Three-Act Structure, Act I

All openings serve to answer a story’s most basic questions: the who, what, when, where, and why of the narrative. Of the five major questions, the first four have simple answers. The ‘who’ is most often the protagonist, although it can be other characters who feature prominently in the narrative. The ‘what’ is a source of conflict in the world. While the conflict in the opening isn’t always the conflict that makes up the center of the story, it usually has a connection to either the main conflict or the protagonist. The ‘when’ and ‘where’ are connected, as the combination of time and place gives the story as setting. The final question, the ‘why’, is tougher to establish, but no less essential. The ‘why’ tells the audience why they should care. It’s not enough to give audience characters and a conflict; they must also have a reason to care which character triumphs and which character fails. Labeling these characters as ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is a start, but for a story to resonate, the audience needs more.

A Link to the Past opens with a text scroll set over a series of vignettes that illustrate the text. In this prologue, the player learns of the beautiful kingdom of Hyrule, where a golden power lies dormant in a hidden land. When an evil wizard named Ganon sought the power, a group of wise men gathered together to seal the power away. For a time, the seal held, but another evil wizard named Agahnim has come to tear it down for Ganon. To clear a path, Agahnim first killed Hyrule’s king and kidnapped its princess. Now, he’s hunting down the descendents of the wise men and ‘disappearing’ them one by one. If nothing is done, Princess Zelda will meet the same fate, and Agahnim will seize the golden power for himself, giving him control over Hyrule.

Using nothing but a short text crawl, the opening to A Link to the Past answers all of an audience’s essential questions in a quick, efficient fashion. The ‘who’ is met twice-over, once by the endangered Zelda and next by the evil Agahnim; the ‘what’ is Agahnim’s quest to seize the golden power. ‘Where’ and ‘when’ are equally well-established: the ‘where’ is Kingdom of Hyrule, and the ‘when’ is long after the wise men first formed the seal on the power. Most importantly, the ‘why’ is established at the very end, when the text explains what will happen if Agahnim is allowed to proceed with his plans: Zelda will be ‘disappeared’, Agahnim will seize the ultimate power for Ganon, and Hyrule will have no one to protect it. While Ganon’s vision for Hyrule isn’t specifically stated, his henchman is a killer and kidnapper of young women, so his reign is unlikely to be a happy one. 

With these questions answered, the player has enough information to get invested in the story. What they need now is someone with both the motive and the skill to save Hyrule. In other words, they need a protagonist.