Link’s Awakening got away with one of the gravest storytelling sins

Even if you’ve never taken a writing workshop before, you’ve probably heard at least a few of the adages that get tossed around. Kill your darlings. Show, don’t tell. These short and memorable sentences are used in fiction writing to prevent cliches and other common mistakes. These truths are absorbed by young writers as truths that must be remembered and followed as if they were generalized instructions. There are, however, times when (SometimesThere are many reasons to not kill your beloved darlings. It is often better, at most, to tell than show. Still, I think we can all agree that the “it was all a dream” ending is really unsatisfying and should never be used.

…Right?

Polygon has announced a Zeldathon for 2023. Begin our adventure through The Legend of Zelda’s entire series from the original 1986 title to the release of The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom.

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is an “it was all a dream” narrative. Link, sailing on stormy waters, is knocked unconscious by a wave and washed to shore on Koholint Island. He is then woken up by someone not as Zelda, in a house not the one he was expecting. An ode to the past.

In the first moments of Link’s Awakening, the game’s dreamlike logic is pervasive. Link mistakes his rescuer Marin for Zelda, like those dreams where it’s your friend, but it’s not your friend, but it is. Enemies from the Mario and Kirby series populate the world, including Goombas, a Chain Chomp, and the absurdly named “Anti-Kirby.”

Image: Grezzo/Nintendo via Polygon

You must first dream in order to obtain an ocarina to allow you to revive a deceased rooster using a song that Mamu has given you. Super Mario Bros. 2. Papahl, an overworked father, has discovered that Link will lose him later in the game. He asks Link to take care of him when that happens. The edges of the Switch remake screen become aggressively blurred. This underscores Koholint’s dreamy, in-between world. It is an island which is the Dream of the Wind Fish. You must wake him up to stop the nightmare that is this game.

Or is it Link’s dream? It could be real. Part of the reason that young writers are encouraged to avoid the “it was all a dream” ending is that those questions aren’t a satisfying conclusion to a story. If a reader invests time and effort in writing a story they can reasonably expect that it will be appreciated and rewarded. The dream ending upends the reader’s investment, telling them that everything they thought mattered actually doesn’t. This revelation will make the reader feel empty. Worst, the reader will feel disappointed, or worse, angry. “It was all a dream” is just another way of saying “You wasted your time.”

Image: Grezzo/Nintendo via Polygon

So why don’t I feel this way toward Link’s Awakening? This Zelda may be considered to be the least important, as it does not have a real story that can relate to later Zelda films. Koholint, the Wind Fish, and Koholint were never again seen. After all, it was just a dream. This game should have been denounced, as I was a former teacher of writing who used to make a fuss when students turned in dream stories.

Image: Grezzo/Nintendo via Polygon

But games aren’t fiction and gamers aren’t readers. Like dreams, games have their own rules. What is the best thing about Link’s Awakening so unique in the Zelda series is its commitment to being a dream, to messing with the player’s expectations from screen one, then piling on the weird, mislabeled pictures of Princess Peach and characters who are just straight-up pulled from other series. What’s remarkable about Link’s AwakeningThe dream narrative itself isn’t a dream, it is that you can recognize it as one.

Zelda is among those gaming franchises storied enough to have established a sense of what is commonplace to the series — themes, rules, and conceits that reoccur from game to game — and thus what is “real.” To play Link’s AwakeningIt is possible to have a conversation about what you know, particularly in 2023 with Zelda upon Zelda. The game is only recognizable as a dream because the player knows that it is not “real” for a Chain Chomp to inhabit the same world as Link. It is not “real” for bosses to say “I’m your bad guy this time!” It is not “real” for Link to lift a person over his head in the same way he does a new item:

Image: Grezzo/Nintendo via Polygon

But this reality itself is only real because of the accumulation of other Zeldas — and Marios and Kirbys. It is only real because you’ve played them all.

Link’s AwakeningIt works because dreaming can be more enjoyable than reading about it. If you’ve ever tried telling somebody about a dream you had, you know the folly inherent to these kinds of stories. It all sounds fake. Everything is light. It’s lost all of the strange importance it seemed to have while you were dreaming it. But if your dream could be experienced on its own terms — if it could be played — then dreams could be just as meaningful as anything else. The memory of the dream would no longer ring hollow, but instead, as the Wind Fish says, “That memory makes the dream world real…”