Why Zelda Games Feature So Much Time Travel
Channel: Video Game Story Time
Date: 2021-08-13

Hey! Listen! Our new series of Zelda analysis videos, which we've now titled "A Link to the Plot", has returned, for a video analysing the use of time travel in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.


In an Iwata Asks interview, several of the creative leads for Zelda games past have made it clear that game mechanics inform the story that they infuse into each Zelda title, which makes sense. Thus, with Ocarina of Time, the option to play as both a child and an adult was decided before the story that was built around it, which sees the player travelling forwards and backwards in time.


According to the developers, this is all thanks to Shigeru Miyamoto (among others), who decided mid-way through development of Ocarina of Time that it would be fun to see a cute Child Link in addition to the grown-up, swashbuckling Adult Link that they'd been developing up until that point.


This turned out to be very fitting, as a story about nostalgia and growing up was a perfect fit for Nintendo at that particular point in time, and this game has since gone on to influence the entire Zelda series, with time travel showing up frequently in the years since.


Be sure to watch out first video in the Link To The Plot series, about how breakable weapons reinforce Breath of the Wild's central message about failure and overcoming defeat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm8TqPEqnAA





Lots of love,BretonStripes (http://twitter.com/bretonstriped) and Kotor (http://twitter.com/kotorcomics)


Sources:
https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2017/02/15/miyamoto-and-aonuma-on-zeldas-storytelling-and-breath-of-the-wilds-trick.aspx
https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/zelda-ocarina-of-time/1/3