Skyward Sword vs. The Minish Cap: Which Game is First?
Posted on August 17 2011 by Nathanial Rumphol-Janc
Along came The Wind Waker with its epic flood tale, which took the story of Ganondorf, the Triforce, and even Hyrule itself in a completely different direction than any of us could have expected. From there, many of the games seem to have been focused more on surprising us with new and different ideas than building on what we already knew. One of those big ideas was the Four Swords trilogy, and from there, The Minish Cap, a foundational prequel for the side series. But Minish Cap did more than introduce the legend of the Four Sword – it also told the story of Princess Zelda’s mythical powers and Link’s trademark cap. From there, many took it to be the new first tale in the Zelda mythos, replacing longtime champion Ocarina as the header for the series.
With Skyward Sword finally peeking above the horizon and stated by Eiji Aonuma several times to be the new first tale on the block (although tentatively in case a future game precedes it later on), it’s time to reopen the “first game” debate. Is Skyward Sword the absolute first story? Or is its placement only relevant to the Ocarina of Time story arc? Could Minish Cap still tie in to the origins of the series somehow? I’ll do my best to line out all the evidence to see if we can hash this one out before November.
Evidence in favor of The Minish Cap
Proponents of an early placement of The Minish Cap usually point to the game’s many references to origins of common series elements. Chief among these is the story of the Light Force, the central backstory of the game. For those of you that don’t know, the “Light Force” was known originally as “Force,” one of the primary magical energy sources in Hyrule as seen in Four Swords Adventures and the DS outings. Not only does Minish Cap explain that Force was brought to Hyrule by the Minish, it declares Force to be the hereditary magic passed down among Hylian princesses. This would appear to cast the backstory of Minish Cap as the origin of Zelda’s sacred power.
Moreover, the game’s director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi (now the man heading up Skyward Sword) talked about how Light Force is an extremely old legend in Hyrule in a 2005 interview with Nintendo Power:
Golden light is a very, very old legend of Hyrule and nobody knows how it relates to the Triforce legend. It is still a big mystery whether it has some relationship with the Triforce, which is the most important element in the Legend of Zelda series.
Many took this to be a confirmation that the game was indeed the oldest tale in the timeline, almost as old as the Triforce’s relationship to Hyrule. The fact that neither the Triforce or Ganon played into the game’s plot (though the former was still spotted on and in some buildings) seemed to further support this conclusion.
Another major “origin” told by Minish Cap was that of Link’s trademark cap. The game’s intro featured a Hylian hero who, while he sported the typical green tunic, lacked the pointy hat worn by most sword-swishing champions. Link began the game similarly, and only gained a “hat” when Ezlo, who had taken on a cursed form, fixed himself onto the little lad’s head. Ezlo gave Link a cap based on this form at the end of the game as a parting gift.
This too was acknowledged by the developers. Bill Trinen, one of the heads of Nintendo of America’s localization division, said this about the hat:
This game takes you really, really deep into Hylian lore, and you could almost look at it as the story of how Link gets his cap.
– Bill Trinen, Nintendo Gamer’s Summit 2004
The significance of the hat was again mentioned on Nintendo’s official 25th anniversary history page for the franchise:
Link explores high and low in the tale of how he got his hat.
So far it sounds like Minish Cap is designed to introduce Link and Zelda as we know them throughout the franchise, but the origin stories didn’t end there. The Minish were also attributed to some other phenomena in Hyrule, ranging from hiding helpful things like Rupees in grass and beneath rocks, one of the other famous attributes of the series, the construction of the Armos, and aiding the sky-dwelling Wind Tribe while they still lived on the surface.
Some look at the game’s setting and see only a few familiar locale names. Other places seem similar to what we know, but have completely different names. Could Minish Cap be set in some kind of proto-Hyrule that predates Ocarina of Time and all of those locales? It’s not as solid as some of the other evidence, but it’s definitely food for thought.
But the real kicker came in the game’s ending. As it originally read in Japan and a few European languages such as French and German, the ending stated outright that Minish Cap was “Link’s first adventure.” Check out the translation below:
Thus Link’s first adventure ended. But hereafter, many kinds of occurrences will perhaps come to Link and Zelda in Hyrule. So, the story goes on. As long as there is the Force’s guidance…
– The Minish Cap, ending in JP and some EU versions
This placement goes along pretty well with a statement Eiji Aonuma made about the Four Swords game for GameBoy Advance being the “oldest tale in the Zelda timeline” during a 2004 interview. Taken together with it, this ending confirmed an early placement for many theorists.
Some protested this interpretation, believing that it only refers to the current generation Link and Zelda and not the characters as they appear throughout the series. I’ll be the first to admit that I was one of them, but I’ve since rethought my original impressions and decided that the idea was definitely that this would be the starting point for Link and Zelda’s adventures across the whole timeline. After all, the ending talks about their quests continuing as long as Light Force’s guidance endures, and we see in other games that Force plays a huge role in a number of games post-dating Minish Cap.
So, are you convinced yet?
Counterpoints
Unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as that. A number of elements in Minish Cap seem to suggest a different story. I’ll deal with one of the most drastic first: in editions of the game localized by Nintendo of America, most notably the English version, the line about “Link’s first adventure” is totally absent from the game’s ending. Instead, the final narration went like this:
Thus did Link’s quest come to an end. But surely, this is not the end of Zelda and Link’s adventures in Hyrule. The legend will continue…as long as the power of the light force echoes throughout the ages.
Of course, we see the same suggestion that the story will go on from there, but what we don’t see is the statement that this is where it all began. Some think that Nintendo of America’s localizations don’t have any weight compared to the original Japanese because they’re subject to error, and I won’t bother to open that can of worms, but still…it’s a curious and oddly specific revision if the game really was meant to come first in the timeline according to Nintendo’s official order for the series.
There’s also another possible interpretation of Mr. Fujibayashi’s comments about the Light Force:
Golden light is a very, very old legend of Hyrule and nobody knows how it relates to the Triforce legend. It is still a big mystery whether it has some relationship with the Triforce, which is the most important element in the Legend of Zelda series.
Looking at the bolded portions, it kind of sounds like there isn’t a set idea as far as how Force interconnects with the Triforce legend, which could suggest that there may not be a solid placement for Minish Cap relative to the games that deal with the Triforce. That doesn’t mean it’s not a “very old” part of Hyrule’s history – technically every backstory legend is “very old” as far as the plot is concerned.
What about all those origins? For all we know they could be conditioned solely on the setting of Minish Cap. The cap could have faded from use at some point, with Ezlo’s interaction with Link re-installing it as part of the hero garb. Obviously given that Force is an energy necessary for creatures to live and move as we saw in Phantom Hourglass, it could be that the Light Force is just a super-powerful form of Force and not its first appearance. And the Armos? That’s just one model – and one that’s entirely different than the Goron-based one we see in Ocarina of Time.
As for that statement that Four Swords is first…actually, just check out the support for Skyward Sword listed below.
Evidence in favor of Skyward Sword
I’ll cut right to the chase: there’s an insurmountable number of statements from Nintendo, namely Mr. Aonuma, labeling Skyward Sword as or associating it with the “first story” in the series. Let’s go through them one-by-one:
…this title [Skyward Sword] takes place before Ocarina of Time. If I said that a certain title was ‘the first Zelda game’, then that means that we can’t ever make a title that takes place before that! So for us to add titles to the series, we have to have a way of putting the titles before or after each other.
– Eiji Aonuma, Official Nintendo Magazine, July 2010
Here he doesn’t say point-blank that Skyward Sword comes first, but he does say that it’s before Ocarina of Time and then go on to elaborate about how he can’t quite say that it’s first because he might have to go back on that statement if a future Zelda game comes out that takes place before it. All right, all right, let’s use logic here. Why would Aonuma talk about the issue of which game is first right after stating that Skyward Sword is before Ocarina of Time? Sounds to me like Aonuma’s equating “before Ocarina of Time” with “first in the timeline.”
Not only does this suggest that Skyward Sword is first, before Minish Cap, but it also suggests that Ocarina of Time was still the first story in the timeline until the upcoming Wii game came around. This bodes all kinds of well for Skyward Sword, but kind of throws a wrench in the works for Minish Cap.
There’s a similar statement in a recent Nintendo Power interview:
Where does Skyward Sword fall in the timeline? Does it come between Minish Cap and Ocarina of Time?
Well, calling it the first Zelda might sort of box me in, but what I would like to say is that it does come before Ocarina of Time.
Here Aonuma expresses his intent to call Skyward Sword “the first Zelda” a little more strongly here, but still holds back – not because of existing games, but because he’s afraid of being “boxed in” if he’s ever asked the same question again later on for another game.
But there’s another, more specific declaration of the game’s placement:
I think we’ve talked with the media about this before, about Ocarina of Time being sort of the oldest story in the Zelda timeline, but, of course, in Ocarina of Time the Master Sword already exists, so it’s obviously safe to say that this takes place before Ocarina of Time.
– Aonuma, Nintendo Power interview
Given Aonuma’s reservations to call Skyward Sword “first” in other interviews, his bold statement that “Ocarina of Time is first, but now Skyward Sword is before it” is a little surprising – but there you have it. I don’t see how it can get any more clear than that – or how Minish Cap can hold its ground against this kind of evidence. It doesn’t get much clearer than three nearly identical statements from the guy in charge of the series.
Believe me, I’d love to get into counterpoints, but so far we don’t know enough about the game to really formulate any. The best I’ve seen is that Aonuma must not have been talking about the whole timeline, but instead just the part involving Ocarina of Time. It’s definitely possible – after all, Majora’s Mask was ignored when Aonuma placed Twilight Princess in a 2006 interview.
I could also delve into issues that, if given some attention in Skyward Sword, might clarify the question once and for all…but I’ll save that for another day.
For now, I leave you with this question: based on the evidence as it’s been presented thus far, do you think Minish Cap has enough going for it to really be the first game in the timeline? What about Skyward Sword? Do you think both it and Ocarina of Time are still first, or are their “timeline placements” in recent interviews just discussions of the core Zelda mythos and irrelevant to Minish Cap?
Look for the next edition of “Tribes of Skyward Sword” (a subseries of the Skyward Sword Speculation Series) this weekend for a discussion of the various sky peoples seen in the Zelda series. Will Skyloft relate to any or all of them? Might we see light shed on the mystery of how and why these tribes left Hyrule to go to the sky? I’ll try to cover as many of the possibilities as I can!
The Skyward Sword Speculation Series is a column that focuses on speculated possibilities for Skyward Sword‘s gameplay and storyline. The idea came from a general speculation article we published in the wake of E3 2010, and I’m bringing it back in the wake of E3 and Comic Con 2011! While I try to make my guesses based on confirmed or suggested facts, bear in mind that they are still just that – guesses – and may or may not prove to be true, or even at all accurate. I’ll be dealing with all kinds of other possibilities in future articles, so stay tuned for upcoming installments!
