Universe of The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda is a video game franchise created by video game designers Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka and mainly developed and published by Nintendo. The universe of the Legend of Zelda series consists of various lands, the most predominant being The franchise is set within a fantasy world reminiscent of medieval Europe which consists of several recurring locations, races and creatures. The world was also partially inspired by Miyamoto and designer Hidemaro Fujibayashi's home town, Kyoto. The most prominent race in the series are the Hylians, a humanoid race with elfin features identifiable by their long, pointed ears. The series' lore contains a creation myth, several fictional alphabets, the most prominent being Hylian, and a fictional almost-universal currency, the rupee. The games involve the protagonists Link and Princess Zelda battling monsters to save the various lands they are in, and defeat a villain, which is often the series' main antagonist, Ganon. Link is usually the main player character in these settings, but players primarily play as Zelda in 2024's Echoes of Wisdom. Nintendo developed the series' lore into a timeline that spans thousands of years across its history.
Hyrule was created as the original setting for 1986's The Legend of Zelda and has remained the main environment for successive games in the series. Inspired by dungeon crawlers, Miyamoto and Tezuka developed a high fantasy world in the form of a 2D map filled with monsters, puzzles and dungeons. Hyrule transitioned to a 3D environment with the development of Ocarina of Time, released on the Nintendo 64 in 1998. For Breath of the Wild, released on the Wii U and Nintendo Switch in 2017, Nintendo developed Hyrule into a seamless open world. Since the launch of the original game, the series has been a commercial and critical success and introduced landmark innovations in world design that have influenced numerous developers in the video game industry.
Overview
The Legend of Zelda series is set in a fantasy world that first appeared in the original The Legend of Zelda, which was developed and published by Nintendo. The game introduced Hyrule as the series' primary setting along with the series' protagonists Link and Princess Zelda, and primary antagonist Ganon. Link has been the primary player character since the start of the series, though he is only playable in the prologue of Echoes of Wisdom. The storyline of each game varies, but follows a common overarching plot that involves Link, a Hylian boy or young man, traveling through Hyrule or another land to save the world from evil, which is typically Ganon. He is often guided in these plots by Zelda, a Hylian girl or young woman, usually from Hyrule's royal family, who appears in every game in the series except for Link's Awakening and Tri Force Heroes, and is the main player character in Echoes of Wisdom. A recurring plot element in the games is Ganon's attempts to obtain the Triforce, a mystical artifact introduced in the first Legend of Zelda that will enable him to possess ultimate power. Although Link and Zelda have similar appearances in each game, there are different characters who go by those names throughout the series who appear whenever evil threatens the world. Skyward Sword was established as the beginning of the series' history and involves the antagonist Demise cursing the first incarnations of Link and Zelda so they reincarnate in an endless cycle to protect Hyrule from evil.Hyrule
Concept and design
Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto conceived the land of Hyrule as the setting for the original The Legend of Zelda, describing it as "a miniature garden that you can put into a drawer and revisit anytime you like". He drew his inspiration from the Kyoto countryside that he had explored in his childhood and wanted to recreate the experience of adventure and discovery. Alongside writer Takashi Tezuka, Miyamoto created a fantasy world in the style of fantasy authors like Tolkien, which was viewed from a top-down perspective. It was populated with colourful characters, monsters and dungeons for the player to explore.2D world design
Miyamoto and Tezuka started working on The Legend of Zelda during the development of Super Mario Bros.. Initially, the game did not feature an overworld. In Hyrule Historia, Miyamoto said that Nintendo aimed to develop a launch title for the Famicom Disk System. An early game was initially designed to make use of the Disk System's ability to rewrite data, allowing players to create dungeons and explore other players' creations. He explained: "We made a one-player game with dungeons under mountains that surrounded Death Mountain, but we couldn't shake that "I want to play above ground, too!" feeling, so we added forests and lakes, and eventually Hyrule Field".The first specifications were drawn up on a whiteboard by Miyamoto and then copied onto a document on 1 February 1985. The document detailed early concepts for items and enemies that would later feature in the game, such as a compass, bows and arrows and a boomerang, and "Hakkai", an early name given to Ganon. This was developed into rough sketches for various items and enemies within the following two weeks. The name for the game had not yet been decided, so the title was simply labelled "Adventure". Long paper was used to create the first land map of Hyrule, which was developed by Tezuka and Miyamoto sitting side by side and drawing together. Miyamoto said that the name "Hyrule" seemed like the perfect choice during a discussion to find a name for a high-fantasy region. In Japan, The Legend of Zelda game was released as The Hyrule Fantasy, which was almost chosen as the name for the entire franchise, but was dropped after the first game. Miyamoto said this could have been due to the name being too similar to Final Fantasy, which was released in December 1987.
The original Hyrule map was designed to encourage exploration and discovery, requiring up to several hours to navigate. The map is nonlinear, so players are free to choose from several unmarked paths, with just a few areas being inaccessible at the start. Miyamoto was influenced by The Black Onyx and Ultima, two games that centre around fantasy dungeon crawling. The Zelda world was defined by its mazes, hidden rooms and treasures. The game's nine dungeons were designed to be difficult to locate, forcing players to uncover the secrets of the map with little help. In addition to its underworld, the Hyrule map consists of a large overworld created out of a grid structure that is much larger than can be displayed on a single screen. It is 16 blocks wide and eight blocks high and comprises 128 areas. Miyamoto said that maps for the game were included in North America: "The maps included various hints, but to be honest, I thought it would be more enjoyable to play the game without any help. So we sealed the map, with a message reading 'You should only use the map and strategic tips as a last resort'". Players were required to begin their adventure in the centre of Hyrule and use instinct alone to find an old man inside a cave who gives Link a sword and declares, "It's dangerous to go alone!". While navigating Hyrule's overworld and its many dangerous enemies, players must eventually find the dungeons, which each feature various enemies, items and a boss.
The concept of a role-playing game was a new experience for players in the 1980s. The gameplay diverged from the fast-paced games typically found in arcades, or home console games with a similar "infectious energy" to them like Super Mario Bros. By offering players an open world to explore, puzzles to solve and a fantasy story that centres on a protagonist embarking on an adventure to save a princess from an evil villain and bring peace to Hyrule. The new game concept caused concern with Nintendo's management. In 2003, Miyamoto stated in an interview for Superplay magazine: "I remember that we were very nervous, because The Legend Of Zelda was our first game that forced the players to think about what they should do next. We were afraid that gamers would become bored and stressed by the new concept". During the testing phase, players complained about getting lost inside the game's dungeons, but rather than making the game more simplistic, Miyamoto decided to make it more challenging by removing Link's sword at the beginning of the game and forcing players to locate it. He wanted to encourage players to communicate with each other while solving the game's puzzles.
A Link to the Past introduced a dark version of Hyrule Kingdom: a corrupted land, often caused by Ganon, known in its first iteration as the Dark World. The game, as well as some later installments, had Link travel between similar-looking versions of Hyrule or other lands—one version without an evil influence and one with—as "a clever way to re-use assets and save precious cartridge space" while investing the player in their resolve to save the world.
The fantasy characters of Hyrule, and the universe of The Legend of Zelda as a whole, were partially inspired by the American television series Twin Peaks. In a joint interview, Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma and SRD president Toshihiko Nakago considered Link's Awakening, with Yoshiaki Koizumi in charge of the story, to be the first time the series had a proper plot. Tezuka had made the suggestion to make the characters of Link's Awakening "suspicious types" like in Twin Peaks. Aonuma and the interviewer, former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, believed that this broadened the possibilities of characters and stories that could appear in later Legend of Zelda games.