(I play Ocarina of Time every Sunday and write what happens inaccurately. See previous parts here.)
Last time, we thundered through the Spirit Temple and got to where we could see the boss door, and the only thing we need now, is the boss key.
Luckily I knew where that was because I ran by it last time. All we have to do is solve this impossibility of physics:
Yeah, that's a floating block of ice over a chest that's constantly on fire. How do they come up with this stuff, I don't know. Turns out, all those doors are fake and shooting one of them reveals an eye you can shoot to get ANOTHER floating ice block to appear, which you can get up to and then, on top of the first floating ice block, you can press a switch to make the fire disappear.
Again, the physics of it all make perfect sense: The block is held up by strings and the chest is fireproof. I just feel bad for the guy who has to come in every hour to replace the block because it melted. But eh, what are you gonna do, Ganon is a harsh boss.
Let's do this.
It is indeed outrageous that I'm intruding in your castle without knocking. I'm very sorry ladies.
Someone really should, you're right.
Sorry?
Oh ok.
So first I gotta fight another one of those armored dudes, who's exactly like the other ones, and therefore a nice heart-farm.
But then I finish it and the armor falls off to reveal:
It's Nabooru! Surprise!
Wait who was in the other armors?
No, seriously, did I murder other people you had trapped in armor-suits???
But then they magic-whisk her away again and poof into the next room. So I guess I gotta follow and fight them for real now.
And they do a little anime-get-in-fighting-form dance and reveal their names and powers: The red-haired one is fire, the other is frost.
WAIT
SURROGATE MOTHER?
Hold the phone.
In this fictitious fantasy realm without phones.
HOLD IT.
Ganondorf has not one, but TWO surrogate mothers.
Which, like, hey, all for unorthodox family structures, but let's think about that for a bit.
They raised Ganondorf. They probably gave him his name. He doesn't know his father (or his mother but two surrogates probably make up for that?)
He's got father issues. Oh. That explains a lot. They also call him the Great Ganondorf, so he's also got some gifted-child-syndrome to deal with.
And they're probably Gerudian (?) since they're women and here (kinda bad logic there but this game works like this) so maybe...
maybe he isn't.
Bear with me, like, so they only get one man every hundred years or whatever. And they hadn't got one. So these sly witches stole a man from somewhere else and brought him up?
It's a stretch, I'll admit that. But hey. Fuck it.
(Also not really sure what it matters, but that was fun to theorize)
Anyways they shoot fire and ice at me and I reflect it on the other one until this happens
Lovely
Time To ANIME!
See?
Now, That's Anime.
Anyways, they now shoot bolts that my shield can absorb (?? because it's a mirror?) and doing that enough times blasts it back at them and she falls down and I can hit her.
And I died once during this and went on a health-fairy run and stuff but that's not really important because meanwhile I had a fear that maybe they were actually one person and there was only one surrogate mother which sort of blew bits of the theory
BUT DON'T WORRY
I killed her and they split again.
And we all know that when you defeat a boss they return to their natural form. So we're all good.
Ok, I take it all back. This is the best line of dialogue in this game.
"Shoot, what a fresh kid."
Link is indeed... fresh. (And finally someone calling him a kid, still! These witches have spit more truth than the entire rest of the game.)
They bicker a bit about the fact that they have halos over their heads (which is a WHOLE THING and kinda wild that these are the only two who ever had halos, which makes me want to upend my entire theory buut I'm going to ignore that for now).
And after a boss fight, it'sss..... Sage'o'clock!
And Nabooru is all back to the typical gibberish
Lady. I used my shield in that fight. I didn't hit any of them with my sword once. Except when she was lying, helpless on the ground. Truly, the skill of a master swordsman at play.
And there we hand-waive that whole potentially interesting plot thread away! Ta-daa!
It actually is kinda funny. Like, I have no idea what qualifies you as a Sage. Other than being in the proximity of Link as he does the Temple. Maybe that is the only qualification.
And also, don't you ... die when you become a Sage? It seems little excessive. I feel like we should discuss this whole Sage situation. We can probably find a better way to do t--
And we blip away and get this little cutscene:
It's time for the Showdown!?
Except it isn't, because I apparently have to meet a person in the Temple of Time first.
An Ocarina Jump Later.
Oh, it's Sheik. Surprise?
So, she says there is another version of the Legend of the Triforce that's passed down by the Sheikahs.
Yeah, it took me a second too to remember that the Triforce were indeed a thing we already talked about in this game.
It's something like that the Triforce is a reflection of the heart, and that carries with you to the Sacred Realm: If you're a Bad DudeTM, it'll be bad, and vice versa. But that apparently doesn't matter because if you do not have all three forces (Power, Wisdom, Courage) in balance, the triforce will split, and you'll only keep one (the one you like the most).
See, that's basically what I said.
The other two parts will be held within others chosen by... Destiny?
So, when Ganon went into the Sacred Realm 7 years ago (All my fault, by the way, remember? I did that. Me. Me alone) he kept the Triforce of Power because he's a Bad DudeTM. And then Sheik says that I, Link
Which I choose to call naive stupidity but it's really one and the same! So I'll give the game that one. Link has, on countless occasions, done really stupid things that magically worked out and could've afterwards been attributed to Courage. So, sure.
Now, the Triforce of Wisdom?
Lies within the one who is
Wait, Seventh? Sage?
It is her! The actual smart person in the room! And she got wisdom. Thumbs up.
But wait, remember how I talked about her eye-color not matching Sheiks? Because Sheik was red, she was green. Now she's... blue. Hm.
That's strange.
I thought at first. And then later, as I wrote this, I thought realized something pretty cool. The three colors of the triforce from the first cutscene are:
Red (Power)
Blue (Wisdom)
Green (Courage)
Ahhhhhh....
Except I checked her eye-color now as a child and she's blue-eyed then too. It's her eyebrows that are green.
Fuck. MISSED OPPORTUNITY GAME.
(It still kinda works, Link is green, she has blue... eyes and Ganon has red... hair? So close-ish.
Back to now, she says she was hiding from The Bad DudeTM, so she wore a disguise for seven years.
She reminisces for a bit about how she threw the ocarina at me and how that should've worked out but that she didn't count on Link's... ahem... "courage".
Yes, an "unfortunate coincidence".
All right. Tell me where to smash my face in.
But instead, she gives me an "Arrow of Light" which is a thing that'll apparently help me kill Ganondorf.
But Then...
Screenshake happens.
Which doesn't work well in still screenshots.
But it happened, trust me.
And Zelda gets... you guessed it... kidnapped. I.. said my piece on that.
Because she now revealed herself to me and Ganon obviously saw that. And he has a little spiel about how he knew that if he let the kid wander around, she'd eventually show herself. Which is another example of Link just playing straight into Ganon's hands, but that's more or less expected at this point.
"Slightly underestimate" is a good phrase for that.
Yes, you take that back! I'm not underestimatable! (Also, neat touch that he fixates on the power of the triforces. Because, you know, he's all into Power.)
Well, I was going there anyway! Because I'm... "Curageous!"
And it cuts me back to gameplay where I have half-a-heart and therefore beeping, beeping, beeping.
Sigh.
All right. Let's go save the world. Next time. We're getting right up there!
(Seriously, depending how much stuff there is before Ganon, we might be looking at last episode soon!)