A look back at my convoluted relationship with The Legend of Zelda

Welp, I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve just passed my second month in self-isolation. Like many gamers on lockdown, I’ve got a ton of time on my hands and an entire library of video games just begging to fill the empty void of my existence. A lot of these games have never even been played, and since I have a perfect opportunity to dive into these untouched treasures, I’ve naturally decided to completely ignore them and replay an old favorite from the beginning.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is not only one of my favorite LoZ games, but I also consider it one of the definitive games in the series – which is why I was shocked to find I haven’t touched it in over 12 years. This discovery also led to the revelation that I have completely failed to play either of the series’ mainline successors, Skyward Sword or Breath of the Wild, even though I own both of them. I just couldn’t believe it; how could I have spent THIS much time away from a franchise I love, let alone a game I consider one of the greatest of all time??

I’ve puzzled over this conundrum for days, and I think I finally have the answer. This is going to be a VERY long story, so get a drink and strap in.

In the interest of not getting ahead of myself, we need to start by talking about Ocarina of Time. I know this seems like we’re taking a hard turn out of nowhere, but I can’t adequately address what’s going on with Twilight Princess until we discuss this first. Don’t worry, we’re going to come back around, so put a pin in it for now and take a trip with me back to 1999.

Despite technically owning the original The Legend of Zelda as a kid, Ocarina of Time was my first “real” Zelda experience. It set up my standards and expectations for future Zelda games, as well as for medieval/fantasy games in general. It introduced me to the series’ lore, RPG elements, and was even the first game to demonstrate to me that video games can take their storytelling very seriously. Ocarina of Time made an enormous impact on my relationship with gaming as a whole, and it solidified the franchise as one of my passions.

Because of this, I eventually encountered a website called The Odyssey of Hyrule. The site, now defunct (but still partly viewable via the Wayback Machine), was a hotbed of Ocarina of Time oddities, such as glitches, hoaxes, and beta screenshots. I was so intrigued that it quickly became routine to visit the site at least once a day, hoping to absorb as much of this seemingly forbidden information as I possibly could. This eventually culminated in me stumbling over a seemingly benign screenshot:

Those of you that know Ocarina of Time well can probably immediately tell that this area does not appear in the final game. The Odyssey of Hyrule posited that it was perhaps located behind the Temple of Time, since the setting elements all look the same and the camera appears to be in a fixed location. This instantly rang very true for me; after all, when you look at the building from the front, there’s a clearly visible path running along the side, although it’s fenced off.

If you look closely, you can see that there’s a gap on either side of the bit of fence right where the path happens to be. Is this some kind of a gate? I had previously assumed so, but upon considering the screenshot against the fact that this “gate” never opens, I soon had my doubts. The rest of the fence on the right side doesn’t have gaps like that, suggesting that perhaps this bit wasn’t originally there and the path was once traversable; my personal hunch is that the “gate” is actually a copied instance of the smaller bit of fencing on the left. If the dev team had designed the path to be open but later had to block it off, copying the smaller bit to the left would save them the headache of redoing the fence entirely. The gossip stones, if they were originally there at all, were probably supposed to start from the far right wall instead of the left, which would also allow clear access to the path.

The connection between these two images changed everything about my relationship with the game. It led to an enormous fixation on the Temple of Time, specifically because I kept finding additional clues that suggested the developers had originally designed a lot more content for this area. The longer this stewed around in my brain, the more it drove me absolutely crazy. I realized that this could possibly explain a lot of seemingly disparate elements – including an easily missed detail inside the Temple of Time, which was one of the biggest peculiarities of all. Upon removing the Door of Time to gain access to the sword chamber, the initial view of said chamber is much smaller than the final product. Switching to the first-person camera makes it especially easy to see how close the walls are on the left and right before you start moving in.

For this first moment, the sword chamber is pretty much the size of a closet – which makes sense, if this is intended to be a secret space. But as you take a few steps into the passage, the tight walls abruptly disappear and give way to the massive chamber we’re all familiar with. In fact, if you take your time and walk forward through this hallway instead of run, you can easily see the moment when the room changes from small to large before your eyes.

When comparing this oddity with the beta screenshot and The Odyssey of Hyrule’s guess as to its purpose, I became convinced that something else was originally supposed to happen back there. My personal guess was that the smaller sword chamber was the original version, and the larger chamber was intended to be a completely separate area behind it. Instead of housing the sword pedestal, it was must have been used for… well, what, I wondered? It obviously wasn’t for anything small and simple, such as a chest with a heart piece; the room was far too grand and intimidating for that. This room was clearly designed for something big. Something important. It must have had a large scale of work involved if the designers looked at it and realized they couldn’t finish it in time. But what???

After a LOT of mulling it over, I became convinced that the most likely explanation was that this was originally the entrance to the Light Temple. Several details and inconsistencies led me to this conclusion, particularly the fact that the game just kind of glosses over this subject entirely. I always found it odd that the Light Medallion is non-chalantly handed over the instant Link becomes an adult, whereas the player has to earn the other ones by clearing their respective temples. Upon removing the Master Sword, a cut scene takes over whereupon we meet Rauru the Light Sage, he infodumps about what’s going on, and then he abruptly forks over the Light Medallion without any input from the player.

From a narrative perspective, this really stands out to me because Rauru is the only person you do not interact with at any point in the game. You don’t meet him at all as a child, and as an adult you only see him within the Sacred Realm, aka during cut scenes. All of the other sages are characters you have both childhood and adult connections with, and it’s up to you to awaken them to their powers by ridding their temples of evil. Why would the developers skip that entire process with Rauru, who guards what is seemingly the most important power of all?

Perhaps they never meant to; maybe you were supposed to go through that same process, but the Light Temple got cut.

When designing a video game, there’s a practice that’s recommended before you begin actually building it to help direct focus. You make a list of ALL the elements you have planned, then organize them in order of importance, and then cut the list it in half. The top half is the one you focus on first, because it’s stuff you absolutely positively have to have in order for the game to work. The bottom half is stuff you get to include if you have enough time, and if you make it far enough to touch on this half, you add its items in the listed order because top items are more critical. Is it possible that the Light Temple was either on that second half of the list, or got bumped from the first half because development time simply ran out?

In this particular instance, I believe chronological order and order of importance happen to be the same thing. Obviously you need to go through [dungeon 1] before you can go through [dungeon 2] or [dungeon 3], because the order of the dungeons doubles as the order in which you obtain items, which must be delivered to the player in a specific order. If the development team used the same reasoning as me, then yes, the Light Temple would’ve been much lower on the list than the other temples. It’s entirely within reason to think that it was planned for, but at some point in the process the team realized they wouldn’t have time to fully implement it.

Abandoning plans for the Light Temple would easily explain why the side path is blocked off and why the sword chamber changes from petite to enormous. The backmost chamber, as part of the Temple of Time, was likely built long in advance of any work on the Light Temple, considering that the Temple of Time is a necessary stop early in the game. Once the Light Temple was cut, however, the team needed to come up with a way to eat up all that extra space. After all, you can see how long the building is from the outside, so it wouldn’t make much sense for it to be a reverse Tardis and end up smaller on the inside. Turning the backmost chamber into the sword chamber works out anyway, because it gets to make use of the awe-inspiring architecture to give the moment even more punch.

As to why the smaller chamber is still visible, my hunch was always that the team overlooked removing an old loading zone. If in fact the smaller chamber was the original version, then it makes sense for its loading zone to be outside of the Door of Time, as that’s when you would first need to see it. The larger chamber, incidentally, doesn’t load until after you’re just about to reach the pedestal, which then jumps away from you to the center of the new room. The new loading zone was likely intended to override the other, but programming is often messy, especially when you’re going back to rework something that’s already established. They either didn’t notice it since the change flicks by so quickly, or they did notice but figured it was good enough, for the same reason.

In any case, if a Light Temple really was cut from the game, then I imagine at also necessitated reworking and reducing Rauru’s role. My personal hunch has always been that he was meant to be some kind of high priest who oversaw the Temple of Time, since it IS essentially a church. I mean, just look at that garb! He certainly appears to be some kind of holy man.

Having him as a priest at the Temple of Time that you could actually meet and talk to as a kid would’ve finally made his presence in the game make sense. For one thing, it would explain who and what he is at all, since he just kind of appears out of nowhere and the player is expected to assume this is someone important and worthy of respect. Rauru having a role in the past would’ve also made him consistent with the other sages, insofar as meeting the player when they don’t realize their powers, awakening as a sage once the player rescues them as an adult. In fact, Rauru’s disappearance from the Temple of Time in the future would’ve been the game’s first big red flag that something is amiss, versus having to go outside to see the decay around the temple and the dark energy over Death Mountain. Furthermore, each sage is someone that the game explicitly positions as a person that makes sense TO be each temple’s respective sage, and to me, a priest from the Temple of Time is the obvious choice for the Light Sage when you consider that the Light Temple was probably part of the same building.

Something else that always stood out weirdly to me about the Temple of Time, even before I started down this long and frustrating rabbit hole, was its warp song. The Minuet of Forest takes you to the Forest Temple, the Bolero of Fire takes you to the Fire Temple, the Serenade of Water takes you to the Water Temple… but what song takes you to the Temple of Time? It’s not a song with time in the name anywhere, it’s the Prelude of Light. Once upon a time this seriously annoyed me because I viewed it as breaking convention with the other tunes, but this would make perfect sense if the Light Temple was supposed to share space with the Temple of Time, right?

The warp point itself also holds a couple clues. Each time the player warps to one of the temples, Link lands on a large pedestal bearing the Triforce, just outside of the temple entrance. However, there’s a second image overlayed on top of the Triforce: That temple’s medallion symbol. If you play the Prelude of Light to warp to the Temple of Time, the pedestal you land on features the Light Medallion, as though this is where you were supposed to have earned it, and the platform is about as far from the backmost chamber as the other pedestals are from their temple entrances.

Something else to consider is the fact that the Temple of Time is where the player acquires the Light Arrows, the final item needed before taking on Ganon at the end. Like the medallion before it, the Light Arrows are simply given to the player without requiring any work. The other temples all have a critically important item inside that must be obtained to not only finish the temple itself, but that is then needed in other areas in the game. Doesn’t it seem like you’d have to complete the Light Temple to get the Light Arrows, and they’d follow the same pattern of being used to finish the temple and then go on for further use elsewhere (namely, Ganon’s Castle)?

Getting the Light Arrows last also lends credence toward the idea that the Light Temple was in fact lower on the development list, because it would’ve necessarily been the last temple you visited in terms of game progression. They’re not going to give you the ultimate holy weapon early on in the game, or else you’d blow through the rest of the temples without a sweat! Additionally, the Light Temple being last would only increase the tension of wondering where Rauru went, since each time you warped between the past and the future you’d have to pass through the Temple of Time and note once again that Rauru is missing.

It’s also worth noting just how much infodumping happens at the Temple  of Time. As the game currently stands, there’s very little to actually do there, but there are several long conversations that take place there. You talk to Zelda as both herself and Sheik, you talk to Rauru and the other sages (via the Sacred Realm), and even Ganon monologues there at the end. You end up spending a LOT of time standing around while other characters pelt you with information in this particular location. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t have been any big conversations here, but rather that I feel like there are more than there probably would’ve otherwise been. Some (if not most) of that information could’ve been obtained more gradually and actively if the Light Temple had managed to be a thing.

And look, I’m not saying that what we ultimately got in the game doesn’t work; there’s nothing specifically wrong with the way Ocarina of Time handles the Temple of Time. I agree that getting the Light Medallion and Light Arrows in the Temple of Time isn’t completely out of nowhere since it is connected to the Sacred Realm. I’m only saying it doesn’t come across as the original design to me; as far as I’m concerned, it clearly, obviously screams that what we got was a back-up plan. It works just enough to make sense, but it would work so much better if it’d been done in another way. Everything just clicks together a little more snugly upon considering that there may have been a sixth temple. It’s not that what we got doesn’t make sense, it’s just that I believe these ideas make more sense.

My preoccupation with the suspected cut content of Ocarina of Time endured for years. The topic became a sticking point for me and eventually evolved into a very long rant, which I then foisted upon any unsuspecting soul that made the mistake of expressing a passing interest in The Legend of Zelda. I was met with about as many different responses as you can imagine; some agreed that I was on to something and had maybe solved a mystery, whereas others thought I was reading way too much into details that just don’t have that deep of a meaning. Unfortunately, it’s obviously not something I could take that far in an argument because there was no way to prove my hypothesis. It’s all just a guess, and even though I think there’s some pretty strong evidence to back it up, in the end I have no way to actually verify it. (I mean I guess I could’ve tried contacting Nintendo, but I highly doubt they’d tell me anything one way or the other.)

After several years, I mercifully accosted fewer and fewer Zelda fans with my barrage of fan theories. I moved on to other games, new ideas, and gradually left this dead-end obsession behind me – or at least, I thought I had, until I received a copy of Twilight Princess as an Easter gift in 2007. Needless to say, when I arrived at the new Temple of Time and realized it was a for-realsies playable dungeon with monsters, puzzles, and items, I went through the fucking roof. I literally screamed and shouted and cheered because I felt so vindicated; I realize it’s not definitive proof, but it still felt like a soft confirmation of what I’d been saying for years.

What really resonated with me, however, was the fact that Twilight Princess’ Temple of Time also makes heavy use of the Light Medallion symbol.

Is it possible that this was used as part of the Temple of Time’s visual motif because the symbol appears on the warp platform in Ocarina of Time? Yes, it’s certainly possible, but it’s hard not to also see it as a nod to something more that got left behind. From a fan-theory standpoint, I feel like that’s about as clear of a connection as you can get.

Again, I know that none of this absolutely confirms anything in Ocarina of Time, but it definitely feels like one game is trying to ‘correct’ the shortcomings of the other. It appears as though the dev team wanted to make up for the things they didn’t (or couldn’t) do the first time around, and the fact that they were willing to delay the release of Twilight Princess just to ensure everything was just right reinforces that vibe. They could’ve just cut things again, but they opted for a delay (which is a HUGE deal in the world of game design). Maybe they were making a point to keep everything there in its entirety this time.

What I find particularly interesting about the situation is that Twilight Princess didn’t merely add justification to my old hunch about Ocarina of Time; it actually expanded upon it. Despite having come to the conclusion that the Light Temple and the Temple of Time were likely the same building, I never had much of an idea of how exactly that worked. I mean, it’s literally just a church. We can see exactly how big it is, and it doesn’t look at all big enough to house the sorts of obstacles facing the player in other temples. For lack of any other real explanation, my guess had always been that the Light Temple was mostly underground, hence why I said the back chamber was the “entrance” to the temple.

However, I realized that there’s another possibility that works much better once Twilight Princess rolled around. I still think that the chamber is only the entrance, but it’s the entrance to the Sacred Realm, not a brick-and-mortar temple in the same sense that the other temples are. The way this could’ve worked is demonstrated beautifully in the Sacred Grove, when Link uncovers the magical entrance to the Temple of Time of the past.

Just as the holy energies connect this door to the temple that once stood on these grounds in Twilight Princess, the same principle could’ve been applied in Ocarina of Time to allow Link passage into the Sacred Realm, which makes so much sense as the secret location of the Light Temple I felt like an idiot for not realizing it sooner. OF COURSE the Light Temple would be located in the Sacred Realm, that’s what the “light” is all about!! It’s holy power! That’s why you get the Light Arrows there! They’re the ultimate holy weapon, straight out of the Sacred Realm! It all made perfect sense, and the realization hit me like a ton of bricks.

Of course, this then immediately begs the question, what exactly would the Light Temple be if it’s in the Sacred Realm? It’s hard to imagine enemies making their way in or some kind of monster squatting inside, considering that the Sacred Realm is known for its ability to seal away evil. For an answer to this, I personally turn toward yet another game in the series: The Windwaker. One of the levels in that game, The Tower of the Gods, is also a holy structure – and it’s conceived as a test to weed out anyone not worthy of the treasure hidden inside. This is purely speculation on my part, but I can imagine the Light Temple functioning in the same vein. Filling the temple with enemies whose sole purpose is to test your mettle makes absolute sense, because the entire reason you’re in there is to get the Light Arrows, aka the most powerful weapon in the game. That’s a VERY big deal, so it shouldn’t be so simple that just anyone can stroll in and take them. Anyone intending to take the ultimate holy weapon is going to have to pass whatever tests the Light Temple – aka the Sacred Realm – can throw at them to prove that they’re a worthy recipient. This would ideally make it the toughest temple in the game, which is not only called for by the narrative, but it works with the game pacing, since the Light Temple would’ve been last.

This would also explain the disappearance of Rauru during the adult segment of the game. As the holy man taking care of the Temple of Time, it’s reasonable to assume that he might venture into the Light Temple hoping to pass the tests and secure the Light Arrows once evil descends on Hyrule. I mean, if anyone’s going to do it, he probably has the best chance, and I can’t see him just sitting by and NOT trying to do anything about it. It’s all the more reason for him to be chosen as the Light Sage. Unfortunately, no matter how good Rauru is, he’s still not the Hero of Time, so it naturally wouldn’t have worked out and he’d end up stuck in the temple in some way (as the sages tend to do), hence why he’s absent seven years in the future. Rauru going into the Sacred Realm in the hopes of obtaining the Light Arrows is also sympatico with the role he ultimately receives in Ocarina of Time. He’s only ever seen in the Sacred Realm, and if we scale down the role we’ve been speculating for him, that does seem like the most logical place for him to end up.

Making these connections completely changed the way I viewed Twilight Princess, much in the same way my view of Ocarina of Time was altered by the connections I made with that fateful screenshot. Soon enough, other elements of Twilight Princess began jumping out at me as somehow rectifying unresolved issues in its predecessor. For example, another thing that really bugged me about Ocarina of Time is the fact that, even after you beat the Water Temple, Zora’s Domain remains frozen. I never understood why it was left this way, since every other area reverts back to its original, beautiful form after you defeat the evil in its associated temple. It’s thoroughly unsatisfying to trudge your way through what is arguably the most hated temple in the game and not receive a full reward for your efforts.

Twilight Princess not only replicates the original problem of Zora’s Domain freezing, but it ACTUALLY THAWS IT OUT this time around! And not only that, you melt the ice BEFORE you even go to the temple! That alone feels like Nintendo practically coming out and saying, “Yeah, we messed up, our bad. Here, let us restore the Zoras right away as an apology.” It was such a huge mental release to see that ice melt away and the Zoras come back to life! My brain was finally able to let go of another major frustration I’d had for years!

The City in the Sky is another area where it appears Twilight Princess makes up for lost time – and I can already sense the confusion in some of you. Yes, Ocarina of Time doesn’t have a sky level, but there may have been one planned in the beta stages of the game. Another image unearthed by The Odyssey of Hyrule got a LOT of attention back in the day, largely because it 1) was an animated gif (ooh, fancy!), 2) involves the Triforce, and 3) was speculated to be from some kind of ‘Sky Temple.’

(Once upon a time this gif was reasonably sized, but since computers have roided the fuck out since the days of Windows 95, I realize it’s not the biggest or clearest thing in the world anymore and I apologize.)

The question of whether or not Ocarina of Time was supposed to have a Sky Temple was a huge hot topic among Zelda sites back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. Countless gamers spent enormous amounts of time and energy trying to find the so-called Sky Temple, but unfortunately, nothing was ever discovered beyond the early screenshots. It soon became another piece of gaming folklore passing from person to person and became more obscure over time.

And that’s exactly why Twilight Princess’ inclusion of the City in the Sky, much like the expansion of the Temple of Time, feels a lot like Nintendo is making up for something they may have intended to do but were unable to complete. When I played this area for the first time I couldn’t help thinking that the small glimpse in the gif above feels like it could feasibly fit in here, and it was the coolest feeling of, “I knew it!”

My final connection between the two isn’t so much something that I believed was intended to be in Ocarina of Time and got downsized, but rather something I just plain wanted to be there. I was always sad that, even though you do technically get to enter Hyrule Castle, you don’t really get to go in there. You get an extremely limited and very linear track to follow, and at best you get glimpses of some of the other areas that probably would’ve been really cool to explore had the game been designed for it.

I always felt like the fact that you don’t get any real exploration of Hyrule Castle upset some of the balance in the game, considering that you do have to fully traverse Ganon’s Castle as a solvable dungeon. Getting a thorough sense of what Hyrule Castle used to be like before evil fell would help reinforce just how much things had changed in the seven years that Link was in the Sacred Realm, especially since that contrast is such a strong theme everywhere else in the game.

So, much like when I realized I was actually entering the Temple of Time as a level, I had a very similar reaction when I realized I was getting Hyrule Castle in the same way.

I may not have freaked out quite as much, but damn if that wasn’t another enormous payoff for me! Getting to really look around inside of Hyrule Castle, and furthermore in a version that’s really able to convey the scale and grandness OF a castle, was an absolutely magical moment of overdue gratification.

What’s even better is that Twilight Princess even gives you a mild fake-out in this regard, since at the very beginning you kind of go through Hyrule Castle, but as with Ocarina of Time, it’s extremely limited and linear, so it seems at first like you’re getting roughly the same experience with better graphics.

I remember playing this for the first time and thinking, “Well, at least I’ve gotten a little closer to seeing inside of Hyrule Castle, but I really wish they’d just ACTUALLY let us go in.” IMAGINE MY CHAGRIN when later on that’s exactly what I ended up doing! I sat there fan-screaming for several minutes, and could practically hear the game going, “GOTCHA!!”

The first time I played Twilight Princess, I was of course excited for a brand new adventure, but I wasn’t at all prepared for the apparent legitimization of my years of insisting that there was more to Ocarina of Time. I wouldn’t call it a hard confirmation by any means, but Twilight Princess seems to fill in so many of the missing puzzle pieces from its predecessor that the story finally felt “complete” to me. Twilight Princess, intentionally or not, wrapped up the loose ends that Ocarina of Time left behind.

And now, as I sit back and reflect on the experience, I wonder if perhaps that’s why I never noticed that Twilight Princess bookended the series for me for over a decade, even despite obtaining more games in the franchise. Having my sticking points unexpectedly ‘fixed’ after all those years of pining was incredibly psychologically calming for me, and I think it’s a major reason why I haven’t particularly sought out any other Zelda games in the last 12 years. Twilight Princess gave me everything I’d been looking for since 1998, a decade of hemming and hawing finally resolved.

I honestly believe that playing Zelda games will be different for me now as I move forward, because I won’t have part of my brain mentally searching for a way to fill those little voids in the back of my head. I’ve never so much as placed Skyward Sword or Breath of the Wild into their respective consoles before, but in retrospect, maybe that was a good thing. Now that this tangled mess is behind me, I can truly move on to a new adventure, because I’ll no longer be glancing over my shoulder at the one I left behind.

And when you get down to it, that’s a quality that The Legend of Zelda embodies, too.

 

Obligatory Legal Crap

The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, and all other elements are © Nintendo. Presumably the Light Temple is under their copyright too, but honestly it could be up for grabs since they’ve never actually made one. Boy, I bet it’d chap their ass if someone decided to make a Zelda clone that centered around a Light Temple and they couldn’t do a single thing about it.