Twilight Princess Spoiler Thread

[kirbychu]

I haven't even attempted the Cave of Ordeals yet... I discovered it after finishing the game and then spending hours looking for the missing piece of Eldin Bridge.

Where did you save, Nintyboy? The last time I saved was just before opening the boss door in Hyrule Castle, and when I started the game up again after beating Ganondorf, I found myself standing back at the entrance to the castle, so all I had to do was turn around and walk back out.

[Fryguy64]

I completed the game a while back now - I got all the heart pieces last week, and I tied up the rest of the loose ends (except fishing) last night. Howling Stones, Gold Bugs and Poes. Also completed the Cave of Ordeals (mainly to get that last Poe, but also to strike a pose and say I did it). Got through quite a few blue potions.

Found out today the last thing I have to do (except fishing) is get the last empty bottle (by fishing!)

I don't like the fishing game. I'm sure it's accurate, which probably explains why I find it boring. Also, the training woman keeps telling me to press and hold A&B when prompted, but the prompt never appears. So what's the dealy-oh, daddy-oh?

Nah... I'll stick to my DS and VC games until WarioWare comes out, I guess.

[Phil Bond]

A+B appears when the fish is reeled up into your reach. I'm done fishing. All I have left are seven Poes. Did you use a list to get them or something?

[Fryguy64]

Yeah, for the last few poes and bugs I checked a FAQ. Random invisible hole in random field probably would have never been found without it. Also checked to see if I'd missed anything - 1 bottle and the frog lure... that was it.

So I grabbed the bottle and trashed Ganon again - to find any more clues to the storyline and its links to the other games. The Twilight Realm is definitely not the Sacred Realm / Golden Land / Dark World (which are all the same) and the Zant idea I had seems more valid every time I watch that ending (Triforce fades, Ganondorf chokes, Zant dies, Ganondorf dies). Still... I love the design of Ganon.

And now all I have to do is complete that damn Rollgoal game and catch some fish. That's it. Zelda's done. Where's my next game? Three weeks away, apparently. Back to the DS.

[Old Man Rupee]

On another note concerning timelines, how did the light sages get Ganondorf to the mirror chamber for that cutscene? Umm...let me rephrase that: what were the events leading to the capture of Ganondorf? And where does that fit in the timelines?

If the game is after OOT and before WW, did the sages retreive Ganondorf from the Sacred Realm - where he was sealed at the end of OOT - to give him punishment for his deeds in that game?

[kirbychu]

The only way I can see that it makes sense is with the split timeline... TWW takes place in the future of the adult timeline, while TP takes place in the child timeline, where Ganondorf wasn't sealed up. There are still a couple of contradictions, but it makes more sense than anything else.

[Fryguy64]

When Zelda Legends first opened, I believe I was the first person to posit a split timeline theory based on the events at the end of Ocarina ;D

I think it's safe to say that Nintendo has taken the same line of thought. I don't see any way that TWW, TP and LttP could co-exist in a single timeline. Although only the bizarre story in TWW seems to require this. I see no reason why the series couldn't run smoothly without it.

For the record, I still consider the Vaati saga as a spinoff, potentially ignorable from the main timeline. Tingle's Rose-Colored Rupy Land, however, occupies a very central role, vital to the series as a whole. Without it, the Triforce would simply cease to exist, the lineage of Zelda would come to an end, and Ganondorf would be no more than a man with a silly beard. ;D

[Fryguy64]

I'm going to come back to this 100 Years theory as well. I think there's something important about the Gerudo having a king born every 100 years, and each of the games being - supposedly - 100 years apart from each other.

I am starting to believe there is no coincidence there. The multiple Zeldas has been explained (AoL), more recent games have fun explaining multiple Links (OoT, TWW, TMC, TP), and this may well be an explanation for multiple Ganondorfs.

I never liked the idea of multiple Ganondorfs originally. Multiple Links and Zeldas I could deal with, because it was so obvious, but for it to remain a compelling storyline, I was convinced they should have kept just the single antagonist. But it's unavoidable now to suggest there are multiple Ganondorfs. The Ganondorf at the end of LoZ, LttP, TWW and TP are clearly killed - but he's also been revived (AoL, OoS/A). The one in FSA is definitely not the same Ganondorf, as he gained a powerful trident but never the Triforce.

In short, we could be looking at multiple Ganondorfs - some trapped in mystical realms, some sealed in swords, some killed, and some later revived. All can potentially return. Will we soon be facing three or four Ganondorfs at once?

[kirbychu]

I'm not quite ready to accept to multiple Ganons idea yet... Sure, the evidence is there... I just don't want to believe it!

I'm not sure whether it was actually said in the game at some point or not, but that deserted village where Impaz lives seems like a Sheikah village to me. Impaz says her name comes from the village founder (Impa?), and that it was a secret village that was home to a race that served the royal family. The howling stone in the village even has a Sheikah symbol on it.

Of course, that has little to do with the general storyline. I just found it interesting.

[Old Man Rupee]

Multiple Ganons all trying to kill you at the same time?!? That amount of power would only be conquerable with a crack team of Links ;D

Just imagine.....each Link would have slightly different outfits to reference different games....some sort of time/dimension portal item would be needed (recovered from a boss, because Ganondorf would have stolen it earlier to unleash stuff)....I'd say seven guys is a nice number, after the seven sages.....it'd be like an epic version of Four Swords Adventure!

P.S. I hate thinking about the muddled timeline in words, I much prefer pictures and diagrams - an idea for the next NinDB exclusive wallpaper, Fry?

[Phil Bond]

I find it totally easy to think there's only one Ganon(dorf). He's beyond physical form. Link and Zelda keep getting reincarnated, and so does Ganon, it's just that Ganon does so with the greedy force of his own will.

I don't know. I don't want to pour out all my theories on the whyfors of the Zelda cycle, but I have a lot of them, and an important core principle is that even if Ganondorf has technically been killed a few times, which is debateable, he never forgets. I think Wind Waker established that pretty firmly.

Know what I never realized before? Wind Waker and Twilight Princess both begin with Ganondorf's minions scouring the world for Zelda: looking for blond hair and triforces on the hands. Ganondorf has a very specific agenda, derived from his own personal knowledge and experience.

[mrmolecule]

Unless of course, one of the Ganons is a corrupt past Link (or some other character)

Or not.

[Phil Bond]

There are two kinds of connections people try to make in Zelda continuity: "Of course!" points, and "Wouldn't it be cool?" points.

"Cool" points aren't necessarily wrong. If they could be easily proven wrong, they'd be too stupid to mention. They do, however, involve so much conjecture as to be little bites of fanfiction, not earnest educated guesses. I have no use for that.

[Fryguy64]

I think one thing people do wrong is look at the series in terms of storyline, rather than in terms of chronological evolution. Fictional worlds are developed as they become bigger, more complex, and more tied up in their history.

However, in order to do so, you have to overwrite elements of older games. The Zelda community has already been quite thorough in doing this by going back to the Japanese translations of the first three games in the series, accepting them as "canon" and removing the US translations as unreliable and inconsistent.

In the interests of continuity, I suspect we will some day get remakes of LoZ and AoL that flesh out the story and retcon things that don't tie in. I would, in fact, love to see AoL properly overhauled into a 3D format (DS?) as various parts of it seem to have been inspirations for the later 3D games (complex sword fighting, the ability to jump, and probably other stuff that I can't be bothered to think of).

But it's worth thinking of how the story has developed over time, and take later stories as being more closely tied to the plot. Remember, when LoZ was made in 1986, I doubt Miyamoto or any of the designers imagined the series would still be going this strongly and have such a rich and beloved world and a fantastic legacy in 2007.

Even when LttP was made, I doubt the designers thought they would be telling the story of the imprisoning war in 1998. When they made OoT I doubt they thought about Twilight Princess. It's entirely possible the idea of multiple Ganondorfs has only entered their minds relatively recently, if at all.

And, of course, we have to suck out our gut instincts and look upon the series as a videogame - and so we have to ignore certain things that are simply there to make it a good videogame, as well as constraints on hardware.

[Sqrt2]

Isn't Alttp supposed to be the final game in the series due to the 'And the master sword sleeps forever' line at the end of the game?