#deku link 3ds

[link-is-a-dork]

[retrogamingblog2]

Legend of Zelda Planters made by Victoria Coots

[bluepartyhat3d]

May’s sticker club theme is Ocarina of Time / Majora’s Mask! Here is the mask salesman, goron, and the funny deku sprout.

these are stickers for my Zelda sticker sheet for the month of May! you can get them on my patreon before 6/1 and I will mail them to you :]    

[mw-draws]

EVERYONE LOOK AT MY BOY

[lucifinaspissed]

I finally finished my Deku Forest mini garden!

[demilypyro]

Something I’m a little sad about when I play newer games in the Zelda series is the de-emphasization of the Deku Scrub. When you play Ocarina and Majora, Dekus are everywhere. The leader of the Kokiri is the Great Deku Tree, you encounter a lot of Deku Scrubs here and there on your journey, and you interact with a lot of Dekus in the first part of Majora’s story.

By Wind Waker however, both the Kokiri and the Dekus are nowhere to be found, implied to have collectively evolved into the Koroks, and none of it returned for Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, or even Breath of the Wild, which notably did go out of its way to have both the Zora and the Rito, who supplanted the Zoras in Wind Waker. Personally, I’ve always loved the Dekus. Particularly in Majora’s Mask, they offer such a wide range of fun designs, and while some of that is there with the weirder Korok designs in Breath of the Wild, like Hestu, it feels like something is missing.

The Koroks seem to have no culture, they just kind of hang out. The Dekus were more three-dimentional, almost kind of duplicitous. Many of the Dekus in Ocarina were merchants, and the ones in Majora were usually acting on self-interest. It makes the koroks feel very flat by comparison. By now, the Dekus are a footnote in the Zelda series, having only appeared in two major games. The Great Deku Tree itself has reappeared regularly, but the Dekus remain stuck on the N64 and their 3DS remakes, outside of a minor appearance in the Oracles games and Minish Cap. It’s too bad, cause the Zoras and the Gorons have reappeared many times, and had chances to evolve their culture, but the Dekus were left behind.

Deku Link is cute tho

[divineprank]

Solving a 25 year old mystery...

Very early on in the game, we're informed that if the Kokiri dare step outside of the forest, they will die. That's a fairly heavy statement, but it does line up with more lore that we end up picking up as the game carries on. Anyways, this forest is a secluded, protected and magical place, a small haven that is effectively cut off from the rest of the world. As we carry on through the game, we learn that anyone who is lost within these enchanted woods--anyone who is NOT a Kokiri--will twist into one of two creatures: a Skull Kid if you are a child, and if you are an adult you will transform into a Stalfos. Why this happens is still a mystery, but one can guess it's likely connected to the Deku Tree's magic and the Kokiri being a vulnerable race. They're so precious to the Great Deku Tree; he views them as his children after all, and his children MUST be protected!

Makes sense, right?

So why is it, at the end of the game, we actually see a bunch of Kokiri outside the forest, partying it up with Guru-Guru at Lon Lon Ranch? They're spinning him on his organ grinder, and we even see a lonesome Mido situated next to a heartsick King Zora, both of them missing their special person.

Q: The Kokiri tribe is outside the forest at the ending. And the Zora too...

A: This is because Link's success has wiped out the evil forces, and the range of the Deku Tree Sprout protecting the forest has been expanded. The Zoras do not need to be immersed in water all the time. (Kawagoe, Cinema Scene Director).

And there it is! The answer to a burning question that many people have been wanting to know for twenty-five years now! The worst part is, this interview was published in an April 1999 issue of Nintendo 64Dream Magazine! We've had the answer to this question given to us only FIVE MONTHS after the game launched, and yet still to this day I think it is one of the most-asked questions about Ocarina of Time! Funny how things happen that way, huh?

[Source!]

...Aaactually, since I mentioned it...

Remember the cute little boy who is practically enamored with Dampé, the grave keeper? The one whose father you give the Keaton mask to and the very same child you give the Spooky Mask to?

According to this very same Dream64 magazine interview, this child ends up going missing before Link wakes up seven years later. In fact, five years after Ganondorf had invaded the sacred realm, this poor kid ended up taking it upon himself to search for his missing father, (the Hylian soldier stationed in front of Death Mountain's gate - the guy you trade the Keaton mask to!). Upon searching the forest for his father, he became lost and tragically succumbed to the forest's curse. He transformed into a Skull Kid at eight years old and apparently had an encounter with Link. He didn't bother to attempt communicating with Link, asking if he knew where his father was because Skull Kids don't trust adults. He attacked Link instead and I hate to think where that ended up.

Q:  Where did the little stalker in the graveyard go when you were in your time (became an adult)? A: Five years later, when he was eight years old, he wandered into the Lost Woods in search of his missing father and got lost. At that time, he became a Skull Kid. Skull Kid don’t talk to adults, so when he encountered adult Link, he just attacked him and didn't ask him what happened to him. (Koizumi, 3D System Director).

Grog is actually mentioned in this magazine, too... You know, the "People are disgusting!" guy? After we are given the medicine from the Odd Mushroom he had given us, we don't get to see Grog again. Instead, Fado appears and tells us that everybody who enters the forest turns into a Stalfos. Everybody. Stalfos. The dark and frankly unsatisfying conclusion to Grog's story, just after giving the poor fellow an ounce of hope, is quite jarring and it only left folks with more questions.

Q: What happened to Cucco Lady’s brother after he gave you the mushrooms?

A: Fado, the Kokiri girl who is waiting for you, is saying a meaningful message. "They all become Stalfos.” That's right, everyone who wanders into the Lost Forest becomes a Stalfos and lives in the Forest Temple. What? What about the human Link? Well, they are not Kokiri... Why is that? (Koizumi, 3D System Director).

While it's not a lot of information, we are given a piece of lore that gets my imagination firing off... Why would Grog--or any Stalfos--be drawn to the Forest Temple? Interestingly, if you show the Skull Mask to some of the Deku Scrubs, they will refer to the mask as looking like their "sacred forest totem". Could the Stalfos be related?

And for THAT matter... Why does the Skull Mask look so similar to Phantom Ganon's face?

[blueskittlesart]

hi! im really curious about your thoughts on oot, i'm trying really hard to like it and i wanna see what you enjoy about it

Hi!!! I'm going to do my best to explain exactly why I like oot but there is a TON of ground to cover. i have already written a bit about the story and my thoughts on it in this document, but this is a much more in-depth analysis of the symbolism and implied narrative which i think may be more helpful to you if you're struggling to get into the story and gameplay!

oot is my favorite zelda game of all time and was what made me fall in love with the series, but I will concede that it shows its age, especially with the insane advancements that video games have made over the past 2 decades or so since its release. Try to remember when playing it that it came out in 1998, when a game with any sort of 3d graphics at all was still new and exciting. some of its gameplay is going to be a bit dated, unfortunately, and it's totally reasonable to dislike that aspect of it i think! If you really find yourself struggling with gameplay, i recommend zeldadungeon.net for dungeon walkthroughs. they have very concise and easy-to-follow walkthroughs for the entire game which make the gameplay MUCH smoother for first-time players! there's no shame in needing walkthrough help in these dungeons, ESPECIALLY some of the later ones which get notoriously convoluted and difficult. that being said, even if you use walkthroughs, I'd encourage you to still pay attention to the dungeon's designs and details as a lot of thought was put into these designs and I think they're still some of the strongest in the series! gameplay-wise I'd also say that there are a lot of little collectibles that will seem like they're way more important than they are to new players. you don't need the skulltulas (they get you a bigger wallet), you don't need to complete any trading sequences, you don't even REALLY need to go out of your way to collect any of the extra heart pieces, the game is perfectly beatable with just the hearts you'll get from dungeons. Knowing all these things going in will really streamline your gaming experience and make things easier for you if you're getting put off by the 90s-style game design.

As for what i really love about the series, it's the story. And i understand that if you're not someone who makes a habit of analyzing media to an obsessive degree, at first glance oot doesn't seem to have a lot of story. A simple fact of old game design is that more dialog and cutscenes meant more storage space was needed, and the biggest constraint in game design at the time was the limited amount of storage a disc or cartridge could hold. What this means is that storytelling in older games like oot takes a very different form than the cutscene and dialog-heavy storytelling that games tend to use nowadays. the storage restrictions on the game meant that a lot of oot's story had to be told implicitly, via details and worldbuilding and actions carried out by the player. I know this can make it difficult to grasp at first glance! that's why i love to analyze it and talk about it, because I want people to understand how rich and well-told oot's narrative actually is and i know that most people aren't as willing to put in the work as i am, lol. with that being said, this is where the spoilers are gonna start! i'm gonna recap and analyze most of oot's story here, so if you're not looking for spoilers scroll away now and experience the game for yourself!!

oot is at its roots a story about adults failing children. i will elaborate on this point a bit more later, but for now let's look at our opening segment. We are introduced to our link, the youngest link in the franchise, at nine years old. From the get-go, we as the player are told that link's hylian parents died in a conflict very shortly after he was born, leaving him in kokiri forest to be raised by the deku tree, among the kokiri.

The kokiri are a race of eternal children. what this means, essentially, is that we begin the story with a link wearing rose-tinted glasses. the kokiri live forever without aging or dying, and they never leave the forest. Link has grown up isolated and without any concept of aging or death. he has been told by the deku tree, his father-figure, that he IS a kokiri and therefore will never age or die. Despite this, link does have a crucial difference from the rest of the kokiri that even he is aware of--he has no fairy. If you talk to the kokiri in the initial kokiri forest segment of the game, many of them will talk down to you or make remarks about you finally getting a fairy, reminding the player that link knows SOMETHING is wrong with him, that he's different from the other kids somehow, but he's not yet been able to pinpoint what.

we come to our first dungeon segment, where the deku tree summons link and tells him that he's dying and that link must defeat a monster to save him. when the player completes this objective, the deku tree dies anyway, revealing that he knew all along he couldn't be saved and lied to link about it in order to get him to do the dungeon. with his dying breath, he tells link to leave the forest and find princess zelda. (worth noting that up until this point, link has been told that leaving the forest will KILL HIM.) this is the first major failure of an adult we see, and as the inciting incident of the game it sets the tone very nicely for the rest of the shitshow. The deku tree lies to link his entire life about who he is, and then spends his dying moments lying to link AGAIN, specifically in service of a greater plan to turn link into the savior of hyrule by sending him to help princess zelda. this point is crucial--the deku tree has clear-cut, understandable reasons behind acting the way he does. It would have been much easier on link to allow him to grow up isolated among the kokiri, and it removes a lot of the potential danger he would have faced as an orphan in hyrule in the aftermath of the war which killed his parents. (we will later see that hyrule is in no way a safe place for a child on their own.) Explaining all the magical-destiny lore to a nine year old had the potential to scare him away from the task ahead, as did admitting to him that there was no way to save the deku tree. But lying to him about it all still ultimately deeply hurt him. this is the stage upon which the rest of the game will build.

Link, freshly traumatized by the death of his tree dad, leaves kokiri forest. he goes to castle town and meets princess zelda, a girl no older than him. Princess zelda tells him that she fears for the safety of her kingdom, but that no one will listen to her when she tries to warn them of the danger. this is our second adult failing--the entire conflict around which this game centers could have been prevented if only any adult was willing to listen to zelda's concerns about ganondorf. But because she is a child she is dismissed over and over again until she finally turns to ANOTHER child for help. her plan for link involves him retrieving objects needed to open the gateway to the sacred realm within the temple of time, which i know sounds like a bunch of confusing lore shit but all you really need to understand is that there's a gateway to what is essentially godlike power inside this temple, and zelda wants link to open the gateway and claim the power before ganondorf can. link already has one of the 3 keys he needs--it was the reward for killing the deku tree beating the first dungeon in kokiri forest, and zelda takes this as proof enough that he will be able to find the other two.

in these first three dungeon segments, link is confined to his nine-year-old form. His sword is wooden and deals considerably less damage than it will later in the game, and in each of the dungeon segments there are reminders of the way being a child affects his autonomy in hyrule--the guard at the gates of death mountain won't let him pass, the zora princess berates him for not being enough of a man, several collectibles are clearly visible but impossible to reach with his current size & ability, etc etc. this section of the game is deliberately juxtaposed against the initial segment in kokiri forest, in which everything was built for someone of link's size and strength and no part of the map was unexplorable or all that challenging. What you're supposed to realize here is that being a kid in hyrule is HARD. you have very little autonomy and are constantly condescended to. One of the few hylian npcs your age, Malon, is a good example of this--in her mini-quest she vents to link about how her father can't see that his stablehand resents him and she's constantly having to look after him without being listened to. She is being given adult responsibilities (looking after her father & the animals on their farm) without adult social status. Her situation is a deliberate parallel to both link and zelda's, though during this 3-dungeon segment of the game it's not immediately clear yet just how much adult responsibility link is actually shouldering. in any case, this is our third example of adults failing children, and the theme begins to be echoed in the worldbuilding of hyrule during this stage as well.

now we come to the initial confrontation, the scene which alters the trajectory of the game and divides what i consider the first and second halves of the gameplay (although the second half is probably much longer lol). Link, having found all 3 keys to the sacred realm, returns to hyrule castle, only to find that ganondorf has attacked, forcing princess zelda to flee with her attendant. He catches one final glimpse of her where she throws him the final key needed to unlock the temple of time: the ocarina. although no words are exchanged between them, it's clear that she's asking link to carry out the rest of her plan on his own and claim the power sealed in the temple before ganondorf can. and so link goes to the temple of time and opens the gateway, but link is nine years old and so link doesn't notice that ganondorf, a trained thief, is following him. When he opens the temple, ganon siezes the power zelda was trying so hard to keep him from finding.

we then pan down to link again, but different. he's changed, he's older. notably, he isn't an adult. he is sixteen years old, physically, but mentally, for both link and the player, no time has passed at all. this is important to keep in mind for the rest of the game--no matter how link may look, he is mentally still nine years old. he wakes up to essentially a lecture from the world's biggest dickhead, the sage rauru. Rauru places the blame for ganondorf's rise to power squarely on link and zelda's shoulders, noting that if link hadn't opened the temple of time in the first place, ganondorf would have never been able to sieze power. he tells link that he placed him into a deep sleep for the past seven years because, at nine years old, he wasn't strong enough physically to take on ganondorf and win. But now, he says, link is old enough to be a real asset. it's time for link to defeat ganondorf.

Once again, we have a clear-cut case of adults failing children. Link and zelda took matters into their own hands BECAUSE of the adults in their lives. for link, it was the deku tree (HIS FATHER)'s dying wish that he help zelda. for zelda, her plan was a last resort after begging every adult in her life to see what was coming and being constantly ignored. now that what she predicted has come to pass, she and link take all the blame for it, for being kids in a difficult position doing the best they could with NO ADULT HELP WHATSOEVER. you can't place the fate of an entire kingdom on the shoulders of two nine year olds and expect it not to fall. but that's what hyrule's adult leaders did, and when the kingdom fell they let the nine-year olds take the blame for it. zelda hasn't been seen for years. she's either dead or in hiding out of shame for her mistake. meanwhile, Link has once again become a pawn in someone else's game. The sage rauru decides for him, without ever consulting him, that he can't be trusted to remain conscious for the seven years between gameplay segments. that he will be safer and happier to remain asleep. anyone who stops for a moment to consider what this might do to link's mental state would have not done this, but rauru sees link as a child, which in hyrule is synonymous with an object to be controlled, with no feelings of his own. he needs to be protected and hidden, regardless of what effect it has on him when he wakes up. nothing else matters as long as he can be kept alive and unharmed. this is a deliberate parallel to the way the deku tree treated link while under his care in kokiri forest--he doesn't need to know the truth, because it's easier and more convenient for everyone else if he doesn't. its effect on his mental state doesn't matter. what matters is that he is kept in a position which is convenient for the adults in his life. this is another reminder of the way in which being so young hurts link, and if I can diverge into real-world relevance for a second, it's an obvious metaphor for the way trauma steals one's childhood. Link was never allowed to grow up normally. he went from being a kid one day to an adult the next, with no time in between to figure anything out. his childhood, his coming-of-age, was stolen from him by greedy adults who needed him to be a pawn in their war.

the dungeons in the adult segment of the game can technically be completed in multiple different orders, but the usual order (and what i think is probably the way the narrative is intended to progress) is to get to the forest temple first, which requires you to reenter kokiri forest, all grown up. it's important to note that up until this point in your gameplay, link still has plausible deniability about his race. sure, he didn't die when he left the forest, but maybe that was a lie told to ALL kokiri. maybe he's still a kokiri and he won't grow up. but now he's got solid proof that he was lied to, and that the safe, beautiful sanctuary he's spent the majority of his life in was never actually meant to be his home. When you return to kokiri forest as an adult, you find that it's nothing like the safe-haven you remember. it's been overrun with monsters that are taller than you now, as an adult. This is a metaphor, obviously, for returning to someplace changed. link goes back to his home and it doesn't feel like his home anymore with all that he knows now. And if the monsters weren't enough, if link talks to the kokiri, cowering in their little kid-sized houses, not a single one of them recognizes him. they address him as an adult they've never met before. to them, it's been seven years, and they've never known a kid to grow into an adult before. but to link, it's been a few days at most, and inside he's still the little boy they knew.

the dungeons in this segment of the game are mostly straightforward training exercises to give link the necessary skills and assets he needs to fight ganondorf. I'll skip over most of them, but there are three things i DO want to highlight about this section of the game: malon, sheik, and the water temple.

Malon is introduced in the first half of the game as an example of another child with very little agency and power. Seven years later, if link visits her again, he will find the ranch in an even worse state, with the stablehand having taken over and kicked out malon's father. Malon stays purely out of fear of what will happen to her horses if she leaves them in his hands. She is an adult now, as you are, and yet she has even less power than before. So much of the first half of oot is framed in such a way that the player wishes link was older. It wants you to think, wouldn't this whole thing be easier if I was an adult? Wouldn't I have more power, more agency? but now that you ARE an adult, you're confronted with the fact that nothing has changed. you are still a pawn in a war against ganondorf. Malon is still trapped at the ranch, forced to endure daily abuse or leave her animal friends to die. however, this segment is also the first time you as the player are given the option to fight back. If you, as a child, have taken the necessary steps to befriend malon and epona, one of her horses, you are able to use the bonds you forged in childhood to run the stablehand off the ranch and return power to malon. this mini-arc with malon is a teaser for the overarching arc of the game--having no power in childhood, believing that adulthood will be your savior, but finding the same powerlessness in adulthood, and ultimately returning to pieces of your childhood in order to finally reclaim your power.

next up is sheik, who is deliberately a mystery for the majority of this segment, but. well. we all know he's zelda, so i'm not going to beat around the bush. Sheik is what has become of zelda in the years since ganondorf took power--where zelda was once strong-willed and refused to stand down in the face of danger, sheik now moves among the shadows, darting in to offer link a bit of help or advice but never getting too close. My reading of this is that zelda, after growing up in the aftermath of her failed plan, was afraid of what she'd done to link. She saw her influence as the thing that brought hyrule to ruin--after all, link never would have opened the door in the temple of time if not for her. The way she sees it, her choice to use him back when they were nine destroyed his life and her kingdom. This is why she's largely absent in this segment of the game, only stepping in for brief moments and disappearing the second link tries to reach out for her. Her character at this point is essentially representative of self-isolation as a coping mechanism.

finally the water temple, which I promise i didn't single out just because it sucks, but i will warn any potential players that it sucks. it's the most convoluted ass design in the world and even with a walkthrough it gets confusing and hard to navigate at times. this is not the point of this paragraph, though. the point of this paragraph is that there is a miniboss in this dungeon that is INCREDIBLY important to link's character and to this day is one of the most well-done and impactful battles i've ever had the pleasure of playing. (side note, why the hell did the himekawa manga make this battle happen at the bottom of the fucking well?? ive believed for years that he was a shadow temple boss because of that. whatever. anyways)

about halfway through this dungeon, you come upon a room that looks like an endless sea of water, with bits of ruins and a single rotting tree in the middle. when you walk into the room, you'll be attacked by a mini-boss that takes the form of link's reflection, black and translucent with glowing red eyes. the miniboss dark link will mimic your attacks and block when you swing, requiring players to be crafty and strategic in order to beat him instead of just swinging with the right weapon at the right time. from a purely gameplay-based standpoint, this fight is sick as hell. it rewards you for thinking on your feet and forces you to come up with real time strategy to beat a foe who genuinely seems to think the same way you do, which is REALLY cool, especially for a game released in nineteen fucking ninety eight. narratively, though, there are symbols upon symbols upon symbols to be picked apart in this fight alone. there's the obvious metaphor of fighting onesself--representative of an internal struggle of some kind. pair that with the set dressing for this arena and the information we already know about link, and things start to fall into place. Link was raised in a lush forest, surrounded on all sides by walls of trees that kept him safe and isolated from the world at large. the minute he left that forest, bits and pieces of his worldview started to fall apart--he learned his identity as a kokiri was a lie, experienced the hardships of being a child in hyrule, and now he's grown up and become a pawn in the fight against ganondorf, losing what little agency he had along with the ability to return to his home in kokiri forest. He finds himself in this illusion room, with a shadow version of himself waiting to attack him, clearly indicating that this room is representative of his state of mind. an endless, desolate landscape stretching out into infinity. no walls to keep him safe, no cover at all save for that one single, ROTTING TREE in the middle. This tree is a symbol of link's mental state. (my evidence for this one spans across a couple games but just trust me when i say this interpretation is grounded in reality it would just take too long to explain) and the tree is not looking good. it is dying. and from this dying tree springs a reflection of himself that link must fight to progress. I think there's an obvious message that's being conveyed here: link regrets leaving kokiri forest. he regrets the way he's been used, the hard truths he has had to learn about the world since he left. He is still mentally nine years old, and as a child he still yearns to return to that safety he was promised in kokiri forest despite knowing that it's no longer there for him to return to. Dark link is representative of all link's fear and regret and turmoil surrounding his destiny and what has been done to him over the last seven years. Because this is a video game, he is able to physically fight those feelings, to defeat the reflection of himself that torments him and walk out of that room at peace, having faced his fears and confronted his true feelings. Narratively, this battle is representative of the ongoing internal struggle link is grappling with over the course of this segment of gameplay, and shows the player how link must overcome those feelings of fear and inadequacy in order to gain the power to defeat ganon.

now we finally come to the ending segment of the game. this is where the lore gets a little bit convoluted and trips some people up. if you're not a lore slave you can basically ignore the triforce thing. the only affect it has on the narrative is that it gives ganondorf a reason to need both link and zelda, since they have the other two pieces of the powerful relic he's after. this is why he kidnaps zelda and taunts link to come rescue her instead of just like. hunting them both for sport in the wilds of hyrule.

the final battle with ganon is the culmination of all your efforts throughout the game. in the leadup to it, the final dungeon reminds you of this by having each of its rooms be a mini-version of one of the previous six temples you completed in the second half of the game. once you finish this final dungeon, you're able to get into the castle. I have to mention one of my favorite design choices in this whole game here, which is the fact that the background music in the castle gets louder the closer you get to the final room, and when you finally get there it's revealed that ganondorf was playing it the whole time. the details in this game make me crazy they're all so well-done. anyways. to discuss this battle we first need to discuss a crucial character who i realize i've forgotten to mention this ENTIRE time somehow: navi.

I love navi. i hate the way she became a joke among fans. this is not the point of this post. the point is that narratively, navi is one of the only GOOD adult figures we see in the entire game. (one could argue that she isn't an adult, but she takes on a guiding and mentor-like role for link so i consider her one despite some of her more childish mannerisms.) Navi is the one character who has been at link's side since the very beginning, the only consistent good influence on his life. the only adult mentor who hasn't somehow tried to fuck him over or manipulate him somehow. She is INTEGRAL to his survival through all the crazy bullshit he gets caught up in. the game makes her importance clear to the player in two ways: the first, obviously, is that she's the tutorial character--she tells you where to go, what to do, explains mechanics and puzzles, etc. The second, and the detail that's gonna be super important in our discussion of the final battle, is that she's tied to the game's targeting mechanic. It's subtle enough that I actually didn't notice it my first time around UNTIL this final battle, but every time you target an enemy to attack them (which with the way the camera movement is designed in this game is basically a required element of combat) navi flies to their weak spot and hovers there, which is the in-game explanation for what targeting is--navi is showing link the monsters' weak spots. in the first phase of the final battle with ganondorf, he erects a forcefield which prevents navi from entering the battlefield, removing the player's ability to target completely.

i absolutely LOVE this battle in terms of both gameplay and narrative. removing the targeting mechanic is a genuine handicap that makes the battle genuinely difficult for the player, and narratively it serves to remind you of the importance of navi, a positive adult influence, in link's life. without her, dealing damage is so much more difficult, but as soon as you have her back the battle becomes super intuitive and you're able to strategize much more effectively. Eventually, you deal enough damage to get navi back and flee the castle with the princess, before making one final stand against Ganon, a mutated beast-form of ganondorf. with navi by your side, his massive weakness becomes easily targetable, and you're able to defeat and seal him for good.

the end-credits scene of the game shows link time-traveling back to his nine-year-old self, before any of the events of the game have come to pass, and re-entering hyrule castle to warn nine-year-old zelda about what is to come. this is a time paradox, i know, but i LOVE this ending thematically. As I mentioned extensively earlier, link and zelda's stories are both representative of the way trauma robs you of childhood. they were both stripped of their chance to be children and grow up and come of age due to what happened with ganondorf. Allowing link to go back and prevent those events from ever occurring is a promise of healing. it's a promise that he and zelda will be able to reclaim the childhoods that were stolen from them by war and by adults who wanted to use them as pawns in it. it's a reclamation of the agency that these characters have been consistently denied throughout their stories. it's. a good ending. it's a really good ending. I like it a lot.

So uhhh wow that was a lot! what it comes down to is that i think oot is a story a ton of people can relate to. being a kid with responsibility but no agency and longing to be an adult, but then growing up and wanting nothing more than to return to the childhood you lost... that's something that really resonates with me, at least. and yeah oot has a lot of quirks and convoluted story and stuff but at its core it's a really beautiful coming-of-age that deals REALLY well with trauma and childhood and growing up!! tldr it's just. a genuinely incredible story and it means a LOT to me lol

[williamgart]

Here is an old model I made of Deku Link from The Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask. I've had the render on my hard drive collecting dust and figured I would share it here to showcase my 3D skills.

If you're interested in a 3D character commission, then check out my Ko-Fi.

[link-is-a-dork]

[retrogamingblog2]

Legend of Zelda Planters made by Victoria Coots

[bluepartyhat3d]

more majora’s mask / ocarina of time designs! phantom ganon, deku princess and some various items

these are stickers for my Zelda sticker sheet for the month of May! you can get them on my patreon before 6/1 and I will mail them to you :]    

[ziskeyt]

I like the style of the Echoes of Wisdom / Link's Awakening. I think it's cute, but primarily, I like the 2D but with 3D art style because there's no risk I'll get dizzy playing. Would it be cool to have a big 3D Zelda game with Zelda as the playable character? Yeah! Do I think this is a test of the market before they invest in doing it? Yeah, seems like it. Do I think this looks like the best representation of a playable Zelda? No. I think it looks like it'll be fun. I'm curious what history they'll give us of the world, how they'll deal with the different cultures, why the Gerudo are wearing Link's botw outfit, why there are Gerudo if Ganon is his Old School Blue Pig Self, if Zelda will be wearing the Zora engagement armour, and if Link is in some Dark Realm with Ganon, his bow, and the not-master sword just like, unable to do anything. Will Zelda get outfits we can give her? Will she learn weapons as she goes or is it just the wand? Cause that's weird. Link gets a whole menu of possibilities in the 2D games, she should too. Will we see the return of the grappling hook? Will Zelda have to pull or make the master sword? it looked like the area it should be in front of the deku tree is not where it is. I think in many ways Nintendo isn't sure how to make the Princess the adventurer, and it shows. And how do they do it without sidelining Link? Well, they sideline him in the same way they've done her throughout the series. (I do love his lil determined face they showed when he shot the arrow to break her out of the crystal. you go little buddy.)

I've seen some good criticisms of the choice of style and game already, and I imagine as we see more and the game is released we'll see more. I just also am very aware the game they gave us last year gave us "I'm Evil for the Sake of Evil" Ganondorf who, once again, was given his racist green skin tone. Which is to say, I do not expect much from nintendo. However, for those of us who have motion issues, I am happy to see them making another game in the delightful style they used for the Switch's Link's Awakening.

[solargeist]

in clock town, as deku link the puppy that runs around Will a bite You.

and yeah majoras mask is surprisingly difficult without direction. it doesn’t hold your hand as much as some zelda games? but in the 3ds remake they added the bombers notebook which keeps track of times and quests and stuff as you go on.

and it’s story is gorgeous. and the lore behind termina? there’s no goddesses. there is no triforce, at least not anymore. the ONLY place you see a triforce, is in the stone tower temple (creepy one) where the moving blocks with faces, have the triforce on the bottom of the block, their butt, and they are licking the symbol. sounds disrespectful?

and i adore how every side quest is linked to a character in game

there’s not a single npc that doesn’t get some sort of story or bit of lore

it’s so well thought out.

omg dude as a kid whos only played twilight princess--a game that lets you pick up the dog and play fetch with it, i was SO sad when the dog in majora would push me down or bite :(( </333 i can remember my absolute disappointment !! Kid Link games hit different as a kid, i felt the personal helplessness adgjadjk

i am very glad for the notebook bc i can never remember anything, that game is super hard when you have memory problems !!

[giriduck]

Almost there, folks: we're within 24 hours from TotK launch for much of the world.

Long post under the cut about Ganondorf thoughts in general.

I got into Legend of Zelda as a very small kiddo, way back when it first showed up in the United States on the NES. The limited lore was fine and good, the graphics were on par with everything else at the time, but it was the music that sucked me right in. I'd pop the cartridge in and launch the game just to listen to the theme during the opening scroll.

Zelda 2 was odd and I mostly ignored it. When A Link to the Past came out on the SNES, the enhanced graphics and music was breathtaking, and the story was vast and engaging. There was lore, and it was perfect for picking apart and analyzing. I cared about Link, the fate of Hyrule, and all the NPCs we met along the way. To this day, the epilogue music to ALLttP and the end credits still never fails to make me cry.

I was in my mid teens when Ocarina of Time came out. Subscribed to Nintendo Power Magazine by then, I was all in on the hype. The power of the N64! The first 3D Zelda game! A beefy and hot adult Link! After the launch of the game was delayed by a year, the excitement to play this game was intense.

It did not disappoint. While A Link to the Past was an excellent adventure, Ocarina of Time presented a version of Hyrule in which I genuinely enjoyed simply spending time. It was beautiful and immersive. It was the first atmospheric digital space that I'd seek out when I wanted to relax and watch the sun rise or set. It was the first of it's kind, and it was no surprise when years later, MMOs began rolling out with gorgeous skyboxes and scenery, as digital places for players to escape to. That was Hyrule for me. I already enjoyed it as a fictional kingdom through prior games (and the cartoon series, lol), but OoT solidified it as a beautiful place that I fell in love with.

So I could see why and how the antagonist of the series wanted lay claim to it so badly; it's a desirable, magnificent environment.

The reveal in A Link to the Past that Ganon--the very same baddie from the first game--was pulling the strings the whole time was pretty cool, as well as all the lore about the Golden Goddesses, the Triforce, Ganon's influence over the Dark World, etc. One of the Seven Maidens even mentioned Ganondorf by name, and briefly talked about Ganon's origin story as the guy who found the Triforce, after so many others had failed and all the wars and bloodshed over this mystical, legendary artifact. It was only a few lines, but it was so interesting, and felt like it was only scratching the surface of a much deeper history.

When Ocarina of Time came out, it was so light and fluffy running around as a child in Kokiri Forest until the Great Deku Tree revealed that he'd been cursed and was going to die. He launched into the history of the creation of Hyrule that aligned to lore from A Link to the Past, with music that harkened back to that game. It was a powerful shot of nostalgia.

Then the antagonist--the villain who would eventually find the Triforce--galloped across the screen, backlit by flames. He was big, he was mean, and he was going to appear centuries later in a new form as Ganon. I sort of knew where this was going because I'd played A Link to the Past, and now we got to see the man himself, when he was still a human.

I was instantly fascinated.

Later in the game, it's revealed that he was also a king, and--in a wild choice by Nintendo--depicted as a very rare cis male within his otherwise all-AFAB population of desert warrior people. A big fan of warrior woman archetypes in general, this was also of interest. The whole sociological implications of the, say, constrained demographics within Gerudo society was also an interesting thought experiment.

Ganondorf was such a cocky, arrogant bastard, though. During his seven-year reign, he seemed to squander Hyrule's bounty. He appeared selfish and unconcerned with his people. Although his unexplored backstory to his people and his connection to the Triforce were interesting, he was canonically a pretty terrible person.

Not long after Ocarina of Time came out, I used to frame Ganondorf as he was presented in the game: arrogant, conniving, and cruel.

This made me nervous for the Gerudo, who were in the challenging position of being expected to follow such a difficult person, who also happened to be their king. By extension, it felt like a setup for extremely toxic dynamics, and that did not sit right with me at all. So the mental fanon shifted to him just being uncaring and indifferent about everyone around him, and his quest for power was so all-consuming that he distanced himself from his people, anyway.

This still wasn’t the kind of person I wanted to give space to in my mind. The Gerudo deserved better, and surely they would take great care to raise their prince well, to help ensure their future king was aligned to their values and mores. His people would naturally care about him, and he would ideally reciprocate that to some degree.

Though he had the capacity for cruelty, he was no longer a fundamentally cruel person in my headcanon. “Conniving” evolved into “political” as required, and only a fraction of his original arrogance remained.

Then Wind Waker happened.

Those established headcanons aligned to the more mature, patient, world-weary version of Ganondorf we saw in Wind Waker; he was like who I'd constructed in my head, but even more so. This version was a man who'd suffered defeat and was imprisoned in a world in which he was forced to live with the consequences of his actions. The Hyrule he sought after--the same Hyrule players like myself fondly remember and loved--was maddeningly just outside of his reach. I found myself empathizing because I too, ached to restore the old world to its former glory.

Then, in his famous monologue at the end of the game, how he had sought out the comforts of Hyrule to escape the harsh environment of his home... How he had the names of his adopted mothers engraved onto his swords... Both revelations hit me hard.

For those of us who who wanted to believe that there was more complexity--and humanity--to Ganondorf than what we saw in Ocarina of Time, the reaction to the glimpses we saw in WW Ganondorf was like:

So now we are at the eve of Tears of the Kingdom launch. Will this Ganondorf be the most heartless version we’ve seen yet, or will he have complexity?

In Breath of the Wild, Calamity Ganon had killed Urbosa (a Gerudo Chief skilled with lightning, who was likely his distant descendant) in a very nasty reflection of her specific fighting style (sword, shield, and electricity), and then intimidated Gerudo Town through the possession of a Giant Mechanical Lightning Camel named after a woman he had once personally known, who had famously opposed him ages and ages ago, and because of that rebellion is still remembered as a heroine to the Gerudo.

Clearly his relationship with the Gerudo is going to be severely complicated, at best.

I am curious and actually very nervous about how Ganondorf interacts with the Gerudo in Tears of the Kingdom, if he actually does so at all.

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-zelda-fan]

Majora's Mask 3D: Restored

TL;DR: Majora's Mask 3D made a weird bunch of changes that make it the inferior gameplay experience compared to the N64 version. But now there's Project Restoration, which fixes all of that and more. Try it out! Full story below.

A good while ago, I found Nerrel's video review of MM3D, which asks the question, "Was Majora's Mask 3D a Bad Remake?" In his opinion, yes. The remake fucked up Deku Link's movement and Zora Link's swimming, butchered the boss fights and ice arrows, disabled saving with the Song of Time, weakened the Inverted Song of Time to slowing time to 50% instead of 30% (he forgot to mention this one but it's true), and failed to implement obvious quality of life updates, all the while adding light and color in places that take away from the game's dark atmosphere.

His halfway solution was to make an HD texture pack for the N64 version, which is very, very impressive. He redrew pretty much every texture by hand, but unfortunately couldn't update the models without the game crashing. And at the time of his video, there was already a mod of the game that made a few of those QoL updates. Nerrel admitted that the texture and model work in MM3D is great, and that a mod that fixes all the regressions it made might make it the definitive way to play the game.

At the time, no such mod existed. So I went through the trouble of installing and setting up his texture pack, Majora's Mask HD, on my computer. I played up to the Snowhead Temple before losing steam and getting wrapped up in something else. I was impressed by his hard work, but at the same time, the 20 fps, inconvenience of emulating, lack of motion controls, and awkward juxtaposition of HD textures with N64-quality models made it not quite satisfying to play.

A couple days ago, I finished my most recent playthrough of Ocarina of Time 3D. I was faced with a tough choice. MMHD, or MM3D? That's when I discovered Project Restoration, a fan project to fix the regressions MM3D made while adding QoL features. Link's movement? Fixed. Bosses? Fixed. Songs of Time? Fixed. Transformation masks mapped to the D-Pad? Yes. New button combos with ZL and ZR? Hell yeah. Subsequent cutscenes of playing the Song of Soaring and Elegy of Emptiness? Disabled. Owl statues still saving if you want? You betcha. A whole bunch of other QoL featuers? Oh yeah. I already homebrewed my 3DS, so I downloaded it.

Holy hell, this is great. The lighting and colorfulness is so easy to forgive when you have the best of both worlds. I'm having such a good time right now. And with the way patching games works with Luma, my MM3D cartridge is perfectly safe. If I put it in my other 3DS, the patch isn't there. So yeah, it's been a blast. Playing the way they intended in 2000 with better graphics, controls, and performance. What a time. This is certainly the best way to play Majora's Mask.