I really want to like Wind Waker. To some extent, I do. In a number of specific moments, it's a lot of fun. If played straight through, with no heed to side quests, I imagine that it should be far less of a headache than it was for me.
The story really is rather well-told; at times it's even a little touching. Link hits just the right note, as a sleepy kid who doesn't particularly want to be a hero. Whenever the targeting doesn't get in the way, the controls are amazingly fluid and satisfying -- at least on land. Even though it doesn't really follow through on all of its promises, there are still some interesting elements to the seafaring. The dungeons are, at times, some of the most clever I've seen. At others, they're pure annoyance.
Wind Waker is a good, solid game; technically, amongst the most well-made around today. But it's no masterpiece, even if it has enough ingredients to be one. It's limited by its ties, its lack of insight, and perhaps just the circumstances of its production.
As far as what it sets out to do, Wind Waker pretty much lives up to expectations. It is to the game's immense credit that despite all of the irritation it can produce, it does pull through in the end and remain largely an enjoyable experience -- if not an unqualified success. But I wish the principles behind it were a bit more mature and well-considered. That the goals were a bit more ambitious. That people would expect more.
I'm hesitant to give the game as high a score as it deserves, so much as the level that it strives for. As long as games like this keep being made -- and then heralded as the epitome of gaming -- the medium is going to remain just as developmentally stunted as it is today.
And yet, I suppose it could have been a lot worse.
Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh
is a secret to everybody
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