The Legend of Zelda

Shigeru Miyamoto has said the original Legend of Zelda was inspired by his childhood memories of exploring caves, forests, and lakes near his hometown in Japan.

2017's Breath of the Wild broke from decades of linear Zelda design to embrace a fully open world, influencing open-world game design industry-wide.

Series protagonist Link has traditionally been a silent or mostly-silent character, a design choice intended to let players project themselves onto him.

Most Zelda games tell largely self-contained stories, so they can generally be played in any order, though some entries share direct continuity, like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

Link typically represents a new incarnation of the same legendary hero across different eras of Hyrule's history rather than a single continuous character.

No. The protagonist players control is named Link; Zelda is a recurring princess character central to the series' lore.

Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom rank among the series' best-sellers, each surpassing 20 million copies sold.