The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia Book Review
56The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia is an average video game art book. It has concept art from all of the Zelda games up to Skyward Sword and features an in-depth chronology of the series.
0:00 - Introduction
0:26 - Quality of the Physical Book
0:45 - Content
12:37 - Aesthetics
13:19 - Nostalgia
14:07 - Backstage
14:54 - Closing Remarks
QUALITY OF PHYSICAL BOOK
-9x12 inches.
-It has 240 numbered pages plus a 32 page comic “manga” in the back. So in total it has about 272 pages.
-The quality of the covers, pages, and printing are pretty standard.
CONTENT/INNARDS
Variety of images and image types
-There’s all sorts of stuff, from rough sketches, to iteration art, to finalized concept art, to posters.
-There’s also some other fun, random things like the Hylian alphabet.
Organization
-First there’s a large section on Skyward Sword, then there’s the official chronology, then there’s some concept art for ten Zelda games, and then a comic for Skyward Sword.
-Overall it’s organized in a way that makes sense.
-The chronology section does a pretty good job of using graphics to help you understand where you are on any given page. It even has a large chart that shows all of the chronology on one page.
Is there writing or insight from the artists and developers themselves?
-There’s a fair amount of it in the form of original commentary that was written next to the concept art.
-There’s also a forward by Zelda Creator Shigeru Miyamoto, and an outro by long-time Zelda developer Eiji Aonuma.
Quality of writing.
-The Skyward Sword section has a number of quotes from the developers. I found the writing from the developers to generally be to-the-point and interesting.
-I’m not sure who did the caption writing, but it’s not really clear if it’s a developer. The tone of the book is often of a person who’s very familiar with the Zelda franchise and likely has some inside information, but doesn’t actually have first-hand or concrete information.
-Some of the writing is, basically, pointless.
-I personally found the chronology stuff to be fairly boring because all of the stories are ultimately very similar and are not very complex.
Does it have what you want it to have?
-It really depends on the person. The Zelda series is so big and so long running that it’s unlikely to please everybody.
-I suppose what I was most interested in was stuff from the early games, and there are some great things from this era. However, I would have liked them to be featured more prominently, rather than having them cluttered onto a single page.
-I was really interested in why things were designed the way that they were, and there is a fair amount of this type of commentary in the Skyward Sword section. It would have been nice to have that much developer commentary on everything else in the book.
-With regard to what I would hope to see in this book, I have a few complaints: There’s way too much on Skyward Sword and not enough on Ocarina of Time, and the timeline is basically unnecessary and doesn’t really commit to answering any questions.
-What’s most unique about this book is that it’s the go-to source for the official chronology of the series.
AESTHETICS
-In general the layout of the book is fine but some of the pages are really busy.
-There aren’t really any full pages of art.
-I think the cover looks pretty cool. I think the green and gold really compliment each other in a very “Zelda” way.
-I do wish some of the material was presented with more page real estate, and some of the descriptive text is pretty small.
NOSTALGIA/AFFINITY EVOKED FOR THE GAME
-Nostalgia is Nintendo’s most valuable asset. The Zelda games are just so great that in and of themselves they create a nostalgic feeling, and this book is sure to give you a trip down memory lane.
-I think the nostalgia you’ll experience overall is highly dependent on which games you’ve played.
-There isn’t really a deep dive into any of the games other than Skyward Sword, so that’s a bit of a missed opportunity with regard to evoking nostalgia.
BACKSTAGE
-I got the sense that a lot of side characters, like people in towns, were designed with stereotypes in mind rather than having realistic or complex characters. I think this actually works out pretty well in the Zelda games where the stories aren’t very deep, but you do remember some particular person in town because of their quirk.
-As I looked through the book, I was simply amazed at the huge undertaking it would be to create this series, especially since they were designing absolutely everything from scratch with the first games. It really is amazing that Miyamoto and his team dreamed up and created this series.
There are 17 book reviews in Season 1 of my series “Mike’s Video Game Art Book Reviews.” I hope you enjoy them!
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