It doesn’t distinguish between voiced, voiceless or palatalised consonants, or single versus geminate letters. The script evident throughout this game is a genuine, if simple, syllabic writing system used to write the Japanese language. That changed with the series’ first 3D entry, Ocarina of Time. Again, though, it seems to be indecipherable nonsense. This has a different sign repertoire and looks distinctly more linear, with some apparent ligatures of signs. With just three signs, this is clearly not a functional writing system with any logic behind it.Ī few years later, A Link to the Past received a sequel on the GameBoy, which featured another invented script.

These seem to be broadly pictographic, with some inspiration in Egyptian hieroglyphs – there’s a wavy-line water-like symbol, a possible snakeand something resembling an ankh. Some of the ancient ruins that make up the game’s locations feature inscribed stone tablets that can only be deciphered once the player has obtained the Book of Mudora, a collection of ancient mythology, prophecy, law and lexicography.īefore you have the book, the inscriptions are rendered as nonsense using a very limited range of just three signs. The first Zelda game to make any real attempt at telling a story was A Link to the Past. A Link to the Past/Link’s Awakening (1991-3) But, perhaps curiously, it has been very willing to experiment with inventing writing systems, and in true Zelda style there’s little consistency from one game to the next, which means it offers us some remarkable diversity. It’s largely eschewed the reams of invented lore that populate the bookshelves of other fantasy games, and it’s certainly not the kind of series that would bother itself with Tolkien-esque invention of fictional language. At some point I’ll write something about the archaeology of Breath of the Wild, which I find fascinating, but for now I want to bring all this Zelda talk a bit closer to the day job and talk about writing systems.Īs I mentioned in my previous post, the Zelda series has always placed game mechanics and fun over world-building and internal consistency.

As anyone who’s glanced at a video games review site recently will know, it’s very, very good.

Well, that came out five weeks ago now, and I’m still playing it.

I wrote a little while ago about the storytelling of the Legend of Zelda games, flushed with excitement for the then-forthcoming latest instalment ‘Breath of the Wild’.

The legend of zelda the windwaker font