I used to really like The Legend of Zelda. I was never that big into it but, at least the Zelda games I played were games I really enjoyed, specifically Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. In fact, I enjoyed those games enough that, if I ever got a GameCube or Wii, I'd probably have played the games that were on those consoles as well.
I never played Wind Waker and I can't say I'm a know-it-all when it comes to Zelda but I've done quite a bit of research and learning on this topic and something about Wind Waker doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Specifically, the Koroks and Rito have no reason to exist.
For those of you reading this who are not as big into Zelda as others may be, you may be asking "What are those?" or "What do they have to do with Wind Waker?" depending on whether your biggest exposure to Zelda is Ocarina of Time or Breath of the Wild. In either case, this requires some elaboration before I get to my point.
In Wind Waker there are two specific species that you run into after you leave the island to become a pirate. The Koroks are a wooden species with leaves representing their faces that seem to be able to manipulate certain facets of nature. They live with the Great Deku Tree, and help Link in his journey. The Rito are a humanoid-bird species that are capable of flying to an extent and live on the remains of Death Mountain.
For those of you who played Ocarina of Time and thought that this description doesn't sound right, there's a reason for that. The Species that lives with the Deku Tree in Ocarina was known as the Kokiri. And the species that lived on and in Death Mountain were the Gorons. So here's where we get into lore a little bit.
After the great flood that turned Hyrule into a giant ocean, the Great Deku Tree turned the Kokiri into the Koroks. It used its nature powers to do that, that's why they resemble trees. The Rito are a bit more complicated, however.
The Rito are actually evolved from the Zoras from Ocarina. Many people have had confusion as to why the Zoras needed to evolve at all since they're sea creatures but I've heard the argument that the Zora are fresh-water creatures so I'll let that slide. In terms of how it happened, that's a bit harder.
The Zoras initially fled to Death Mountain after the flooding so they could survive. However, Death Mountain is primarily a volcano and water creatures generally don't handle heat all that well. So a Dragon God converted them into the Rito so they could handle the environment a bit better. Then, due to problems with resources and a war or something like that, the Gorons were driven away. The Gorons are not completely extinct, since there's a vendor in Wind Waker that is clearly a Goron but, where they live or why he's the only one you see are left unknown at the moment. However, that's not really the point of this post.
The reason I'm making this post is to point out that the Koroks and Rito do not have any reason to exist. And what I mean by that is that there really isn't a justifiable reason why the Kokiri and Zoras needed such a drastic shift in their biology in order to survive.
Okay, so let's get the Koroks and Kokiri out of the way first. In Ocarina of Time, it's established pretty well that the Kokiri are practically immortal. They do not age past 10 years old in human time, so death by old age isn't possible. Whether the Kokiri can be killed by other means is not really known, however. We do know that Kokiri that get trapped in the lost woods become Skull Kids but, considering how few skull kids there actually are in the game, and how easy the Lost Woods are to navigate in general, I find it hard to believe that this is a common occurrence. Couple that with the fact that the Lost Woods seem to have some dark magic involved with them, I feel like this is less about the Kokiri dying as it is about Kokiri becoming physically corrupted.
And out of every Kokiri in the game, only a handful are actually seen in the Lost Woods at all. Sariah goes into the lost woods because she's the sage of the forest temple, which makes sense. Mido and a blonde girl are seen in the lost woods, and though the girl's reasons are unknown, Mido says that he went into the lost woods to look for Sariah, meaning he did it with intention.
There are never that many Kokiri in the game to begin with but, other than Sariah whose duties as a sage leave her fate unknown, and that one blonde girl that to my knowledge doesn't appear until Link is an adult anyway, the number of Kokiri doesn't really change all that heavily. The credits for Ocarina of Time even suggest that several of the Kokiri did in fact survive.
On top of that, speaking in terms of the environment that each respective species is in, there isn't really a whole lot the Koroks can do that the Kokiri couldn't. Although the Koroks have the ability to hover and fly with certain abilities, the Kokiri would easily to be able to use the Deku Leaf the way Link does.
Link also displays skills in Ocarina of Time that the Kokiri must also possess. And when I say that, I'm referring to Link's starting moveset and equipment load by the time you defeat Gohma. Link was left with the Great Deku Tree as a baby which means any skills he had at the beginning of the game had to have been acquired from his time with the Kokiri. His ability to swim, wield a sword, and play instruments all had to have been taught by someone in the Kokiri village. On top of that, the village was small enough that everyone could've learned from somebody else some skill that they didn't have, provided someone in the village learned it somewhere.
Likewise, the Rito were evolved from the Zora by the magic of a dragon god. Now, the thing about both of these species is that they were evolved from the magic of a sentient entity. Meaning that the magic used to transform them had some degree of choice for how the evolution would be handled. If the Zoras were struggling to survive in the Great Sea, a simpler solution than what is here would've been to convert them into salt-water fish so they could survive and flourish.
Many times, it seems like Nintendo does things within the story or character designs because they happen to fit the gameplay. In fact, Nintendo bigwigs have even said this themselves. During the development of Splatoon, they didn't come up with the artstyle until just a few months before the game was released. They came up with the concept of paintball first and then added the style afterward.
The thing that bothers me about this in Wind Waker's case, however, is that they seemingly added gameplay mechanics because they were cool and decided to add context in a way that didn't make a lot of practical sense and really wasn't necessary anyway.
That's all for now. Have a wonderful day.
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