#or like ... actually raurus- like clearly too big for link

[ganondoodle]

link gets his arm "irreversibly" damaged

"omg!! does he get a cool prosthetic?? like the weird tentacle like morphing arm in the botw concepts?? shiekah tech arm????? that would be so awesom-"

its just. arm but grey. occasionally green. some jewelry.

"well, does he at least lose it or have some scarring at some point or at the end-"

deus ex machina. arm normal again.

>:C

[sally-mun]

(Sorry anon, Tumblr screwed up my draft of your ask, so you’re a screenshot now.)

I hope you realize what you’ve done, because this is going to be a VERY long story. Get a drink and strap in.

Before I can get into this too deeply, we first need to talk about Ocarina of Time. There are a lot of issues I had with OoT that I was VERY excited to see were later addressed by Twilight Princess, whether it was an intentional link or not. There are a handful of things involved here, but for me the biggest one by far is the Temple of Time.

Waaaaay back in the late 90′s/early 2000′s, the internet was still relatively young and, in a way, more simple and innocent. The standard for using it largely boiled down to, “I like [x], so I’ll search for [x]” and just seeing what mess of crap you ended up with. I did this mostly with Sonic and anime stuff, but every now and then I’d do it for things like LoZ as well. One of the sites this brought me to was called The Odyssey of Hyrule, which at the time utterly blew my mind with its content. It was a hotbed of Zelda oddities, glitches (some of which I now see often in speed runs), hoax debunks, and most importantly for this discussion, screenshots from early builds of the game.

We can probably trace the origin of my fixation back to this screenshot:

Those of you that know Ocarina of Time well can probably tell right of the bat that this is not an area that appears in the final game. The website posited that this was perhaps an area behind the Temple of Time, since the setting elements all look the same and the camera appears to be in a fixed location. After all, when you look at the building from the front, there’s a clearly visible path running along the side, and it does appear that the fence has a “gate,” although we can never open it.

See it there, behind the second gossip stone from the left? There’s a gap on either side of that bit of fence, right where the path happens to be. The rest of the fence on the right side doesn’t have gaps like that, suggesting that this bit of fence wasn’t originally there and the path was once traversable; my personal hunch is that the “gate” is actually a copied instance of the smaller bit of fencing on the left to save themselves the headache of redoing the fence entirely. The gossip stones, if they were originally there at all, were probably supposed to start from the far right wall instead of the left, which would also open up access to the path.

The longer this stewed around in my brain, the more it drove me absolutely crazy, because I realized that this could possibly explain a lot of seemingly disparate elements. For example, there’s a peculiarity in the Temple of Time that’s easy to miss if you’re not taking your time and paying close attention. After you remove the Door of Time to gain access to the sword chamber, the initial view of said chamber is actually much smaller. It’s especially easy to see when you switch to first-person, because you can more easily see how close the walls are on the left and right.

(My apologies for the shitty quality of these pictures, I took them back before we had decent digital cameras. I’ll get better ones when I post this as an actual article on my other blog.)

As you run into the chamber, the tight walls abruptly disappear and give way to the massive chamber we’re all familiar with. In fact, if you take your time and walk forward through this hallway, you can easily see the moment when the room changes from small to large before your eyes.

When comparing this oddity with the beta screenshot and the website’s suggestion that the path may have allowed you to go behind the temple, I became convinced that something else was supposed to happen back there, but was cut from the game for one reason or another. My guess is that the sword chamber really was originally very small as it first appears, and the larger chamber was a separate area behind it, which was used for... well, what? It obviously wasn’t something small and simple, like a chest with a heart piece; not for a room that grand. It was clearly for something big, something important, because it had to have a large enough scale of work that the designers looked at it and realized they couldn’t finish in time. After a LOT of mulling it over, I became convinced that it was most likely the entrance to the Light Temple.

You see, something else that always struck me as odd was the fact that you’re just given the Light Medallion as soon as you become an adult. You do absolutely nothing to earn it; it’s all part of the same cut scene that plays after you remove the sword for the first time. You meet Rauru, the Light Sage, pretty abruptly as he infodumps about what’s going on, and then he just forks over the Light Medallion without hesitation.

From a narrative perspective, it sticks out to me because Rauru is the only person you do not interact with at any point in the game. You don’t meet him at all as a child, and as an adult you only see him within the Sacred Realm. All of the other sages are people you have both a child and adult connection with in some way, and it’s up to you to awaken them to their powers by ridding their respective temples of evil. Why would they just skip that process with Rauru?

Perhaps they never meant to; maybe you were supposed to go through that same process, but the Light Temple got cut. When you’re designing a video game, there’s a practice that’s recommended before you start actually building it where you make a list of all the elements you want included, then you organize it by importance, and then you cut it in half. The top half is the one you focus on first, because it’s stuff you absolutely positively have to have in the game in order for it to work. The bottom half is stuff you get to include if you have enough time, and it’s added in the order you listed it because top items are more critical. It could very well be that the Light Temple was either on that second half of the list, or it was never on the second half at all but development time simply ran out and it got bumped.

Either way, at some point in the process I think they realized they weren’t going to be able to complete the Light Temple, so they blocked off the side path and expanded the sword chamber to eat up the extra space. After all, you can see how long the building is from the outside, so it wouldn’t make much sense for it to be a reverse Tardis and be smaller on the inside. Once the back path was removed, I imagine they reworked Rauru to reduce his role; my head canon has always been that he was some kind of high priest who oversaw the Temple of Time, since it IS essentially a church. I mean, just look at that garb. He certainly appears to be some kind of holy man.

Having him as a priest at the Temple of Time that you could actually meet and talk to as a kid would’ve finally made his presence make sense. It would explain who and what he is at all, since he just kind of appears out of nowhere as the game currently stands, and it would’ve aligned with the other sages insofar as meeting them when they don’t realize their powers, then saving them as an adult and awakening them as a sage. In fact, Rauru disappearing from the Temple of Time would’ve been the game’s first big red flag that something has gone terribly wrong in the last seven years, versus having to go outside to see all the decay and the dark energy around Death Mountain. Furthermore, each sage is someone that the game explicitly positions as a person that makes sense TO be each temple’s respective sage, and to me, a priest from the Temple of Time is the obvious choice for the Light Sage when you consider that the Light Temple is probably part of the same building.

Speaking of the Temple of Time, it has a lot of clues of its own that it may have once doubled as the Light Temple. For one thing, consider the songs that warp you around the game: The Minuet of Forest takes you to the Forest Temple, the Bolero of Fire takes you to the Fire Temple, the Serenade of Water takes you to the Water Temple... but what song takes you to the Temple of Time? It’s not a song with time in the name anywhere, it’s the Prelude of Light. This would make perfect sense if the Light Temple was supposed to share space with the Temple of Time, right?

Another clue is the warp points themselves. Each time you warp to one of the temples, you land on a large pedestal bearing the Triforce. However, there’s another image overlayed on them too: That temple’s medallion. If you play the Prelude of Light to warp to the Temple of Time, the pedestal you land on features the the Light Medallion, as though this is where you were supposed to have earned it.

I later discovered that this is even more prominent in another old beta screenshot, which is much more heavy-handed with the symbol on the pedestal.

Something else to consider is the fact that the Temple of Time is actually where you acquire the Light Arrows, the final item that you need before you take on Ganon at the end. Like the medallion before it, the Light Arrows are again just given to you without requiring any work. The other temples all have a critically important item inside that you must obtain to not only finish the temple itself, but that is then needed in other areas in the game. Doesn’t it seem like you’d have to complete the Light Temple to get the Light Arrows, and they’d follow the same pattern of being used to finish the temple and then go on for further use elsewhere (namely, Ganon’s Castle)?

Getting the Light Arrows last also lends credence toward the idea that the Light Temple was in fact lower on the development list, because it would’ve necessarily been the last temple you visited in terms of game progression. They’re not going to give you the ultimate holy weapon early on in the game; they have to save that for the end so you don’t blow through the rest of the temples without a sweat! Additionally, the Light Temple being last would only increase the tension of wondering where Rauru went, since each time you warped between the past and the future you’d have to pass through the Temple of Time and note once again that Rauru is missing.

If it were me making the priority list, the temples would be listed in the same order that you play them in-game, because obviously you need to go through [dungeon 1] before you can go through [dungeon 2] or [dungeon 3].* In this particular instance, chronological order and order of importance happen to be the same thing, and if the development team used the same reasoning, then yes, the Light Temple would be much lower on the list than the others. It’s entirely within reason to think that they had planned for it, but realized they weren’t going to have time to fully implement it, and instead blocked it off and handed over the items you would’ve obtained there so they could focus on getting other, more critical things done.

It’s also worth noting just how much infodumping happens at the Temple  of Time. As the game currently stands, there’s very little to actually do at the ToT, but there are many long conversations that take place there. You talk to Zelda, both as herself and as Sheik, you talk to Rauru (as that technically happens while you’re at the ToT), and even Ganon monologues a bit there at the end. You end up spending a LOT of time spent standing around while other characters pelt you with information in this particular location. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t have been any big conversations here, but rather that I feel like there are more than there probably should’ve been. Some (possibly most) of that information could’ve been obtained more gradually and actively if the Light Temple had managed to be a thing.

And look, I’m not saying that what we ultimately got in the game doesn’t work; there’s nothing specifically wrong with the way Ocarina of Time handles the Temple of Time. I agree that getting the Light Medallion and Light Arrows in the ToT isn’t completely out of nowhere since the ToT is connected to the Sacred Realm. I’m only saying it doesn’t come across as the original  design to me; as far as I’m concerned, it clearly, obviously screams that what we got was a back-up plan. It works just enough to make sense, but it would work so much better if they did it this other way. Everything just clicks together a little more snugly when you consider that there may have been a sixth temple. It’s not that what we got doesn’t make sense, it’s just that I believe these ideas make more sense.

This topic is something I used to go on and on about back in the day, to pretty much anyone who would listen to me. I was met with about as many different kinds of feedback as you can imagine; some people agreed that I was on to something and had maybe solved a mystery, whereas others thought I was reading way too much into details that just don’t have that deep of a meaning. Unfortunately, it’s obviously not something I could take that far in an argument because there was no way to prove my hypothesis. It’s all just a guess, and even though I think there’s some pretty strong evidence to back it up, in the end I have no way to actually verify it. Sure I could contact Nintendo, but I highly doubt they’d tell me anything one way or the other.

SO NEEDLESS TO SAY when Twilight Princess eventually came along and had a Temple of Time that was a for-realsies playable dungeon with monsters and puzzles and items to collect, I went through the fucking roof.

At the EXACT moment that I realized that this is what the game was giving me, I literally screamed and shouted and cheered because I felt so... vindicated, in a way? It felt very strongly like a soft confirmation of what I’d been saying for all these years -- ESPECIALLY since the Twilight!ToT ALSO makes heavy use of the Light Medallion symbol. I feel like that’s about as clear of a connection as you can get.

Like, I know the Temple of Time being playable in Twilight Princess doesn’t absolutely confirm that it was supposed to be that way in Ocarina of Time, but it gives me that vibe because it feels like Twilight makes a point to ‘right’ a lot of ‘wrongs’ present in Ocarina. It gives me the sense that they were making up for some of the things they didn’t (or couldn’t) do the first time around. The fact that they were willing to delay the release of Twilight Princess just to make sure everything was just right also gives me that vibe. They could’ve just cut things again, but this time, they wanted to make sure everything was there, and that it was good.

One other thing I’d like to mention before completely moving on from this topic is something that I admittedly can’t confirm, but it’s another point that’s been on my mind: Back when I was playing Twilight Princess for the first time and I was screaming about the Temple of Time, a guy I knew back then mentioned to me that the ToT that we see in Twilight is, canonically, the same ToT that we see in Ocarina. He said that he’d heard somewhere that the Ocarina world map actually fit perfectly when overlayed against the Twilight world map, and the major world features/locations from Ocarina of Time lined up exactly with landmarks and ruins in the Twilight Princess world. I did attempt to look this up for myself before writing this post, but most of what I found was a big mess; I may attempt to line the maps up myself sometime if just to be able to better wrap my brain around what might (or might not) work here. What I can definitely say, though, is that the idea is at least supported by the theme of the series in general, given that it’s based around the notion of history repeating itself. Zelda games reference other Zelda games all the time, so it’s far from unheard of.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier the Light Temple isn’t the only thing that makes me feel like Twilight Princess is trying to make amends for things that were missed in Ocarina of Time; it just happens to be the one I was most prominently fixated on. Another big thing that Twilight Princess appears to be rectifying is the City in the Sky. Going back again to my old stomping ground The Odyssey of Hyrule, there was another beta screenshot that got a LOT of attention back in the day, because it 1) was an animated gif, 2) involves the Triforce, and 3) appears to be some kind of ‘Sky Temple,’ as it was known.

(Once upon a time that gif was reasonably sized, but since computers have roided the fuck out since the days of Windows 95, I realize it’s not the biggest or clearest thing in the world and I apologize.)

As I recall there were a couple of other screenshots that appeared to also be from this alleged Sky Temple, but sadly I don’t seem to have any of them myself, and although The Odyssey of Hyrule technically still exists, it looks like its images are all broken. In any case, the question of whether or not Ocarina of Time was supposed to have a sky temple was a HUUUUGE hot topic among Zelda sites for years. So many people spent enormous amounts of time and energy trying to find the so-called Sky Temple, largely because there was a sizable sect of the fanbase convinced that the Triforce HAD to be hidden somewhere in the game. Amazingly enough someone did eventually find the Triforce obscenely hidden in the game files (I wish I still had the pics of that, the amount of glitching needed to get to it was insane), but nothing was ever ultimately discovered about the Sky Temple. It just became one of those bits of gaming folklore that got passed around from person to person over time.

Which, of course, is why the inclusion of the City in the Sky in Twilight Princess, much like the expansion of the Temple of Time, feels a lot like Nintendo is making up for something they may have intended to do but were unable to complete.

Not gonna lie, when I played this area for the first time I couldn’t help thinking that the small glimpse in the gif above feels like it could feasibly fit in here, and it was just the coolest feeling of, “I knew it!”

Another thing that really bugged me about Ocarina of Time (and in fact still does to this day) is the fact that, even after you beat the Water Temple, Zora’s Domain remains frozen. I never understood how this could be, since every other area reverts back to its original, beautiful form after you defeat the evil in the associated temple. Not Zora’s Domain, though! It’s thoroughly unsatisfying to have gone through what is arguably the most hated temple in the game and not have a full reward for your efforts.

This, again, is something it seems Twilight apologizes for; not only does it actually replicate the original problem of the Zoras getting frozen, but IN THIS ONE YOU ACTUALLY THAW THEM OUT!! And not only that, you thaw them BEFORE you even do the temple! That alone feels like Nintendo practically coming out and saying, “Yeah, we messed up, our bad. Here, have the restored Zoras right away as our apology.” It was such a huge mental release to see that ice melt and the Zoras come back to life! My brain was finally able to let go of a frustration I’d had for years!

My last one isn’t so much something that I felt was supposed to be in Ocarina of Time, but rather something I just plain wanted to be there. I was always sad that, even though you do technically get to enter Hyrule Castle, you don’t really get to go in there. You get an extremely limited and very linear track to follow, and at best you just get glimpses of some of the other areas that probably would’ve been really cool to explore had the game been designed that way.

I always felt like the fact that you didn’t get any real exploration of Hyrule Castle upset some of the balance in the game, considering that you do have to fully traverse Ganon’s Castle as a solvable dungeon. Being able to get a thorough sense of what Hyrule Castle was originally like before evil fell would help reinforce just how much things had changed in the seven years that Link was in the Sacred Realm, especially since that contrast is such a strong theme everywhere else in the game.

So, much like my reaction when I realized I was actually entering the Temple of Time as a level, I had a very similar reaction when I realized I was getting Hyrule Castle in the same way.

I may not have freaked out quite as much, but DAMN if that wasn’t another enormous payoff for me! Getting to really look around inside of Hyrule Castle, and furthermore in a version that’s really able to convey the scale and grandness OF a castle, was an absolutely magical moment of overdue gratification.

What’s even better is that Twilight Princess almost gives you a sort of a fake-out in this regard, since at the very beginning you kind of go through Hyrule Castle but, like Ocarina of Time, it’s extremely limited and linear, so it seems at first like they’re going to do the same thing.

I remember playing this for the first time and thinking, “Well, at least I’ve gotten a little closer to seeing inside of Hyrule Castle, but I really wish they’d just friggin’ let us ACTUALLY go in.” IMAGINE MY CHAGRIN when later on that’s exactly what I ended up doing~ I’m sitting there fan-screaming and the game is going “AH HA I GOTCHA!!”

Soooooo yeah... This ended up being an extremely long post and probably way more than you were ever interested in knowing, but, yeah, I think that’s why Twilight Princess felt like such a bookend for me. Even though I did technically have the original LoZ as a child, my life as a Zelda fan really began with Ocarina of Time, and that game left me longing for several very specific things that Twilight Princess later fulfilled. I’ve never had so many large unresolved issues with any other game, and the fact that Ocarina of Time was the Zelda game that I ‘imprinted’ on, those issues left a very deep impression on me. Having Twilight Princess essentially go back and ‘fix’ those things was incredibly psychologically calming for me, and I think it’s a major reason why I haven’t particularly sought out other Zelda games in the last 12 years. Twilight Princess gave me the things I’d been looking for since 1998 -- a decade of hemming and hawing finally resolved.

I honestly feel like playing Zelda games may be different for me in some way now as I move forward, because I won’t have a part of my brain mentally searching for a way to fill those little voids in the back of my head. I have both Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild, which as I said in that other post I’ve actually never tried out, so I guess we’ll find out how I relate to them whenever I finally decide to take that leap!

If you actually made it to the end of this post, THANK YOU SO MUCH and I hope you enjoyed it~

*Fun fact, this isn’t necessarily true when it comes to the Fire and Water Temples. The game wants you to do Fire first, but it’s completely possible to do the Water Temple if you want to!

[ganondoodle]

you know, i had a totk thought (uh oh)

soemthign thats really bothering me about the whole "actually, ganondorf didnt like the guy appearing out of nowhere marrying a hylian and just saying yep das our kingdom now and we can mine it barren under your nose and also i got laserbeam pebbles that i totally wont ever use on anyone come join me or die just bc of all of that but mainly bc the guy brought some weird tech with him that he dont like" - thing is that ......... we see almost not a single tech thing in the past (and for that matter see nothing of the oh so perfect and peaceful paradise hyrule was before big evil desert man didnt want to join our paradise- like what is the point about making the whole point of the game be -we need to restore hyrule to this paradise it once was- when you dont even see it or get to care about anything of it)

it might sound like a weird hangup but no really, the most we see is like two servant constructs, thats it, when they 'prepare for war' im pretty sure all you see is some lightly dressed ( ... is it just me or does their whole get up look alot like native american/other indingenous people too ... i still dont know how to feel about that- kinda adjacent to some of the sonau armor, the battery one i think??, also having that look...) hylians with spears, where the heck is all that tech?? is it implied to be all down in the mines hollowing out the underground (for no real reason either bc .... theres only two sonau left and no one else seems to want use nor need the tech otherwise there should have been more traces or soemthing left of it -unless it all just magically appeared out of nowhere in mostly prime condition while all shiekah tech jsut vaporized for bs non reasons just for it to be in tha game but oh dont you see its always been there lmao- so whats the point really????)

or up in the sky as most battle constructs are and they cant get them down in time bc *gestures vaguely*

or is it intentionally kept out of view bc idk seeing an army of robots on raurus side he can send out on a whim might not make him look as oh so good and perfect as they want him to look when he already got laserbeam pebbles (most of which hes been hoarding until ONE falls into hands not under his control) ?? like it just ... feels weird?? so many battle constructs that can even be a threat to link are jsut fully functioning strolling around in the present still, why wouldnt you want to use any of them to battle gan and if they DID why wouldnt you show that (no the 3 second unicorn cutscene doesnt count bc its just .. gan and his monsters isnt it) ?? (also ... why isnt there a big like battle ground , like fine you dont have to animate an army of monsters and robots clashing but... wouldnt it be cool to have you discover a giant flat plain in the underground (that magically got put under ground like gan just decided to stroll down there to get sealed lol) and its the only mostly empty field in the game littered with thousands of monster bones and dead constructs intermingled?? just to give it all a bit of weight?? evidence that it happened?? cool ass discovery????)

(also also i cannot let go of ganondorf apparently being sooooo anti tech but then clamgan uses the shiekah stuff??? shouldnt he also be against that then or is that suddendly fine bc- oh woops sorry, forgot clamgan is actually just something, not connected to gan at all actually, i mean why else would miasma turn into malice only to turn into miasma again haha none of that is connected actually what is a calamity anyway? also im sorry to bring this up again but i just cannot let go of the ppl in the present being so obsessed with using sonau tech in every part of their life now- they just lived through an apocalypse of a barely understood strange tech but CLEARLY this other even less understood strang tech is not dangerous at all lets make CARS OUT OF IT and what theres no danger in miasma and that tech existing at the same time LIKE SOMETHING ELSE BEFORE THAT IDK SEEMS LIKE A BAD COMBO--- oh sorry forgot that ceased to exist in both the world and peoples minds for *gestures vaguely* plot reasons- why why why are monsters mining the sonanium?? they dont even work with the yiga no that is also completely disconnected we dont wanna draw and interesting connections after all- whats the point if it means nothing but to be a loot box for the player-- actually, so much of totk is just a so built around throwing you into a box of toys with no substance to it- listen i know games are kinda like toys but if it doesnt make sense and offers you nothing interesting to think about even slightly whAT IS THE POINT)

[ganondoodle]

i might have talked about it before but i kinda wanna rant a lil how nonsensical both the "getting of the time reversal" and "giving zelda the mastersword" things are

bc ... to get the time reversal powers you touch a ... ghost of the enigma stone that used to be there .. and i GUESS it was the one zelda has now but used to be raurus and since its now linked to her we get .... link being astral projected into ghosty dimension similar to the other sages and we get zeldas sage power, but .. how does that even work, zelda, having supposedly long lost her soul to being a dragon is somehow still able to do the whole sage thing of taking you to fogland mclight dimension, just doesnt tell you the same stuff the other sages do word for word (thank GOD)

but how did that even manifest? even ignoring her soul being GONE how can she make that oath or whatever while shes not awake and just floating there, what business does the ghost engima stone have there and why dont the others have something similar to where they were once stored (in the forgotten temple backrooms tm bc we cant have the sonau NOT touch a thing in this world all of the sudden-)

is it bc they were like ... released of their holder from the old sages since they had long died and those go back to being big floaty stones (for whatever reason .. shouldnt have sonias stone done the same when gan took it then??)- also zeldas ability being put into the hand ability wheel while we gotta chase down the damn sages any time you want to use one of their abilities is so unfair .. you could have made the sages usable .. but no ..

its a relatively small complaint compared to the rest but it still bothers me bc it just ... feels so contrived, like it feels to be so clearly just some loose string to get you that power

the same with the weird ass time bubble to get the mastersword back in time to zelda just so she can have a flimsy reason to do what she does (we wouldnt want the character this series is named after be an actual CHARACTER instead of a pretty prize at the end now would we??) and its jsut so .......... why not have her grab the broken master sword as shes falling into the past (SOMEHOW) or it falling down with her bc really link shouldnt maybe not be able to hold it anymore- wait he reaches for her with that hurt hand .. so he did drop it .. and it somehow got back to him instead of being put into the past WITH zelda right then and there?? why??

(also ..rauru just teleporting him to the sky island ... wasnt that arm the last bits of raurus physical body? was his ghost just chilling up there the whole time- ... can ghosts in totk control and teleport their physical, dead limbs to whereever their ghost is? why can a ghost even be so far apart from the rest of his remains .... or was that spiraling energy stuff just him slowly turning into a ghost there ... but my point about ghosts controlling their dead limbs still stands- WAIT he ALSO has to be able to ... SEE somehow bc he grabbed link before he fell too .... the way he talks when you find him chilling on the island tho is like hes seeing it all for the first time too .. so .. he wasnt a ghost yet and still knew where to go .. even tho the place is somehwere totally different to where it used to be and if he became a ghost right there why couldnt you see him when he grabbed link... if the hand that grabbed link wasnt actual the one that fell off gan why does it look like it then? bc gan hand was long and thin with long ass class and raurus actual ghost hands are barely different from typical human ones- .. i think im having more thoughts about this point thant nintendo had over the entirety of making the game .... also fuck rauru for doing the fake out "oooh noooo im fading awayyy" thing just so he doesnt have to answer any of your thousand questions i guess, only to return at the end going, "actually, i want my arm back and yours was fine anyway lol, and here sonia is here too for some reason! also check this out! zelda is back and you didnt have to do shit, isnt that cool?")

the weird time bubble makes me so angry when i remmeber it exists bc it just .. makes NO sense?? what even is it?? if it was a foreshadowing to zelda learning to use her new time powers and you find more over time in the game where she manifests mroe and more until she manages to return on her own like it was kinda teased with sonia tellign her shell find a way to use her new powers to go back since she (SOMEHOW) also got herself here and that point going nowhere like so many other points (hows it going impah, foudn a way to get zelda back yet? dont bother, turns out the solution was 'beat the bad guy' and it all solved itself) OK fine, that works

BUT ITS NOT a foreshadowing of anything, the time bubble thing is just THERE and it drives me nuts, it really only adds to this whole game feeling so weirdly held together by loose strings and it just gets worse the more you think