9 Video Game Controversies We Were ALL Wrong About

1. Wind Waker's Art Style

Of all the complaints to come from fandoms towards creatives, Wind Waker’s is not only the most misguided and baseless, but the one that’s aged the worst.

First up, some background. Nobody is going to deny that Ocarina of Time was a landmark moment, not only in video games, but for controllable digital entertainment. To an entire generation of children and teenagers, embodying Link and going on a quest to save the realm; exploring Hyrule field and journeying from dungeon to castle, desert to cave and back again, it felt like the most epic thing ever. Not to mention, the shift to playing as Adult Link gave the experience a sense of maturity, grounding it as a real coming of age tale.

All of this was doubled down on by Majora’s Mask being creepy and interpretive as hell, so come the time we laid eyes on Wind Waker, thousands of fans who’d pegged Zelda as a series “for adults” with “adult themes” ended up, well, losing it.

Thing is though, The Legend of Zelda is a fairytale. The unassuming hero, the princess, a dastardly evil that needs to be stopped. Fairies, swords n’ shields, magic and horse-riding - it’s archetypal fantasy, and absolutely fits being rendered AS a fairytale more than anything approaching “realism”. Wind Waker and Minish Cap are far closer to what Zelda is “supposed” to be (if that’s anything at all), and if you want proof that realism is bad… just look at Twilight Princess.