Wind Waker breaks from Zelda’s recurring legend to warn against blind faith

The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker begins with a myth: Once, a great evil came upon the kingdom of Hyrule, and all seemed lost until a young boy appeared to challenge it. The people called him The Hero Of Time, and he vanquished the evil before mysteriously disappearing. To us, this is likely a familiar tale; it’s the plot of The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, passed on as folklore. But the story doesn’t stop there. It goes on to say that, after much time had passed, the great evil returned. The people, remembering their stories, waited. “Surely The Hero Of Time will come and save us,” they thought. He didn’t, and at the last hour, the people of that kingdom had no recourse but prayer.
It’s an especially grim ending for a prologue to a game that’s remembered for being bright and cartoonish, but the tale’s calamitous conclusion reads as cautionary. The desperate situation in which the denizens of Hyrule found themselves seems to be a result of their own belief. They waited for a hero when none were forthcoming, dooming themselves with blind faith. Despite enacting this same familiar fairy tale journey, Wind Waker takes this warning to heart. It’s a fairy tale against fairy tales, showing reverence for received stories even as it warns that they should not be blindly trusted.
The Link you play as in Wind Waker bears no relation to The Hero Of Time, though he does live in his shadow. When the game begins, he receives the ceremonial green pointy hat and skivvies of Links long past, which he wears for the rest of the game (and as many characters point out—in keeping with the theme of skepticism—are far too warm for ocean living). As his sister is kidnapped and Link crosses paths with the revived Ganondorf (the opening legend’s great evil and the series’ recurring bad guy), he’s forced into The Hero Of Time’s quest: gathering three magical stones, claiming the Master Sword, and fighting the villain. Even the names of the locales he visits point to the way Link is tied up in the same old story. The journey begins on Outset Island. His mid-game test is in the Tower Of The Gods, hearkening back to the turning point of Ocarina Of Time where The Hero Of Time slept for seven years in the intangible Sacred Realm of Hyrule’s goddesses. After emerging from the Tower, Wind Waker’s Link even gets a name to befit the weight of his legacy. He is The Hero Of Winds, inheritor of the mantle of Hero Of Time.