 The Legend of Zelda, Skyward Sword HD, provides fans new and old the opportunity to delve back into a time travel fantasy adventure. It's a nice bridge between last year's time travel heavy Age of Calamity and next year's Sequel to Breath of the Wild, which trailers suggest will also feature some form of time travel. Have you ever wondered why the Zelda series uses the concept of moving backwards and forwards through time so much? Previously we started a new series analysing ludonarrative consonants in Zelda games, or in less pretentious terms, how the game's story and central gameplay mechanic complement and reinforce each other. For example, how Skyward Sword's central gimmick is the use of motion controls to wield Link's sword, and the story of the game centres around the origin of the Master Sword. This is no accident. According to Satoru Iwata, it is often said that when it comes to making a Zelda game, game mechanics come first and the script later. The Ocarina of Time is a perfect example of this, and it's also the first time that the Zelda series featured time travel. The reason for this is purely inspired by the Nintendo 64 game's central gameplay, but it also perfectly reflects the attitudes and feelings within Nintendo at the time of the game's development. Work on Ocarina of Time began while many of the game's developers were still working on Super Mario 64, and a lot of the game's structure and gameplay were designed as a response to the difficult challenges the team faced with the Mario game. According to Yoshiyaki Koizumi, as we were making Super Mario 64, we were thinking about the Legend of Zelda the whole time, and started talking about decreasing the action element in the Legend of Zelda and increasing the puzzle elements. For example, Zed Targeting with Navi the Fairy came about largely because the team found combat in Super Mario 64 so frustrating. Toru Osawa, the game's general director, was responsible for taking the game's various gameplay gimmicks and coming up with a narrative that justified their existence. He got some help on this front from Koizumi, always a fan of story and games, who was eager to add his own input. For instance, by naming Link's horse Ipona after the Celtic Goddess of Horses. According to Osawa, the team didn't always agree on the story that he was writing for the game. He said, We got into it every day. I would write the script and everyone would point out problems saying this is weird and that's impossible. Then I'd come up with a revised script and say I changed this. What do you think? I remember going around showing it to each and everyone to get there okay. So why throw time travel into the mix? It was Shigeru Miyamoto's fault. Well, among others. Ser Osawa. Partway through development, Miyamoto-san and others on the staff started saying they wanted to see a cute little Link. We thought about how we could have both the child and adult forms appear in the same game and came up with the device of going seven years into the future by drawing the Master Sword and then returning back to his child form when he returns it to the pedestal. The game was already quite a way into development at this stage and the decision dramatically increased the number of character animations that were required. Iwata remarked of this change, It's amazing that such a big change didn't cause the whole project to collapse. This change, though, gave Ocarina of Time its primary definitive gameplay gimmick beyond the novel concept of a Zelda game in 3D. What's more, the idea was a perfect reflection of Nintendo's struggle to make the leap into the polygon era. The 64-bit revolution was a watershed moment for Nintendo. The company had to entirely relearn how to make games. 3D technology wasn't their strong suit and they needed to rely on outside companies, including foreigners, for help in developing new systems. And so we have the story in Ocarina of Time, a coming-of-age tale which closely follows Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces Folk Story Structure, most famously the basis for iconic modern myths such as Star Wars and Balan Wonderworld. Bet you thought I was going to say Wonderland, didn't you? Haha, I didn't. In the story, Link, a small boy in a sheltered forest, ventures out to see the world. All the classic stages of the Thousand Faces story structure are here, crossing the threshold, following an animal-to-adventure, and even a very literal interpretation of the stage known as The Belly of the Beast. The game's story is very literally about the perils of growing up. Link's adventures as a child have a sweet naivety to them. He plays music to cheer up a sad Goron leader, plays with several princesses, and collects shiny stones. Link, though, must grow up to fulfill his destiny, and when he draws the Master Sword from its pedestal, he is immediately greeted by Redeads, zombie monsters that screech in a very child-unfriendly fashion. While Link can place the Master Sword back into its pedestal and return to a simpler time whenever he chooses, he can't regain his lost innocence. Even in his child form, he's still aware of, and sometimes actively facing, monsters and trials from the older timeline. This premise of growing up and facing dangers in the world is reflected not just in Link's journey, but also in the story arcs shown for many of the characters around him. Said Ijiya Numa, in Ocarina of Time there were four girls, and it was important to create a storyline where you meet them and then part ways with them. So aside from the gameplay itself, I think that a storyline is an important factor. Shigeru Miyamoto added, and I remember saying that, as part of the player's growth that they go through, the meeting with those four female characters is very important, and a lot of people wonder how that came about, but it's really something that the player can create within themselves. The four female characters in question are Saria, Malon, Ruto and Princess Zelda, each of whom the player meets when they are children before reuniting with them in adulthood. Saria is a character which clearly embodies the notion that you can't escape growing up. She's a Peter Pan-like Kokiri, a child of the forest who never ages and never gets any bigger. Even so, Saria has a sadness to her. She mourns the loss of Link when he departs from the Kokiri Forest into the big wide world, knowing that things will never be the same between the pair again. When Link meets with her after his seven-year nap, she hasn't aged, but there's a weariness to her. She recognises that she has a bigger role to play, that things can't be the same as they were before, and that her time of dancing in the forest is behind her. The next girl the player meets is Malon, who foreshadows Link's inevitable need to grow up early. Malon may be young, but she works hard, and in the absence of her mother, often needs to parent her father, who has a habit of immaturely shirking his responsibilities around the farm. Despite being small, Malon is, of necessity, very mature for her age. According to a gossip stone, they say that Malon of Lon Lon Ranch hopes a knight in shining armour will come and sweep her off her feet someday. While this fantasy may keep Malon going, in reality the player can't save her from the ranch that she's required to maintain. Malon has a responsibility from a young age, and even as she gets older, she's never given the freedom to choose her own destiny. Princess Ruto, meanwhile, takes a liking to Link as a child as they adventure within Jabu Jabu's belly. It seems that Link leaves an impression upon her, as even seven years later, she's still eager to think about marrying him. However, Ruto recognises that this isn't possible, stating, I grant my eternal love to you. Well, that's what I want to say, but I don't think I can offer that now. As an adult, much like Saria, she recognises that her responsibility and Link's destiny will keep the pair on different paths. As much as she might like to rekindle her childhood romance, she recognises that part of growing up means putting aside games, and doing the job before her. Finally, there's Princess Zelda. The player first meets her when she's a child, but she's already devoted to protecting her kingdom, even going so far as to argue with her father when the king doesn't take an impending threat seriously. Even so, Zelda's mission for Link is dismissed by others throughout the game. They're seen as playing some childish game, rather than doing anything important. The seven-year gap is most harsh to Zelda, who gives up her old identity, taking on the role of Sheik in order to survive. Sheik keeps his distance from Link throughout their encounters both physically and metaphorically, not allowing Link to know too much about his motives. It's clear that Sheik knows a lot about the world, as he provides the player with a lot of the important information and skills necessary to progress through the game. Perhaps we're reading too much into this, or allowing the manga adaptation to colour our view of the character, but there's a sense that Sheik has had to do some shady things in order to survive Ganondorf's reign of terror. As a child, Princess Zelda was firmly dedicated to doing the right thing, but as an adult, Sheik has learned that the world isn't as simple as good and evil. So the moral of Ocarina of Time is that you can never truly go back to your childhood, even with the power of time travel on your side. Link can transform back into a small boy, he can return to his heart in the Cookery Forest, but he can't shake his knowledge of the future, he can't truly regain his childhood. So too, Nintendo as a company could never go back after the Nintendo 64. While there are constant re-releases of nostalgic games from the past, they never feel quite the same as they used to, now that the player has a knowledge of what comes next. Rather than attempting to stay firmly attached to the NES or SNES eras, Nintendo has had to evolve, change business practices, experiment with new technology and new ways of making games. All in all, Ocarina of Time presents itself as a classic iconic adventure story, but under the surface it's a slightly sad tale of how, once you leave the safety of home to explore the world, you will never truly be the same again.