By David RuizJanuary 19, 2019
The land of Hyrule is an interesting terrain that ranges from gorgeous scenery to locales you wouldn’t want to be caught roaming in the middle of the night.
From Beamos, Biri, Bokoblins, ChuChus and even a giant smiling moon — I know this takes place in Termina — that’s just a small sample of the enemies that have roamed several locations in the history of this franchise.
Which begs the question: how the heck did people live and survive here?
In the original Legend of Zelda for the NES, how many people did Link encounter during that adventure? No more than, what, five? You could even argue it’s the same Old Man that visits him in each dungeon. Link’s adventures have always been about Link vs. X or Y monster — that includes bosses and even Ganon himself.
Now, Zelda games have evolved to include more of a populous — and you could chalk the original to hardware limitations of not having more people — and towns. So, certainly, there’s an evolution of Hylians, Gerudos, Zoras, Gorons, etc.
But each race has been affected by other monsters, races, or Ganon to the point where they’re almost isolated in their respective villages of Goron City, Great Bay, and Kakariko Village.
How was milk delivered from Lon Lon Ranch? Mail from the kingdom? Outside life to Kokiri Forest? And don’t tell me Kokiri Forest is THAT cut off from the outside world if Link was delivered there by mostly like an adult.
If we’re to believe the lore of Hyrule over its many games, then we know that the land has succumbed to destruction, flooding and more over several decades of existence.
Traversal is tough enough for our protagonist Link, so are ordinary people supposed to make the equally tough trip as non-adventurers? Probably not.
And that fact is proven every time Ganon rises to power. The most notable exception is in Breath of the Wild in which we saw multiple cities and establishments capable of surviving on their own.
