The other reason, though, is because I always feel like I’m arriving late.
All the actual archaeology has been done by the time I get there.
The one area where I can properly engage with the lore, however, is the Zelda series.
I think that’s because lore in Zelda feels different to lore in other games.
That sounds like pretty deep thinking tbh.
This was probably unwise.
I swear Borges gets funnier as I age.
It mainly made me think about Zelda, and about one of my favourite characters in Zelda.
I suddenly realised I didn’t know anything about this person - not anything legit.
Stick with me, but only if you fancy.
Even by my own standards this is a wayward and indulgent piece of speculation.
And what an opening.
A whole world lies before you, and you could go anywhere, start anywhere.
But in that first screen, if memory serves, there’s a cave.
Link goes in and an old man is waiting for him.
The old man’s bald, with a white beard and patches of white hair over his ears.
He’s wearing red robes and he’s standing between two patches of flame.
These aren’t bonfires or lanterns as far as I can tell - they’re just balls of fire.
Link grabs the sword, and the old man vanishes, his job done.
You know all of this, probably.
It’s an incredibly compact set-up for what follows, a sort of universal guide for playing Zelda.
It’s the perverse music of utility.
Yes, all of that stuff is magic.
But over the years I’ve started wondering: who is this old man?
I may have been looking in the wrong place, but anyway: I didn’t find anything.
But also, I should add that I haven’t looked online.
I don’t know what other fan theories are out there.
Selfishly, I didn’t want any existing theories to damage my own.
Further caveats: I have never seen the manual to the first Zelda, which may explain everything.
And, I have to admit, I have never actually completed the first Legend of Zelda game.
I’ve played about the first half.
Maybe the old man comes back in the final act!
Maybe he’s Ganon.
I don’t reckon that’s true though.
For me there’s only one real likelihood for who this old fellow is.
He has to be.
He’s Link back from the future, old and tired, but with one last job to do.
It just makes so much sense to me.
A hero in green.
A world that needs saving.
Having old Link back at the start kicking things off with young Link sort of closes the system.
You’re throwing money away, and why would you do that?
In the endless retelling, a stage has been created for a play that never has to end.
There’s something else, I think.
I noticed this afresh today when returning to the game for this piece, actually.
It’s a rapier.
Because at the time this game was created, Link’s specific sword was maybe not yet legendary.
Link was still potentially a kind of fourth musketeer.
And this is also why I still balk at the idea of the official timeline.
This game on the NES is so obviously where Zelda begins.
Not just because it’s literally where Zelda began, but because it feels so much like it too.
Things are still penciled in.
Rituals still feel like happy design choices, possibly conceived as one-offs.
Even Hyrule itself feels like this arid, slightly under-imagined place.
Or maybe that’s fine.
It’s dangerous to go alone.
Part of me was surprised on something deeply truthful level that anybody else knew about Zelda.
I know Zelda belongs to everyone.
I know that it belongs to Nintendo.
I know it belongs to you.
So why does it feel that it belongs to me?
