts helping them. Some might realize that he’s on their side – but what if they don’t? What if Link has to fight off the monsters even as he dodges the villagers’ attacks?

And by the end of the battle, the villagers would be forced to confront the fact that the wolf actually saved them. Would they realize their error and befriend the wolf? Or would they stubbornly refuse to accept it and continue viewing Wolf Link as a threat? Different villagers would likely react in different ways, providing us plenty of character development in the process.

Path to the Ancient Grove

We also can’t forget the next time Link visits home, after he’s gotten the Master Sword and is now looking to return to the Sacred Grove. As a human this time, how would he react to his old friends telling him of the wolf’s battle against the monsters? They may be praising the animal in secret, or condemning the beast as loudly as they can. Either way would affect Link in some way, even if neither group was aware of the wolf’s true identity. No matter Link’s reaction, it’s a chance for character growth in the eyes of the player, and that’s never a bad thing (unless it’s done Zant-level poorly, but let’s try to stay optimistic).

Another thing: by this point in the game, there would likely be several Castle Town refugees living in the village. While some may take shelter in preexisting structures – [TANGENT] no matter what, Link’s fangirls must end up living in his house. Their reaction to discovering who really owns their new home would be priceless! [END TANGENT] – the town would probably have to expand further into the woods to support the increased population.

If this expansion was to encroach upon the Lost Woods, we can make use of the Skull Kid, who would start “playing” with anyone who ventures too far. Tales of this strange imp attacking Ordon would be the reason for Rusl to return to investigate the area (I told you we’d come back to Rusl!), and he and Link could later team up to hunt down the Skull Kid – who, in turn, would end up leading Link back to the Sacred Grove. Now Rusl has a new purpose that is actually worthwhile, and this event could also show us a different side of the Skull Kid, rather than the repetitious pair of interactions seen in the game we got.

Most importantly, we completely remove that stupid Golden Cucco from the game. *celebrates*

Rusl could even start looking into the history of the Lost Woods and legends of the Skull Kid, providing us with a chance to maybe get some backstory on the imp and the region he protects. Is he MM Skull Kid all over again? Or maybe, as Francis suggested, he’s a part of Rusl’s past? Sure, his role should remain minor and relatively vague, allowing us fans to piece things together ourselves, but it still would’ve been nice to get some insights on the guy.

The End Result

When Link and Midna visit Princess Zelda and learn of the Master Sword, she instructs them to return to Ordon Village to search for it. In doing so, Wolf Link finds his home under attack by Ganondorf’s monsters, and he helps Ordona and the villagers fight them off – while still struggling to avoid the villagers’ attacks, as they remain suspicious of him after his assumed role in kidnapping the children. Afterwards, Link learns from Ordona of the hidden path to the Lost Woods.

In the time between visits to the Sacred Grove, refugees from Castle Town settle in the village, expanding it out into the woods. This seems to draw out the ire of the Skull Kid, who “plays” with any who venture too far. Rusl and eventually Link return to the village to deal with this threat, and the Skull Kid’s “playing” leads Link to the Temple of Time.

Ordon Village was an opportunity for us to see amazing character growth in the game. With it being the first location you visit, it could have become an image of how Hyrule itself is changing throughout the events of Twilight Princess. Instead…it just sits there, a completely forgotten locale despite its importance in the opening sequence. I already spoke at length about how bad that kind of thing is last week, so I won’t continue to harp on it.

Actually…there really isn’t all that much left for me to harp on these days. Some of you guys have posted a few ideas of your own in the comments, but the truth is that we’ve gone through all the major issues I could come up with for the storyline of Twilight Princess. Were there more issues? Absolutely, but none that really stood out to me like these did. Of course, we’ve been going at this for almost three months…that’s a lot that stood out to me.

Next week we’ll have a recap article, one which will hopefully show how all of the changes I’ve proposed thus far work together to create much stronger storylines and characters. It’s currently intended to be the last article of this series…though I won’t promise that. Either way, I think we all need a break from criticizing TP – after all, its story may be bad, but it’s still a great game. I really want to start playing it again after spending all this time talking about it. But that can wait until we conclude this series next week.

Until then, this is Alpha, signing off to go do…stuff.

“Rewriting Twilight Princess” is a series focused on examining the many narrative issues of this epic Zelda game in an attempt to understand why it has garnered such negativity from the fanbase over the years. Join us each week as Tyler “Alpha” Meehan delves into each of these issues, explains what was wrong with it, and explores ideas for how the storyline could have been rewritten to salvage such problems.

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