when a game's artist actually cares about the villain
Channel: Video Game Story Time
Date: 2023-07-03

Let's face it: Tears of the Kingdom Ganondorf is a very handsome man. There's a reason for that: Satoru Takizawa, a man who single-handedly saved The Legend of Zelda: Twilight princess by drawing moody pictures of Gandondorf.

Well, it wasn't specifically Ganondorf that he was drawing, but rather, the art style for the entire game. Nevertheless, Ganondorf was probably in there somewhere, right? Either way, that's the point that Takizawa pushed his artistif preferences onto the Zelda series, and that's a large part of the reason why he was asked to design the new, handsome Ganondorf for Tears of the Kingdom.

Of course, Takizawa's involvement with Ganondorf doesn't start there. He also designed the character's very first appearance in Ocarina of Time (not including the namedrop in A Link to the Past) as well as Twinrova. Before that, he made some of the best/worst enemies in Super Mario 64, and made enemies for Star Fox 64.

Basically, for over two decades Takizawa has been Nintendo's go-to guy for cool enemies, which is why he was assigned the job of designing this latest Ganondorf, with the instruction to make him as cool as possible.

Mission accomplished.

PS And naturally, Purah is super cool too, but we don't have a specific reason for that to delve into at this time.

Lots of love,
BretonStripes and Kotor

Sources for this video:
https://www.theverge.com/23721063/zelda-tears-of-the-kingdom-interview-aonuma-fujibayashi
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/index.php?title=Interview:Nintendo_Power_July_2005&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop
https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-Wii/Iwata-Asks-The-Legend-of-Zelda-Twilight-Princess/3-Like-trying-to-Mould-Clay/3-Like-trying-to-Mould-Clay-227280.html