Rewriting Twilight Princess: The Usurper King

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 theorize 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.

Some people love him; lots of people hate him. If you’re going to start talking about problems with Twilight Princess‘s storyline or characters, you might as well start with the one that Nintendo ruined the most: Zant. He started off so awesome, easily entering the fight for favorite villain of the series, but in many people’s minds he bowed out halfway through the game…and then spent his final moments laughing in our faces for even considering him worthwhile in the first place.

There are arguments to be made for why his character arc was actually a good one – and there are arguments for why those arguments are incorrect. I hope proponents of the former can forgive my obvious bias and instead focus on what this series is about: explaining why these things were bad, and hypothesizing how they could have been so much better.

Let’s get to work.

The Game We Got

Zant starts off as a complete enigma, albeit a frighteningly awesome one. We first see him as the mysterious conqueror in Zelda’s flashback, gradually tease out more details from Midna over the first half of the game, and then have our fateful first encounter with him – at which point we lose all doubts of his epic-level villainy. Not only does he throw the Hero to the ground without lifting a finger, he does the same to Lanayru and nearly kills Midna. When next you meet, he’s humored by your survival but ultimately leaves you to Stallord’s mercy while he breaks the Mirror of Twilight. Dang, talk about a villain!

…And then the next time you see him, he’s essentially an insane clown who needs someone to get him back on his meds. Gone is the amazing foe from before, leaving behind a whiny, spoiled brat. He’s also inexplicably much weaker than before (I guess because tiny wittle energy balls are so much better than bursts of power that send Heroes and Light Spirits flying. Obviously).

Yes, yes, I’m embellishing. Just trying to get a point across.

The Problem

A lot of the defenses of Zant that I’ve seen can be boiled down to a single point: the guy was always insane, and he just didn’t show it during your first few encounters. And you know what? That’s probably true. Heck, I’d be more shocked if he wasn’t a tiny bit deranged throughout his entire campaign of conquest. Almost every villain is like that to some extent – be they motivated by greed, revenge, power, whatever, that motivation almost always becomes an obsession that drives them to do increasingly malevolent things. It’s what makes their villainous desires believable and, to an extent, relatable.

The thing is, I think everyone agrees with that. Whether you hate what Nintendo did with him or not, I’m sure almost all of us would agree that Zant was crazy throughout. He covered it well with an authoritative demeanor that made us tremble in our boots, but the touch of derangement was never far off. So…if not the insanity itself, what is it about the final meeting in the Twilight Realm that throws people for a loop?

It’s the suddenness of it all.

The problem many people have with Zant is that his character makes such a dramatic shift from “authoritative, confident villain” to “insane, whiny clown” that we can’t help but feel a bit jarred by it. He does it all at once – there is no foreshadowing of this lack of composure, no clues to hint at this underlying aspect. You can’t even call it ‘character development’ because there’s no time spent developing it – the shift of his personality just abruptly happens. And to make matters infinitely worse, it just abruptly happens without reason.

Many try to explain it by saying that Link’s progress has him worried, but I don’t think that holds much weight. I’ve seen several such arguments compare Zant to the cliché “schoolyard bully” character, one who thinks that he’s big stuff but goes into a mindless rage when someone challenges and beats him. And that’s not a bad comparison – there’s just one problem with it: schoolyard bullies don’t consider that you can beat them until you’re already beating them. Their minions? Sure, you might stand up to those guys. But the bully himself? The very idea that he could lose seems ludicrous until he’s already lost – and even then, sometimes he still can’t see past his pride and accept defeat.

Zant has no reason to go crazy before the fight starts, because for all he knows he can just blast the Hero away like he did before – and, honestly, that may very well have been possible. Why he didn’t use that level of attack again is just another unsolvable mystery.

And actually, that’s another part of the problem – because Zant’s power is diminished without reason, the satisfaction of beating him is diminished as well. I wanted to fight the enemy who took me down in one hit in Lanayru’s Spring; beating up on a whiny clown can’t even compare to the fight I was expecting when Link walked into the Twili’s throne room. It’s such a disappointing betrayal of our expectations that of course people will complain about it.

…Now, I’m not going to say that Zant going insane was a bad thing (though I will say that the puny energy balls were bad). His craziness at the end could have been a well-played reveal that would have given him a sharp contrast with Ganondorf’s eternal composure. If we had gotten a reason for it or, better yet, seen his descent into insanity happen before our very eyes, it would have been much better development for his character.

Proposed Solution

And you know what? Zant’s boss fight would have been a perfect place to see this descent.

Given how his boss fight is set up, the reveal of his insanity could have easily followed the schoolyard bully route. Starting out as prideful, calm, and confident as ever, the multiple stages of the battle would have provided time for Zant to discover he was outmatched, start getting desperate, and at last reveal his insanity in all of its terrible glory as a last-ditch effort to win.

So how do we want to change this? Well, to start off, the cutscenes that precede the fight need to have all of Zant’s clownish antics removed. He should be sitting on his throne when we arrive, poised and confident, probably itching to crush this accursed Hero beneath his boots. A bit of light conversation starts it all off as he recounts how he was initially denied kingship, only to meet his god and gain the power necessary to obtain the throne that he rightfully deserved.

One thing we would not change would be what happens in the flashbacks before the fight. Past-Zant’s tantrum after being denied the kingship is good foreshadowing for his true character, and seeing those memories will help to prepare players for the approaching meltdown.

Afterwards we move into the fight itself. The first few stages need to have Zant underestimating Link’s abilities, and something like those weak energy balls of his fit this well. As the battle goes on, however, he should get more and more frantic to crush this unworthy mortal who dares challenge his right to rule, so his attacks become wilder, less focused, and more draining on our villain. This is also when his more foolish aspects can start to reveal themselves, as at this point we’re ready to see that Zant’s really not all that great – in his hubris he simply believed himself to be strong, and Ganondorf’s gift of power only reinforced that falsehood.

To facilitate this, we’re going to reorder, replace, and even add to his list of stages.

  1. Twili Throne Room: The battle will not start off with a change of scenery. With him no longer portrayed as a clown in the preceding cutscenes, the throne room is symbolic of Zant’s authority and control over the Twilight Realm – when he is defeated in it and forced to switch the scenery to places of the light world, it represents how he is now losing that control. Combat could be reminiscent of the Phantom Zant fights, with the Usurper King warping around the room at random until he’s ready to attack, at which point Link could seize an opening and slash away.

  2. Morpheel’s Chamber: The boss room of the Lakebed Temple fits for the second stage simply because trying to drown the Hero makes good logical sense, which Zant won’t be capable of later on in the fight. Not to mention, there already isn’t much silliness in this arena, so it fits well with our idea of Zant still thinking himself the stronger one. Link beat him in the throne room, sure, but he was just getting warmed up!…or so he thinks.
  3. Diababa’s Chamber: Stage three marks a good point for Zant to start getting a bit more pissed off – for some reason, this whelp has had the gall to not fall before him yet, and he can’t understand why. Here he should start showing a bit more of his power, firing off larger, more dangerous energy balls instead of the minor ones from the game we got. Maybe he could start unleashing one or two of those energy waves from Lanayru’s Spring, too.
  4. Blizzeta’s Chamber: Zant is starting to focus more and more on power than on actually-useful strategies, and his size-change tactic displays this very well. He should probably move a bit faster than he did in the game we got, though, in order to subtly convey how frantic he’s unwittingly becoming – this foolish Hylian is testing his patience and needs to be squashed. In his haste, he may even overstep Link, which would give us the opening needed to crush his toes with the Ball and Chain.
  5. Dangoro’s Chamber: Up until now Zant’s obsessiveness has been showing itself in subtle manners; this is the stage where it becomes more blatant. He frantically leaps around the arena, and his attacks are far more dangerous than a stream of energy balls – Zant instead uses swarms of attacks, energy balls fired in all directions as he focuses more on overwhelming Link than on accurately hitting him. If our Hero gets close, Zant unleashes an energy wave without a second thought. Using all this power would quickly wear him out, though, and that’s when Link can attack.

  6. Hyrule Castle: This one can actually stay mostly unchanged – Zant’s franticness with his swords works well to reveal just how desperate he’s gotten. I’d prefer it if he also used some magical attacks, but perhaps we could forgo that to show that he’s used up all his magic and is now forced to fight in a way that’s unfamiliar to him. His pridefulness is all that keeps him in the game at this point.
  7. Final Stage: Zant is exhausted and confused. He cannot understand what is happening – he is the King of Twilight! He is empowered by a god! And yet this worthless brat dares to raise a hand against him and, somehow, bring him to his knees!? This new seventh stage is where Zant abandons restraint, strategy, even sanity itself – he has to win, no matter the price, and so he grabs every last bit of power available to him and hurls it at Link. At long last, Zant abandons his mask of regality (ooo, he should lose his mask in this stage too!) and reveals his true, deranged self.

But even with all that power, Link still beats him, leading to Zant’s (in my humble opinion) absolutely absurd assertion that Ganondorf will revive a mere pawn like him. His taunting of Midna serves as his final attempt to regain control of the situation…and only pushes the Twilight Princess into destroying him once and for all.

The End Result

Upon arriving at the throne room of the Palace of Twilight, Link and Midna are met by Zant, who – while a bit annoyed by their persistence and by his forces’ inability to stop them – retains the sense of dominating control that he has always held…or, at least, that he has always appeared to hold. His mask starts to falter, crack, and ultimately shatter as Link overcomes his every obstacle and attack. In time he completely loses himself to his misplaced arrogance, trading sanity for power in an attempt to maintain the illusion he has built up that he is in control.

By the time the battle ends, Zant’s insanity has been revealed in full. He has even managed to delude himself into believing that his dark god would show mercy on this failed servant and revive him – his one last attempt at regaining some semblance of control over the situation. And even that is taken from him when, due to his thoughtless taunts of Midna, she awakens the Fused Shadows’ power and destroys Zant for good.

Zant was not a bad enemy. He wasn’t even a bad character. The main issue players have with him, near as I can tell, stems from the poorly executed ‘reveal’ of his true self: it comes out of nowhere and blindsides you without warning or reason. The dichotomy between Zant’s personalities was simply too great to ignore, and it could be seen in both his character and his boss battle – you’re led to expect some epic clash between Hero and magical mastermind, but instead only get some weak energy balls (no, Nintendo, I will never let that one go). The battle could have been used to help gradually move Zant from his commanding persona into that of a spoiled brat with some level of realism. Alas, it was a missed opportunity – one of many in this game’s story.

Of course, even if the boss battle had been epic, that alone would not have guaranteed success – one need only look at Zant’s replacement to see that. You can’t complain about one Twilight Princess villain without going after the other, so next week we’ll reconvene to take a look at none other than the Dark Lord himself. He’s easily received as much – if not more – criticism than Zant, and it seems his presence in TP fundamentally shifted fans’ perception of him. Was it only because the game was hijacked by Ganon? Or could the developers have written his arrival in a way that fans would have loved? We’ll discuss that next time.

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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