Best Villains Ever #5
Ganon (The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker)
When you’re a Zelda game, all roads lead to Ganon. No matter what the game’s on about, no matter how hard it tries to pretend otherwise, sooner or later it ends up Ganon. So what I’m saying is that it ends up pretty predictable who the villain’s going to be. It’s also rather predictable what his plan is: he’s going to get the Triforce and then make some wishes and probably take over the world. Honestly, it’s hard to play a villain for serious drama in the tenth Zelda game when he’s the exact same villain with the exact same plan that’s been in the other nine Zelda games, and even moreso when he doesn’t really have any character to speak of. Oh, hoo har, he’s an evil one, he is. But that’s really all the character we ever get to see.
Enter The Wind Waker. This game was almost universally reviled by Zelda fans, which is because people are morons. Don’t get me wrong; it certainly had its faults, but Wind Waker was like a breath of fresh air for a series that was growing stale, both in gameplay and in art design. Especially, however, it gave us a fresh take on an old villain. Ganon really shines this time around; he gets a bitchin’ new look that makes him look a lot more like the evil warlock he supposedly is than like Judd Hirsch’s evil twin brother, he gets good dialogue that really fleshes out his character, and by the end of the game we really almost feel sorry for the guy, even though we know he’s the same old evil Ganon he’s always been. He even has lines that indicates that he really doesn’t want to hurt Link and Zelda; they have something he needs, and he does intend to get it, but he’s perfectly content to do them as little harm as possible. Here’s a video of the scene in question. Major spoilers involved, and I apologise for the minute-long bullshit epeen titles and the several moments of idiot commentary, but it was the best clip I could find. This is Ganon how he should be done. You see that moment when the rain starts? Chilling.
