Wind Waker Has Been Completely Rewritten
By Jason Collins | Published 5 hours ago
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker turned 20 this year, but that isn't stopping fans from finding new and fun ways to freshen up one of the most favorite Zelda games. One such fan has put together a romhack called Wind Waker Rewritten that adds over 10 thousand lines of dialogue, several additional textures, and a few changes to the game's cinematics, giving Wind Waker a more comedic edge.
As reported by Kotaku, The Wind Waker Rewritten is a romhack developed by Aproxm, which replaces a lot of character's dialogue in 2002's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, giving it a much more chaotic language — something that would never get approved over at Nintendo. Most of the time, it revolves around other NPCs calling Link a series of hurtful names, like "fat nose" or "Gnome freak." Other characters are also affected; for example, Beedle regularly forgets to deliver adequate customer service.
Admittedly, The Wind Waker Rewritten mod breathes a colorful new life into the Nintendo classic and allows gamers to experience an entirely different Great Sea narrative in a familiar setting. But, according to the modder, the romhack doesn't actually alter the game's models, music, gameplay, or special effects. Instead, it only adds new lines of dialogue, recontextualized cutscenes, and additional textures for every NPC — which greatly affects their characterization.
Of course, the entire Wind Waker Rewritten experience also depends on the person consuming the content; the dialogue is often ambiguous — it really depends on how you read the dialogue in your head — and often slightly offensive. Still, the recharacterization of certain NPCs is done so admirably that the dialogue now befits their overall design better than anything Nintendo would've released. This makes the romhack particularly interesting to series veterans, though it isn't specifically catered to said members of the Zelda fandom.
Anyone interested in trying the romhack, Aproxm has made a tutorial on their YouTube channel that walks the unexperienced romhackers through the hacking process. All the necessary ingredients and instruments are a laptop or a PC, the romhack, a piece of software, and a few minutes of spare time before you can adventure across the Great Sea in a familiar setting that offers a completely new feel to the game.
Of course, the Zelda fandom wholeheartedly welcomed the Wind Waker Rewritten mod, with several individuals pointing out Nintendo's strict and outright hostile policies against modders. In recent events, Nintendo threatened legal actions against gaming tournaments using modded versions of its games and has even announced that it won't be participating in several gaming events in the near future, opting to sit alone at its own desk. The reason behind such a decision remains unknown.
Given the massive success of the Nintendo Switch and its gaming lineup, financial difficulties most certainly aren't the reason for Nintendo's absence, and the entire industry is wondering why the gaming giant opted to "fly solo." The company may threaten legal action against The Wind Waker and its creator, but there's next to no legal ground for such action. The romhacking community simply distributes the patch, not the actual game or any of the copyrighted material.
In more recent news, Breath of the Wild just received a co-op mod, which also isn't officially sanctioned by Nintendo, and the sequel to one of the best games ever made had its plot details leaked some three months ago. There's still no official confirmation about The Breath of the Wild 2, so those impatient could give The Wind Waker Rewritten a try while we wait for Nintendo to grace us with good news.
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