Thought this was good! Always forget I am a member there.

Or perhaps a more pertinent question - what if it already has?

The Zelda series is no stranger to the ideas of advanced technology.  Miyamoto himself revealed that the Triforce was originally designed to be a supercomputer in early drafts of the original Legend of Zelda, and the manual for A Link to the Past talked of the three goddesses as coming from a “distant nebula”.  Heck, I even wrote a theory series based around all of these bits of information a while back (and to gratuitously pat my own back, I theorized that the Triforce was a supercomputer before Miyamoto’s interview earlier this month).

As the series has gone on, more and more elements like these have found their way in.  Even given these details from Zelda and Link to the Past, the series was pretty sturdily set in a fantasy world - it really started to waver in The Wind Waker, where we were introduced to the perhaps a bit too mysterious Tower of the Gods.  The things that went on in that dungeon could be easily explained by magic…but they could just as easily be explained by advanced technology.

Here was a test set by the gods of old, adorned with controllable robotic statues, laser-firing mechanisms, teleportation chambers and an electrical floor in the boss chamber.  Not to mention the finale of the test is blatantly a mechanical creation made of metal that can think of its own accord.

This trend grew exponentially in Twilight Princess, with the entire Oocca thread of the story.  Here was a race of enlightened beings - those closest to the gods - who fostered the growth of and may in fact have created the lesser intelligent species of Hyrule.  The Oocca had robots, laser turrets, teleportation, hard light technology and egg-shaped aerial craft.  If this isn’t en endorsement of the idea that Hyrule finds its origins in science fiction ideas, I don’t know what is.

Now we have Skyward Sword - where to start with this one?  Link’s companion appears to be an AI (replete with robotic dialogue) and there’s an entire region of the world racked by environmental disaster that is still mined by robots who clearly run on electricity.

That the Zelda series has plenty of what would considered to be science fiction content is inarguable.  The real question is: should it?

This slowly growing trend towards science fiction has not gone unnoticed by fans of the series, as evidenced by a considerable amount of fan response to the Lanayru robots in particular.  What’s interesting is that this shift in the series was met with marked vitriol on the part of these fans.  Although the series has been building up its incorporation of advanced technology, it was mostly subtle until this point.  This open acknowledgement of the direction the series was taking by Nintendo was both shocking and divisive.

If left to grow and evolve in the direction it’s currently heading, it seems to be a safe bet that more and more science fiction elements will find their way into the ongoing tale.  This is no generic debate about “what if Zelda had lightsabers!” like so many questions about this topic devolve into.  This goes much deeper - to the core of Zelda itself.

For the series’ existence until this point, Zelda has been about adventure.  It’s a fantasy story about questing through a land full of excitement and mystery, and all the events that unfold as the plot unravels.  Science fiction, on the other hand, is based around a “what if?” principle - a core question that drives the entire plot into motion.  The increasing science fiction elements in the series go beyond the trappings of advanced technology, and into the plot elements Zelda is starting to embrace.

The plots of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword raise intriguing unanswered questions that beg open consideration on the part of the player.  Who are the Oocca, and why did they create the Hylians?  How did the people of Lanayru eradicate their natural resources and reduce their land to a desert?  To what purpose were the Gates of Time originally built?  More and more of these questions are starting to mount in Zelda.

As to the question posed at the beginning of this article: is Zelda science fiction?  I would have to say no - not yet, at least.  Increasingly larger bits of sci-fi are making their way into the series, but the core remains fantasy.

I personally like the idea of Zelda backing away from this content, remaining the adventure story it’s always excelled at being.  But what do you think?  Should Zelda continue down the path of science fiction it’s headed in recent entries, or should it reclaim the tighter hold on fantasy of the past?  Comment away!  For further discussion, why not debate on the forums?