I kind of always liked the idea of them being glowing orbs - something more alien and fantastical about it.
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Is Zelda's Navi a glowing orb with wings, or is there a traditional fairy under there?
- Thread starter Rotobit
- Start date
Koizumi:
-Yeah. But I was a designer, so I didn't want to use such a simple marker. I wanted to make something else, so I came up with a fairy. After all, it was The Legend of Zelda.
Iwata:
-So first you went to make a marker, and later you made the fairy?
Koizumi:
-Right. Usually, if you were to make a fairy, you would make a cute girl, but that wasn't possible with the Nintendo 64 system, so I just made a ball of light with wings.
Iwata:
-Uh-huh.
Koizumi:
-I called it the Fairy Navigation System, took it to Osawa-san, and asked, "How's this?" He immediately said, "Let's name it Navi." Because she navigates! (laughs)
Iwata:
-Osawa-san called on his simple naming sense. (laughs)
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/zelda-ocarina-of-time/1/3
-Yeah. But I was a designer, so I didn't want to use such a simple marker. I wanted to make something else, so I came up with a fairy. After all, it was The Legend of Zelda.
Iwata:
-So first you went to make a marker, and later you made the fairy?
Koizumi:
-Right. Usually, if you were to make a fairy, you would make a cute girl, but that wasn't possible with the Nintendo 64 system, so I just made a ball of light with wings.
Iwata:
-Uh-huh.
Koizumi:
-I called it the Fairy Navigation System, took it to Osawa-san, and asked, "How's this?" He immediately said, "Let's name it Navi." Because she navigates! (laughs)
Iwata:
-Osawa-san called on his simple naming sense. (laughs)
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/zelda-ocarina-of-time/1/3
Good. After watching Pans Labyrinth i can't get that fairy eating picture out of my head (a very good film)
In the actual battles, all fairies are displayed as the glowing orbs as well. This is more evident in the 3DS version, where it doesn't do the close-up when using their big power like the Switch version does, but it's in both.
Impa looks way cooler here.For what it's worth, there's this early OoT art which depicts what is presumably Navi and she looks like a Hanna Barbera character
Whether you factor this into your Orb vs. Tiny Person opinion depends on whether you take it as canon
Also, #TeamOrb
Does that look right to you?
Its an actual fairy, a humanoid. I kinda wish they expanded more on the Fairies story and stuff in Zelda.
Obviously a fairy, which various games have shown. No reason to think they'd cease to have a physical form between games. And Nintendo doesn't have the writing chops to even consider such a lore detail. But maybe if enough people bitch about it, they'll adopt it like they did the whole fan-written timeline.
My own personal theory is that they were originally normal fairies and just displayed as an orb because of technical limitations, but now they decided that they are indeed orb-fairies. There are other races of fairies that are not orbs.
I also prefer to imagine the orb-fairies as orbs.
I also prefer to imagine the orb-fairies as orbs.
Y'all crazy. It's just an artitistic choice. Even in BotW, they have glowing orb fairies. It's just a thing sometimes.
Those human fairies are all orbs of light outside of the my fairy menu in the 3DS version, and in the switch version they are orbs of light while in bottles.
I like them. wouldn't mind more stuff like it from the Great Fairies. I also really like the Great Fairies from Four Sword. They have such a nice clean and elegant design.I'm sure they are supposed to bet tiny winged women that glow. What I don't get is why great fairies are so weird looking in Wind Waker:
And the Fairy Queen is even worse:
A comic that sums up this thread
OP
OP
my master plan was to make this the new "is Toad wearing a hat or is that his head?"
everything is proceeding better than I expected
Orb.
Technical limitations or not, the OOT-era faries are clearly depicted as balls of light. The artist said he made them as balls of light, and all in-game interactions treat them as balls of light.