Why Marin Uses A Bell As A Weapon In Hyrule Warriors

One of the characters in Hyrule Warriors, Marin, uses a bell to fight. The character was added in during the second batch of DLC for the Koei Tecmo title that was made in collaboration with Nintendo. Producer Yosuke Hayashi explained recently why Marin uses a bell to fight.

Nintendo Everything picked up the quote from Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream, where Yosuke Hayashi states...

That's very interesting. Over on the Marin Wiki page they explain that she first appeared in The Legend of Zelda series during Link's Awakening, where the character develops an unspoken relationship with Link over the course of the game. Her first appearance was on the SNES back in 1993, well over 20 years ago.

Marin hasn't been used much since then, so that's why Yosuke Hayashi mentions that they had to take 2D pixel art and then make the transformation into a 3D model. In some artwork they showed Marin with a harp, but Hayashi appears to have wanted the bell for her to use as a weapon instead of a harp.

Technically, Marin could have used the harp like a projectile weapon, both as a bow and to play chords to send shock waves toward enemies. However, they decided to give Marin the giant bell to swing around on the battlefield.

Marin's fighting technique really isn't much of anything to write home about. The character definitely acts like a DLC add-on, with basic swings and running animations that don't quite match the speed of her movement. Her bell attacks are basic purse-style swings that links into AOE spin attacks. She can also use various special attacks to wipe out small sections of enemies. Nevertheless, there's a bit of an airy theme to Marin's inclusion in Hyrule Warriors. The lighthearted character and the use of a bell as a weapon is a distinct departure from the other characters in the game who are either more serious or have some dangerous weapons at their disposal, such as Ganondorf, Impa or Linkle, the last of which seems like she comes right out of Tecmo Koei's own Dynasty Warriors series.

Nevertheless, it's pretty cool that Yosuke Hayashi and the crew were able to create an opportunity to move over a classic and compelling enough character from the illustrious history of the Legend of Zelda for today's generation of gamer, and did so by giving her one of the more unlikely weapons one could imagine appearing in a Musuo game.

Hyrule Warriors is available right now for the Nintendo Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS. If you want to play as Marin and her bell, she's available as part of the DLC character pack for the respective systems.