Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 237: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

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Todays game is Zelda Links Awakening. How would you rate the story on a scale from 1-10?

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name><rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them. Games need at least four votes to count for the list.

Previous Results:
Planescape: Torment - 9.85 (13 votes)
Clannad - 9.75 (4 votes)
Omori - 9.67 (6 votes)
Outer Wilds - 9.61 (22 votes)
Silent Hill 2 - 9.5 (20 votes)
Higurashi When They Cry - 9.5 (9 votes)
Deus Ex - 9.32 (12 votes)
428: Shibuya Scramble - 9.27 (9 votes)
Nier Automata - 9.25 (31 votes)
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC - 9.2 (20 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations - 9.19 (35 votes)
Last Window: The Secret of Cape West - 9.15 (10 votes)
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 9.1 (14 votes)
The House in Fata Morgana - 9.06 (11 votes)
Yakuza 0 - 9.03 (13 votes)
Red Dead Redemption 2 - 9 (8 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - 8.95 (31 votes)
Steins;Gate - 8.94 (9 votes)
Mother 3 - 8.91 (15 votes)
Umineko When They Cry - 8.89 (14 votes)
Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward - 8.88 (21 votes)
Return of the Obra Dinn - 8.85 (10 votes)
Silent Hill 4: The Room - 8.83 (6 votes)
Suikoden II - 8.8 (11 votes)
Persona 3 - 8.76 (22 votes)
Grim Fandango - 8.75 (14 votes)
Xenogears - 8.73 (24 votes)
AI: The Somnium Files - 8.73 (12 votes)
Tales of Berseria - 8.71 (15 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics - 8.67 (27 votes)
Metal Gear Solid - 8.67 (28 votes)
Pyre - 8.64 (7 votes)
Portal 2 - 8.64 (19 votes)
Bastion - 8.63 (12 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.63 (32 votes)
Dragon Quest V - 8.6 (15 votes)
Yakuza: Like a Dragon - 8.58 (6 votes)
The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask - 8.57 (28 votes)
Persona 4 - 8.56 (32 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.56 (17 votes)
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - 8.53 (18 votes)
SOMA - 8.5 (6 votes)
Fate/Stay Night - 8.48 (12 votes)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic - 8.47 (16 votes)
Undertale - 8.45 (42 votes)
Mass Effect 2 - 8.44 (29 votes)
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky the 3rd - 8.42 (12 votes)
What Remains of Edith Finch - 8.41 (19 votes)
Chrono Trigger - 8.4 (41 votes)
Snatcher - 8.33 (6 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.31 (56 votes)
Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door - 8.31 (17 votes)
Final Fantasy VII - 8.29 (38 votes)
South Park: The Stick of Truth - 8.25 (18 votes)
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus - 8.23 (6 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective - 8.21 (19 votes)
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor - 8.2 (10 votes)
Parasite Eve - 8.19 (9 votes)
Dragon Quest XI - 8.19 (17 votes)
Final Fantasy VI - 8.19 (43 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.19 (43 votes)
The Walking Dead Season 1 - 8.16 (22 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies - 8.15 (17 votes)
Wolfenstein: The New Order - 8.14 (7 votes)
The Last of Us - 8.13 (35 votes)
Conkers Bad Fur Day - 8.11 (9 votes)
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals - 8.11 (9 votes)
The Wolf Among Us - 8.11 (15 votes)
Horizon: Zero Dawn - 8.06 (18 votes)
Silent Hill - 8.04 (14 votes)
Portal - 8 (26 votes)
The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky - 8 (18 votes)
Xenoblade Chronicles - 7.98 (28 votes)
Hades - 7.96 (22 votes)
Tsukihime - 7.94 (7 votes)
Persona 5 - 7.92 (27 votes)
Life is Strange - 7.92 (32 votes)
Spec Ops: The Line - 7.9 (17 votes)
Bloodborne - 7.88 (20 votes)
Kid Icarus: Uprising - 7.86 (13 votes)
Psychonauts - 7.79 (7 votes)
Deadly Premonition - 7.77 (11 votes)
Final Fantasy IX - 7.77 (26 votes)
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn - 7.75 (14 votes)
Mario & Luigi: Bowsers Inside Story - 7.75 (10 votes)
Silent Hill 3 - 7.75 (8 votes)
Professor Layton and the Unwound Future - 7.75 (6 votes)
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - 7.75 (4 votes)
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - 7.73 (32 votes)
The Sexy Brutale - 7.7 (5 votes)
Bioshock - 7.65 (24 votes)
Skies of Arcadia - 7.63 (15 votes)
Paper Mario: The Origami King - 7.63 (6 votes)
Doki Doki Literature Club - 7.61 (28 votes)
Celeste - 7.56 (26 votes)
Half-Life 2 - 7.55 (10 votes)
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - 7.51 (31 votes)
The Last Story - 7.47 (6 votes)
Mortal Kombat (2011) - 7.46 (13 votes)
Marvels Spider-Man - 7.43 (16 votes)
Tales of Symphonia - 7.42 (30 votes)
Earthbound - 7.37 (20 votes)
Mass Effect - 7.33 (29 votes)
Batman: Arkham Asylum - 7.33 (23 votes)
Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma - 7.27 (20 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.25 (29 votes)
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - 7.25 (12 votes)
Red Dead Redemption - 7.23 (11 votes)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 7.21 (30 votes)
Devil May Cry 3: Dantes Awakening - 7.21 (12 votes)
Resident Evil 4 - 7.19 (25 votes)
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - 7.17 (25 votes)
Mass Effect 3 - 7.16 (21 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots - 7.11 (23 votes)
The Stanley Parable - 7.11 (14 votes)
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars - 7.1 (30 votes)
Broken Age - 7.1 (5 votes)
The Last of Us Part II - 7.09 (16 votes)
Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal - 7.08 (6 votes)
To the Moon - 7.07 (7 votes)
INSIDE - 7.06 (16 votes)
Warcraft III (overall) - 7.06 (8 votes)
Assassins Creed II - 7.04 (13 votes)
Final Fantasy VIII - 7.01 (31 votes)
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - 7 (6 votes)

7

Nominate The Oregon Trail

4

Maybe the worst Zelda story.

8 5

Maybe the best Zelda story

8.5

definitely the second best zelda story

8

Probably the best Zelda story?

8

maybe a Zelda story?

8

I'm gonna give this on 10 on the grounds that it's virtually the only game to ever make me care about the plotline as I was playing it.

I don't play a lot of single player games (well, I guess I do now more than I used to), but of those that I play, they're usually the "endless" type, like arcade style, etc. In the cases where I do play progression-based games, I don't care about the story at all. When there's dialogue, or new events happening, I watch it, but it doesn't mean anything to me. I'm in it for the gameplay in between plot points, whether it's the platforming, or the adventuring, or whatnot. Link's Awakening was the first game that made me feel like "wow, I actually care about what the game is telling me". The way that the mystery slowly unravels as you discover new areas, the very oddly behaving characters that make you wonder why they are the way they are, and the "big reveal" 75% of the way through which was more impactful due to the very abrupt way which they present it. The game really did move me.

Even now I don't think that any other game has been able to grip me the way that LA did when I played my first full playthrough. I've gotten engrossed in games for other reasons (Splatoon 2 has really deep lore that's fully unconnected from any of the gameplay or the 1P modes) but this is the only game that was successful in telling me a story that I wanted to hear.

6.5/10

Has some memorable moments and a cool setting, but it never wowed me.

8

8.5

Probably the best Zelda story

5

Because of the really good ending. Video games didn't have the balls to pull off such things at the time and I commend LA for doing it.
Otherwise a ho hum story like you can expect from Zelda.

8

The wind fish concept is rad

Mother did it first though

Up.

4/10. A good ending but not much to it other than that, absolutely a case of people making the story out to be more in their own heads than the work actually supports.

3, it has one interesting plot beat but the rest is so rote and barebones I don't get the love.

Lightning Strikes posted...

4/10. A good ending but not much to it other than that, absolutely a case of people making the story out to be more in their own heads than the work actually supports. Undoubtedly one of the weakest Zelda stories.

I've always maintained that if a game has a structure that inspires its players to build upon it and imagine, that should be viewed as a huge positive. This is how video game storytelling used to be, where the game design itself is part of the narrative. It's totally fine to have your perspective, where there needs to be more actual linguistic storytelling, but I think "making the story out to be more in their own heads" is a bit unfair.

5

I don't think I've ever seen much in the way of people "building upon it and imagining" in regards to Link's Awakening's plot. I don't think the issue is that the storytelling isn't explicit but rather that the ending and related twist are just about the only aspect of the story that's even particularly noteworthy and it feels like people are projecting that back onto the rest of the game when there's just not all that much else to it, explicit or not.

Also while the ending and the few beats leading up to it are good, the...specific nature of it probably only really works well in the context of a story that isn't great or that prevalent to begin with. If I actually cared a lot about the plot and characters here, I'd have probably been annoyed at the ending instead of praising it! It's the kind of thing that can maybe elevate mediocrity a little but would probably take masterclass execution to not drag down a story that's actually good.

4

Above average for a Zelda story but that isn't saying much

7

Any more?

7.5 seems about right. I have intense nostalgia, particularly wrt/ the ending, but I can respect that the middle of the story isn't much plotwise. Stilll, it's kinda fun exploring the Wind Fish's bizarre dream world with singing frogs, Mario monsters, 2-D platforming, a dungeon dedicated entirely to faces, etc. and I'll argue that is part of the storytelling here.