It’s weird. When it comes to hardware, Nintendo is the most daring video game company in the world, hands-down. You don’t come up with stuff like the DS or Wii unless you’re slightly mad.
Yet when it comes to software — and I’m especially talking about its older series like Zelda — Nintendo is unusually conservative. Sure, there have been deviations in setting, like Wind Waker’s post-apocalyptic Hyrule and the fact there are trains in Spirit Tracks, but for the most part, Zelda games are always about a boy in green who has to save a girl in purple.
Which is why I love this idea so much. It flips that completely on its head.
New York artist Aaron Diaz has come up with Clockwork Empire, a Zelda game that isn’t just steampunk in design, but — inspired by the work of Anita Sarkeesian — also stars Zelda, who has to strap on some gear and go and rescue Link for a change.
What’s more, this isn’t down to some quirk in circumstances, where the usually “heroic” Link has a bad day. In this part of the Zelda timeline, 2000 years after Twilight Princess, Zelda is “an aspiring battle mage”, and Link is a naive, pasty noble.
Clockwork Empire [Aaron Diaz, via Gamefreaks]
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