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Table of Contents | 02 – The Twilight
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So here’s the deal: I first wrote this recap waaaaay back in 2018, when I was still hoping to be a sporker. It was the only thing I had on hand that I was immediately equipped to deal with besides Persona 3. But back then, I didn’t have a capture card. Now, I do.
So I’ll be recording video of my playthrough here. But, I don’t have a YouTube account (or at least not one I’d publish sporking material under), so instead I can just upload them here as the occasional gif, if you guys want. Whoever's reading this can let me know.
So we boot up the game, and the title screen comes up, depicting Link rearing on Epona before crossing a gorgeous bridge. You gotta hand it to Nintendo, for a Gamecube-Wii game, this game looks beautiful. Choirs sing as the camera pans over the castle of Hyrule, bathed in the golden light of the setting sun. A wolf howls as the title screen reaches its end, showing us the curtain of the Twilight, whereupon the title displays itself.
A sword-like shing! plays as we come to the menu screen, where we create a new file. We name ourselves Chris, and name our horse Epona.
The game opens up on a scenic set of low falls at sunset, as we pan down to what seems to be Link and a stranger we don’t know. He asks if we ever feel a strange sadness as dusk falls.
“They say it’s the only time when our world intersects with theirs…The only time we can feel the lingering regrets of spirits who have left our world.”
We get a closeup of the speaking man, who explains this to be why loneliness always pervades the hour of twilight. We also get a closeup of our very own Link, who is wearing a blue earring and is a brunet, which is a break from tradition.
The man says he has a favor to ask of us, and Link turns to him as he says he was supposed to deliver something to the royal family of Hyrule the day after tomorrow, a task the mayor set to him...but he wants us to go instead.
“You have…never been to Hyrule, right?”
This is also a break from tradition. Most games in which Hyrule was a factor had them take place in that country. Are we now strangers to a land we called familiar?
The man talks of the grandeur of Castle Town and the great castle, and the town around it that far outstrips the small village here. But even bigger than those, he says, is the rest of the world the gods created. Which, he says, we should have the chance to see with our own eyes.
The sword-wielding man gets up, and says that they should get back to the village, since it’s getting late.
We take up Epona, revealed in a new camera angle, and lead her back to the village, where gates laden with flowers greet us. The man goes to greet a child, who looks back at Link, who smiles. The camera pans out from the tree as a hawk looms, and we see a girl come up to Epona, leading her off. Another man, meanwhile, comes up to the house she was next to, calling for us. Link arrives in a window up above. This stout man wants to know if we’re going to help herd the goats.
Ah! No forest faeries or precocious islanders for us. Nope, we’re a ranch hand this game!
Before Link can get outside, the rancher asks where Epona is. The screen fades out, and we’re handed control, green mini-map on the left side, three hearts in the upper corner, and not a rupee to our name. The first thing to do is take a look around. We’re in some type of clearing, with practice dummies around, and I very quickly realize that I unfortunately cannot change the camera control, which is inverted. About now, some changes had been put in place since Wind Waker, and the rocks I pick up hit the ground without breaking, and don’t break until I throw them at the wall. A check of the prompt on the left lets me know that pressing north on the D-pad will bring up an item wheel. Nice! A look at our map reveals us to be in Ordon Woods, in Ordon Province. Hmm…
We go inside our house, which is surprisingly large and comfortably furnished, especially considering the tiny wooden room it was in Ocarina of Time. Going to the window upstairs lets us use a prompt to get a lovely first person view of the outside. Going downstairs leads us to a very darkened cellar in which we can’t do anything. What kinda skeletons are you hiding from us, Link?
We go outside, and the rancher urges us to find Epona. On that, we go to the path behind our house that the earlier scene showed a girl leading Epona down. It leads us down a walled, mossy path, at the end of which is the flower-laden gate we saw earlier. But if we turn left, we’ll see our horse at the falls again. Hey, Epona!
Going in triggers a scene where we come across a short-haired girl in a white shirt, petting our horse. She greets us when she sees us, and says she washed Epona for us as soft music plays to Link’s equally soft smile. Handed control again, we go up and talk to her.
She reminds us that Epona is a girl, and needs to be treated properly like one. She asks us to use a piece of grass, visible nearby, to play the tune she likes. We’ll recognize it as Epona’s Song, the song of the wild that was used to call her to us in past games. On doing so, the girl herself skids forward, as if she were about to run to us but realized we were only seven feet away right on time.
This satisfies the girl, who lets us go with Epona, reminding us not to work her too hard. We mount, riding the horse back the short distance to our house. The rancher isn’t there when we get back, so we proceed into Ordon Village, a quaint little homey place with a river running through it.
Dusk is going to straight-up last forever, so I don’t see why we need to head straight to the ranch. Let’s explore a bit.
We come across Sera, who runs a shop, and is apparently married to an alleged good-for-nothing husband who’s utterly failed to catch the monkeys that’ve been pestering the village. Their daughter is similarly unimpressed. We take a dip in the river which, shock of shocks, has real-world lighting effects and is blue from afar, but transparent once you’re in it. We also talk to the man who opened the game by talking to us, the swordsman—who is apparently named Rusl. He says his son Colin is making a fishing rod, hoping to play with us, and he wants us to pick it up tomorrow. Nearby are Colin himself and his mother, heavily-pregnant Uli. At the other end of the village, Mayor Bo urges us to meet with the rancher, whose name is Fado.
Satisfied with our exploring, we turn our eyes back to the ranch and ride Epona there. It’s no Romani Ranch, but it’s nice and humble enough. Fado greets us and prompts us to play a short game wherein we herd the goats into the pen. Once done, he sends us on our way, saying he can cover everything else tomorrow and bidding Link to take a day off. Before we go, though, he wants to set up fences and see us jump them on Epona. Easy enough. Using this newly-learned skill, we demonstrate this by jumping the gate and heading back into the village. The screen fades to black and prompts us to save.
The screen fades back in. It’s the next day, and the sun is high in the sky. Back at our house, we’re summoned outside by three children: Talo, Malo, and…Beth. When spoken to, excitable Talo yells about a slingshot being sold at Sera’s shop, and Malo, the one who looks like an infant, has this to say:
“I wonder how powerful it is… I… I need… I must try it…”
But yes, there is a slingshot in this game.
Beth says they should just buy it if they want it so bad, but Talo’s broke, and tries to mooch off his friend by asking her to loan it to him. Malo complains that their allowances are terrible and bemoans that his family owns a waterwheel and not a slingshot. Guess that’s our cue to go collect some rupees and take it for our own, huh?
On entering the village, Sera’s husband complains that the cat hasn’t been home since the night before, which has put the wife in a bad mood and he wants to cheer her up. Also, there’s a bees’ nest above her place that needs to be slingshotted with extreme prejudice. On entering the shop, we do indeed find Mrs. Sera, looking too depressed to sell us anything. She explains that the cat took the fish they were going to eat last night—she scolded him, but he hasn’t come back since. Hmm…
We trod over to the river and talk to Uli, who says Rusl went out, taking his sword. She also has a favor to ask: she wants us to find her bark-woven cradle, which seems to have fallen into the river and drifted off. Up on top of a house, we find some ‘hawk grass’. It plays only two notes, but calls a hawk down to our arms. Nice! We’ll just aim that like a rocket launcher and send it straight into that wasp nest.
Whaddya mean ‘that’s inhumane’? The hawk just flies off, and it’s us the bees come after. The good-for-nothing husband says he saw this in action, and bemoans that he didn’t think of it. There’s no reward for doing this, by the way, we’re just being nice.
We spot Sera’s cat near the river, but it runs from us when we go near. We go over to the mayor, who says Fado’s handling things. Right on cue, a shout from the ranch declares a goat is loose, which comes hurdling down the road towards us. Moving and pressing the A button at the right time, we stop it in its tracks, and toss it on its side like a true ranch hand.
There’s a man atop a pillar of rock that calls us to climb up to him on vines, and once there, he directs our attention first at Sera’s cat, laughing about it thinking it’ll catch a fish, and then towards some hawk grass growing on another pillar. Once we call the hawk, we aim it down the river. It flies off before going anywhere, but we do see something interesting on its way: a monkey, with a flower in her hair, holding up Uli’s cradle over her head! We’re gonna need to get a hawk over there somehow, because she’s on an incline we can’t reach by foot. Thankfully, there’s more hawk grass on the next pillar over.
The next firing of the hawk-missile is a success, and it snatches the cradle from the monkey and drops it on our heads. Thank god there wasn’t a baby in that. Unless the monkeys ate it.
Kidding. We take the cradle over to Mrs. Uli, who thanks us, and rewards us with the fishing pole Colin made for us. We promptly assign it to Y, and head for the lake, and use it to catch a tiny 10-inch greengill, which the game informs us is small fry found everywhere. It is immediately snatched by the cat, who runs home with it while an indignant Link looks on.
On going into Sera’s Sundries, we find the shopowner ecstatic to have her cat back home, with a replacement fish to boot. Since she’s in such a good mood, she offers us some of the milk she’s also using to treat her cat, on the house. We promptly item-get a bottle, half-full of milk. But most importantly, it’s a bottle!
Also, we buy the slingshot for thirty rupees, which gets us a chiding from Sera about being too old to want such childish things as violence. We do get informed that should we run out of bullets, pumpkin seeds can be used in lieu. And hey, it holds fifty pellets! Now with the slingshot in our possession, we head back to the house to impress the kids.
(The slingshot was almost our first Link Called point, but I decided against it. In Skyward Sword, however…)
Rusl meets us there, mentioning he dropped something off in our room for us to pick up before he leaves. We go over to Talo, Malo, and Beth, who squee and engage us in a target practice game. Beth ineffectually chides the young boys in a failed attempt to mask her own excitement. They continue squeeing and cheering with each target hit, and I must say, it feels good to show off for the kids. When targeting the scarecrows, their pumpkin heads explode in a wonderfully violent display that reminds me awkwardly of the Resident Evil games I was playing before this.
Our first weapon of the game is used to remove a large rude tarantula from our ladder that knocked me off when I tried to climb it. It squelches when hit and drops to the ground before exploding in a characteristic plume of black smoke. Kind of unsatisfying. But we head into the house and find a chest containing a wooden sword.
Going back outside merits another demanded demonstration, but if we refuse, we can’t go forward. Try and hit the kids with the sword, by the way, and they’ll duck. Once we give in and offer another display, we’re given a tutorial on the attack types we can use. The Jump Attack splits the hat on the scarecrow and elicits shocked yet gleeful reactions, even with Malo having criticized us the whole time.
Talo, who earlier talked about chasing off troublesome monkeys, promptly sees the flower-wearing monkey in our yard. He goes chasing after it, as do the other two, right into the woods. That does seem like a bad idea, doesn’t it?
I discover with delight that the sword can be swung while running instead of stopping to do so, and chase the kids. Beth is the first one I spot in the clearing just beyond the house, who couldn’t keep up with Malo and Talo. Malo is the one I see next, who points us in the direction Talo went. We cross the bridge past the open gate, into a tightly walled path into Faron Woods.
The gate beyond is locked. No problem, I got a horse I can call. There’s yet another series of falls—called a spirit spring—located just beyond the gate. One wonders why one was put less than half a mile away from the first one…but I digress. Continuing down the path takes us to a clearing where a guy with an afro is selling lantern oil. And offering a lantern with it, what a steal. Lighting the torches nearby makes a glowing light appear, which coalesces into a chest. Or that’s what I thought would happen. It seemed like the logical thing. But that didn’t happen.
Anyway, we continue on our quest to find that rascal Talo. At the entrance to a cave lies his wooden sword! Uh-oh…kid’s definitely in trouble. We head into the dim cave, lighting unlit torches along the way. Once we go through, we come to a dried-up swamp, where a Bulbin (a frail goblin-like creature) attacks, and screeches when it’s promptly smacked to death. We cross the swamp and go into a smaller cave, collecting a key from a chest. Lighting the torches here does give us a chest, in which we find our first Piece of Heart.
“Collect 5 pieces to form a new heart container!”
...Five?
Hang on, we have to put in another fifth heart piece to get a heart expansion? But then how come we still lose hearts in quarters? What the hell gives?
Bad Game Design: 01
A small, petty point for something that isn't so much bad game design as tedious game design. But I'm going to guess that Nintendo didn't feel this was worth it in later installments, since it goes back down to four for every game after this.
Going to the other end of the swamp takes us to a locked gate to use the key on, where we see a sign saying the Forest Temple is ahead and advertising lantern oil. The clearing we come out on is far too large to house the mere three Bulbins we find there, but no other enemies come out. A nearby shop comes into view, run by Trill, a bird with a familiar afro. Trill squawks about punishing the evildoers before pecking at us. Hey! Get lost, asshole!
Once the Bulbins are dead though, she apologizes and welcomes us as a customer. Seeing as we have money to spare, we buy some red potion (for health restoration) and leave the thirty rupees in the box, plus a tip. Continuing on through the clearing, we come to a narrow elevated path leading into the jungle, at the end of which is another small lot—and who should be caught there but Talo, in a cage! And the monkey with him! We cut down the two Bulbins keeping guard and, knowing the kid has the sense to duck when a sword is aimed at him, we break the cage open with a spin attack.
A scene of us making our way back to the village with Talo plays, dusk falling in the background. A solemn Talo thanks us for saving him, and explains how the monkey tried to protect him from the monsters, and thus got captured, too. He asks us not to mention this to his dad before running off. Right on schedule, Rusl walks up, saying he heard about the rescue from his own son Colin, and apologizes for not carrying it out himself. Rusl says he feels uneasy lately and the woods have been “strange”, and reminds us that tomorrow is the day we go to Hyrule. He says we might even meet Princess Zelda (in a tone that makes it clear he’s joking) and bids us to be safe. The screen fades to black.
We’re at Ordon Ranch the next day, being summoned by Fado. It’s almost time for our trip, so we should probably finish up early. We call Epona and engage in another goat-herding game, and there’s naturally one or two that want to be a problem, but no biggie. That done, we hop the gate and get back to Ordon Village. When we get there, we are set upon.
We ride up to Mayor Bo’s place, and the girl from before that washed Epona is there. She rushes up to meet us, and Bo greets us. While the girl, presumably his daughter, pets our horse, he advises us on the gift Rusl intends us to take to Hyrule, and very seriously warns us that we need to represent Ordon well. In the background, the girl asks “my sweet horse” to keep us safe. However, she soon takes a look at Epona’s leg. Her tone turns sharp as she rounds on Link and accuses him of having injured Epona by pushing her too hard, probably by leaping fences. She gets up in Link’s face, and he visibly takes a step back. Calling her ‘Ilia’, Mayor Bo tells her to cool down, but she just yells at him, too.
“How can you be so easy on him? You’re the MAYOR! You should start acting like one!”
What I do with my own horse is none of the mayor’s business, Ilia, nor is it yours.
Link and Bo hang their heads in shame as Ilia just...talks sweet to Epona and straight-up walks offscreen with her. She’s taking her to the forest spring to get her healed up, and...uh…
*pause*
I beg your pardon?! Get back here with my fucking horse!
Bo urges his daughter to wait, and bemoans that without Epona, the gift won’t get delivered in time, which makes what Ilia did just now doubly dickish. So uh, yeah, we gotta go get our horse back.
Listen, I’m definitely among the band of people that are tired of people overblowing Ilia’s bitchiness, but you’ve got to admit that this is a somewhat…extra way of establishing a character. There’s some token reassurance here, with Link and Mayor Bo giving each other a look that says “damn, she really thinks she’s the boss, huh”. But her leaving with the horse does cross the line for me.
That’s not her damn horse. Look, I’d never abuse an animal, and I can guarantee Link never would either, but that’s not Ilia’s fucking horse. She can’t just chew people out—much less people who work with animals on a regular basis when she doesn’t—for how they treat working animals she has nothing to do with. She legit just bitched us out and then stole our goddamn horse right out from under us.
Judging by how easily she cows Link and Bo, I’m going to guess that this was Nintendo’s way of giving Ilia some ‘bite’. And that making her ‘fierce’ like this makes her interesting. It does not.
But this is only the first and least annoying of Nintendo’s problem with that in this game.
Anyway, we head back to our house, where we’re spoken to by Colin. He says that ‘those guys’ (Talo and Malo, the bullying kids) don’t usually let people through, and asks if they can go see Ilia together. Sure, why not. The two kids in question stop us, and Talo excitedly tells a version of yesterday’s events that evidently does not include him getting captured. Thanks to Colin tattling on Talo to Rusl, they don’t intend to let him through. He then turns to us, demanding to see our wooden sword, and claiming that if he’d had it, he’d have handled yesterday all alone.
Boy, I found your little stick toy at the entrance to a cave. I doubt that.
We refuse, but we haven’t got much choice, since he won’t let us through until we give it to him. I sorely wish there was an option to whoop this kid upside his head right now. While Talo runs off to practice on the scarecrow, Colin confides in us that those two are always teasing him.
“What’s so fun about swinging something like that around, anyway? I hate it… it’s scary…”
Get it? It's ironic because we’re playing a game about a dude swinging a sword that’s one of the best-selling game franchises on Earth.
Hollywood Profound: 1
That was our first point, and it’s for the little subplot being set up here—the whole “big brother Link that the kids look up to for guidance”. I’ll remark on it in full at a later date.
That said, Colin does want to be like us in that he wants to ride horses, and makes us promise to teach him, before running off.
We now have no fucking sword. Let’s hope we don’t need one. Turns out Ilia was heading to the Ordon Spring, and locked the gate on us. Luckily there’s a hole we can crawl through. Once we get in, a scene plays. Colin has somehow gotten here ahead of us and is in the spring with Ilia and Epona. Apparently, he’s explaining to Ilia that Epona got more of a workout than intended because we needed to hop gates to chase down and rescue Talo. Ilia is immediately remorseful. We walk up, and Ilia tries to pet Epona, but she’s shrugged off.
“So you still prefer your master over me, huh, Epona?”
I should hope so!
She tells us not to worry about our horse, saying that the injury isn’t too serious, and then she gives us permission to go on together.
I don’t need your permi—ugh, nevermind.
She begs us, though, not to consider trying anything ‘out of our league’ on our journey, no matter what may happen. I fully understand that this is supposed to be her caring side coming through, but it really just sounds condescending to me. All she wants is for us to come home safely. Link smiles.
But at that moment, disaster strikes!
As the soft, gentle music fades out, the gates to the spring are busted down, as two Bulbins ride in on a massive war boar. An arrow hits Ilia in the back! Link is knocked out by a club to the back of the head! An even bigger Bulbin, with huge horns, arrives on his own boar and blows a horn. A digital-looking, swirling red portal opens in the sky, and the Bulbins race off just before Link wakes up. He gives chase, but very quickly comes to a stop, having reached a wall of...something ominous, dark, and glowing. Before he can back away, a spindly black limb reaches through and drags him in!
A beast with a shield for a face is holding Link by the throat on the other side. Before it can kill him, a familiar triangular mark glows on the back of his hand, and there’s a flash of light, repelling the beast, who drops him. Link’s vision flashes before he convulses, and before our eyes, he turns into a goddamn wolf! The beast drags the unconscious, now wolfy Link off, and in the distance, something is watching us.
And in true cockblocking fashion, that’s where I’m going to leave off. The drama of the game has officially started, and the next post will be a good place to meet our next…lovely…partner. And, of course, we get to establish our main conflict!
Counts:
- Hollywood Profound: 01
- Link Called, He Wants His Ocarina Back: N/A
- Fuck Off, Midna: N/A
- What Villain?: N/A
- What Zelda?: N/A
- Just Tagging Along: N/A
- The Hero of Wasting Time: N/A
- Bad Game Design: 01
- Ill Logic: N/A
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Table of Contents | 02 – The Twilight
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Date: 2022-09-15 04:00 pm (UTC)From: