I'm playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for the first time. I've gone through all the tutorial business in the starting town and I've made it to the surface world. The Sealed Grounds is a shock after spending thirty minutes above the clouds. Not that I'm surprised to see it, but the contrast of the vast spiraling hole against the empty skies above was jarring. In a good way.
I take the time to wander around a bit, fight a few carnivorous plants, strike an ancient spike with sacred beams from my sword in order to unlock an equally ancient set of doors. You know, regular stuff.
I go through the doors and I'm met by an empty temple, save for an old woman bathed in a single dusty shaft of light. I walk up to her and she recognizes me as the Chosen Hero and gives me some Cryptic Advice. I'm about to leave through the side door when I notice the bigger doors the old lady is sitting in front of.
They're cracked open.
It's worth noting here that I had avoided almost every piece of preview material for this game. I am discovering every detail on my own in the most intentionally spoiler-free experience I've ever had.
I run over to the doors (because I can in this game) and try to interact with them. Nothing. No prompt or button indicator appears. I talk to the old lady again, but she's giving me the "repeated NPC dialogue" treatment.
I switch the camera around Link and can see a space beyond the doors. I enter into first person view for a better look.
It's another section of the temple, but it seems to be outside. There's grass all along the floor and vines cling to every surface. In the middle of the room is an orange crystal.
What?
I talk to the lady again, thinking I may have triggered an event, but she doesn't say anything different. I put the controller down and rub my forehead. How is it that everything in this game is spelled out for me except for the story? I can't go five minutes without my helper telling me that it would be a good idea to complete the objective I was already in the midst of completing. Why is the game holding back now? I mean, I appreciate that the entire story isn't unloaded all at once, I just want some consistency.
I angle my viewpoint in an effort to see the whole room, shifting around the hole like a peeping tom, but that's all there is. Plants and an orange crystal.
I file it under "mysterious" and move on. I don't spend too much time agonizing over its purpose because I'm about to enter the first area and I've waited for this game to be released for too long and I just want to play I just want to play.
Many hours later, I am face to face with Zelda. I have chased her through the entire game, got put down by Impa for not chasing fast enough, got jock blocked by Ghirahim at the Time Gate, got told by more than one deity (I think) that I wasn't that great of a hero, fought the sealed form of the source-of-all-evil twice, traveled into the past through a secret Time Gate after completing the
We are talking in the sealed room from earlier.
That fact hasn't sunk in. I'm as dumbstruck as Link is. I am too enraptured by the moment to care about much else. Yes, I'm itching for some answers to this crazy situation, but I'm more excited that Zelda is alright.
She enters exposition mode, filling in the gaps in my knowledge of the situation. They are extremely important details, but there's only one that is important to this story: she has to stick around and keep the seal on the source-of-all-evil intact. Before I have time to really understand what that means, Zelda is surrounded by a swirling mass of orange energy. Energy that coalesces into a crystal, trapping her in a deep millennial sleep.
I drop the controller. I can't play the game again for a half hour.
The concept of time travel is not new to the Zelda franchise: Ocarina of Time and Oracle of Ages both had it as a central game mechanic. However, Skyward Sword, in my opinion, does the concept justice. In those other two games, different time periods worked exactly like a dark/light world (I'm exempting Majora's Mask from this due to its Groundhog Day narrative). Here, time travel and the manipulation of time is more intertwined with the narrative and how you interact with the world. The whole purpose of Zelda visiting each shrine was so that she could eventually make her way into the past. The little robots in the desert are mining for timeshift crystals with the permission of the local dragon deity, who you have to revive through the use of time manipulation. You're able to float around in a dead sea by using a timeshift crystal. In that same area it's hinted that pirates were stealing those crystals because they were a new source of power.
Given all of this, I should have seen it coming. However, I wasn't shocked by the revelation, or that I had lost Zelda almost immediately after reaching her. I was flabbergasted that I was shown what was going to happen in such a subtle way.
In books or in movies, the reader needs to be shown something like this somewhere within the text or film or else the twist will seem contrived and hollow. The best writers are able to pull this off deftly and without drawing attention to themselves.
With video games, there is the opportunity to throw every story detail into the game and have the player discover them on their own.
I wasn't shocked that I was told what the crystal was and didn't recognize it. I was shocked because I discovered the detail on my own, thought it wasn't important, and reeled from the revelation because it felt like my own personal discovery.
I vent like I've just heard the best/worst pun and eventually sit back down to play. Seconds afterward, I figure out that Impa and the old woman are the same person.
I turn off the system and go to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment