(BONUS) We Beat The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Hello, everyone, and happy new year from TripleClick2U. Kirk Hamilton here. We are off this week, as we mentioned last week. We are taking a break for New Year's Eve, and we'll be back next week with an all-new episode, a very exciting episode, as we always kick off the new year with our predictions bet. So we will settle our bet from last year's predictions and we will make a whole new crop of predictions for 2026. Of course, one of the things that makes the predictions bet so exciting is that the winner gets to pick a game that the other two will play. And last year, Maddie won and she picked The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time for us to play. And we did play it. We put out an episode about it midway through the year, but we just kept going and recorded a spoiler cast, a beans cast, for the Maximum Fun members-only feed that we released in September, where we talked about pretty much the back half of the game, the game as a whole. It was a really fun conversation and kind of a more complete one, or at least a good companion to that first discussion of the game. So we thought that would be a good bonus episode to put in the main feed for you all this week as a little holiday gift. It was a very fun conversation about an amazing game that I at least am so glad that I played all the way through. So that is what you are about to hear. It is our bonus episode for members from September about The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. And just as a reminder, there are a ton of bonus episodes like that that you could listen to if you support our show by becoming a member at MaximumFun.org. Thank you so much to everyone who is a member. You really make it possible for us to make this show. We always say that. It kind of can lose its meaning because we say it every month. But it is super true. And I at least really appreciate all of you who like this show enough to support it. So I hope you enjoy this conversation about The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. And we will see you all next week for our 2026 predictions. I'm Maddie Myers. I'm Jason Schreier. And I'm Kirk Hamilton. And Hyrule is saved. Yay, we did it. Good job. We did it. We hit Ganon's tail a lot of times with a weapon of our choosing until he died. A hammer. yeah the hammer's pretty good the megaton hammer's pretty good jason and i had the bigger on sword but kirk i don't think you ever got it anyway no i i had the little gore on this one we're talking about the legend of zelda ocarina of time today we are we completed it we have beaten it we watched chic become zelda and then get immediately put into a crystal and then she helped us later at the very end of that fight. And then Hyrule was set to write. And she told us we could just be a kid again. She told us we could be a kid again and that would also be fine. Kind of a strange, bittersweet ending that we'll get to. But on the main feed, we talked about all the child dungeons, kind of the first third or so of the game. But we really haven't talked about the adult dungeons at all yet. So I wanted to ask you two, what are your big picture thoughts on the game and especially the adult, the big boy version of Link's journey. Jason, why don't you go first? Sure. Yeah. Well, Maddie, thank you for making us play this because it was a joy to play through Ocarina of Time. Like I said in the triple play, I feel like as I'm playing, I'm just like, man, some of the things about this game are annoying me playing it in 2025. But at the same time, it is just such a joy to play. Like, I don't think there was any point in the game that I wasn't just having a good time. And in that sense, it's held up beautifully. Yeah, the kid dungeons really are, I mean, it's night and day from the temples that you get in the adults as adult Link. They're so much bigger and more elaborate and have more dead ends and just kind of more elaborate puzzles. um replaying the water dungeon especially i was like man this is uh this is you can you can see why so many people uh found this frustrating back in the day but at the same time it's also awesome um especially the 3ds version where you can assign the iron boots to an item uh hotkey and you don't have to switch to them in the gear menu which i imagine was a royal pain in the ass yeah i only imagine god yeah just a delightful game um it's just so fascinating playing it today because you can see so many of as someone who's played pretty much every zelda game you can see so many of the foundations you can also see so many of the things that just aren't new to this and just came from other zelda games but are just translated to 3d which just kind of like uh sets a bar um in you know like or brings it to a whole new level um whole new dimension literally um and yeah just fascinating to play through and extremely enjoyable um game um except for the part where i was playing through the shadow temple and when you get to that room with the boat in it you can like climb up this ladder uh and you're supposed to move this block out of the way and into a different position but if you climb up the ladder before you've moved the block completely it will reset and then you will just be stuck and that is the most annoying trick that the game plays on you uh where you just have to redo the entire dungeon because you walked in the wrong direction and a game that rewards curiosity that sure is a pain but um yeah great great video game great game other than that one part with the block in the shadow temple great note uh kirk what did you think yeah i felt similarly i was amazed by the part of the game that we are going to be talking about by the adult section of the game i hadn't really played most of it i i learned i realized that i think as we kind of got cracking. I had watched friends, I think, play through the forest temple. That spiraling hallway rang some bells. It's a really iconic visual, this sort of twisting hallway that then turns the room upside down. And I think I had watched a friend do that. But at the same time, I had never played through it and certainly not just tackled the dungeon start to finish with my kind of adult gamer brain or whatever. Like I just had not done that at all. So I was, I was. Adult gamer brain. That sounds like a derogatory term. Gamer brain. Well, in some ways it is, right? I'm a lot slower than I used to be at some things. But also I think think a little bit more. I don't know. I have a stronger sense of like conceptual sense of things sometimes than I did when I was younger. Though I do want to say actually in our, in our triple play of this game, I talked about watching people play it as a kid. This game came out in 1998. I was 18 years old. And it's sort of funny that I have these nostalgic associations with it that feel like childhood because, of course, you are a child in the game and the game is evoking a feeling of childhood. But at the same time, I mean, I was 18 years old. I was about to head off to college. I was watching my friends play this game probably while I was in college. So I think that was an interesting sort of disconnect between the way that my memories of the game feel and the truth of it, which was that I was actually a lot older when it came out than my memories tell me or that my memories feel. Anyways, yeah, I thought this was just really, really special. I want to play through all of these 3D Zeldas. I really haven't played them. You know, I played a big chunk of Wind Waker. That's the one I'm most familiar with. I've never played Twilight Princess. Wow. I played a chunk of Majora's Mask, but never did the thing, which I really want to play that now, especially because it shares so much in common with Ocarina. And then, yeah, I mean, Jason, on the main timeline you're talking about, or the main feed, you're talking about Oracle of Ages. The main timeline. The main timeline. The timeline split between Bean's cast and... Right, right. I'll play the Song of Ages and transport us back in time. And then on the main feed, you're talking about playing Oracle of Ages. And I want to play that as well. I mean, this really has made me realize how timeless, no pun intended, these Zelda games are. Yeah, I will say, just as a caution here, is that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword especially, they get slower than Ocarina. And Ocarina already feels slower than Link to the Past and the 2D games, as I mentioned a couple times in the show. And it gets slower and slower as you go. That said, those games all have plenty of greatness to them. like the some of the dungeons in twilight princess are truly incredible and wind waker has some inventive items and obviously the art direction of wind waker is stunning and skyward sword also has a lot of really cool stuff including like prototypes for what would become breath of the wild you could see a lot of that including like a power glider that you get and some other just really clear links um so there's a lot to love about those games but i don't think they're like as um i don't know as i don't want to say perfect but as kind of thorough not as beloved as this one i think yeah definitely not as like ocarina is really held up as one of the greats definitely but as a whole package i don't like i think those games have more have a lot of greatness to them but the entire package is a little bit weaker than ocarina and some of the 2d games i would say at least in my opinion something i've noticed though is that it's i mean that may be true but this type of game, the Zelda type of game, you know, is very familiar to me. And I've played a lot of games that are influenced by Zelda. Going back and playing, especially this one, especially Ocarina, which is kind of one of the foundational games. It's just a reminder of how much I like this type of game. I mean, it's really just a puzzle solving, environmental, like, it's, that's what it is. I mean, I know there's like, you get in sword fights, kind of, but they're never difficult. and the boss fights are kind of a joke and maybe they weren't at the time, but I never felt challenged by them. But the game is just going into a dungeon and then watching as it grows ever more elaborate and building this map in my mind of all the ways that it works and realizing what each button or each key might unlock and just watching it grow. And that feeling is amazing. And it just repeated over and over. I was so struck by how good the later game dungeons are, particularly the Shadow Temple, the Water Temple. Yeah, really, those two are so complex and interesting. The narrative that they tell as you work through them, like the story of exploring the dungeon is so exciting and cool. I really was so captivated by it that even if the other games don't quite reach those highs or don't hold together as like a full contiguous unit quite as well, just going and playing through a bunch more Zelda dungeons would be wonderful. I actually played a bunch of Skyward Sword and that game has great dungeons for all the things that people hold against it. And like, I totally want to go back and play that Switch version and just play through the whole thing and enjoy the dungeons, enjoy that feeling. That Twilight Princess you gotta play, especially there's one dungeon in Twilight Princess that's like a big house and it's got a little Resident Evil. Yeah, it kind of does. It's a little spooky. It's a lot of little spooky parts of Twilight Princess. It's a snow house. Yeti house. Yeah, I think that's right, and it's interesting. I think back to the era, like early 2010s, pre-Breath of the Wild, when a lot of people were critiquing Zelda, and one of the big critiques I remember seeing on YouTube videos and the like was that the dungeons in Zelda games kind of give you this illusion of open possibility, but they're actually really linear, and you're just walking in this straight path. I remember this one video, and I remember where it was but it was just kind of showing the map of a Zelda dungeon and how like, despite the fact that it seemed really big, you could only really go in this one pathway. And I thought that was kind of a weak criticism in many ways, in part because the, of one of the big appeals of these Zelda dungeons is not like, like trying to figure out what to do next is seeing the design of it all and the interlocking, like the interconnectiveness of it all and seeing how it expands as you go. and seeing how different areas will just like continually expand or like open up in new ways. Even if you're just, there's only one potential path you can follow. It's still really fun and clever to watch it all unfold. The Spirit Temple might be my favorite one. And that's a good example of that, where like at first you're just like, you're exploring it as a kid and then you're exploring the other ring as an adult and just kind of seeing how you're not seeing the same stuff, but you're interacting with the same sort of mechanics and seeing how much different they feel and how much easier they feel as an adult is pretty cool. And yeah, a lot of stuff like that. I just really enjoy stuff like that. Or like the fire cavern, like seeing how like, okay, this pillar, now it operates in a new way and opens up new parts of the dungeon. Just seeing how like things just kind of gradually reveal themselves is a really cool experience, even if it's totally linear. And in fact, I think a lot of that is lost in dungeons in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom or the temples in Tears of the Kingdom because you can approach them from any possible direction and they're totally nonlinear, which means they can't be designed in that really cool interconnected way. Yeah, I agree with that. Playing through the Sky Temple in... Tears of the Kingdom. Tears of the Kingdom. It was the feeling of sort of, yeah, you can get to a lot of places on that ship in the air, you know, from outside of the ship just by floating around. You can get a little creative. But once you get where you're going, you just kind of cast the spell and like activate the fan and keep going like it doesn't have that feeling of dialogue that these dungeons all have where it feels as though you're in conversation with the dungeon and thus the designer of the dungeon and so you're they're constantly revealing these little tricks to you and they're very different i mean it's not even to say really that one is better or worse or anything as a critique i understand that as a way of understanding the dungeon but as a criticism i agree that like whatever like yeah i guess it's it's one particular thing but it's doing it so well and it's such a delightful experience it's also the feeling of like getting into a new dungeon and seeing some sort of like unfamiliar puzzle and try and like the first time you play you don't know what kind of item you're gonna get and then eventually finding that item and be like oh that is it that's always such a cool thing and there's nothing worse than spoilers for like item an item that you're gonna get in a zelda dungeon you're playing a new you don't want the spoilers because it's so fun to like discover what kind of dungeon and there's some really cool items, especially in those later 3D games, some really inventive items that I'm excited, Kirk, for you to discover if you ever do wind up playing like Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword all the way through. Yeah, I know kind of the modern critique of the Zelda games now that I've heard a lot of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are that they don't have dungeons and specifically temples is usually the word that people use to describe what is missing. And I think based on having played through this entire game again, that this is what people are longing for. And when I played the child dungeons, I was, even though I've played this game before, I had sort of forgotten. I was like, oh, these are kind of simple. And I'd forgotten how much more complex they were going to get. And I was like, the Tears of the Kingdom areas, I don't know that I'd call them dungeons, but those big four areas are pretty similar to Ocarina of Time. So I'm not really sure that criticism holds water. But then when I got to these adult dungeons, I was like, oh, right. These are actually really cool. And they have extremely specific environmental puzzles that, like Jason said, are predicated upon the item that you get, but also on you having a very specific list of items already in hand, which, yes, makes the game linear, arguably. You have to play some. You can kind of mess around. Like, you can kind of. I think you can do the Fire Temple first or something. Like, there's people who've played Ocarina in, quote unquote, the wrong order and made it work. but I personally just played it in like the classic order that you're supposed to the order that the characters in the game tell you to go to the areas and that's the order in which I go to the areas and I get the items and use them as intended but even with that there's an inherent challenge just baked into every dungeon where you're even if you've got the hover boots or whatever it is it's still kind of hard because you're like okay I have to just hold my breath while I'm crossing this gap and Link is just barely going to grab onto the other side and it's exciting and you're like, oh, am I going to make it? Or is this not really the place I'm supposed to go? And that just feels really good. And I don't know that I want to diss Breath of the Wild or Chains of the Kingdom in that way. I think those games have a ton to offer that's really different and really cool. But yeah, they don't have these classic dungeons. And I think many people like me are going to remember the ocarina dungeons as like the ur dungeon in a way for zelda yeah no i i completely agree with that and they are very different games um i was struck by how interesting some of the items in ocarina of time are i didn't realize you know the lens of truth is probably the most interesting item in the game but there is no real equivalent to that in breath of the wild or tears of the kingdom they're not trying to do that sort of thing the iron boots are a similar idea where you have these boots that really you just use in this one instance and then sometimes out in the world but they're really just for this one dungeon but then as a result they they combine with the design of the dungeon to make for this incredibly mechanically dense and variable experience and that so cool i mean it it really sticks with you once you made your way through the Water Temple this experience because the item that you using is just so distinct. And then the Lens of Truth, I mean, I just really didn't know that was a thing in this game, that you can get an item where every time you press a button, it reveals a second layer to the world, and there's all kinds of stuff hidden, and then the dungeons are designed around it. And then, of course, that also gets to something that this game has, that not every Zelda game has. I remember this with A Link Between Worlds, this coming up. And Jason, I believe this was a criticism that you made, being a Zelda fan, that in that game, you could get any of the items at any time. There's a sort of a store. And you would go and you could rent them, but then eventually you would go to the dungeon and you would unlock them. But you were able to get any of the main sort of puzzle-solving items, the boomerang, the bow and arrow, et cetera, the hookshot, from the start. And so then as a result, it kind of limited the design of the puzzles, like of the dungeons, because you didn't know when anyone had it at any given time. Basically, it was more open-ended. And then as a result, you couldn't have as curated of a puzzle-solving experience. Well, so the way it worked was each dungeon was tied to a specific item. And then so you only needed that item. So it was very obvious when you got through that dungeon that every single puzzle you were going to have to solve there only required whatever item was tied to it. Right, right. That's right, I suppose. Yeah. And then the dungeons were, you could tackle them in any order. so there was no it wasn't until the very end that you were in a dungeon where it was like okay you must have all the items and now you can kind of have more elaborate puzzles which this game does a brilliant job of toward the end both the um what uh what's the what's the name of the like the trial that you do in the uh oh the training ground the gerudo training ground yeah the gerudo training ground that is really fun where you're kind of yes yes optional but i did it and it was Very fun. And then also the final dungeon in Ganon's palace where you're having to use all of your items and kind of think of them in other ways to like, oh, actually, wait, fire arrows can also do this, you know? Oh, I actually would, maybe I can, whatever, use the lens of truth to see this. And you have to kind of dig into your whole bag. And because you have all these unique items, the puzzles just seem incredibly rich and complicated and really fun to kind of puzzle out. And there are parts of the game that just become trivially easy in a fun way as soon as you have an item. Like, to just give an example, like, I don't know why, but I just totally forgot that when you're fighting Bongo Bongo, you have to use the lens of truth in order to see him. Otherwise, he's just two big hands. And I was just trying to hit the hands because I kind of remembered, like, right, you hit the hands and they kind of stun them. And it's not how this boss fight works. And I just kept dying and being like, I guess I'm not doing enough damage to the hands. And then I was like, wait, there's like a whole other piece of this. But like a lot of the game is kind of like that, where it's like it becomes a cinch as soon as you have the item that you need or the applicable item. And that's like something that I think of in a kind of classically Nintendo game way. It's like what I like about the Mario Odyssey boss fights and many other Mario fights where it's like once you know what to do, it's easy in a fun way. And you feel like you've figured it out. You're almost like tricking the game in some way. And like, as you're collecting items in this game, you feel more and more powerful. And the game rewards you for that by being like, okay, buddy, you've got the hookshot and the arrows and the mirror shield. Well, now I'm going to make you do a puzzle where you need all three of those. And you need to like, actually think about what you're going to do next and consider every single item that you have in your arsenal, because the puzzles are going to take advantage of every single one. And that just is more inherently interesting to me than something like the Link Between Worlds example, where it's like, OK, this one's going to be the hookshot dungeon. You don't really need the bow and arrow for this one. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah. You know, it really strikes me that these games are such puzzle games. They're just puzzle games. Yeah. Top to bottom. Like that is what they are, because even the boss fights are puzzles. Because as you say, once you figure out what you're supposed to do, it's not hard at all. and you know anytime I referred to a guide it would just say yeah here's what you do it's going to take you five seconds to beat this boss and then I just would crush the boss and move on so it's the difficulty of the boss is just in kind of figuring out what you need to do it's not in having the twitch reflexes or whatever to beat them and I think that's actually a really interesting fact about these games because playing through this there are moments where you can see Dark Souls you can see FromSoft especially as adult Link when you're fighting the big skeleton guys you know in the in the kind of whatever it is, the Phantom Temple, the Shadow Temple. And in the bottom of the well, too. The bottom of the well. Yes. Oh, for sure. They just kind of feel like Elden Ring or Dark Souls or whatever. Yep. And you can even feel it in the combat. There's kind of this similar push and pull. You're blocking. You're attacking. But then, of course, there isn't really that much challenge to any of the fighting. And then what challenge there is is mostly in just figuring out what you need to do, where Dark Souls really went in a different direction. and those games are about the combat challenge and the sort of fighting game design of the of the fights and you do kind of figure out okay this guy has this move and this move and this move he's vulnerable to this if i go over here then like the ceiling will fall on him whatever there are some kind of things you figure out but it's not the same kind of game and that's cool i mean they went in their own direction and they did something really successful that's really neat and has its own identity that started with zelda but it is very striking playing ocarina and seeing how dramatically different, how far away it is from a FromSoft game, despite having this sort of shared DNA. Man, I think you bring up the Souls games, and that's a great comparison point. You can see the foundation here, obviously. But I think it's worth noting here that in addition to these being amazing puzzle games and having these incredible dungeons that we all just experienced, this is also a game that invented so many things. I feel like we don't, it's hard to appreciate that today because we've been playing 3D games for almost 30 years. But when Ocarina of Time came out, there was no such thing as like locking on to an enemy in a 3D space. Like that did not exist until Ocarina of Time brought it to life. And that concept that we all take for granted in pretty much every 3D action game of having a target lock on was invented by this game. And like so many other things, so many things that it played around with in the 3D space just like would be then copied and inspire like countless other 3D action games. There was no such thing as a 3D action game until this, essentially, or at least one that functioned in any decent way. And for Nintendo and the people who made Ocarina of Time to be simultaneously inventing a genre while also creating these incredible puzzle boxes and dungeons and items with these completely original, in a lot of cases, just inventive ideas. and also translating a lot of the 2D items in 3D, which itself is just a remarkable feat. For that all to be done at the same time, you are creating a genre and also just making this amazing game. I mean, what an accomplishment, man. In the 90s, that was even... I mean, the reason that it's the highest rated game of all time is because it accomplished both of those things in the 90s. And I think revisiting today, again, we can appreciate so much of it, But like, it's hard to remember what the state of 3D games was like in 1998 when this game came out. Yeah. Yeah, I would have loved to hear those conversations, especially between the design team working on the Water Temple. Just because, to think of it in that context that you mentioned, Jason, that these people were designing a 3D dungeon and figuring out how a 3D dungeon might work. and then really going for it and assuming a lot of 3D, you know, sort of spatial puzzle solving and ability on the part of the player. Like, it's a hard dungeon. You spend a lot of time thinking, okay, wait, right, there was that one room where I can swim up if I raise the water up, but I actually have to raise the water down first so I can get over on the second floor and then connect through and then, okay, but I can get to where I raised the water back up and then that'll get it higher so I can take the boots off and I can go up. And you're like having to think these incredibly complicated. And then you're like, shit, I forgot to get the key at the very bottom. I have to do all that again. Right. Right. And then like that they would have to figure out how to design that at a time when doing something like that was just a totally new thing to be doing is remarkable. And that they did it so well is doubly remarkable. And on top of that, like playing around with time travel and like different. To have like adult Link and young Link with different animations. like I was reading an Iwata asks about this and from what I understand they did mostly map the adult link animations onto the child link ones and then just like changed a couple things but even that is so much work I can't even imagine like it's like these are two completely different body models of characters and you're designing puzzles around them and like we've kind of talked about like it's it's the spirit temple where you have to start out as child link and like you crawl through a little hole and you do part of the dungeon as him and then you time travel and your adult link again and you do the rest of the dungeon like even just the creativity of that idea is so fun but i also get why they only did it once because it's like all right this game is complicated enough we're not going to design more than one dungeon where you need to be a kid and an adult because this is ridiculous well yeah that that's the one that's the one thing that i think is missing from this game is that like unless you're doing a lot of optional stuff which is so unnecessary in this game like you don't even need money in this game you don't the rubies are such It's just a silly reward by a certain point. It is absolutely useless. I got the giant's wallet just because it bothered me any time I wasn't able to collect rupees. But I literally never bought anything, I think, in the entire... I mean, I bought some bombs once. Yeah, sometimes you beat bombs or arrows a couple times, so that's about it. The one thing that I think is kind of lacking is that they don't really play around with the time travel that much. Like, there are a couple of moments here and there where it's like, oh, you're the guy from seven years ago, and here's the son that I named after you. and there's a couple fun moments like that and the beanstalks again that's all optional there aren't a ton of puzzles where you have to do something in the past and then it impacts the future in some creative and clever way or you have to go back and forth a bunch of times which is too bad because Chrono Trigger had done that in a really fun way a few years before this so that concept had been played around with but again I think because they were trying to do so many other things that it would have been very difficult to pull that off Yeah, you can imagine that being a lot more difficult with the 3D space. Oh, yeah. It does feel, playing this game again, I also was thinking about how it feels like there is some cut content in this game. There's some ideas that they wanted to play around more with but didn't get a chance to. Two things struck me. One is the ice arrows, which you can get and then, I guess, use, but you don't need them. I don't know what they're for. You don't need to use them ever. But you don't need to use them. and the other is the golden gauntlets which you use probably three times you can leave I don't know if you guys realize this you can leave Ganon's castle and then use it to get a reward from the fairy where the fairy is who gives you Din's fire the damage reduction yes and it's worth doing I guess if you want the fight to be even easier which why not I went up to that huge chunk of rock or whatever that you can only use with the golden you can only move with the golden gauntlets and for a brief minute the prompt like grab came up and this was before i had the gauntlets and i spent a long time over there looking at it thinking i'm supposed to be able to grab this but i don't understand because actually the thing you were talking about earlier like where you don't know what the new mechanic is going to be for the dungeon like i didn't know that i was going to be able to move things that look exactly like that yeah and then i finally was like i guess i'll just i don't know because i actually hadn't figured out how to get into the castle so i thought that was the path in and i finally went and backtracked and realized oh okay there's gonna be a magic bridge and then i got the gauntlet so i was like oh okay so then i went and immediately got that that upgrade yeah it does feel like um that they wanted to do more with that it's bizarre that you only use it like those two or three times in ganon's castle i don't know i could be wrong but it's weird that they created that whole tower thing just for that and the ice arrows definitely feels like there was something they wanted to do with the ice arrows but just like never quite made it in the game maybe or they just needed a reward for the training grounds that would be okay to be optional like why are those there i suppose i i have no idea that's also just a guess i don't know but yeah you really don't need them the time travel thing definitely seems like there's just a lot of potential that they weren't able to explore i really love um the uh the song of storms puzzle or i guess this is i guess he's telling you how to get to the bottom of the well is that what it is yeah it's where He's saying basically, oh, like, you look like that kid who came in here and played a song and ruined everything when you haven't done that yet. It's very Bill and Ted where they have to decide to leave the keys in the future so they can pick up the keys now and then the keys just appear. It's very like that kind of time travel joke. It is. And it kind of doesn't make sense, too, because like there are things in the game that aren't affected by the present. But there are other or the past rather. but then there are other things that are and you just kind of have to not think about it. That's one of them. It's one big paradox. Yeah, you can't overthink it. I thought it was really funny and I really like the moment at the spirit temple. So usually, I think, well, the way I played it, I think typically you will arrive there as an adult. Yes. And so, I don't remember what they're called. Maybe the most annoying enemy in the game? No, no, never mind. There's so many annoying enemies. Fire keys are the most annoying enemies in the game or ice keys, I guess. Keys are the most annoying enemy. No, dude, man, Wallmasters are the most annoying enemy. Okay, fair. Keys are the third most annoying enemy in the game. If it goes Wallmaster, then Keys, and then those things that pop up out of the sand and are like hockey punks that fly around. What's so funny is you spend a long time dealing with those, and they're very annoying. And then you realize, oh, I have to go be a kid and come back here as a kid. And I do appreciate that the game always gives you a song to warp wherever you're going, so you don't have to do a ton of walking. it does kind of cut down on the tedium and so then you come back as a kid and those things pop out and they're the side they come up like above your head because the character design the character model is just so much smaller i just think that's like an amazing moment and something that they could only do in 3d that you can i'm just sure they were delighted by that the feeling of oh yeah these little annoying guys suddenly are like the you know taller than you are yeah and having i mean i think they were limited by having it so small link can only use certain items so that kind of limits your puzzle solving i talked in the main feed about how i've been playing oracle of ages which is a 2d zelda game that came out after this and also plays around time travel in more elaborate ways than ocarina of time does oh in the main timeline you were talking about on the main timeline yes and one of the one of the tricks i think is that an oracle of ages you are not traveling into a past version of yourself you are just the same link traveling between the past and the present and so you don't have limited usage of some of your items or you don't have to worry about stuff like that you're not smaller you're just the same link going back and forth which i think from a puzzle solving perspective and from a game design perspective makes things way easier because you can get into more complicated stuff knowing that you will have all the same abilities that you have in both timelines yeah do you think that when link goes to put the sword in or take the sword out like do you think he kind of has to brace himself for that because it's a little bit horrifying just that he's like maybe this time i won't wake up you know maybe this time I'll be there for 50 years or a thousand years. You know, how do I know it's going to be seven years? I do feel that way. And I think some of that is like me projecting depth onto the game, but it also invites some of that by kind of having some of these darker implications and moments and this like kind of almost mournfulness to the ending, especially when you're like, okay, I'm a kid again, but like also I know too much almost. And like, I've been through so much and like, how can I ever go back? Like, there's no going home again. And like, every time Link is like going to the Temple of Time, I think about that where I'm like, like he is 10 years old, but he's also 17 years old or whatever age breakdown you want to say. And it's kind of uncanny and upsetting, but like the game doesn't include any thoughts or monologuing from Link about that. So you have to just imagine what he might be thinking in those moments. Yeah, they're not consciously exploring it. It's so funny. So I've been watching Alien Earth, which I talked about in the main timeline. Right, right. The main timeline. I'm just going to keep saying that. We're going to see if we can turn it into a thing. No, it's good. It's good now. And it's so funny just because that show is in large part about children's minds being put into the bodies of these synthetic adults. And just that you would ask that question, Maddie, in our main feed episode. Where you're like, does he have a child's mind in a 17-year-old's body? And that the game is not really interested in answering that question. but it does make you think about it. And man, let's talk about that ending for a second because you mentioned it. For a long time, I was aware of this ending and I'd seen it and read articles about it. So I knew that it ended with Link being turned back into a child and that, you know, that that was sort of, that felt kind of bittersweet. And I remember even as a younger person knowing that and thinking, oh, that's too bad. Like he loses all the cool abilities that he had. He's not as big and strong. Playing it and watching it I actually I didn find it bittersweet I think it a lovely idea it would be really bittersweet if he had to stay as an adult like as a teenager because he would lose his whole childhood at least this way they're like you can just go back to being a kid now like you don't have to worry about all of this you can let it go yeah and but it does raise that question you're right Maddie I hadn't really thought about it but he's been through it all still he's been through all this he knows this happens so he'll be like sitting in school or whatever with the other fairy kids he's like you guys haven't seen the shit i've seen i fought a god you never will because i protected you from it because like in the ending of this game which sort of introduces this idea of the splitting of the zelda timelines that like zelda fans including me are so fond of is that he goes back in time to be himself as a child and for some reason the king believes him i like that we never have to see this scene where this unfolds like even though zelda kind of has a premonition about it i guess she needs like the additional weight of this other random kid coming in and being like guys you gotta watch out for this ganondorf fellow he's he's gonna turn on all of us and unlock evil and like get master the triforce and have it be just the power triforce and all this other all this other stuff and like these two kids are believed which is also kind of a charming fantasy in and of itself especially as an adult playing it but it kind of feels like a child's story where it's like the adults will finally believe me and like that's the good ending is that like zelda and little baby link are like no ganondorf is bad and like we have some sort of proof now of this and like we get to save the world and prevent all of these horrible things from happening but there's also this other timeline we assume that includes the downfall that includes like the horrifying version of the Temple of Time that we see and we walk out to and there's all the re-deads and like Hyrule is in shambles and everything's gone to shit. Like there's that timeline that I think is like the one that leads to Wind Waker. I'm not solid on all of the like ways that it shakes out, but I do know that the child timeline leads to Majora's Mask. And like you haven't played it Kirk, but like Link is like not doing well as a child in the future in Majora's Mask. He's like really struggling in that game. I played some of it. So you do know then that like some of the game is about him kind of struggling with the idea of being a hero and like wanting to kind of abandon it. And so I think that bittersweetness is there in this game and it gets leaned into more in the darker sequel to this where it's like, what if that continued? And like child Link who knows too much is the main character now. and I think that's cool. I think we should use an ocarina to travel to two years ago and tell Joseph Biden not to run. I think you should bring some proof. What would we use it for? If we can only travel a few years into the past, what are we using it for? I think that the benefit for Link is not just getting to live out his actual childhood but also getting to live it in a world that isn't completely destroyed and terrorized and like infested with zombies um yeah the the ending is really interesting um and i think leaves a lot of questions and leaves a lot to the imagination about like what what's going to happen next and what it means and like what does this actually mean for all the stages are the stages still there because you kind of see them like often in sage world um zelda is still there as a child they reappear during the credits right like they kind of they come back during the credit sequence and then they're all there with everybody i took that to mean that the sages return from the sage realm and kind of rejoin the world oh i thought it was them just kind of viewing things from a distance as like the the kind of like we are now just like the protectors of this world we're no longer part of it that's how i interpret it but again it's it's open to interpretation kind of ambiguous yeah which i appreciate um and yeah i mean as a story it's a good one. I would say that Ocarina had the best story of any of the Zelda games before it at least on console. I mean Link's Awakening story is pretty cool too. But Ocarina definitely took storytelling to a new level and I think it being in 3D allowed for that because suddenly you could have cinematics and you could have facial expressions and Kirk you mentioned in the triple play about that those shots of like Na'vi POV like flying around Kirk Uri village and And yeah, a lot of cool stuff there that I think whatever you lose moving from 2D to 3D, whatever you lose in kind of the gorgeousness of the sprites and the quickness and efficiency of like rooms and temples and screens and stuff, you gain in story and narrative capabilities and a lot of other cool stuff too, including having to look at Link's ear when you throw a boomerang. Yeah, the perspective really helps the environmental storytelling. I mean, the feeling of jumping into a well is just different when you're in 3D and you're jumping into the well. That's true. And then in those later dungeons, you know, when you're in the Shadow Temple or the bottom of the well. Remind me, is it the bottom of the well where it's like the kind of death and the sort of evil of Hyrule? Like all the evil thoughts have manifested here. There's like some text that says that. Is that in the bottom of the well? Yeah. It's so cool. like the foreboding haunted atmosphere of that space and of the spirit temple or sorry the shadow temple not the spirit temple like both of those kind of darker dungeons you know you can only do that in 3d like that would only work you know that the feeling of like climbing through these guillotines and looking out over these weird kind of blasted holes of darkness getting on that boat i mean that boat sequence as mechanically kind of goofy as it is where you're kind of then you're on a boat and you fight some guys and you have to jump off it it's a pretty epic cut scene though the boat coming out is yeah but exactly like this freaking boat of the dead like yeah on the river sticks or something like the feeling down there i mean that is really cool and it is it's kind of an intersection of the narrative and the design and the look of it i mean the feeling of being in this dark subterranean space where the all the dark thoughts of the of people from the land of Hyrule have manifested into some kind of evil energy. That is really cool and I don't know, I've certainly never had quite that feeling playing a 2D game. It's just an enveloping immersive feeling that you really only get when you're walking around and looking around inside a space. I do feel like it's playing more and more as Zelda games did after this point with the idea of darkness being inherent to Zelda. We haven't really talked about Dark Link yet. I definitely wanted to bring him up as another Another example of something that I think from software games have borrowed from, but that also other games in general and stories. I mean, it's not like the idea of fighting a dark version of yourself is Dark Links the first time. Absolutely not. It's pretty core to a lot of legends and stories of people. It's like your real enemy is yourself, but also like your darkness inside of you and fighting against that. But Kirk, I know you had some thoughts on like kind of the from software-ness of it all. like just the specific design of that level and how weird it looks and like the i think that's also close to when you get the mirror shield am i remembering right like kind of the idea of mirrors i'm trying to remember i think that's a different dungeon that's at the end of the water temple and i don't think you get the mirror in the water yeah but like the idea of like duplicity in this game like the two timelines the two links i mean it just kind of it all comes together in that yeah Yeah. And I mean, yeah, the feel and the environment like or the encounter pacing of that fight just is straight up feels like Bloodborne or something. It feels like a Souls game. You walk into this room. You've been in the water temple this whole time and it's just like a normal temple. Right. And you walk into this room where it's like the horizon goes to infinity. You're standing in this shallow water and the water just stretches to infinity. there's like these bits of ruin like ruined stone just sticking up out of the water and it's like where am I? What is going on? And then like Dark Link health bar appears and suddenly this guy comes at you out of the fog and then next thing you know you're in this like one-on-one fight with this incredibly difficult enemy. I mean that is in every From game. Like there is a sequence where you walk into a boss room and it's some phantasmagorical space that doesn't make any sense compared to where you just were and then that exact rhythm happens. I mean, it felt so FromSoft to me more than anything else in the game. Like the health bar and then the enemy and you're like, oh no, there's a health bar. It was just great. And then you defeat him and like the illusion is broken and you're just in a room back in the temple, which is also so cool. So this, in case you guys don't know, this is kind of a 3D translation of a fight from Zelda 2, The Adventure of Link, which is the NES game that is like a side-scroller. It's kind of the black sheep of the series because it's all just kind of like an action side-scroller and it's a very strange game. One of the inspirations for Hollow Knight as it happens. Listening back to that old Hollow Knight interview. Yeah, that's true. And also Shovel Knight, the kind of the downward stab sword that you get in that as the inspiration for Shovel Knight. But anyway, the final, final boss of The Adventure of Link, Zelda 2, is Dark Link and you like walk in I think you beat another boss and then you walk into this room and it looks normal and then suddenly like the colors get inverted and then Dark Link pops out of you and you have to fight him and he's like mirrored that's even creepier him popping out of you well it's like your shadow it's like your shadow that you're fighting and it's a really cool um boss like final final boss fight um that was then translated to 3d for Ocarina that fight is Such a pain in the ass. The actual Darkling fight, what a pain. A lot of the ideas in Ocarina, it's really cool to see them translated from other games. So, for example, the trading quest that you do to get the Biggeron sword, which is really fun, and has some tough time limits that are fun to get around. That is kind of an evolution of the trading quest from Link's Awakening. And in Link's Awakening, it's a little bit sillier. you are getting these just kind of random hilarious items like a banana or like a stick and you have to figure out what to do with them. I think a beehive is one of them. I'm not remembering exactly what they are. And they're like 10 of them. And you just like, as you're playing through the game, it's just something you have on the side as like a side quest. And then at the end of it, you get the super powerful boomerang. In this, it's a little bit shorter and a little bit more serious and also has these time limits that make it more of a challenge, challenge um which again is just a really cool thing to see that um just is an evolution of like what the 2d games did except now in 3d so now instead of just kind of like wandering around the world and trying to figure out where to give something you have this time limit that forces you to learn the open world and how things connect and for that final time limit i thought this was really cool um if you so uh the final thing it asks you to do is you have to get these eye drops and bring them to Biggeron, who's on top of Death Mountain, all the way from Lake Hylia. And you have a four-minute timer. And if you go from Lake Hylia all the way to Death Mountain, you're probably not going to make it in four minutes, or it's going to be super tight. You have to play it perfectly to do it. But if you remember that in the Lost Woods, there is a shortcut to the top of Death Mountain, then you can do it that way, and you can do it all in like two minutes. So it's one of those fun little things that, I don't know if that was intentional, but it's one of those fun things that just rewards you paying attention and being curious and like learning the world is that you were able to do this side quest really quickly and without too much stress attached. And by the way, you can't use fast travel. You can't use the fast travel songs to do it. You can't. And that's part of it. And if you do, it's automatically going to disqualify you. I think it's intentional for the reason you said, which is that by that point in the game or by the point that you're going to get rewarded with the bigger on sword, you should know the world well enough to know all the shortcuts and that's your reward in some ways is that you're like okay well I've already been running to and fro and maybe you haven't yet unlocked those ocarina songs like some of them she takes takes his time teaching you what they are and you're like okay I guess I'm gonna have to run around and figure out where to go but yeah I think it's like that's your reward for knowing this relatively small but still just big enough open world and you can use Epona. So like, that's another thing that I'm like, I can't do it without her. But like, I think this is also one of the early open world games where you can call your horse, like kind of speaking of things that were relatively new. I'm not sure if it's the first one, but it's certainly one of the ones I remember where like calling your horse from anywhere and kind of having her magically appear, but also having her kind of help assuage the distances of the open world which are just like a little too long for you to want to walk like that kind of helps the world cohere into something that i think other games emulated again where it's like it just needs to be just big enough it doesn't need to be so so big and i've named many horses epona after this horse because i'm like yeah he's the open world horse maddie that's a really good point that i hadn't even thought about like so many that mechanic of like calling your horse Culling your horse is just casually invented by this game. Like so many mechanics. I mentioned the Z-targeting because that's the biggest one. I don't think so. I don't think it ever happened before that game because in 2D spaces, I mean, there's certainly games where you could ride horses or ride things. You could ride Yoshi in Super Mario World. But there weren't 3D big open world games where you would need to just be able to call your mount from anywhere. I don't know. I could be wrong. But it certainly feels like something that Ocarina of Time invented. and certainly there must be a long list somewhere of these just like mechanics that we've seen in a billion open world games that were just casually invented by Ocarina of Time. Yeah. Yeah, on the shortcuts a little bit more. So I never used those. Every time I found one, I found a delightful because you hear whatever Saria's theme coming through and blow up some rocks and the next thing you know, you're in the lost woods. But then I never really needed them because the game gave me those fast travel songs so I could get wherever I needed to get. It's cool that to get the big orange sword, you have to use them. Like that's kind of the moment when you're going to really be rewarded for remembering that those are there. I wonder, first of all, if there's a map anywhere that indicates whether those shortcuts make any sort of geographic sense or not. Because I'm actually not sure if they do. The Lost Woods is not. They're in the Lost Woods and the Lost Woods plays by its own kind of magic. It's a little bit magical. That's a good point. Also, the shortcut songs aren't that useful because like the water one takes it to like Hylia. if you want to go to Zora's realm. Well, I guess I'm just, I got everything pretty much except the Vigaron sword and I never used the shortcuts. Like I found- If you don't need the Vigaron sword, then you're fine. That's more my point is that like you don't totally need them. Like they're not, you're not going to be using them constantly because you do have a fast way of, especially getting back to the Temple of Time and because the castle town is right next to Kakariko village, like so much of what you do is like right over there. but anyways yeah I think I think the shortcuts are really cool and they're kind of delightful to find and then of course yet another thing that I think From really learned from and that same feeling when you blow up some rocks and suddenly you're in the Lost Woods you get that same feeling in Dark Souls the first time that you like operate an elevator and realize like oh wait I'm back at Firelink Shrine like how did this even happen and in that game of course it's much more useful because there's no real other way to get around until way later in the game when you unlock fast travel. And it's much less magical and kind of more special because that game literally, there's no Lost Woods that's like short cutting you through. Yeah, there's no cheating. It's like things actually are where they seem to be and you have to actually walk the exact distances, which is its own complexity. I have no transition, but I did want to talk about the Zelda chic thing because it's the other thing that makes this game famous and is something I really love about it. I've always been kind of sad that like this is the only game in which Sheik appears. I think it's like a really cool conceit for Zelda to just go and train to become a ninja for seven years. And like you don't see it happen. And like you just kind of get to reap the benefits by being your weird child mind, teenage body of her just already knowing all this stuff and being ahead of you. But like the idea of Zelda being ahead of you and also often being like a little older than Link is like a long tradition that I've really enjoyed about these games. And that is kind of carried over here because that's part of why in my own head canon I see Link as like kind of being younger even when he's older is because she just she's seen it all. She knows it all. Yeah, she lived the seven years. And trained to be a ninja in the intervening time. And like I just think that's so sick. I'm sad to say I always knew that twist, so I don't know how I would have reacted to it if I hadn't known. But that was kind of like how I always knew Samus was a girl It was just gaming lore when I was growing up Well Smash Brothers ruined it for everybody Yeah for everybody which I played tons of before I feel like I even knew about this game Maddie did you know that Retro Studios makers of Metroid Prime had a sheet game in development at one point? No that's so interesting I think it was like the Wii era and apparently it was shaping up to be bad according to internet rumors so that's why it was cancelled I get it sad that they never explored that concept further because a game where you for to solve puzzles and stuff you had to switch back and forth between sheik and zelda could be super cool i know i like sheik's move when she throws the flash bomb and disappears which happens over and over and over the animation is just so silly it's very good it's so great and link is always like what what that even by then it was such a trope like the ninja throwing down the bomb and disappearing in like an anime or whatever and then it's kind of awkward like the animation it's always like and then she does it but it kind of rules every time yeah it's always a cool I like her playing the harp too her playing the harp with with the ocarina is always like kind of sweet the idea of the two of them playing together I really like that well and that's for me I mean I I always kind of knew this was Zelda but like it's a clue to me at least the fact that Sheik is playing the harp and they're playing together and like pretty quickly it's like okay well this has to be Zelda because otherwise like where is Zelda we saw Zelda go off with yeah with the Impa protector who was who was one of the Sheikas so that's that seems like it might be related to what happened by the way did you guys know that apparently the owl Kippurah Gaborah is Rauru the sage wait what uh really what do you what do you mean the owl is Rauru and the owl are the same so apparently this is some deep ocarina of time lore apparently Rauru was like incarnated as an owl or something aurora was like alive many years earlier and then like took on the form apparently you learned this from like one of the gossip stones really if you know that's so funny wild the gossip stones never lie so i'm sure that's true i guess that explains why the owl is telling you so much additional information that you don't need like rower is really worried about you figuring it out yeah i was i was struck in general by how many echoes and similarities there are between this game specifically and Breath of the Wild and then Tears of the Kingdom. Like the Sheikah, just Ganon being the villain, like the fact that he is this like Gerudo king. Like so much of the story really feels very similar. Like it just, there are echoes over and over and over. It made me, I got the sense that Breath of the Wild was designed like they were like, okay, we're going to use Ocarina of Time as kind of our reference point. But that's just my feeling and I haven't played all the other Zelda games, but is there something to that? Like, am I right to feel that way? So the way that Zelda lore works is that if you kind of, if you look from the beginning, it's got kind of like one layer and then the next game adds another layer and then the third game adds another layer. So as an example, and so on and so forth. So as an example, Link to the Past brings in the Zora and introduces this concept of like these aquatic figures and you meet the Zora and she gives you the flippers and stuff. And then Ocarina of Time brings in the Gorin and the Gerudo and then the Zora and the the Goron and the Gerudo become these like integral parts of Zelda lore in each subsequent game and each game adds new stuff. So like, for example, Skyward Sword adds this concept of, I don't remember if they were called the Zonai, but certainly this concept of an ancient race of people who had all this modern technology, this advanced technology. And then like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are kind of the culmination where they're taking these, all of the, they're like, it's taking all of the ideas from all of the previous Zelda games and adding even more to the stew. so a lot of these games you'll just kind of see the same ideas just carry it on and on and on and on yeah i guess that's true and those are the like the you know the ones from ocarina i am familiar with and i'm seeing in the moment but right fire fee is the sword in tears of the kingdom like you hear her theme play and she even talks to zelda in the same voice from skyward sword like there are these other echoes of the other games i'm just not familiar with the other ones so i don't catch the references yeah and then there's some interesting story stuff too um in like uh wind waker i won't spoil it in case you wind up playing through the whole game kirk but like in wind waker there's some interesting just kind of lore that you get as like a big plot twist in the middle of that game i played that much i played a lot of okay to be clear i think i said that but yeah that's the one that of the 3d games that i've actually played the most of i've gotten all the way up toward the very gotcha gotcha gotcha so yeah where you discover like the temple with the whole history of Hyrule and stuff. Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, it's just kind of like, the way to think of it, I think, is that if each Zelda game is kind of like a legend, like someone telling you the same story with just embellished details or different versions of the same story, like, oh, you remember the legend of Zelda? This is what happened. It's a big game of telephone. Each teller adds some new details. They're like, well, everyone knows his version. I'm going to add mine. Or like more archaeological digs discover something where we're like, oh, actually, we didn't really understand what the deal was with the zora before we just knew a little bit and like now here's a more detailed picture and then like the next dig they're like oh actually whoa there were these huge octopus spider monster robots that everyone had to fight that apparently covered the world yeah yeah but i kirk i feel like i i did also notice at least when you're like breaking into the gerudo fortress like that part did really remind me of tears of the kingdom as well or breath of the wild specifically i guess is is when link has to cross dress because there is a part where you break into the gerudo fortress like that part is really similar and i was like that feels almost like somebody played ocarina of time and was like but what if link was wearing a really cute outfit like all the ladies here he could probably pass like that that could be something that could work this game needs is a tedious stealth sequence just thrown right into the middle right when you have a head of steam okay but actually though that part of ocarina like we complained about the castle guards but like that gerudo fortress is my least favorite part of it. If you want to see how quickly I can look up a guide watch me playing that sequence That's the one. So the problem with that is in a game with like immaculate design most of the time the level design in that is so bad because it's just so confusing all of the rooms look identical it's just like it's one of those sections that is just like you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't just look up a guide on how to do it because it's just not fun to figure out on your own. That said you can shoot the Gerudo ladies with like arrows and they'll just get knocked out. That somehow doesn't kill them. And then they're still unconscious after they become friendly. So they're just lying around unconscious. And I'm like, sorry. Sorry about that. My bad. Also, what's really annoying is that after you get the card and you become like they become non-hustle. A card carrying member, yeah. They all say the same line of dialogue. I know. It's like they didn't even bother to like write out a full like story for them to tell you. Well, so that part of the game, it feels, I'm hesitant to use the word rushed because I don't know. It does, though. But it does feel like that was, it feels like that was done late in the game. It felt like they wanted to add more. Underbaked. Yeah, it definitely. Underbaked, I think, is a great word for it. Especially like the fact that the training grounds give you the ice arrows like we were saying before. Right, exactly. And it feels like you should have, yeah. There should be something else here and it's not, it's missing. Or maybe just never. Or even that whole desert section, it just feels so different than other parts of the game. like you're just following a ghost around like you kind of you did that already with Dante in the in the graveyard like to get the hook shot or like there's it just doesn't like have the same that same kind of I don't know it doesn't doesn't feel quite as polished as other parts of the game that whole Gerudo section yeah and obviously it's the last part you do before Ganon's castle and um yeah I don't think it was but that said I love the spirit temple so like that uh I think is still just as good yeah it stands out like you said because so many of the other temples are so cleverly done and that one feels like i don't even really know why this is here but also like maybe it's supposed to add kind of some color to ganondorf's backstory except it kind of doesn't and you have to fill in the blanks on that and i don't know that's something where i feel like breath of the wild and cheers of the kingdom like add so much more to the gerudo as as people and characters that's like so fun and funny and they get like all their lines about how link is short and like have their interplay with him in both games. And like, that's adorable. And it's like kind of gratifying that those games improve on it, especially when earlier in this very episode, I kind of dissed them for not having amazing adult Link style temples. Those games have so much other color to offer to the series. Something I really like that both of the recent games do is that they'll have characters from the different regions out on pilgrimages or just around. There's the Goron guy who's out. You know, you run into him from time to time. They're the ladies who are trying to date. Yeah, who's just like, I got to find a guy somewhere, man. But just that they're on various, you know, quests around. And so you get a feel that like each of these cultures sort of intermingles within the world. And it's just cool. It makes the world feel a little more alive and gives you a better sense of each of these different places and the people. Yeah. Storytelling wise, you can see that their chops just continue to evolve because I feel like the Zelda story. um ocarina was is way better at storytelling than link to the past and then from there like wind waker is even better and like um i think tears of the kingdom is kind of like the best like zelda form of zelda storytelling yet even if you aren't a huge fan of like the non-linear way that the tears work i think the the micro stories of like getting to each in and like talking to the the the characters and how hilarious like there's so so many funny moments where you're like taking pictures of people are just like running into like these hilarious npcs i feel like that has just gotten better over time, the way that Zelda dialogue works and stories are told. And going back, I played a lot of Tears of the Kingdom just sort of for fun when the Switch 2 came out. And man, yeah, also the main story of Tears of the Kingdom, like the fact that there was this missed hand clasp that Link misses her and Zelda falls into darkness. And then the whole game is built around this motif of hands coming together. and you shake hands with everyone and there's a sound that plays in the music, this like clap and it builds and builds and builds and the whole game is like building toward the moment at the end when he like finally catches her. That is, it's awesome. And like they have not done something, for me at least, that was as effective as that was for me where it like rocked my world the first time. And then each time I see it, like replaying the game, I was like, this is so good. Like now that I know where this is going and how it's all structured. So I totally agree that they've really just continually up the ante on the storytelling in these games. I agree too. Although it has been, just to kind of bring this episode to a close, really wonderful to like play a game that for me is where it all started in terms of the open world Zelda era. And that just laid the groundwork for so many of the storytelling tropes and just wacky things about Zelda that I love so much. Like it was just a joy to play through this and I'm so glad we did it. and I'm really happy that you two enjoyed this game as much as I did. Man, I totally agree. This was a great pick, Madian. I'm so glad that I played through it. This was a total delight. Yes, completely agree. Can I do one more nitpick? Please, yeah. I just remembered. Let's conclude by complaining about things. Let's conclude with a nitpick. This is a classic game review format. It's like you fit your one criticism at the very end of the review. Well, no, I started this episode with a nitpick about the Shadow Temple, and now I have one more nitpick. It's the old nitpick sandwich. Exactly. All the good stuff in the middle. All the fluff in the middle and here are the harsh edges. The burnt edges. The two ends of the bread that are at the end of the sandwich for some reason. In the Fire Temple, there was one... So I was thinking about Zelda rhythms and how the puzzles in Zelda games are never really that tricky. You always feel like you know what to do and you just have to execute and that's part of the fun rhythm to it is that you always just feel like, oh, got this, I'm a genius, got this, I'm a genius, etc. except there was one puzzle that just stumped me for a while in the fire temple shortly after you get the megaton hammer you um walk into this room it's kind of l-shaped and the the long part of the l is going down a stairs and then you get to the bottom of the stairs and there is a little button and then there's a gate and you step on the button and the gate opens and then you leave the button and the gate closes and i spent so long just smashing with that with my hammer trying to figure out what am i supposed to do here finally i looked it up turns out you're supposed to go beginning and get the little crates and put them on the button. Now, I should have known this because Zelda, like all Zelda games, have that kind of puzzle where you have to push a crate onto a button. The problem is, in Ocarina of Time, the crates are so tiny that there's no way in hell that they would actually stick on that button. In every other Zelda game where you have to push crates around, they're always the size of Link, or at least the size of a substantial size to put onto a button exactly in this they are tiny and i don't know why that is but that bothers me so much because i was i was like it didn't even occur to me that they were crates that should be moved onto something because they are like the size of like link's thumb i think there's like a similar jabu jabu's belly tiny crates puzzle as well that i like had a similar problem with where i was like why are these crates so little like but in java no in java java's belly you use rudo to uh to put on the buttons. That's true. I think there's like one time when you need crates. Maybe I'm misremembering too long ago. But this one stumped me for so long because it just never occurred to me because they're so small. Anyway. I think I have a theory about that because I felt the same way about that. It kind of just stuck out to me. And it's a little bit like I think back about Chris Dolan's essay about Dark Souls. He talks about a portal puzzle that does this. Okay. Where out of nowhere there's a puzzle. I think it's in Portal 2 where you have to figure out like which of these cubes like doesn't look like the other ones. Something like that and it's a confusing puzzle not because it's not a good puzzle on its own but because that's not the kind of game that portal is and you've been solving a different kind of puzzle forever and then suddenly they're like giving you something different and i got stuck on that and i do think that it's partly just because once you have the hammer you know all the world's a nail like you're thinking i need to be hitting things with a hammer now and really kind of shortly after that it gives you this puzzle where the solution is actually to go back up the stairs and pick up an item and put it down on the button, which is like very straightforward in the rules of the game. But it's like not the kind of puzzles that you're currently solving. And so your brain just kind of isn't there. So it winds up being this unexpected left turn that can throw you off. Yeah. But also the crate's just too small. That's the real problem. The crates are too small. Totally agree. So 7 out of 10. Yeah, 7 out of 10. Kind of a mixed bag. Mixed bag is what we're saying. Fans of the genre will like it, but it might push newcomers away. We can't conclude the episode by saying that. It's a 10 out of 10 in my heart. I love this game. It's just, it sticks in my memory. And, you know, all the things I dislike about it, I still kind of have a soft spot for despite it all. And yeah, I'm glad we played it. Any other final thoughts before we just put the sword back in the stone and become children again forever? No, what a lovely experience. And we should play another Zelda game soon. Yeah, we should keep playing Zelda. And just talk about it. Yeah, I mean, I would not be averse to either of you picking whatever Zelda games you want for bets in the future and like if every year someone wins and we play a Zelda game, that would be just all Zelda. Then we'd have to wait two years. No, let's just play a Zelda game. Like in January when it's like there's no new games coming out, let's just play a Zelda game. Yeah, we should always remember that Zelda's there for us. Anytime we're like what should we do on the show? We could just play a Zelda game. Exactly. It is the series that we have dedicated the most episodes to already so we might as well keep that streak going. And even when we talk about FromSoft games, we're actually talking about Zelda, folks. it's all Zelda it's Zelda's all the way down and with that we leave you thanks so much for being a MaxFun member you are if you're listening to this and we appreciate every single one of you and yeah that's been our episode and now we return to Hyrule as children but it's going to be way better because Ganondorf isn't going to be around we'll see you next time in the main timeline see you next time I will see both of you in the main timeline bye Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier Maddie Myers and me Kirk Hamilton I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music our show art is by Tom DJ some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration you can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network and if you're listening to this bonus episode it means you're already a member. So thank you. We really appreciate your support. Find us on Twitter at TripleClickPod. Send email to tripleclickatmaximumfun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows. Supported directly by you.