the old grey bear he aint what he used to be

see, zelda is a lot of things to a lot of people. whatever Zelda they started with is going to leave a pretty heavy impression on them, and they’re going to take certain things from it that influence their idea of what a Zelda game should be. any game that deviates from this is going to be a let-down. games that reinforce these ideas are going to stand out as favorites to them. 

now i am nearly thirty years old, a literal dinosaur in internet terms. i have been playing zelda games since i was about ten years old. my first Zelda (well, actually my FIRST zelda was a game & watch LCD watch game) but my first Zelda was *the* first Zelda. my favorite game and the one i always think of when i think of Zelda was Link to the Past. in this game link is pretty young. he explores a huge and interconnected overworld, packed with hidden caves, colorful, 16-bit cartoony monsters, very few people, and a ton of weird magical items. when i see Link as an adult, my brain sort of involuntarily rejects this notion. link’s not an adult to me. when i eventually got a nintendo64 after high school i basically liked nothing about Ocarina of Time. i saw a grown man link, who was pretty muscular, wearing pants (link never wore pants before ok?!) riding a horse (what is this bullshit) and making  a lot of manly grunts. link to me shouldn’t be ‘manly’. that’s what endears him to me, is being a little runt of a kid who nonetheless goes off on these ridiculously dangerous adventures because he is a hero. of course i eventually played and liked ocarina of time. i accepted that the series had moved away from a massive overworld with hardly any people and a zillion dungeons (link to the past had something like ten dungeons in it) to a more story driven game with lots of characters in it. i wasn’t the biggest fan of the art style, and i’m still not. but i enjoyed the game. i will never have the kind of devotion to it that a lot of zelda fans do, because it wasn’t my first Zelda, and in fact i didn’t even really like it at first. i saw enough of what i liked about Zelda games in it to be able to enjoy it. when wind waker came out, i saw even more of what i liked about Zelda games in it, and when twilight princess came out i basically saw nothing of what i liked about zelda games in it. other people enjoy different things about zelda games and they see those things in games i might not like, such as twilight princess. they might not see these things in wind waker or skyward sword, and they might not like those games. thats ok. not every zelda game is for every fan in the same capacity. they’re all very very different in a lot of ways. 

and thats ok. its no reason to get all bent out of shape over. theyre just video games.