The Wind Waker Hearty Darkness

I've already done a blog series (Let's Plays in text, as I call them) about The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (it starts here), but a little more needs to be added.
I recently cracked into The Wind Waker HD with my fiancée and have to say that the game's downright lovely. Even on an old tube TV, the graphics are lush, the colours are vibrant, and the lighting is immaculate. However, I've found that the latter effect is achieved through a bit of trickery.

Like most of the 3D Zeldas before it, dark rooms in the Gamecube version of The Wind Waker weren't shown as pitch black. They were dim, but you could see silhouettes and very bland colours while moving through a cave that was designed to be navigated with a torch. In The Wind Waker remake for the Wii U, though, those parts of the game that were previously dim are now just dark. Just plain, unabashedly dark. So much so that when you return to a room with any light at all the colours you can once again see really pop out at you.

Having to actually use a torch in the darker areas of the game is a pain, but the contrast is welcome and nicely reflects the conflict between the game's cartoonish appearance and darker undertones.

(Spoiler ahead.)

Let's not forget that this is the Zelda game that ends with Link stabbing Ganondorf in the face.

A tingly theory

As it turns out, Uncle Rupee's grand plan isn't to bring Tingle to the paradisical Rupeeland. In reality, Rupeeland is a place of slavery. It's what Uncle Rupee wants to turn the world into so that everyone will be forced to gather rupees to feed his greed. In fact, Uncle Rupee's ultimate goal is to turn everyone into a Tingle - something especially terrifying for Western gamers.

All of that doom-saying aside, the game says, precisely, "a Tingle." Yes, "a Tingle," not "Tingles." This means that "Tingle" isn't a person, but rather a thing, some sort of entity; an entity possibly like "The Hero of Time."

This little insight, though questionably canonical, does suggest that there's some sort of cultural bleed through between the worlds of Termina and Hyrule. After all, Tingle first appeared in Majora's Mask, the game that introduced the land of Termina. He then appears in Minish Cap and The Wind Waker.

Setting aside the former game, Tingle isn't the only thing from Termina in the Hyrule of The Wind Waker. The game's Phantom Ganon uses a sword apparently made by Zubora and Gabora, the blacksmiths from the foot of Snowhead in Termina.

Clearly there's some kind of dimensional crossover here. Perhaps the reason Tingle's not in so many of the Zelda games if looked at chronologically is because of Hyrule's cultural cycle. Tingle could be a one-off in Termina, but recurs in Hyrule whenever the Master Sword needs powering up. Perhaps it's a process that requires an influx of energy from the Termina dimension, thus causing the idea of Tingle to enter Hyrule's zeitgeist, and imprinting Phantom Ganon's sword with a maker's mark from Termina. Thus, Tingle is an entity born of an energy influx (or exchange) between dimensions (at least in mainstream Zelda titles).

What do you think? Feel free to leave your own thoughts on the question of what Tingle is in the comments.

Pushing onward in Rosy Rupeeland

It's never been a big deal in Rosy Rupeeland that Tingle's just a normal guy. His outfit is commented on every now and then, but otherwise he's never really noted. Among the amalgam of Tingle's non-notable characteristics, his strength is a great candidate for the most unremarkable.

Now, barrels full of gun powder are definitely heavy, but Tingle's lack of strength means that he pushes them around as slowly as everything else he pushes. Normally, the speed at which you can push things around doesn't matter. But in the mini-boss fight on Tingle's second visit to the Pirate Ship, his begrudging shoving around of barrel-sized grenades is terrible.

The only way to progress the battle is to catch the bug-possessed captain skull in a chain explosion of at least five of the grenades. However, along with Tingle's moving the barrels about, the skittering skull nudges them when it bounces off of them, and your bodyguard pushes them out of place as he or she walks past. So to finish the battle I had to patiently line up the barrels, use my bodyguard to nudge the boss into the enclosure and then quickly set off the chain.

Looking back, it's fair to say that that miniboss is Rosy Rupeeland's Moldorm. Yes, the incredibly frustrating boss from A Link to the Past and The Wind Waker. It's had other appearances, but those two are the most difficult since it thrashes wildly about and either knocks you off of its platform, or is just simply frantic in 3D.

With a mountaintop dungeon ahead, though, a giant multi-sectional worm boss isn't out of the question. So there may be something more Moldorm-like on the way.

Returning to No More Heroes

With The Wind Waker finished and the Gamecube titles in the "Wrap-Up" portion of my Game List now exhausted, it's back to the Wii. Specifically, since the sprawling Xenoblade Chronicles will make a better finishing piece for the "Wrap Up" part of my Game List, I'm now playing No More Heroes.

For those unfamiliar with the title, it's similar to recent Grand Theft Auto games, but much more focussed. Rather than doing a myriad of missions for various mobs, the protagonist of No More Heroes, Travis Touchdown, is merely pursuing his goal of being the greatest assassin. So you spend the game going around doing various jobs to earn enough money to pay the admission fees for Ranking Fights. In these fights, Travis faces off against one of the 10 assassins that he's trying to top, and assumes their rank once they've been defeated.

I'd just barely started to play it before getting swept up with other things, so all I had to relearn upon picking it up again were the controls. They're pretty straight forward. The nunchuck controls Travis' movements, the "A" button interacts with things, and "B" cancels things. The others do specific menu-and HUD-related tasks.

The game doesn't use precise motion controls for Travis' beam sword, a la Skyward Sword, but once you've engaged with an enemy a direction will flash on the screen, prompting you to finish off the enemy or your current combo. It's an all right system, and the game's free-roaming city-sized world offers welcome exploration potential. Though it's a very empty feeling place since the only conscious person on it is Travis. Everyone else wandering and driving around is just a shell, moving about and yielding to Travis no matter what.

After the wind's been woken

Ganon's Tower was way longer than I remembered. The maze and finding the Light Arrows and then your final ascent to where Ganondorf and Zelda wait had been entirely forgotten. And that's pretty surprising.

The maze is easy enough, and the final ascent is uneventful. But, the major reason for those final stairs and the enemies along the landings being so quickly dismissed is the Light Arrows. A single one of the shining projectiles instantly destroys any enemy - from Bokoblins to Darknuts. With magic jars on almost every landing, shooting down the final lines of enemies is entirely painless. Though the fight with Puppet Ganon makes up for that.

The first two forms are easily dispatched. Bring the glowing blue orb into view, and hit it with a light arrow. Bang, done. But, this boss' third form, the Moldorm form, is just plain terrible. Fighting the Moldorm in A Link to the Past is bad because it takes patience and timing to land enough hits - but at least in that game you've got the 3/4 view in your favour.

Once you find yourself in the middle of Puppet Ganon's Moldorm form all you can do is slash and hope to hit the head to buy yourself some escape time. Though that gives you hardly enough time to get out and to shoot at the flailing worm's tail. That's definitely what makes this section of the final boss so difficult, though. In its appearances in previous games, you could just slash at Moldorm's tail. But, instead you need to use the Light Arrows on said tail. Needless to say, striking Puppet Ganon's Moldorm tail requires a little more accuracy.

The final fight in this boss sequence is shockingly easy after dealing with the thrashing body and rapidly moving target that is Puppet Ganon's Moldorm form. The fight with Ganondorf just sees you slash away at the villain until you need to let Zelda hit you with a light arrow to stun the Great King of Evil. That last downward blow to the head always looks like it should do more than just turn the man to stone, but so it goes.

Having recently finished Skyward Sword, there are actually a few strange similarities between these boss fights. The formation of the swords that Ganondorf uses to block Link's attacks changes with each strike, similar to Demise's constant blocking of Link's first attack. Both enemies are also downed by a downward strike, something that could allude to the Downward Stab from The Legend of Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Of course, what I'm left wondering is was there a point in The Wind Waker's development at which players had more control over the angle of Link's attacks, or is Ganondorf's changing his swords' arrangement each time he blocks merely aesthetic?

In the end, The Wind Waker is a worthy entry in the Zelda franchise, despite the hate piled on it when it released in the West. The game's cartoony style brings back the whimsy found in A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening - a quality that helps any good game shine brighter.

Don't hate the bosses, hate the boss anterooms

Ganon's Tower is ready to be ascended. Link's got his Hero's Charm, and all four of the previous bosses have been beaten.

Go figure that game's most fun boss battle becomes the hardest when replayed. Not to mention that its lead up is also the most frustrating. It's one thing to perfectly land on a moving platform after gently wafting over with the Deku Leaf, but it's quite another to inch your way down a hallway, reluctant to wake any sleeping Redeads. Unless we get to see them in glorious HD once Zelda U's released, The Wind Waker's Redeads are still the series' creepiest.

Re-fighting the bosses is a nice call back to Majora's Mask's optional boss rush. Doing so in black and white, rather than The Wind Waker's full colour is neat too. It's as if Link were fighting the memories of these bosses, or perhaps Ganon's reconstructions of them. They are, after all, all his creatures.

What's left unclear, though, is whether defeating them merely opens the door to Ganon or if it causes a break in whatever power he had to actively exert to maintain the four part lock on the door to the stairs. The latter makes Ganon seem all the more fierce an opponent, and an enemy truly able to don three forms to battle with the Hero of Winds.

Comparing gauntlets

The lead up to Ganon's Tower in The Wind Waker seems like it's a prototype for the lead up to Skyward Sword's final boss sequence. Both are gauntlets in the form of continuous battles with a variety of enemies, though Skyward Sword's feels much much more like Link is being pitted against the army of evil.

Compared to the trials you have to go through to get the Triforce Shards, it's quite literally a walk through a field. Though the fight against two Darknuts in a ring of fire is an exciting - though not very challenging - one. Since The Wind Waker's enemy walk is so underwhelming on the Gamecube, since you just march right through (and can even just run past most of them), it'll be very interesting to see what's done with it in the HD remake. The hardware differences should make whatever change the Zelda team makes stand out.

Hopefully they don't change the reward for the Gold Membership at the Beedle Shop Ships. It comes late in the game, and might seem useless, but the "Fill-Up Coupon" is the perfect way to re-fill everything before you go down to sunken Hyrule for the final time.

A fractured cap for the Triforce quest

If the lack of a sense of accomplishment plagues you at the end of the Triforce quest in The Wind Waker, I think I know why.

The Triforce is an item of such grand legend in the Zelda series that its alleged existence in former games stirred the internet to a fever pitch. Whenever Ocarina of Time's remade, and when the Master Quest was released, there were all sorts of rumours that the Triforce would be obtainable. It's the same thing in Ocarina's Beta Quest, and undeniably one of the coolest things about any Zelda 64 reconstruction project is the possibility that you would be able to get the Triforce.

The one game in which you do get the Triforce, A Link to the Past, has a supremely satisfying ending - and actually getting the Triforce is a major reason for that.

In The Wind Waker, quite obviously, you also get a piece of the Triforce. It's a quest that takes about two to three hours to complete, but the pay-off doesn't match the effort. Yes, you need to get the Triforce of Courage to progress in the game, but the immediate reward is just a cheap little animation. The game jumps to the inventory screen and shows the Triforce of Courage glow while all of its cracks and fissures disappear. This is, plainly and simply, just not enough.

The game's designers went to the trouble to make each piece unique, and yet the joining of them together gets a level of attention dwarfed by even the cinematic of the Triforce of Wisdom reforming:



Suffice to say, a more satisfying joining sequence can be added to the list of improvements I hope to see in The Wind Waker HD.

Charts and Challenges

I set out on the last leg of the Triforce Chart hunt, thinking I'd only find that chart. Instead, I came away with a chart that shows where all of The Wind Waker's hidden caves are, where all of the heart containers are, and where all of the sea platforms are. These could be useful, sure, but much earlier in the game. At this point, things are wrapping up and I doubt that anyone would remember all of the things that they've already gone through and/or gotten.

Also, after having fought four Darknuts simultaneously for the second time, I've got to say that their bunching up is irksome. It's a great defense, which draws out the fight, but it's also a sure way to knock off helmets while leaving their armour on. And since they're practically impervious to everything except a sharp sword point, an exposed head is little help.

Still, despite the problems of the four-on-one Darknut vs. Link match ups,  such battles are just plain fun.

Idle sailing

The hunt for the Triforce Charts continues, and what I've pulled from it is that seagull piloting is tough.

On Bird's Peak Island, I must've wheeled around that second-to-last switch at least three times. Thankfully, the last one was handily dealt with by bow and arrow. After such a challenge, though, just going below and conducting the Wind's Requiem made getting that chart seem quick. Strangely so, considering the lag in this part of the game.

But it's not a bad lag.

What better way to make a game based on the ocean replicate the feel of sailing and of grandeur than of making a sailing-heavy part of it slow. It would definitely be going too far into realism if there were certain days when you couldn't leave port because of storms, but the slow sailing times aren't terrible. It forces you to take the end of the game more slowly, and really, why is it necessary to rush through a game, something that's supposed to fill your leisure time?

Triforce wrangling, part one

When Link falls down a hole in the ground does he scream because the length of the fall surprises him?
Or is it because he reaches the bottom and is terrified by what he sees? Why does he even scream when he falls down holes? Without a formal count, a solid guess as to how many he's dove down so far would be 30. Maybe Link's just always optimistic about his fall, but then ultimately disappointed and his scream is an expression of the inescapable loop in which he has found himself.

As you might've guessed, I'm in the thick of the Triforce wrangling section of The Wind Waker.

In a Developer Direct with Eiji Aonuma (posted as part of the E3 blitz), he pointed out that this part of the game ruined the experience's pacing and is something that many players complained about. I can see why, because it's unlike anything we've ever had to do in a Zelda game before.

But, it also suits the game very well.

The Wind Waker is supposed to be a game about an adventure in a flooded version of Hyrule, making sea travel essential. Plus, there's no shortage of treasure (and other) charts that show you where treasure (or subs, or Big Octos, or the Triforce Charts) are. Exploration via sailing is a huge, and necessary, part of the game. Sailing around Hyrule to find the Triforce charts, and the things themselves, is then a logical way to wrap the game up.

However, if the Zelda team does make a change to the Triforce hunt in Wind Waker HD, hopefully they give us direct access to the sunken surface of old Hyrule for it.

Savage from room to room to reward

It's a little known fact that Twilight Princess was originally going to be a sequel to The Wind Waker. Though the final versions of both games are quite different, some things in Twilight Princess are the stuff of a The Wind Waker sequel. The Wind Waker's Hookshot, though not clawed, feels quite a bit like the prototype of Twilight Princess' Clawshot and Double Clawshots. It might be an obvious connection (the case could be made for them just being the same item, merely redrawn), but there's another that's more substantial.

The quest for the Triforce Charts in The Wind Waker, takes Link back to his home of Outset Island. On the isle, the chart is found in the "Savage Labyrinth," a series of rooms infested with enemies from throughout the game. Any players of Twilight Princess will recognize this idea's being reused for that game's "Cave of Ordeals." But it wasn't just the idea that was carried over. The ultimate reward - even the final room - is similar.

As mentioned, these areas involve 51 and 50 rooms respectively, each holding a group of enemies to be handily dispatched. The final room of each involves a mad melee with four Darknuts, and the final reward of each is particularly underwhelming.

In Twilight Princess, the various Light Spirit fountains across the land become populated with fairies. In The Wind Waker, you get a piece of heart. Twilight Princess' reward is slightly more substantial, but considering that both involve a solid 40+ minutes of battling and neither can be completed until the final leg of each game, their rewards fall far short of the effort required.

At least the in-game rewards are rather thin. Hardcore Zelda players will take each area's completion as a point of pride, but it would be much more incredible if there was something grander at the bottom of each. Maybe a scroll that teaches Link the sword beam technique.

Maybe that's one of the things added to The Wind Waker HD (along with a higher gear for the boat), or at least such is hoped.

Seas v. Skies

Link is pretty impervious. He takes getting hit by cannon fire quite well, losing only 1/4 of a heart. And the King of Red Lions takes no visible damage whatsoever.

The sea battles in The Wind Waker, as simple as they are, are definitely the game's overworld's saving grace. They make travelling between places more interesting, and add an extra layer to accessing those islands around which ships keep a tight perimeter. It's also hard to deny that it's just plain fun to put on the Magic Shield and barge into a three-on-one bout, cannon blazing.

This built-in distraction from travel is what Skyward Sword's "Above the Clouds" area is missing. There are some enemies flying around up there, but none of them actually engage you. They'll fire off rocks as you pass, or fly in a set pattern bearing rupees, but none give chase or effectively bar your way.

As lush and lovely as Skyward's Sword's environments are, its three dimensionality of movement in flight is what does that mechanic in. Nothing can really bar your way if you can just fly over or under it. Though jumping over sharks on the Great Sea is fine.

A sword that radiates light without heat

The fight against Molgera in the Wind Temple is incredible. It's a little weird that anything would leave its weak spot so conveniently exposed, but, well, yeah.

In an ideal world the smaller sand worms that it sends out would actually be bits of its tail. They would curl up when hit them and you would need to toss them into Molgera's gaping maw to shorten it and expose the main body's weak point.

Nonetheless, it was an intense battle, even if it came from a designer on the Zelda team simply acting on the thought: "What if we forced players to beat Twinmold from Majora's Mask as regular sized Link?"

Now, all that's left in the game, aside from the final dungeon and the battle with Ganondorf, is to find all the pieces of the Triforce of Courage. The section of the game that's reviled by as many fans as there are people who dismissed The Wind Waker out of hand because of its graphical style. I think it'll be a good excuse to go through some sidequests and to work my way through all of the treasure charts I've collected.

But, this last part of the game won't be as awesome as it could have been. The Master Sword is fully powered up now, and it creates its own light when drawn. It gives off no heat though. Beam-shaped, projectile heat, I mean. Even when Link's at full hearts.

It's disappointing that Link's swings don't shoot sword beams because it makes the final form of the Master Sword less badass, and because Fierce Deity Link could fire off energy waves in Majora's Mask.

The games' relative sizes aside, isn't the Gamecube more powerful than the Nintendo 64? Where are those sword beams at?

An eventful dungeon crawl

The Wind Temple is well suited to all of its dirt and trees. It's a low down place that takes advantage of your progressing through it. When Makar had sprouted all the requisite trees and the door into the main chamber opened, I balked at the brief scene in which he's surrounded by Floormasters, fearing the need to back track to the first room. I went ahead anyway, convinced that I could get the hookshot without him.

However, as it happened, Makar had just been moved into the main chamber, locked behind a giant stone statue. So I went on, and had my conviction confirmed. The hookshot was handily found and won, and Makar was as good as freed.

But this in-dungeon event is a solid example of what the Zelda team claims to be trying to do with the series. When we first had word of the game that would become Skyward Sword, making the overworld and dungeons more seamless was one of the major things that they were trying to achieve. In some small way, they did it here.

Dungeons are, after all, a space in a video game where players get to try their skills against the game's challenges. They have to use what they have with/around them to solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and move forward. More often than not, these are solitary affairs, any accompanying characters basically becoming an advanced sort of box. You can drop them on switches, move them about, maybe use their special ability to solve puzzles, but they don't necessarily get much personality outside of their dialogue and appearance.

However, putting events, actual things that happen because x, y, and/or z have happened (or are "True," or are present), in dungeons changes their feel all together. It allows the other characters in the dungeon (traditionally populated only with monsters) to actually interact with the player as characters and not just another tool to be used.

In the briefest terms, it takes the dungeon experience (where the usual interaction is with enemies and involves putting your weapons through them) and adds a more nuanced interaction. Adding this interaction is what can make the dungeon/overworld split more seamless because it makes the two areas seem more alike, rather than each being especially set aside for different purposes. Dungeons thus have the potential to become bustling places of character and story development rather than being the thing that players work through to get to the next social area where story and plot can develop.

Hopefully we see this sort of seamlessness fully implemented in Zelda Wii U.

Worthy of the Triforce of Courage?

I'm beginning to wonder about the character of Link in The Wind Waker.

He seems like an upstanding fellow, but at the same time, he never goes in first.

At the entrance of both of the dungeons requiring him to bring along an awakened sage, the pair finds themselves at a well. The first one down this well is never Link, but instead the sage, either Medli or Makar. I want to say that he does the same with Tetra when the two enter the chamber of the Master Sword in sunken Hyrule, but I don't remember if such is the case.

The feel of the wind temple is very, well, festive. The fiddle music is what gives it this atmosphere, though from memory this is the more difficult dungeon.

The puzzles aren't as difficult as those in the Earth Temple, but because Makar's ability is to grow trees from patches of bare earth he sometimes has to venture on ahead, or is left exposed to enemies. Such exposure means there're more chances of resets in here.

What's more, in the Earth Temple, you could get Medli into a shaft of light, which shielded her from most foes. And, of course, you could always drop her by the door, clear the room, and then sally forth together.

Playing it safe with the same strategy that got me through the Earth Temple without difficulty may be as effective here in the Wind Temple, though. Yet, Floormasters could still prove troublesome.

A buggy chest?

I know that my The Wind Waker disc has some problems. They aren't game breaking, by any means, but they're there. And they mostly manifest themselves in freezes.

You'll play for a lengthy amount of time, or have discovered a lot since your last save and suddenly Link is no longer responsive. Then it dawns on you like the sun over the Great Sea: The game's gone again.

Now, this hasn't happened yet on my current play through. But something stranger has.

In the south-eastern most part of the Great Sea, there's a submarine. It's surrounded by four platforms, one of which has a treasure chest just sitting on it.

Before going into the sub, I took out all of the bokoblins hanging about (after grappling away their Joy Necklaces), and then went to get said chest. A chest that seemed to have been there all along.

But it wouldn't open.

I'd done everything that you normally need to do in a Zelda game to get a chest to appear. But nothing. The chest would not be budged. So, I went through the sub, came back out and tried again - this time before knocking out any bokoblins. The chest opened and I found something minor enough to be almost immediately forgotten.

Because I'm playing on a pre-ordered copy, chances are this titchy treasure chest is a minor bug that was left in due to time constraints. But what if it wasn't?

To get treasure to appear in a room or area in a Zelda game, you need to solve a puzzle or beat all the baddies in the vicinity. This is how it's been since the beginning. But what if it was different? What if there was a chest that could be opened only if all of the enemies in the area were left alone? It's a possibility that could lead to some excellent puzzling.

Dungeon Disappointments and Cinematic Critiques

Though it would risk being hair-tearing infuriating, the co-op sections in The Wind Waker should involve some AI. It's bad enough if you have your companion fall into the hands of monsters, effectively sending them back to the dungeon's entrance, but having to corral them would have been a welcome challenge.

Just dropping Medli at the door, clearing out the baddies and whatever elements of the puzzle Link can handle alone, returning for her, and then solving the room isn't rewarding after a dungeon's worth of tandem trekking.

The dungeon's boss was ultimately disappointing, too. Fun, sure - how could fighting a giant poe you have to stun and then throw into brambles not be fun - but still disappointing. The Hurricane Spin sword technique may have made clearing away the poes that constituted this giga poe named Jalhalla far easier than chasing them down individually, but there should have been a second section.

Don't just give us a cinematic of the haunted mask getting trapped in a shaft of light, let us corral him into a shaft of light. Or, have the player open each eye with a light beam and then fire an arrow into them, thereby keeping with the idea of the dungeon's sun-and-moon light-activated doors.

Having a bit more of Medli in her farewell would also have been better. The long shot that's used for the whole scene is reminiscent of the opening shot during the scene where Link talks with Saria before leaving the Kokiri Forest in Ocarina of Time, but the mood isn't quite the same.

In Ocarina of Time, you get a strong sense that if Link could talk he would say "I'll come back," even if he didn't believe it. In the scene where Medli leaves to continue to pray at the temple there's much more finality and I don't think a long shot does that justice.

In the Earth Temple's Depths

I didn't remember just how co-operative the Earth Temple is. Perhaps it was a matter of running up against the Gamecube's limitations, but the game would be much more interesting if more than the final two dungeons were one-player co-op experiences.

Having two separate inputs in a 3D adventure-type environment can't be easy to keep track of, after all. Plus, some sort of system for door opening would be needed. An alternative could be to make the game split screen and give each dungeon player their own third person view, but stuff could be easily missed then.

Aesthetically, the Earth temple is this game's Shadow Temple. Being an Earth temple, what's safe to assume would have been a place worshipping the fertility of the earth and whatnot, its creepy, old ruin look and atmosphere at first seem out of place. But, kick in the fact that a giant stone head and an impassable magic door were blocking it off for centuries, it's not too surprising to find it populated with floor masters, purple chuchus, and redeads.

Oh boy, this game's redeads. They aren't the lurching creepy polygonal mask-wearing bodies of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, but they have a jibblies-inspiring look all their own. And rather than just moaning and latching onto you they screech and their faces become clown-ish before they launch their teal skeletal forms at you. Indeed, their's is a kind of scare that only the Happy Mask Salesman could conjure.

Hookshot Hopes and a Timeline Nerd-out

Hopefully the Earth Temple yields the hookshot. I forget what's on the ghost ship, but I know that the hookshot is necessary to actually get on it. Not to mention it's needed to get the ghost ship sea chart, which, if memory serves, keeps the thing from disappearing when you approach.

There's good reason to believe that the Earth Temple will have the hookshot, too. The original sage who played in the temple to keep the power of evil's bane strong in the master sword is a Zora, and the hookshot's been the treasure found in several water dungeons. Plus, the mirror shield, the other possible item to be found while wandering with Medli, is usually the last thing to be found in a dungeon. It has been, with only some exceptions, since A Link to the Past.

Actually, going back to the sage of the Earth Temple being a Zora, there's something strangely prescient here. Medli, a member of the bird-like Rito tribe, is a direct descendant of Laruto, and therefore the Rito evolved from the Zora.

Pull out the focus a little and take that transformation more generally. A species which flourishes in the becomes one that flourishes in the air. The Wind Waker is a game based on the water, and then, in terms of real world chronology, Skyward Sword comes later and is based in the sky.

Could this transformation of the Zora into the Rito be some sort of sign from Nintendo that there would be a Zelda game based in the sky just as there'd been one based in the sea?

Not to mention the possible connection between the distinct Native American atmosphere of the Rito tribe and Renado and his daughter Luda in Twilight Princess. Perhaps, they're just two timelines' different expressions of the some inevitability?

But what, then, would be the expression of that inevitability in the "Defeated Hero" timeline?