Twilight Princess: A Special Game I Wish I Could Change | PART 2
Linear vs. Non-Linear Game Design
If you’re familiar with video games at all, you know that many games are designed so that there are only two directions you can really go: forwards or backwards. In Super Mario Bros., you go right to go forward. In Call of Duty, you go forward to go forward. We consider this type of design “linear.”
The Legend of Zelda in 1986 differed from Super Mario Bros. because you weren’t going left to right. Instead, you were immediately greeted with choices to make, different paths to take. As you explored, you would eventually stumble upon a dungeon. The dungeons were numbered, one through eight, so if you couldn’t progress in a dungeon, it was probably because you needed to go to a lower number dungeon. That said, there were some dungeons that could be completed in the “wrong” order.
The downside to this type of design is the way the player can easily start to feel lost and/or stuck. The Legend of Zelda is quite difficult to complete without the use of a guide. That’s why a detailed map was included with the manual back in the day—which is something I didn’t know when I tried to play the game on Wii. Later Zelda games would offer considerably more guidance to the player within the game itself. Not only that, but there was more structure to the progression. In Ocarina of Time, the game started you out in a small area, which you couldn’t leave before beating the first simple dungeon—and even at that point, it wasn’t like you’d be able to go straight to the final boss from there. Still, like I mentioned in the previous post, Ocarina of Time retained a degree of openness, and it was possible to do certain sections in the incorrect order.
There is a delicate balance between making progression so obtuse that players get frustrated and quit, and holding the player’s hand so much that they don’t feel in charge of their own adventure anymore.
Honestly, it can be troublesome to use this terminology of “linear” and "nonlinear.” Because ultimately, you can’t just complete the quests in Ocarina of Time or other Zelda games in whatever order you want! So it’s not like they’re totally nonlinear! Yet there is an obvious difference between Zelda and a game where you’re going from level 1 to level 2, and so forth. So understand that when I say “linear,” I mean that type of game. And “nonlinear” refers to this type of game where you can explore a world and revisit areas.
Nonlinear design offers players a heightened sense of freedom and agency. See, when I play Uncharted, there are collectables I can find in the corners of levels. But ultimately, if I don’t go the direction the game wants me to go, I’m never going to see the rest of the game. But when I play Ocarina of Time, if I want to visit a ranch even though The Great Deku Tree told me to see Princess Zelda, I can do that. Or I could go to straight to Hyrule Castle like I was supposed to and come back to the ranch later. It’s really up to me. I still eventually have to the correct way, but there are a few places I can see in the meantime. I have choices beyond “Beat this next part” or “Quit.”
And maybe I just like to procrastinate in video games. You want me to do a dungeon? Ok, but I think I’m gonna talk to everyone in Castle Town first.
With all this said, we’re here to talk about Twilight Princess. And Twilight Princess is not a game that departs from the standard Zelda formula. Right? You do a dungeon, and then you go explore fields and towns until you find the entrance to the next dungeon. Exploration, dungeon, repeat. That’s the same as ever, isn’t it?
Technically, yes. But while the general structure is the same, when you look closely at how the “exploration” phases are designed, there are some differences from previous Zeldas that end up making Twilight Princess feel more linear than any Zelda before it. And I think that’s bad.
Are the Linear Parts the Funnest Parts Anyway?
Before I proceed to explain how the increased feeling of linearity was achieved and why I think it’s bad, let’s consider an alternate viewpoint: it doesn’t actually matter if the game feels more linear, because the game is still fun!
And, well, yes, the game is, for the most part, a lot of fun. I’m going to get into things I wish were more fun later on, but the game is able to lean into its strengths and deliver an exciting and epic action-adventure story.
There are certain parts of a Zelda game that are going to be linear no matter what the rest of the game is like. Consider the journey to a dungeon. Usually, once the player has learned where the next dungeon is, there are still unusual obstacles on the way there and only one path through them. These sections can sometimes make for some of the most memorable moments in a Zelda game.
This is especially true in Twilight Princess. In this game, getting to dungeons requires you to:
*Sumo wrestle a Goron *Escort a wagon and protect it from archers with flaming arrows *Ride on a large boar-like creature and use it to destroy a bunch of wooden gates *Snowboard down a mountain (I mention this as often as I can)
These moments are unique and action-packed. And they’re just plain fun (well, that’s debatable on the escort mission one, but I liked it).
So clearly there is a ton of creativity evident in this game, without even looking at the dungeons themselves (and the dungeons are quite good, by the way).
But of course, the whole game isn’t just these moments I mentioned plus the dungeons. If it was, that would be an interesting sort of action-adventure game, but it wouldn’t really be in the spirit of Zelda.
So yeah, we gotta talk about other aspects of the game. We’ll start back at its beginning.
Over-Tutorializing
The intro of Twilight Princess is infamous for being slow. Personally, I don’t really have anything against the peaceful beginning in the village. But even once you get beyond that part, I think it takes too long to get to the real Zelda gameplay loop.
This is how the game starts, going up until the first dungeon:
Do ranch stuff
Help people around the village until you end up with a sword, fishing rod, and slingshot
Rescue child who went into the woods
Do more ranch stuff, appease girlfriend (not literally)
Bad guys show up. You are a wolf now
Escape jail, learn to be a wolf, make your way through Hyrule Castle to meet Zelda
Go back to village as wolf, obtain sword and shield by sneaking around
Find Tears of Light by squishing bugs, with the help of your map
Finally you are human again. Go to the Forest Temple
After completing dungeon, you may enter Hyrule Field (and proceed to next Twilight Area)
I condensed some steps a bit, but this is essentially accurate. Now here’s how Ocarina of Time starts:
Navi tells you to go to Great Deku Tree. Walk to other side of village to do that, but guy won’t let you through the door
Find sword by crawling through tunnel (you will have to find the tunnel basically on your own, but this shouldn’t take long)
Gather rupees to buy shield
Talk to Great Deku Tree
After beating the dungeon, you can go to Hyrule Field and explore the world
You know a big reason why Ocarina of Time’s intro so much shorter? It has barely any mandatory tutorials. You can learn about combat, if you read the signs, but the game isn’t going to force you. With Twilight Princess, it’s like the game needs to make sure you understand every little thing it has to offer within the first couple hours. We gotta learn to fish. We gotta learn to blow on some grass. We gotta make sure you can hit these targets with a slingshot.
Yeah, a bit too much tutorial going on here.
The Adventure Line
But hey, eventually, you make it to the first dungeon and complete that. If the game is anything like Ocarina of Time, at this point, you’ll be able to explore the world a bit more, right?
Sadly, the only new place you can explore at this point is a field. A big empty field. And unlike Ocarina of Time, there are no ranches with cows in them in this field. The only place to go next is the Twilight Realm.
But wait, isn’t the Twilight Realm a place to explore? Eh, sort of.
See, when you go in the Twilight Realm for the Eldin province, it is indeed a new area. What the game wants you to do, though, is use your wolf senses. Then you follow a scent trail to get to your destination. Modern open world games like to provide simple navigation methods like that, and this one is visually striking, with a cool sound effect to go with it, so I do like this from the metric of “coolness.” However, I wouldn’t call following a line in the dark “exploring.”
Telling the players what location to go to is nothing new, but there is something especially mindless about following a line. At least with marking the destination on the map, the player still has to use a tiny bit of brain power to make sure they’re going the correct direction.
As you’re headed for your destination in Eldin, even if you do stray from the intended path, you’re not going to find much. It’s another area of Hyrule Field, and there are no surprises hidden between the entrance and exit—the exit being your destination, Kakariko Village.
Then in Kakariko Village, what do you gotta do? Find more bugs.
I really dislike bug hunting. Not only is it tedious, it takes the fun out of exploring an area by directing you from corner to corner via the marked locations on your map. When you return to the area after the Twilight Realm is gone, you’ll feel like you’ve already seen most everything.
It takes quite a few hours, but eventually you’ll unlock the Lanayru region, which is the one I wanted the whole time, because it’s got Castle Town in it. It also has the Zoras and really the most fun stuff out of any of the game’s regions. This is the point where the game “opens up.” But a Zelda game holding back so much is certainly different.
No Peeking
All walls in a game are placed by the game designer, obviously. But some walls feel more reasonable than others. If I see a boulder blocking an important-looking path, it’s easy for me to understand that I’ll probably be back later, once I have some means of moving it out of the way. On the other hand, some walls in Twilight Princess are so effective, you won’t even know they exist and are blocking something important until the game tells you they’re removed.
I find it disappointing how Twilight Princess keeps upcoming areas, for the most part, completely hidden. In Ocarina, you can go to the entrance of some areas before realizing you can’t go further, usually because you lack an item. In Wind Waker, there are some places you can sail by, look at, and (usually) set foot on, but if you’re early on in the game, you’ll have no idea what you’re supposed to do there. Twilight Princess prefers to keep stuff a secret until it’s time to actually go there, however.
Like did you know there’s a desert? (Well if you played Ocarina, then yeah, you knew, but that aside), do you know how to get there? Well it turns out you need a special cannon. And did you know there’s an abandoned village? Well it was impossible for you to know, because it’s hidden by rocks that won’t clear until you reach that particular point in the story, and no sooner.
If it were possible to discover the hidden village ahead of time, though, and I did that through random exploration, I would feel like a darn genius! There wouldn’t be anything to do there yet, I imagine, but I would still be thrilled. And part of why I think about this possibility is because those are the exactly the types of experiences I had in Wind Waker. I visited the private island with the fancy butler long before I knew it was actually part of the main quest, for example.
If it’s totally impossible to even know about an entire region’s existence or get any hints about it, what is the difference between Twilight Princess and a game like Uncharted, really? In both games, you don’t know what locations you’re gonna travel to. I didn’t know that I was gonna be going to Madagascar midway through Uncharted 4 until the game took me there.
Well, one big difference is that if Twilight Princess tells you there’s a new place you have to go, you have to travel there yourself. The need to travel as opposed to the use of a level-selection screen like in Mario (this was actually considered for Skyward Sword, at one point) is largely just there for the immersion, but it could be more meaningful if there were more choices to make on the journey—or to be more precise, more distractions to potentially pursue.
I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s always wrong to arbitrarily hide an area because you simply don’t want the player to go there yet. But where are the surprises for the player to discover on their own?
Well, I guess they must be beyond the main story!
The Empty World
When I played Twilight Princess HD on Wii U in 2016, I really thought I was going to uncover a lot more stuff than I had on Wii. I thought there were tons of secrets I had simply never bothered to investigate.
And well, there are a few caves. There’s a Spinner track in a couple sections of Hyrule Field. There are heart pieces and Poes, of course.
I remember scouring the area of Hyrule Field north of the castle, thinking there had to be something cool there. Like a secret entrance to the castle, maybe? It turned out that there was a chest with a stamp in it (which wasn’t much use because by the time I finished the game, Miiverse had already shut down), but other than that, the area was empty.
It started to dawn on me: there’s really not much hidden in this game, is there?
The main story really convinces you that this world is vast. You will usually know exactly where you’re supposed to go next, and because of that, you’ll often be rushing from one area to another without needing to scrutinize your surroundings. Slow down a bit, though, and the illusion of vastness might not hold up. I mean, the world is technically vast. But empty fields are only good for so much.
The downside of the game doing so well at convincing me its world was grand and realistic was that I naturally started believing it was hiding a bunch of stuff. The game just couldn’t manage to live up to that expectation.
Talk to me
Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker set the bar quite high when it comes to optional content. In Majora’s Mask, there are only four dungeons, but collecting all the optional masks (which rewards you with the Fierce Deity Mask at the end, an item which basically trivializes the final boss) will require you to help all sorts of people with all sorts of challenges. These quests are so unique, surprising, and sometimes straight-up weird in the best possible way. Wind Waker, alongside a bunch of underwater treasure chests, also contained a number of similarly character-focused side quests, mainly taking place on Windfall Island.
Of course, Majora’s Mask was considered a side story and had a short development time, and Wind Waker ended up with fewer dungeons than originally intended—which tells me these quests are quicker to develop than dungeons are! For Twilight Princess, however, Nintendo was not going to rush another game out the door, so there are quite a few more dungeons. So we can maybe forgive them if the side content isn’t as extensive.
But like I said, I like to procrastinate. Side content is where I thrive. So I’m still going to be disappointed. (I’m not mad at the developers, I’m just imagining what it would be like if it was possible to build my ideal game).
The one character-focused side quest in Twilight Princess I remember is this part where you have to deliver hot spring water to some Gorons. Other than that, the game kind of left those types of quests behind. Which was always a huge bummer to me, because anytime you can tell a story where I, as the player, am able to help someone, I’m gonna remember that.
What’s crazy is that after the beginning section of the game gives you this village with all these characters you have to help out, the other towns in the game have incredibly few people to talk to. Some of your friends move to Kakariko Village (where almost all the residents seemingly…died?) and will have some activities for you, which is great. But what’s up with the Gorons? It’s like they got one room where they hang out while the rest of them stand guard on Death Mountain. Zora’s Domain isn’t too different. The Zoras mostly just stand around in one room and don’t have much to say. Castle Town seemed like it would be super lively, but the number of people who will actually talk to you is tragically small.
You can, however, run around as a wolf and scare everyone. And once you put in enough rupees to get Malo Mart there, you can go and have a dance party. You can also pick up cats and play fetch with a dog. Really, these features pretty much make up for all my complaints.
But yeah, if you like games where you can talk to a lot of people and help them out, Twilight Princess doesn’t have much of that.
There are other things to do, however. There are several minigames, and they’re pretty cool. You can go fishing in a boat (which you couldn’t really do in Wind Waker, somewhat ironically). You can shoot targets in a boat cruising quickly down a river (that one is fun). There’s a game in Castle Town where you use the clawshot to try to get all the rupees, and if you win, these three girls become your fans.
There is a long combat challenge hidden in the desert, similar to one in Wind Waker.
And yeah, there are also quests where there’s a bunch of items you gotta collect scattered throughout the world, but that sort of thing never really interests me much. It’s exciting to see a Poe or a Golden Bug, but I’m not going to go out of my way to find them all.
Remember all those unique main quest moments I was talking about earlier, like the snowboarding? Most of those activities, you can only do once (you can snowboard multiple times, luckily). I think some of those would have made for good side activities too. But clearly, a lot more attention was poured into the main quest than the side stuff—and obviously, that makes sense. Everyone’s gonna have to play the main story, while only some people will go exploring just for the fun of it. But that doesn’t stop me from being disappointed by it.
You know how I said the nonlinear style of game gives the player the feeling of freedom and agency? They aren’t simply being taken for a thrill ride or even just overcoming whatever challenge is in front of them (as great as that is). When they discover optional content, they can say “I found this!” Really, the game designers wanted them to find it. But the player still gets to feel smart for getting there without any super obvious help. That’s the beauty of optional content.
I think in my mind, after experiencing so many interesting, totally optional quests and areas in Wind Waker, Twilight Princess felt like a downgrade in this department.
And even when you compare it to Ocarina of Time, it doesn’t do well here either. Ocarina has a much smaller map, but the secrets hidden within it can really make an impression. Like why is there a cow underground?
I suppose the little holes in the ground are one of the less realistic aspects of Ocarina of Time, huh? Still, even with the more realistic caves in Twilight Princess, the developers could’ve put some weird stuff in them. I remember this one cave is basically an additional puzzle based on the iron boots magnetism mechanic. Gotta respect that, because that was a cool mechanic. But it’s also kind of boring. Let’s throw in some tiny weird rooms here and there! That’s the kind of stuff I want to see! I just want to be surprised!
Ocarina of Time also has one of those Straw Millionaire style trading quests, which Twilight Princess does not have. Shame.
Anyway, it turns out that while Twilight Princess seems huge when you’re playing through it—so much so that it makes you think, “I want to really explore this world and find all its secrets”—the reality is that it’s huge solely for the sake of feeling huge. Because if it’s going to be a realistic adventure, it has to look huge!
At the very least, at the start I didn't envisage the project expanding to the scale it eventually did. But it seems that in the minds of the staff, they wanted to make a very big Zelda, and as development continued, the project grew and grew. At one point, in the middle of development, I actually thought: "This is getting a bit out of hand." I made various attempts to rein in the project, but when something has developed naturally to that size, it becomes somewhat difficult to apply the brakes. At that point, all we could do was fill in the space by cramming it full of more fun elements for the player to enjoy. We kept adding more and more to the game, but the size caused a lot of trouble, right up to the end. Of course, this is not a bad thing, and in the end it has become a Zelda game which has retained a sense of proportion. It's undeniably big, but I believe all those fun elements which make up this world justify this size. Now that we have finished, I feel that with a generation accustomed to watching epic films like Lord of the Rings, when you want to design a convincing world, that sort of vast scale becomes necessary. But it's a fact that putting it all together was a challenge, and I sensed how much I still had to learn as a director.
Trying to see it from the developer’s perspective, I imagine the thinking is something like, yes it has to look huge. But we also gotta make a bunch of dungeons, and that takes a lot of time. And we can’t just keep delaying the game over and over. We can try to fill in the space as much as possible, but there’s only so much we can do.
Oh and by the way, if it’s going to be this huge, won’t it be easy for players to get lost?
I think that part might explain why it takes so long for the world to open up, at least, and why the game has that wolf-scent line mechanic.
Is this game extra easy?
I am sure Twilight Princess’s developers were concerned about players getting lost. I also wonder if they were concerned about players struggling with combat and puzzles.
When it comes to puzzles, I think they brought their A-game, for the most part. I remember some of the dungeons giving me a decent challenge. I do think some of them are far too straightforward (looking at you, Temple of Time), and there aren’t any super-elaborate Water Temple type dungeons, but I can’t complain much about the game’s dungeons overall when some of them are truly creative in theme.
Now, when it comes to difficulty in combat? Ehhhhhhhhh
Let’s back up for a moment. When I played Ocarina of Time, I don’t think I had really played anything in the genre before. And there were some parts I struggled with. Specifically, the Stalfos fight in the Forest Temple. That guy killed me a bunch. (I wonder if maybe I was re-attempting the fight without full hearts, too). But really, when I describe the winning strategy for the fight, it doesn’t seem very difficult, right? Just shield and wait for an opening to strike. So yeah, in time, I master Ocarina of Time’s combat, and then when I play Wind Waker, it seems like a super easy game.
In Twilight Princess, I do remember dying a number of times in the beginning. Not really for good reasons. I remember falling in lava multiple times. There was at least one time I got killed by a bird in the very first wolf section. And that’s all well and good. The problem is, as you acquire more hearts and equipment, usually you’d expect the game to increase the difficulty to somewhat match. But it kind of feels like that doesn’t happen.
In Ocarina of Time, there is an enemy late in the game called Iron Knuckle. If you are hit by one of these enemies, the penalty is quite severe: we’re talking six hearts of damage. But of course, it’s late in the game, so avoiding their attack shouldn’t really be a problem, right?
In Twilight Princess, there’s a late game enemy called Darknut. They look cool. They look tough. But they don’t deal much pain. Six hearts? Yeah, try, I dunno, one and a half, maybe.
To be honest, not even the final boss does a ton of damage.
These fights are meant to encourage you to use the extra combat moves unlocked throughout the game, but the lack of penalty for getting hit makes the fights a lot less interesting than you’d hope. There just isn’t much pressure when you can make mistakes again and again without seeing a Game Over screen.
Of course, it’s harder to get hit when shielding is now done automatically as long as you’re Z-Targeting. This change seemed necessary due to Wii having fewer buttons on the controller than GameCube, but maybe it was a design choice made earlier on? I’m not sure! But from my point of view, it does seem to be at least part of why this game is too easy.
The lack of difficulty in combat does slightly, slightly diminish the sense of “epic adventure” the game has, in my opinion. When you’re fighting some of those super cool-looking enemies, you want them to be a threat. But when you’d have to put the controller down to lose against them… Link can’t exactly brag about that, can he?
And again, to a seasoned gamer, Ocarina of Time is not all that difficult either. But if you were to button mash and not even try, you would still die to a lot of its enemies, right? So you can at least say there is a threat there, which isn’t present in Twilight Princess.
The move where you sidestep twice and then roll behind the enemy’s back is really fun to do, isn’t it? Spamming it against Darknuts doesn’t automatically win you the fight though. There’s not a punishment for spamming it, but these guys do like to block a lot.
I will say, I did die in the Cave of Ordeals when they put me up against like three Darknuts at once. So that’s cool!
Are the New Combat Moves Game-Changers?
I briefly mentioned the unlockable combat moves. First of all, if it’s possible to miss any of these moves, that means they’re not actually essential for beating the game, which means combat isn’t totally built around them, right?
When I used to browse online discussions on Zelda frequently, I would sometimes see a lot of praise for these moves—some comments making me wonder if people actually played the game? One of the moves, for instance, is a finisher where Link plunges his sword into the enemy while they’re lying on the ground. Pretty cool, right? But let’s be real, these moves are stylish and fun, but they don’t transform the Ocarina of Time style combat into a brand new system. They’re just a few extra options you get.
At the same time, Twilight Princess abandoned all of Wind Waker’s new combat ideas. Aside from the parry mechanic, the game had a system where enemies could drop weapons, and Link could pick them up and use them. Enemies could also accidentally hit each other, and there were even large objects that could be destroyed only with a big enough weapon, like the sword of a darknut. Fundamentally, Wind Waker’s combat was still based on Ocarina of Time’s, but these additions did create some hilarious moments from time to time.
However, perhaps the goofiness of Link wielding a giant sword didn’t fit with Twilight Princess’s style.
I think Twilight Princess’s combat is fun and cool and everything, but I just don’t find it exceptional, nor the best in the series like I’ve seen some fans say.
Was the Wii Strategy a Factor in the Difficulty?
Anyone who remembers 2006 and a few years after that can probably remember the Wii craze, where everybody was rushing to buy a Wii so they could play Wii Sports and Wii Fit. Why did that craze happen? Basically because Wii and Wii Sports were simple for anyone to understand, even if you’d never touched a game controller before. Nintendo’s strategy was not to impress gaming enthusiasts with fancy new graphics, but to reach millions who’d never considered buying a game console before. And it paid off, for a while.
Nintendo hoped that those who were introduced to video games through Wii would consider buying other, more traditional games as well. By and large, this didn’t seem to happen much. But to try to make it happen, Nintendo added features to their games that would, in theory, make them more approachable. For example, if you die a bunch of times in Super Mario Galaxy 2, the game will offer to beat the level for you.
My question is, even though Twilight Princess started life as a GameCube game, did this philosophy affect the game at all? The game’s combat is un-punishing, and its structure is rather straightforward. Was it the Wii and DS strategy that pushed it more in these directions? My answer is: maybe? There’s no way to know, because no one at Nintendo has ever stated anything that would suggest this, as far as I know. It’s just speculation.
But there definitely seemed to be a pattern of Nintendo making their new games smoother and more hand-hold-y for a few years, and I feel like Twilight Princess was part of it, whether intentionally or not.
The Little Things
Twilight Princess is a game for the Ocarina of Time fans. It’s got a Link who has the same overall vibe as the Ocarina of Time Link. He even has the iconic Hylian Shield. It’s meant to be the same world, just a number of years in the future. So I don’t feel bad about comparing Twilight Princess to it so frequently.
There is something in Twilight Princess that always felt off for me, and it took me a while before I put my finger on what was wrong. It’s the sound of the world at night. Why does Twilight Princess’s air sound so lifeless and empty? Is this a world devoid of insect life? Well, no, because there are the golden bugs…. I don’t know. This just feels like a weird oversight. Maybe Ocarina of Time’s nighttime ambience was excessive, but it definitely made the world feel alive.
There is music at night in Hyrule Field, which I do enjoy. But it’s not a replacement for the ambience, to me, especially in areas with no music. All you hear is the sound of the wind.
There is a bit of strangeness to the overall layout of the world and the connectedness of everything. I mentioned before how in Ocarina, you can see Kakariko from Death Mountain—and I’m not gonna lie, I brought that up solely to mention how Twilight Princess doesn’t have that!
Honestly, even though Death Mountain in Ocarina is many, many times smaller than a real mountain would be, when you’re playing, you accept that it’s a big mountain. Because you can see it from the Temple of Time! And that’s enough to convince you that it’s always towering over everything, the way a real mountain is.
The look of Death Mountain in Twilight Princess is far different, though. And it’s kind of an eyesore.
I would’ve just stuck with the stereotypical volcano shape they had before, but I guess this design is meant to show there’s lava flowing out of it right now? Whatever the case, it seems to be a smaller presence than the old Death Mountain. And tragically, if you go to the highest point, there really isn’t a view at all. You’d think I’d be able to see big old Hyrule Castle at least.
Maybe it seems petty for me to be upset about the lack of views on top of mountains, but I will remind you again, I grew up a Coloradan.
Really though, the way areas connect to each other can be a bit strange in this game. The route to Snowpeak is just this little cave in Zora’s Domain. The only way up to Gerudo Desert is to use a cannon from Lake Hylia. But then how do the Bulblins get there, anyway?
Even though I do have a lot of praise for the atmosphere of Twilight Princess—and it really does have this unique kind of darkness and weirdness, a vibe that has always fascinated me—I wouldn’t say it dethrones Ocarina of Time in the category. And all these little things count against it.
Conclusion
If I may exaggerate for a moment, Twilight Princess feels like a movie version of Zelda: it’s full of thrilling moments where the extremely cool hero Link can do incredible feats, and the game’s progression can be so linear at times that you’ll be going from one cool segment to the next. But outside of that main quest experience, there is a lot left to be desired. There are limited chances to explore the world at your own pace, largely because the bug hunting “Go to this exact point on the map” sections have you exploring at the game’s pace, and when you do get a chance to explore on your own, it’s rarely rewarding.
The game is brilliant in so many ways. You can tell Nintendo poured all the love possible into it. The art style is exactly what I would want a darker Zelda game to look like (it just needs modern fancy textures and lighting to really sing), and the soundtrack has melodies that bring the right emotion to any scene and stand alongside any other Zelda game proudly.
There’s a reason the game got my eleven-year-old self interested from the first time I saw it: it looked weird, it looked a little scary, and it looked deep—a fantasy world I could lose myself in.
The game was, in fact, weird and a little scary, but as far as “deep” goes, it didn’t live up to what I hoped it to be, and more importantly, it rarely, if ever, made me feel the excitement of making a discovery like previous Zeldas had. I probably wouldn’t have ever realized that fully if I had just left my memories alone. But when that HD Wii U version came calling, I answered, wanting to dig deeper into the game than I had before. But when I tried that, I found my shovel hit rock a lot sooner than I expected.