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After decades of patiently explaining to elderly relatives, “No, Zelda is the princess”, 2024 is going to be the year that Grandma is finally right. The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom is boldly going where no mainline series entry has gone before by putting the titular princess in the driver’s seat. How shocking! How bold! How unlike anything that we Zelda fans have been calling for for years. Ahem.
The ‘Zelda is the hero’ reveal was only surprising because of how long it’s taken. Aside from the obvious protagonist confusion, the series has been crying out for the Hylian monarch to take a starring role. She shines as Sheik in Ocarina of Time (our apologies to those who have avoided that spoiler for the last 25 years), she edged into the spotlight in Spirit Tracks despite it very much still being Link’s adventure, and Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom really leaned into the cool magic shenanigans. Sounds a lot like a game-leading hero, if you ask us.
We hope that Echoes of Wisdom is the first of many games with Zelda at the forefront (they can exist alongside the standard Link-led projects, fear not), but we can’t help but wonder whether Nintendo has plans to push this switcheroo further. If the Zelda series can open its arms to new protagonists, why stop at two? Particularly when the third holder of the Triforce is sitting right there.
We are talking, of course, about Ganondorf, The Demon King / Dark Lord / Wicked Man of the Desert / Hunky Heartbreaker (only some of those are canon).
You see, for as long as Zelda has been caught up in proceedings, so too has ol’ ‘Dorfy. She has long possessed the Triforce of Wisdom and Link has the Triforce of Courage, while the man with Demise’s touch holds the Triforce of Power. These things come in threes, so it stands to reason that a Ganon-led project could pop up at some point in the future. Right?
Well, maybe. Ganondorf is playable in Hyrule Warriors and he has been a mainstay of the Smash roster ever since Melee, but a game where the big green mean machine is the protagonist is a difficult thing to imagine. In general, Nintendo tends to steer clear of games where you play as the bad guy — unless you consider Olimar the ultimate antagonist of the Pikmin series (we totally do). They can be playable, as with Ganondorf in Smash or King Boo in Mario Kart, but the family-friendly Big N would never risk having somebody so morally corrupt as the lead.
Or would it? There might not be quite the same level of “Give us a playable Ganondorf!” energy as we have seen for Zelda in recent years, but we are far from the first people to consider the idea. An extremely overpowered, ‘evil’ protagonist feels a little out of Nintendo’s comfort zone (then again, it’s readying an M-rated horror game at the time of writing, so who knows what it has up its sleeve), but a Ganondorf game could just as easily present a more sympathetic take on the gorgeous Gerudo à la Wind Waker to slot into a PEGI 12 / ESRB 10+. Nintendo isn’t completely oblivious to its fans’ wishes, so it’s not as if the fundamental concept of a Ganondorf game is off the table.
And what a concept it could be! The all-powerful, near-indestructible approach that we saw in Hyrule Warriors is all well and good, but we can see it getting tiring after 20-30 hours, and it’s hardly very in-keeping with the series’ expected puzzle-adventure gameplay.
What if, instead, we saw a classic Metroid set-up, with the fully-powered Demon King falling at the hands of a pesky Hero of Time only to be reincarnated without his abilities? All of a sudden, we have something to aim for. The Gerudo Big Bad has a mission of revenge, real objectives, and an end goal that’s not quite as anti-Nintendo as ‘Bring About the End of the World: 75 XP’.
Ooh, what about something with more of a real-time strategy edge? Echoes of Wisdom is about to bring monster summoning to the forefront of Zelda mechanics, and isn’t that fundamentally what the Demon King is all about? Sure, he’s all sword-swinging when he and Link finally go head-to-head at the end of each game, but what has he been doing for the 40 hours before that if not keeping a close eye on his forces (apart from crunches and pull-ups, apparently)?
And let’s not forget that apart from a little slither in Wind Waker, ‘Ganondorf The Sympathetic’ has never really had a chance to shine. We’re not proposing a complete moral turnaround where it turns out, ‘actually, the Big Bad was right all along!’ but there’s definitely room for a more personable portrayal of the Dark Lord that is still untapped.
This is a man who is doomed to carry Demise’s curse, one whose upbringing has rarely been explored — one Gerudo male every 100 years and being raised by surrogate mothers Twinrova is hardly the most in-depth analysis for a character with this many mainline appearances — and one whose sole mission in life is thwarted, time and again, by a child in a nightcap. The avenues for a personal tale are endless.
Look at God of War‘s Kratos. This is a figure who is constantly battling with a latent evil inside, but who is determined to better himself for the good of a loved one. He’s not an all-out “hero”, but there’s enough pathos to carry our attention and root for his success. Now we’re picturing Ragnarok-style combat as Ganondorf takes on the Hylian army. Maybe an action-heavy approach would work.
It’s all fun and games to speculate, but we’re no developer — we’ll leave it to Nintendo (or whichever mystery third-party studio it ropes in to work on the game under a shroud of secrecy). All we’re saying is, there’s potential.
The Zelda series might be on the cusp of a big change, one where its hero doesn’t look quite so Link-y and its gameplay isn’t quite so dungeon-y. Echoes of Wisdom finally handing Zelda the reins of her own series is an exciting prospect and we desperately hope that it isn’t a one-and-done starring role for the princess. We also wonder whether this is the start of Nintendo branching out. Is this the long-awaited fan-pleaser or simply the second chapter in a Rashamon-style Triforce trilogy?
What do you think? Does the introduction of Zelda as a lead protagonist open the doors for Ganondorf to get similar starring-role treatment, or is that completely off the table? Fill out the following poll with your thoughts and then take to the comments to pitch your dream Ganondorf game.