- I would’ve bought this sooner if Nintendo had dropped it to twenty bucks sooner. I don’t have “Wiimote Plus,” though, so I may have to spring for the Gold Edition of Skyward if I get it.
- Anyway, Twilight Princess. …It’s kind of Furry, isn’t it? With the “Blue-eyed Beast” pet name, and howling instead of using the Ocarina to make songs?
- Not that I’m discriminating; some of my best friends are furries.
- And other than that, it’s kind of Ocarina again, only updated and T-rated. Which is fine; who doesn’t like Ocarina?
- A re-run from my Twitter yesterday: It’s really romantic that Link can ride all night, until the moon sets and dawn kisses the horizon (with a lovely combination of pink and blue light). But doesn’t he need to sleep, ever? It would be convenient if there was a bed in his house, or somewhere, so that he could sleep there. Not just for Link’s sanity, but because sometimes it’s night and you want it to be day. I realized later that this observation about Link’s sleeping habits was probably inspired by playing Fallout: New Vegas Hardcore mode and Deadly Premonition more or less back to back.
- A related observation. There’s a Goron character who will sell you hot spring water. It’s of limited use, because when it cools off, it turns in to “regular water.” I bought some anyway, thinking, “Well, I’m going out to the desert, maybe I’ll have use for water.” So just out of curiosity, when I’m halfway through the desert area, and heat waves are rippling all over the screen, I pull out the bottled water. And Link just turns it over and dumps it on the ground! Right on the ground! He practically gave me the finger. Link, you are in the desert: drink the water.
- Incidentally, there’s a Gerudo Desert, but I don’t actually see any Gerudo. Did Gerudo Moses finally come to take them to the Gerudo Promised Land?
- Life would be a lot easier for Link if he wasn’t mute. Like, instead of having to summon hawks and catch fish and solve all these puzzles he could say: “Hey, Sera, I found your cat; he’s down by the waterside.”
- Except Link isn’t actually mute; he’s just selectively mute. A little ways in you have to explain to the mayor of your hometown what’s up, and the screen fades to black, then fades up. Presumably during that fade Link explained the story of his adventure thusfar. Why weren’t you always doing that? Man, you’d have saved yourself so much work.
- Of course, no dialog also means I can’t flirt with any of the many cute, eligible young women in this game. This is probably a good thing, otherwise I would be going for the Harem Ending. The Girl in Reasonable Armor at the bar would be all mine! And you’re next, Fishing-Spot-Canoe Girl! Not Agitha, the Bug Princess; she is ten. But she is totally adorable.
- And as a companion, Midna is quite well-executed, isn’t she? She’s delightfully slappable, especially early on in the game, as if Nintendo finally realized we were irritated by Navi and just ratcheted up the Irritation Quotient by about two-hundred percent. On the other hand, she doesn’t interrupt you unless what she has to say is important, and when you do consult her, her context-sensitive clues are actually useful. Best of all, you can tell Wolf-Link is irritated with her, which makes all the difference. When he rolls his eyes and growls at her, I feel like we’re in this together.
- Though speaking of Midna, why does she offer me the option to turn “back in to a human”? I’m not a human. I’m an elf, aren’t I? I mean, there’s another word for the race but Link is obviously an elf.
- It occurs to me that anything even sort of resembling a human is called a human in this game though. Ilia, the almond-eyed girl from your hometown, is a round-ear, but her dad the mayor has some kind of boar tusks as far as I can tell. Is she a… one-quarter orc? It’s nice that the game is equal-opportunity about Half-Orcs and Elves.
- And I know they aren’t actually called orcs, but the green things you fight are basically orcs, and that’s awesome. It is the most “D&D” of Zeldas in that sense. Like when you roll up on an entire pack of orcs, and you’re firing arrows at them, and spinning around and swording three at once, and then hijacking their wild boar mounts, well, that just reminds me why I rolled an Elven Ranger.
- The game also owes a bit to Shadow of the Colossus. One boss fight in particular is pretty brazen in that respect. Nothing wrong with that though! (Belated edit: wait, I checked, and, those games came out at about the same time? … really? That is quite a coincidence.)
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