Broadening Zelda’s Borders
February 3rd, 2006 at 2:21 pm

Flying in an airplane is a weird experience for me. Normally, my belief is that the world is really, really big; I believe it would take forever to get anywhere really far away. (This is quite helpful actually; if I thought I could go anywhere in a snap, I’d tend to travel all the time and not show up to my job like I should, and I have to admit, the rupees cash is nice!) But whenever I fly, I find it extremely odd that I’ve just passed over several state lines in just a few hours; when I finally land, I still believe that I’m in Ohio despite all of the signs that say “Welcome to Seattle!” (In case you’re wondering, that’s where I currently am.) It’s times like this when I realise that, hey, the world isn’t as big as I once thought it was; in fact, it’s quite puny by comparison…

So when I was flying out here, I was thinking on the airplane just how big Hyrule was. (No, I most certainly do not think about Zelda 24 hours a day. Just a mere 23, thank you.) I mean, consider the possibilities: Hyrule has this huge field in Ocarina that could not be travelled in a twelve hours’ journey, thus forcing us to battle those skeleton types outside the castle gates if we mistime our journey. It takes us at least a day to cover all seven blocks, one direction, of the world map in Waker. And beyond that, we know that there are places in the world that are not Hyrule, namely Calatia from Adventure, Holodrum from Seasons, Labrynna from Ages, wherever Four Swords is supposed to take place, and Termina (maybe) from Majora. So the world isn’t exactly teeny tiny, ranging only a day’s ride from end to end.

But really, how big is the world of Zelda? Whatever you do, don’t stifle your imagination when you try to figure out your answer to the question.

From what we know, there is the classic creation story. The goddesses indeed created Hyrule, giving them the Triforce blah blah blah. That’s all good and all, but what about Calatia? What about the islands off in the Great Sea? They’re surely not in the creation story, so logically speaking, they must not exist, right? Well, we know that’s false. (It actually makes you wonder if the creation story itself is accurate, but this isn’t Religion 101, and I don’t want to get into the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster theory here.) What’s important is that there is stuff outside the borders of Hyrule, regardless of whatever Death Mountains or Lake Hylias or otherwise impassable borders or invisible walls happen to keep us from spilling outside the world the developers force us to stay in.

This whole concept begs a lot of unanswered questions. First and foremost on my mind is the notion of other kingdoms. Calatia, Holodrum, and Labrynna are great and all, but to our knowledge, they are merely a bunch of random cities, towns, and villages scattered here and there. They didn’t know Hyrule had a king. They thought they were autonomous collectives. Never have we seen the presence of a foreign lord or king beyond Hyrule’s borders, yet to imagine that Hyrule is completely alone in the world when there are already scattered peoples across islands and land seems to be a bit of a stretch.

If we assume that there are other kings near Hyrule (We really need a name for this supposed continent; I nominate the name Cheese.), then we have to talk about the size of Cheese. Taking a look back to medieval Europe, countries were quite large, and it definitely took more than a day’s ride to get from end to end, so Waker does a better job, I’m guessing, of truly estimating the proper size of Hyrule. What we might be looking at then is very nearly the size of Europe, provided we have enough Burger King crowns to go around, that is. Sure, we might never hear about some of the smaller nations or the ones further away (and may never hear about any of them if tradition holds true), but my hunch is that Cheese would be about that size.

And then to go beyond that, would the planet Hyrule was on (Hmmm… time for another name. Anyone opposed to Greg?) be filled with continents like Earth or would it be just one Pangaea of Cheese? At this point, it’s anyone’s guess as to what we might find on the face of Greg, and it will probably depend upon whether you support Hyrulean evolution, Hyrulean creation, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. (Only Mother Greg knows what really happened, and he/she’s not telling.) What is definitely certain is that Cheese would be a very powerful continent with all these kingdoms on it, and the power of Cheese would be very easy to behold.

Now Twilight’s aim is partially to broaden our sense of Hyrule. We get a horse very early in the game because, you guessed it, Hyrule is bigger than it ever has been before. We need that horse to get from place to place. (If you’ve ever played Shadow of the Colossus, you know that of which I speak.) What I think would be interesting to find out though is whether or not Twilight will go so far as to break Hyrule’s borders and go beyond into whatever might lie beyond.

Then again, I’m sure that some people would find my idea very Cheesy indeed.

Written by The Missing Link

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