My first adventure with Link was on the island Koholint, which is a virtual world that I keep close to my heart. And after I had explored the different iterations of Hyrule from the NES classics and Ocarina of Time, Nintendo invited us to visit the strange lands of Termina, Labrynna, Holodrum and Subrosia. When the Zelda series first had gained traction in the early 2000s, half of the games took place in Hyrule and the other half someplace else.
As exciting as this was, Nintendo has not followed this trend. In fact, most of the games that came after featured some version of Hyrule, where lately they even have revisited the Hyrule from a previous title. Now, the upcoming Ocarina of Time remake certainly won't change any of that, but going forward it will be nice to breath some fresh air... And that's what this article will be about.
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To be fair, just because a new game takes place in Hyrule once more, it doesn't necessarily have to be the same old kingdom. For a while, the various iterations couldn't have been any more different from each other. The Great Sea from The Wind Waker is really its own place, while the Hyrule in Spirit Tracks is a completely different land, only named after the original. Skyward Sword showed us the raw place that existed before the founding of the kingdom. And Breath of the Wild had created its own, massive representation of Hyrule, designed to be a fully open world.
But there can only be some many different versions of the same place, where the more recent Zelda games came to respect that. A Link Between Worlds took us back to the Hyrule from A Link to the Past, and Echoes of Wisdom has reused it yet again, this time expanding it in all cardinal directions (which was done ingeniously). With hundreds of years passed in the story, it also allowed for some greater changes to the terrain and buildings, while staying faithful to the past. Tears of the Kingdom on the other hand takes place in the Hyrule from Breath of the Wild as a direct sequel. And while the game world stayed mostly the same, it got expanded with sky islands, caves and the Depths (which arguably wasn't done so well).
Now, the only Zelda games that didn't take you to some form of Hyrule in the past 20 years were Phantom Hourglass and Tri Force Heroes. But the world of the Ocean King was merely an extension of the Great Sea, while the kingdom of Hytopia and the neighboring Drablands had little to offer. You only get to explore the castle and castle town of Hytopia and nothing else, while the Drablands are sectioned into individual levels. Hyrule Encyclopedia even states / speculates that Hytopia would later become the northern part of Hyrule that we see in Zelda II - The Adventure of Link, so you may not even count this either.
In any case, both of these games didn't exactly grow to become fan favorites, unlike Majora's Mask or the Oracles back in the day. And maybe we will return to Termina, Labrynna, Holodrum and Subrosia in the next years via remakes, but the series needs more strange lands like these. Exploration is a big part of what defines Zelda, especially with the new "open air" direction. And we have seen so many different versions of Hyrule Castle, Kakariko Village, Lake Hylia and Death Mountain over four decades that these names have lost some weight to them.
There also come a certain expectation with these names, where new lands open the door to creative ideas that simply wouldn't have been possible in Hyrule. Take Termina, for example, where its main town in the center of the country was designed to be a huge clock on the face of the earth. Where else do you get to see something like this? The game world really can become a reflection of the gameplay in a meaningful way.
If Nintendo were to continue the 3D games in the same style as Breath of the Wild, because this has really created a brand of its own, then it would only make sense to finally leave Hyrule and take the open-ended, physics-based gameplay elsewhere. The next game could even still star the same Link and Zelda, as long as everything else is new. A different land could be host to an entirely new set of monsters, for example, leaving the usual Bokoblins, Moblins, Lizalfos and Octoroks behind us.
And the act of leaving Hyrule can be interesting in itself. Both Link and Zelda may set sail and discover new lands on their journey. Or they might find themselves trapped in a parallel world, akin to Termina or Lorule. Even something as simple as a neighboring nation, like Hytopia, could lead to some new spins and threats.
We know that Sidon's fiance, Yona, came from a Zora tribe outside of Hyrule. Wouldn't it be interesting to learn where she came from? Maybe we could even meet the both on their honeymoon. And we don't know anything about the whereabouts of Kass in Tears of the Kingdom. Maybe he has gone on an adventure somewhere, where it would be lovely to reunite with him in a third game of a trilogy.
Taking familiar faces into new scenarios is something the Zelda series certainly likes to do, which was especially true for Termina, where most of the people from Ocarina of Time's Hyrule have strange counterparts. Or you will find the Happy Mask Salesman and Tingle at home in Labrynna, while Malon and Talon have a small Cucco farm in Holodrum. And Beedle will sell his goods, no matter where you go.
But it's the new faces who really will matter. And something that the Oracle games and Phantom Hourglass both had in common was introducing new tribes to the franchise, like the Tokay, the Subrosians, or the Anouki. Sure, only the tribes introduced in Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker became a staple in the end, while the others occurred in one or two games at most, only to be forgotten after. But this could be a chance to re-introduce some of them, like Echoes of Wisdom did with the Deku and the Yeti. Like, where did the Mogma go after Skyward Sword? Maybe we will find out one day...
No matter who we are going to encounter on our travels, the upcoming Zelda games really should dare to peek across the borders of Hyrule and let us explore what's beyond. We have seen about a dozen different versions of the legendary kingdom over the course of the franchise's history and it's really time to leave it a for while, before Nintendo creates another depiction for a new generation of Zelda games.
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