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For Link's 25th birthday, Nintendo got him a book: a handsome, glossy-papered volume with a Hylian crest embossed on the front in gold foil and a title that should send an electric charge racing through the fingers of anyone who's ever spent a lazy afternoon scudding over the Great Sea or scrabbling up the rusty pathways towards Death Mountain: Hyrule Historia.Now publisher Dark Horse has brought the Historia to the West, with a full translation - crucially, this includes the designer's scribbled notes that accompany the hundreds of sketches - even nicer paper and a slightly larger form factor. It's genuinely weighty, a plush art book you could use to fend off burglars if you had it to hand at the right moment, yet it walks a delicate line with great care and surprising elegance.
That line, I think, comes down to the way that Nintendo makes games: in secret. It tends not to throw open the doors to the press, clutching their notepads and dictaphones, and it rarely explores the dark creative process with any real openness. This means that there will always be fans who want to know more - who want to pick through the design scribbles and get a peek at various characters, environments, and items that didn't make the final cut. Hyrule Historia's great for all of that sort of thing, as it happens, but, crucially, it never goes too far. It lifts the veil without then flinging it away; you'll learn quite a bit about the Legend of Zelda games by flipping through this book, but you won't escape from the series' essential mystery. Would you want to?
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