Robin Williams and the Hero of Time
In my mind, this commercial was for A Link Between Worlds, not Ocarina of Time. For me, as Zelda games go, Robin Williams is more strongly connected to A Link Between Worlds.
Because here was the first celebrity death in my life to make me shed tears and the first Zelda game to make me shed tears.
As Egoraptor said, The Legend of Zelda has for many years been reduced to a series of symbols without attention given to their context. The treasure opening sound effect, the keys, the boomerangs, and of course, Zelda and Link, themselves symbols of wisdom and courage.
Zelda – a lot like the American comic book in its Silver Age – became stale and predictable. So something has to give. There has to be a desire for growth. What if we took these symbols and deconstructed their purpose? What if Zelda had a Bronze Age?
As colorful and charming as it is, A Link Between Worlds is also the closest we’ve come to looking at Hyrule from an achingly realistic perspective. Many, if not most, Zelda games deal with duality in the world – light and dark, future and past.
Lorule is the version of Hyrule in which things did not go right, in which its residents could not fully maintain their roles. Society could not stay harmonious, the Triforce could not stay whole, and the wise ruler could not stay virtuous. This leads to civil war, the destruction of their sacred treasure, the deceit and barbarous acts of Princess Hilda – Lorule’s parallel of Princess Zelda. They are fallible and imperfect, not like symbols, but like people.
Lorule allows us to see a glimpse of the characters we’ve known for years at their absolute worst – at their absolutely most honest. Desperate, selfish, shortsighted, scared.
And of course, the big question that you often forget to ask (because you’re having so much fun) is: If Lorule has an alternate Zelda, where is its alternate Link?
What does a hero do when the mantle becomes too heavy? What can a hero do when the difference between what other people see in him and what he sees in himself diverge so fully that it’s too painful to bear? Where can a hero go to escape the lie that his life has become, the lie that he himself has participated in by virtue of his existence?
If he’s lucky, he can slip away and find someone a little bit like him to help him do the things he is too afraid to do himself.
When Ravio, the bumbling merchant who’s been gouging me for rupees for hours, finally pulled off his dumb bunny hood, my heart jumped into my throat.
Ravio, for all intents and purpose, is Link at his worst, his most vulnerable. When he revealed his identity, I felt like I was looking at Link – someone who I’ve known my whole life, someone who was born in 1987, the same year as me – for the very first time.
Only now, only after all of these years, only after seeing him at his most selfish, his most cowardly, his most honest, did I feel like I truly understood him.
Being a hero, being someone who others rely on to make their lives safe and happy, must be terribly hard.
Please take care of your heroes.