Hey! Listen! Leave Navi alone!

"Fly, Navi, fly! The fate of the forest, nay, the world, depends upon thee!" - The Deku Tree

When I first saw The Legend of Zelda, one of the things that most impressed me was Navi. You see, I believed they had changed the way games would be made that day. They had figured a way to make a "living, breathing" cursor that helped you navigate a 3D world. It wasn't a dumb arrow, a blinking highlight or such. It wouldn't beep, or even halt the game with a text message to catch your attention; instead you'd get a cheerful "HEY!"

After that game I expected game creators to resort to more in-game resources to point the player in the right direction so the storytelling could flow. I daydreamed about the day one of the members in your party in a JRPG would point and say "maybe we should check that out". Instead we got stuck looking at cursors, arrows, HUDs, life gauges…

I'm pretty sure Miyamoto and his team were also enamored with the whole Navi concept. For the first five minutes of the game you'd think she was the protagonist! The scene in which she zips through the forest with her own catchy theme playing in the background, dodging kokiris here and there, only to bump into a fence! The way she shakes it off and continues on her quest to save the world. She HAD to find the boy… the boy with no fairy. I guess it missed its mark with the rest of mankind, but to me she was established as an important character for the remainder of the game. Not just a cursor.

Whenever she went "hey!" I knew there was something I should watch out for, and eventually she became white noise just like every other sound effect in the game, just like the gazillion footsteps, Link's fierce war cry every time he swings his sword or rolls (HHYYYYAAAAAAHHH!!!!!) or the horrible warning you get when running low on hearts (on every single Zelda game). But still, a human voice is always a thousand times more pleasing to the ear than a random chime.

Why is it, then, that Navi gets so much hate? Nobody ever bashes Link's overacting. The answer is simple; it's just another internet meme that refuses to die. I'm pretty sure someone thought it'd be funny to post a video of her repeating her famous line over and over, then some idiot who had never played the game listened to it, reached the conclusion that Navi is annoying, and decided to forward it to his friends, who in turn started remixing the sound. Before you know it everybody hates Navy out of peer pressure. Do you even remember what the game is like? She never goes off on a loop like that! Lies, all lies!

If you're going to let the internet brainwash you, let Downcast do it. I'd never steer your wrong! Now fly! Buy yourself a Nintendo 3DS and a copy of Ocarina of Time 3D! Then come back in a week or two when I will have an in-depth review of the game, even though everybody knows it's awesome already! Go!