First Dungeon: A Link Between Worlds part 4

Link goes to Sahasrahla where he finds out the elder's son, Osfala has gone to the Old Eastern Palace that is now presumably older than the Old Eastern Palace from A Link to the Past.  In order to gain passage to the Palace, Link must borrow a bow and arrows from Rafio.  Rafio gives them for free but with certain expiration fees (aka when you die you have to buy the arrows back).  He then sends Link away to the Palace.

Link reaches the Palace to meet Osfala, but Osfala is confident in his abilities as a Sage to take down whatever evil lies inside.  The lore and games in the series are a little vague on the purpose of sages in times without heroes, so Osfala's confidence may do itself some justice.  Of course if Osfala dealt with the villain here and now, there wouldn't be much of a game.  Naturally, Osfala gets turned into a painting, and after Link gets done dodging several large steel balls rolling down the hallway, he fights Yuga.

Yuga uses magical attacks.  Link outfoxes Yuga with the bow and arrows, and Yuga doesn't think Link is worth his time. Yuga goes ahead and turns Link into a painting as well.  With Link detained in the wall, Yuga declares nothing will stop him from getting the remaining sages and finally Zelda.  As Link remains motionless as a painting on the wall, the hero's bracelet he got from Ravio begins to glow.  As it shines a purple color, Link is freed from the wall.

Link finds he is now able to turn into a painting and interact on flat surfaces by the power of the bracelet just like Yuga.  Using this power, he escapes from the Eastern Palace to find Sahasrahla waiting out front.

Sahasrahla recognizes that all of the sages are in danger, but then an earthquake strikes.  Following the earthquake, Link and Sahasrahla find a dark force field has surrounded the Hyrule Castle.  Sahasrahla attempts to break it but realizes the only magic that can break the barrier is the Master Sword of legend.  To get the Master Sword, three pendants are required to awaken the sword.  The first pendant is the one Zelda gave to Link before all the business at the Old Palace.  Sahasrahla sends Link to retrieve the other two, and the game opens up to a much greater degree of free choice.

I'll talk about this choice in the next post.

The Princess and Her Castle: A Link Between Worlds part 3

   By order of Ravio, Link heads out to the castle to warn about the magician who has been turning people into paintings.  He is stopped by the palace guards who think Link is being ridiculous and is looking for an excuse to see the princess.  When it seems like Link won't get into the castle, Impa, the adviser and protector of Zelda, intervenes and lets Link in.

   Link waits in the great hall of the castle where he looks at the paintings that represent the events of Link to the Past (if you'd like a recap, you can read the post from part 1 that explains it).  Meanwhile, Impa goes before Princess Zelda to pass on Link's warning of the magician.  After looking at the paintings for a while, Link is summoned by Impa to come before Princess Zelda.

   As Link enters into the throne room, Zelda immediately recognizes him.  Zelda believes she's seen Link before, but she does not recognize his name.  She does mention that she shared the dream Link had at the beginning of a monster putting Hyrule in darkness.  It's important to note that this Link has never met Zelda prior to this encounter.  This is almost always the case (with the exceptions of Skyward Sword, the Minish Cap, and the Four Swords Adventure).  There is usually some degree of familiarity since the two have been bound by fate for possibly thousands of years.  In much the same way Link knows how to use a sword simply by picking one up, Zelda's knowledge of Link comes from her many lifetimes of planning for the days in which Hyrule is in danger.

  Zelda gives Link the Pendant of Courage for reasons not yet explained, and she sends Link to an old sage named Sahasrahla.  I'm not expecting you to have to remember that name, but his deal is that he was a descendant of the same Sahasrahla from Link to the Past who was the descendent of a sage from Ocarina of Time (the sage of light if I had to guess of course there were six sages in OoT and seven in LttP so maybe there is no correspondence).

  I write all of this to say that if you don't know these games that well, Zelda will get captured or kidnapped some time between now and the end of the game.  Some critics have said some very strong remarks on how this objectifies Zelda in some manner in that she is frequently kidnapped and doesn't really exhibit much personality.  Let's get the record straight on one thing.  Link just does things because he's told to do things.  I'm not saying he doesn't have some interest in the well-being of Hyrule, but he is not the strategic mind who knows how to stop the forces of evil. Zelda is the master planner.  Throughout all of time, Link receives the Triforce of Courage whereas Zelda receives the Triforce of Wisdom.  She always delays her capture long enough to allow Link to have the necessary means to defeat whatever evil he must face (usually Ganon).  It's also important to note she is the only apparent form of government in Hyrule, which may sound like a foolish means of governance, but it actually makes sense given past attempts at shared power usually lead to the person that isn't Zelda to try and take power over the land in one form or another.

  In this sense, it is sort of like a queen in a game of chess.  The queen holds the most mobility on the board, but the queen is best used when positioned to thwart enemy mobility.  It is the other pieces that take advantage of the queen's position by catching and cornering the enemy pieces to open a way to take the king.

  I will also go ahead and say things don't go perfectly according to plan, but the pieces are picked up by someone who has also been planning.  We shall see this other planner later.  For now, Link must go to Sahasrahla's house in the village.

Get Out of My House: A Link Between Worlds part 2

Ok, so back to the regularly scheduled adventure.

After going unconscious in the chapel, Link wakes up back in his house.  He looks around to see everything in its place until a man in a strange purple rabbit costume comes out.

There's some major spoilers on this guy,
so I wouldn't recommend looking him up if you don't know his deal.

He introduces himself as Ravio, and he is apparently the guy who dragged you back to your house.  He has a small winged bird friend named Sheerow.  When he finds out from Link about the magician turning people into paintings and how Link tried to fight him, he declares Link is a hero with great cheer.  He states that he is a merchant who sells items to heroes, but he is in need of a place to set up shop.  He then passively coerces Link to let him stay in his house and offers a musty old bracelet thing as rent.  To add extra worth to the bracelet, he calls it the Hero's Bracelet.

He then admits it does absolutely nothing, but it's too late because you already agreed to let him stay.  Before Link can object, Ravio sends Link out saying the kingdom is probably in danger, and he needs to warn Princess Zelda because that's what heroes do.  So Link leaves the house and goes to the castle to warn of coming disaster and the true nature of the vandalism as told to him by his mysterious friend in a rabbit costume.

Even though Ravio may seem like a handful now (and he will only seem like more of a handful in very little time) circumstances will reveal near the end why he's probably one of my favorite Zelda characters.  Generally, my most beloved Zelda characters are the ones that are helpful but also some definitive character flaw.  Tatl is bossy, Midna has ulterior motives, and Ravio likes your money and your property.  In the end, your uneasy alliances with these characters work out, but at first they seem questionable.  I feel like this makes them more memorable since you constantly find yourself guessing what they're all about.  We will return to Hyrule Castle next time

(also, if you know Link to the Past and what it had to do with rabbits, that will help you learn something about Ravio)

A New Link, A New Life: A Link Between Worlds Part 1

Here is the context of this latest installment.  If you don't care about the grander scheme of things and just want to know about this game in particular, you can skip this part and pick up at the Green Sentence.  This game takes place in the Fallen Timeline.  If you have read my post about all the many Links over the years, you would know the Fallen Timeline involves the instance where the Hero of Time (Link from Ocarina of Time) was defeated by the demon king Ganon.  Following this, a war was fought known as the Sealing War where Ganon was defeated by the efforts of the knights of the land and its Seven Sages.  Ganon was sent back to the Sacred Realm where he sought the land's ultimate power, The Triforce, and in this realm he built his empire that became the Dark World.

Many years later, the court wizard Agahnim staged a coup in the land of Hyrule where he seized the seven descendants of the original Seven Sages as well as this reincarnation of Princess Zelda.  The nephew of a veteran soldier for Hyrule, Link, rose up to become the next hero who freed Zelda and the Sages, defeated Agahnim and the demon king Ganon again, and restored peace to the realm.  This Link would continue his adventures in other lands in such games as Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons before going on his final adventure in Link's Awakening.  

This brings us to the present where a lazy boy named Link is asleep.  All Links begin their adventures after waking up, but it is made apparent by his best friend Gulley that this Link is consistently lazy.  Link lives alone in a house that is in the same geographic location as the house where the previous Link lived, but such information was many years ago and lost to time.  He is an apprentice blacksmith under the tutelage of Gulley's father, but his consistent laziness has made everyone call his future success in this endeavor into question.  He runs into the captain of the castle guard who leaves the blacksmith shop without his sword.  The blacksmith sends Link on an errand to return the sword as punishment for his laziness.  Upon reaching Hyrule Castle, he is told by the guards that the captain usually goes to the chapel north of the castle before going on duty.  Link also hears that there has been an outbreak of vandalism all across the castle.

Gulley and his parents

When Link reaches the chapel, the doors suddenly slam shut and the screams of Seres (the chapel priest's daughter) can be heard inside.  Dampe, Hyrule's gravekeeper, tells Link there is a hidden entrance into the chapel.  After Link gives Dampe a run around on how he's ill equipped to face whatever is going on inside, Dampe threatens to tie the sword to Link's hand on the basis that he's the only one who can be of any assistance present.  This marks two differences with this Link from all previous Links. First off, this Link pretty clearly talks as he waves his arms around like he is conversing with another person.  Second, he is incredibly reluctant.

After descending through a network of tunnels in the graveyard, Link arrives within the chapel to find a painting of the captain on the wall.  The captain is nowhere to be found, but the priest is lying on the ground, and a dark menacing figure is approaching Seres.  The figure is a magician named Yuga who holds a flaming scepter that looks like a brush.  He talks about permanently capturing Seres beauty and hanging it on a wall.  He then creates a picture frame and zaps Seres into it, turning her into a painting.  Link recognizes this guy can't be allowed to escape because magicians are almost always causing trouble.  He rushes at Yuga head on, but Yuga jumps into the wall as a painting.  Link slams into the stone wall and falls over.  Yuga thinks Link isn't worth his time, and after he hops out of the wall, he walks off with the painting of Seres.

Link passes out.  

Without Me: A Link Between Worlds Intro

Guess who's back?

       Alright, so I wasn't sure if I'd bring this back, in large part due to lack of inspiration, but with the release of Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, I felt I could at least make an effort and see what happens.  I'm going to start off by saying my initial goal was to approach games on their story aspects and share it with gamers and nongamers alike, but admittedly this is a sort of difficult endeavor.  It's sorta like handing a Wii remote to someone and telling them to "swing it like a tennis racket" and they insist they can't do it because "they don't play games." So this time, I'm going to be a little more reasonable and recognize I can't get everyone to read it but I'll still leave it open for everyone to read.

    I also recognize reading takes time (and in the case of my stuff a little effort too).  So I'll just throw in pictures so we can all be on sorta the same page.


    So why am I coming back now?  Wind Waker HD came out last month(?) and I've sung its praises and considered it my second favorite Zelda game just behind Majora's Mask.  I wrote about Majora's Mask on the basis that it was so bizarre and outside the conventions of the Zelda series while being full of symbolism.  Well, I think I want to do Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds in large part because it is so close to the traditional Zelda formula and yet brings something new and exciting that makes it my third favorite Zelda game.  I'll have to do it a little differently, so this will probably be a shorter series.  By shorter series I mean it will be less than thirty pages.

   Without further ado, let's talk about the boy in green.