Join With a Terrible Fate for an Interview with the Creator of The Legend of Zelda: Hero’s Purpose!

Published by Caymus Ducharme on

*This interview has been streamed and published! Watch it anytime on the With a Terrible Fate YouTube channel.*

Are you fascinated by fanfiction’s ability to recontextualize your favorite video game stories? Does the discussion around video game adaptations interest you? Have you been starving for intellectually engaging content about the Legend of Zelda series while you wait for Tears of the Kingdom to finally release?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to join With a Terrible Fate as we interview Sean McGarry, creator of The Legend of Zelda: Hero’s Purpose—an ongoing fan animation series! See below for the full interview logistics as well as a preview of the topics to be discussed.

On Fanfiction and The Legend of Zelda

When: Thursday, April 20, 2023, 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM ET

Where: The With a Terrible Fate Twitch Channel

Analysts: Caymus Ducharme & Aaron Suduiko

Hero’s Purpose aims to bridge the gap between Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess, completing the story of the Hero of Time. It follows Link as he returns to Hyrule after saving Termina, only to find the kingdom facing a renewed threat of destruction from Ganondorf.

The Hero’s Purpose logo. Source: MajorLink.

Since October 2020, Sean has regularly released new episodes on his YouTube channel “MajorLink,” with Episode Five dropping this past February. He has made fan animations of the Zelda series for over six years, and Hero’s Purpose is shaping up to be his magnum opus.

I have followed the series since its initial release, but after watching the most recent episode, I realized Sean is crafting something truly special. His story offers an enlightening perspective on the entire Zelda franchise, and his characterizations of Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf challenge us to reevaluate our understanding of its narrative. As such, exploring his view of the franchise will provide longtime fans with a fresh lens through which to analyze the story of the games.

Here are some topics we plan to cover in the interview:

  1. The value of fanfiction and its relationship to video game stories
  2. The Zelda timeline/canon and its impact on fanfiction
  3. The dynamic between Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf
  4. The curse of Demise and the player’s role in it
  5. The nuances of video game adaptation

If you want a primer on some of these topics, check out The Hero of Time Project on With a Terrible Fate! Not only does it offer a different take on the story Hero’s Purpose is telling, but it also explores the relationship between fanfiction and video game narratives in detail.

Link from Episode Two of Hero’s Purpose. Source: MajorLink.

While the primary players in this interview will be Sean, Aaron, and myself, Twitch enables us to incorporate the audience as well. The interview will be streamed live, which means audience members can voice their own ideas or questions via the chat. We want to hear your thoughts, so come ready to engage in the discussion!

I must express my immense thanks to Sean for agreeing to this interview. If you are a Zelda fan and haven’t watched Hero’s Purpose, you owe it to yourself to do so. We’ll see you all in the chat next Thursday; let’s have a great conversation about fanfiction and The Legend of Zelda!

Categories: NewsThe Legend of Zelda
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Caymus Ducharme

I began *really* playing video games in 2011 when my sister bought The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D for our brand-new Nintendo 3DS. I had played video games before, but they consisted mainly of Wii Sports and Mario Kart. Ocarina of Time was the start of my video game hobby—one that continues to this day—and it introduced me to the entertainment medium that is video games. I was a typical gamer at the time. I played many of the mainstream titles—Zelda, Assassin’s Creed, Mario, and many more—and saw video games as mere entertainment. To me, video games were just that: games. But that all changed in 2013 when I played Xenoblade Chronicles for the first time. It was my first ever JRPG. I adored the combat, the music, the world, everything about it. But what enticed me most was the story. The characters fascinated me, the dialogue was stellar, the many plot twists and turns kept me wanting more and more, and the themes resonated with me. In an immeasurable way, Xenoblade forever changed me. It opened my eyes to the potential of storytelling in video games, and it made me see them not just as games, but also as stories. Story-driven games now fascinated me. Looking for unique stories, I delved into many new titles: Shadow of the Colossus, The Last of Us, Dark Souls. I began to prefer the story aspect of games above all others, and it all came to a head when I played NieR:Automata in 2018. NieR’s story was of a particular intrigue to me. I loved it so much that I blew through the game in one weekend, focusing solely on the story. What I loved most, though, was seeing how effectively the game used the video game medium to enhance its storytelling. The visuals, the dialogue, the music, the gameplay—it all seemed meticulously designed with the story as the ultimate focus. It all culminated in the brilliance that was Ending E. After witnessing such a masterpiece, I knew that I needed to share my thoughts on the game’s excellence. Not long after, I stumbled upon With A Terrible Fate. And here I am now, doing just that. My journey in gaming has led me to With A Terrible Fate to engage in the analysis of video game literature. I, like my fellow analysts, hope to see the day when video games are considered on the same plane as literature and art. From my perspective, video games represent the next evolution of storytelling, and I want to see developers use the medium to its fullest in order to create unique and engaging stories. With that in mind, my goal on With A Terrible Fate is to examine the games that push the medium to its storytelling limit to show everyone that games can surpass even Shakespeare in terms of literary brilliance. By highlighting these games, I hope to develop an accurate gauge on the full potential of video games as storytelling devices, and to one day find the game that reaches that full potential.

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