If you’re not familiar with the series it may surprise you to learn that mowing the lawn is a recurring theme in Zelda games.
No, I’m not joking.
All the way back in 1992, Link was cutting grass in yards throughout Hyrule for profit. For some reason, people in Hyrule have a tendency to drop all sorts of valuable stuff in the grass, and since Link is apparently the only one who bothers to trim the foliage, he gets access to the equivalent of Hyrule’s collective couch cushions. Heck, in Link to The Past, there’s one guy in Kakariko village who lets his yard get so overgrown that the grass gets all the way to bushes, and it’s up to Link to clear it out in order to get to the front door of they guy’s house.
The thing is, grass doesn’t just hold money; grass holds bombs, arrows, hearts, ammo for slingshots, and so on. This leads to link being the equivalent of The Master Gardener of Hyrule. The solution to the bulk of the games’ supply-related problems usually boils down to cutting the grass. Short a little for the bomb bag they’re selling at the shop? Cut some grass. Run out of arrows? Go mow the lawn.
Twilight Princess embraces this with the way that Link moves when you want to give the vegetation a manicure. For the bulk of the rest of the Zelda games, when you do an attack while moving, Link will stop where he is and swing his sword. In Twilight Princess, on the other hand, Link keeps going, allowing you to slice through the grass quickly, even with large fields.
This is a real minor aspect of the game, I know, but it stood out to me as I was playing it today when I realized that I was 12 rupees short of being able to purchase another bottle to store lantern oil in. Turns out the merchant hawking the valuable piece of equipment was surrounded by… fields of grass! So off I went, giving his yard some long-overdue care, and in return, I gathered up enough Space Bucks to buy the object of my desire.
Do you have any interesting stories about mowing the lawn in a Zelda game?
You gotta be careful in skyward sword while cutting the grass in Faron Woods. You could get an exploding sticker caught on your leg, or worse...scare away valuable grasshoppers!!
ReplyDeleteI just hate when you're walking around with a full wallet. I don't care if I have 999 rupees and nothing to spend it on, all of those rupees from the grass are going to waste!
ReplyDelete