Latest / Mythic Mind Games / 6 - Legend of Zelda: Triforce Virtues and the Cyclical Hero

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6 - Legend of Zelda: Triforce Virtues and the Cyclical Hero · Mythic Mind Games

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Mythic mind Games, where we discuss
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: video games through the lens of the Christian humanities. I'm
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: welcome back to our first episode in a two parter
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: on Zeldam. And if you're listening to this on the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: public feed, the non Patreon feed, then you'll notice that
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: we are. We have back to back episodes here that
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: we just had episode last week. We can have another
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: episode next week, and so you know, originally my design
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: was for us to start off every other week, but
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: we things just happened, so we kind of had some
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: some episodes stockpiled here. I didn't want to hold on
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: to him for too long, and so we're going back
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: to back for now. But I can't guarantee that we're
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: gonna be able to keep that up, and in fact,
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: we probably won't unless I guess more support that allows
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: me to divert attention from elsewhere to really get into
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: providing weekly episodes here, maybe even more than weekly eventually,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: if we hit the right levels of support that allowed
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: me to do that. And so if you like what
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: we're doing here, if you like this conversation that you're
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: about to listen to today, then head over to patreon
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: dot com slash Mythic Mind and lend your support. Get
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: involved in this community, whether you are a silent supporter
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: or you're more actively involved in joining some of our
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: shows and whatnot. I definitely welcome your company. But today,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: as I said, it's the beginning of a two parter
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: on Zeldam and Zelda is obviously a major franchise. It
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: has a major grip on our culture. You know, even
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: people who aren't really active in video games are at
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: least generally familiar with Zeldam. It's one of those franchises
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: that extends from the nes up to the current iterations.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: You know, it's about as much of a mainstay at
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: as Mario, which which is pretty significant. And you know,
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: whenever you have a franchise that has this kind of
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: enduring value, I'm convinced that it has that enduring value,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: it has that staying power because it resonates with certain
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: eternal reality of the human experience, certain desires, certain longing,
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: certain things that we're looking for, whether we consciously recognize
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: that or not. In our Star Wars conversation, I've talked
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: about how how Star Wars is something like a modern mythology,
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and what makes mythology significant is it's something like a
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: public dream, as Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell would say,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: in that it speaks to to something that happens kind
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: of our own in our own psyches, but in a
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: way that we can visibly and communally recognize that together
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and engage with. And so I think that Zelda has
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: that kind of mythological power to it, which is why
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: it's such a major franchise. And that being said, in
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: the conversation we're about to listen to with as I'm
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: joined by David and Josh, they really lead this conversation.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: As as I mentioned, my experience with Zelda really ends
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: with the N sixty four back with Okreen of Time
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: in Major's Mask, and so I participate to the Cynthia
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: mable here, but really Josh and David are going to
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: be carrying this conversation, and so I appreciate them. But
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: next week we'll have more of a targeted kind of conversation.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: We'll have an interview with Anthony Cirilla, who is as
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: a professor at the College of the Ozarks, and he
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: has co edited a book of essays on Zelda and Mythopoia,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: and so he's gonna be a good resource to go
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: even further with this investigation into the legend of Zelda.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: But for now, I hope that you enjoy this general
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: conversation with Josh, David and me, and let's go ahead
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: and get to it now. All right, welcome to our
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: latest episode of Mythic mind Games, as we talk about Zelda. Now,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: this is I mean, I haven't played Zelda since in
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: sixty four days majoris Mask and Nakarinam played Link to
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the Past, but not since Superintended Days. So I'm gonna
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: be a little bit out of loop on this conversation,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: but I fully expect that Josh and David will be
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: able to carry it to I'm gonna let Josh really
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: sort of see this this conversation, and so Josh go
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: ahead and take it over.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks, Andrew, thanks for the honor and privilege of
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: I'm seeing this.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: So this should be fun, Sorr. Yeah, just typical mythic
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: mind fashion. I figured it would be best if we
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: just talked about our just general overall experience at the
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: Zelda So, Andrew, you kind of explained yours, But did
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: you want to say anything further on that?
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's about it. I mean I I
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: had the uh, I had older brothers and so I
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: had the gold cartridge in es Zelda, I had the
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: the link to the past. That Okarina is really what
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: iut considered to be my Zelda game, the one that
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: with so many people right that that's the one that
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: stuck with my imagination, that stuck with me over time.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: My cat comes to me when I whistle oppone a song,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: it's it's it's the one that stuck with me, and
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: I just especially taking a pretty much a hiatus from
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: playing games, I just I miss a lot of what
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: happened since then in the world of Zelda. And so
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: that's about where I am for for this topic.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: Dave, you can go next.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Well for me, I'm video game wise. I
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: feel like I'm probably the biggest geek in this group.
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: So I I think it was in sixth grade, maybe
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: seventh grade, when the Legend of Zelda came out and
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: I blew through it in like a week. And I've
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: played all of the other ones at release pretty much.
• 5:30
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I've it's been a part of my life
• 5:34
  Speaker 4: since the early teenage years on, and I've always really
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: enjoyed the themes and the sense of exploration and all
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: that aspect of it. So I'm looking forward to talking
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: about it, and.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: I'll definitely want to really lead into your insight a
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: lot on those those early games.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: I'm not calling you old by the way your wisdom is.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: Appreciated, did and that is not I'm not just saying
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: that is sincere and genuine. So for me not really
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: having the experience of a lot of the NES and
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: SNS games, I I dabbled in them when I was older,
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: and there's like emulators and things like that, but based
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: only the timing and I was born. Okeraina of Time
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: was the first Celda game to come out in my lifetime.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: I was like three or four when it came out,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: and it's kind of same thing with me Andrews, like
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: that was like the game that was really that was
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: like the game of like my entire childhood. There's not
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: a single game that was really more influential, and uh
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: really that stuck with me more probably in like the
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: first like sixteen years of my life or so than
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: the not Okerina of Time. So it was like a
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: nine year span of me like be like playing that game,
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: getting a little bit further, getting frustrated, taking a break,
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: coming back to it because I was I was a
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: little kid, and I just wasn't smart enough to up.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: I just wasn't smart enough to.
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: Get past Joba Jobbers Belly and then the Forest Temple,
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: than the Water Temple, and then the Shadow Temple after that.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: So but I yeah, I played.
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: I mean I played Majora's Mask when it came out,
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: revisited and beat that one later. I think Windwaker was
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: the first one that I actually would when it came out.
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: I was actually able to beat it, like all the
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: way through without having to take breaks. But Twilight Princess
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: was probably the one that also really hit me at
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: a really good time too, because I was about I
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: was about eleven when that came out. Got it when
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: the release of the Wei itself that came that was
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: one of the games that came with it, or one
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: of the options you had, I think, and uh so
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: I played that one. I was like, I felt like
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: it was just dark enough where I was just the
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: right age to play that at the right time. So
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: they all stuck with me I liked Skyward Sword too,
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: but I was so fed up with the WE remote
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: system by the time Skyward Sword came out that I
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: actually never finished it because I was I was sick
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: of like fighting like this all the time, so I
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: admit ed never I never finished it. But I know
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: the story and it was an excellent origin story.
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  Speaker 2: I guess.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: Since I'm driving this discussion and less say have something
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: to say, I I don't want to rant too much
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: about my experiences because they're lengthy. They'll probably come out
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: as we go through this, but I think one thing
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: I did want to talk about this and we have this,
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: We have this interview scheduled with Anthony Sirilla, who's really
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: really a great voice in this uh this realm. He
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: he edited a uh a book on like the basically
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: mythopoea in Zelda. I can get you the exact title
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: if you want. But this whole idea there is that
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: like Zelda is not just like the legs of the
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Zela's here was just not just like a childish game.
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: It is in some sense, but it's it's it's also
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: it's childish and all of the best ways, right, Like
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: just like as the Great fairy tales and the great
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: romances of the medieval and Renaissance and even like to
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: some extent, the modern era are as well. And I think,
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: you know, one of my goals here this in this chat,
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: in with the chat with Anthony two days from now,
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: that this really debunks the idea that watch of Zelda
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: is just an adventure game for kids, in that there's
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: not a lot of literary or philosophical depth in it.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: Because I think one of the really interesting things about
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: Zelda is that so Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator, also created Mario,
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: also created Donkey Kong, later created Star Fox in the nineties,
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: so that was all those others were created in the eighties,
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  Speaker 3: and this game really in Dave, perhaps you could speak
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  Speaker 3: to this in a second, but it's like it really
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: pushed like from my understanding, at least just reading the
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: history of video games, it really kind of pushed like
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: the uh, really the literary and narratival elements of a
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: video game was kind of revolutionary a sense like you're
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: not you're not playing pong with your buddy in his garage,
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: Like you're not Mario jumping over the barrels that Donkey
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: Kong throws at you right, like you're not Super Mario Bros.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: Like there was an actual like you know, the original
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: Zelda game from eighty six is it's a role playing
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: game and there's a story and there's text, and there's
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: there's items, and like a not an open world, but
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: for its time, a pretty open worlds to explore in
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: a way. So Dave, if you want to actually say
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: more about that, I think you'd be the right person
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: for for that topic.
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think, uh, that's something that was really revolutionary
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: about the first one was that it doesn't have a score.
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: You know, you don't get a hundred points for stabbing
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: an octorock or anything. The whole point of the game
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: is just to explore this world and your your hand
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: isn't really held, you know. You you have to walk
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: into that first cave and the old guy gives you
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: a sword, and from there you can go in any
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: direction and just you know, when you run up against
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: a wall, you try to figure out how to get
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: past that. And I've seen where Miamoto said that was
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: kind of inspired by just exploring the countryside when he
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: was a kid. You know, he'd find caves or ponds
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: and things like that, and he wanted to to kind
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: of latch onto that sense of wonder and exploration and discovery,
• 11:07
  Speaker 4: which I really feel like they didn't capture again until
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: all the way to Breath of the Wild, where you
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: could just go in any direction and you would stumble
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: across things to do. But I mean even the dungeons
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: in the original Zelda, like sometimes you would have to
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: burn the right bush and a staircase would appear, and
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: that's how you found the dungeons. So like, you know,
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: as a middle schooler, I would pass friends in the
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: hallway between classes and be like, well, hey, I found
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: you know where the fourth dungeon is or whatever. So
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: there was there was a lot of fun, especially before
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: the Internet, when you know, now you're only stuck for
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: two minutes until you google a video where somebody's got
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: a complete walk through. But yeah, before this, most games
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: were arcade games where the goal was to try and
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: convince people to put more quarters in a machine, so
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: the score and getting your name on the scoreboard was
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: the only goal. But they started to slowly realize, hey,
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: we can tell real stories that people have already bought
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: the game. Let's just make it an engaging enjoyable experience.
• 12:15
  Speaker 5: So yeah, that was a good point.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate your perspective. I had.
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: I think there was like a version of that that
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: released on like it was like a re release for
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: the game Boy Advance when I was a little kid,
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: probably two and one, two and two roughly, and that
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: was like the only time I played it, And of course,
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: growing up playing like Operato of Majora's Mask, I was like,
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: this is hard, and he's like eight.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Bit, and as a kid, I just didn't get it.
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: But one day I will go back and probably try
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: to play those, so we will see if I can
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: actually do it. They're they're very challenging in their own
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: right too. But I kind of want to like talk
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: about like just this idea of like just there being
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: just beauty meaning and such things in the Zelda series.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: So I kind of see like High Rule as something
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: of it's kind of like something like of like a
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: like a adventurous world in like a romantic sense, right
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: like where it it draws you in, it's imaginative. It's
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: kind of like it's almost like reading like a George
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: McDonald novel like Fantastes or something where it's like there's this,
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: there's this beautiful world that draws you in and not
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: everything's just explained to you. And I think in our
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: postmodern society, and not directly picking on post modern ideologies directly,
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: but just just in general how people today like view
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: literature and writing and TV. And Andrew is comment maybe
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: maybe more comments later, but people like just are very critical.
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: People have a very critical spirit today, and sometimes I
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: think Zeldic almost get passed over in a conversation because
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: it's not always as obviously written through, you know, explicit
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: dialogue in the way like Final Fantasy is right, where
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: you have these back and forth between a whole cast
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: of characters for thirty to seventy hours sometimes of like
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: gameplay and where things are explained to you and cut
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: scenes maybe a little bit more at times, even I
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: think Zell that can kind of get over passed, And
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: I would say, like wrongfully so in that for sure,
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: but I also think in general too, what I'm also
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: getting at there is there's no uh A story doesn't
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: have to always be on the nose and told with
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: a really rich and robust narrative. Like I am a
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: fan of novels just as much as I am a
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: fan of poetry, and I teach both of those things
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: to middle schoolers, and they both have their purpose.
• 14:46
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: It's good to read like a well fleshed out, four
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: hundred page book. It's also good to work through a
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: poetry collection where sometimes you only have, like you know,
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: sixteen lines of poetry that paints you a picture, and
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: it's right. And so I think there's something about the
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: world of Zelda that's just incredibly poetic in its own right.
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: But there's paired another sense too, I think with yes,
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: like the characters are fleshed out in a way, it's
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: just not there's there's not be as much dialogue, but
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: it's mythological in a sense too. And it's mythological in
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: the sense that you've got basically every game is like
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: its own episodic tale, right, like you have you have
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: an introduction, and there's there's tension, and there's a plot,
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: and there's a beginning, and there's a middle, and there's
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: an end. There's an antagonist, often Gan or Gannendorf. Right,
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: there's the protagonist is always link. Zelda is usually, if
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: not always in the game, and she's sometimes a damsel
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: in distress often but she's also more than that. But
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: these episodic encounters they all roll up to a higher
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: a higher meaning, and a higher really meta narrative overall,
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: if you may, And it makes it kind of the
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: same things that we appreciate about mythology, right like you read,
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: you read like you know, the story of Prometheus, or
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: then you go read one of Homer's epics, or then
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: you go read like Hessi. It's theogony, like the tales
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: of like the Greek gods, and they're all part of
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: a greater mythos, right And I think in a sense
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Zelda is the same way. And it's really we can
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: talk about this more later if if you all desire
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: to do so, But there's a higher mythological significance to it,
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: and there's beauty just even in the way that they interconnect.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: In my opinion, Yeah, I'd like to get to some
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: of that mythology in a second, but first in emphasizing
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: that Zelda perhaps tends to be more of a poetic
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: experience than strict narrative, which it is, I mean, at
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: least in my experience. Again, it's it's fairly limited at
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: this point that there's not a lot of story again
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: from going like in sixty four days and behind that,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: there's not a lot of story built into it. I
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: guess you can outline the story pretty quickly. And so
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: when you describe it as being poetic, what do you
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: mean by that? What makes the Zelda franchise poetic?
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question, and I
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: think just kind of speaking, uh, just very like high level.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: I think one of the I mean, and I kind
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: of hint to this earlier, but one of the biggest
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: differences in poetry like pro is really is sometimes just
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: merely the fact that like you get you get word
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: images in a sense, right, and they're not just word images,
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: but you get these they're almost like mosaics in a way,
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: where you get these different lines.
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: Of poetry that come together and they're beautiful in.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: Their own in their own right, like as their own
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: fragments of their own pieces, but they as pieces and
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: fragments come together to a hole and make a picture
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: that's you know, ten times maybe one hundred times more
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: beautiful at times because they all come together in concord
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: and they work in a harmony in a sense. And
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: I think there's something about and maybe it's just as
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: simple with zelda As and this conviction probably grows deeper
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: just again in context of our postmodern society, that it's
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: it's really just enchanting. And people might say, well, it's
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: just like a forest, it's just a castle. It's just
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: there's just choros and there's just fairies and high leans,
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: and it's like yes, but it's like that's that's where
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: you want to spend your time sometimes and especially just
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: in them, you know, argue by the most disenchanted society
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: we ever lived in, right. I mean, this is why
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: in the nineteenth century the Romantics like like Wordsworth and
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: Coleridge and Keats and later on MacDonald and others were
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: really pushing back because there was about one hundred years
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: of just disenchantment post Enlightenment, in the Enlightenment and post Enlightenment,
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: and I think we are honestly seeing a lot of
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: parallels there in our time where it's like postmodernism is
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: really ugly in every form, and I think sometimes it's
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: immersing yourself in a beautiful world and of itself is
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: profound and meaningful, and like you do get characters within that,
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: and sometimes it's just a mere matter of show rather
• 19:20
  Speaker 3: than tell, things get explained to you in a lot
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: of more RPG based Like we talk about the Elder
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: Schools sometimes here, and it's like the amount of conversations
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: you can have in the Elder Schools are in Knights
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: of the Old Republic, and I love that they're made
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: that way. But it doesn't mean that Zelda is not meaningful,
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: because you can't just walk around the town and talk
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: to like, you know, twenty different guys, even though they
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: all have the same voice a lot of the time.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: In Elder Schools, there's something to it where it's like
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: you're being shown a lot of things, but you're not
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: always being told. And when you're not being told, you
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: can ask questions, and when you're not being told the answer,
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: you can ask more questions and you can think about
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: it longer, and you don't always get a direct answer.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: Sometimes that's really fun and really evoking of wond Artist
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: in general.
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: And I I'm thinking back on a lot of these games.
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: Most of them open by showing, you know, carvings on
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: a wall or tapestries, explaining something that happened in the
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: ancient past. I think of like wind Waker and even
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: the beginning of Link to the past and what's the
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: most recent one. Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: the Wild. They have that aspect going to them, so
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: it's like, Okay, we have these old stories and then
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: we're put into the modern world where people are just
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: living their lives, and then lo and behold, there's truth
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: in these stories. They're not just stories, you know. And
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: I think that's an important thing for people to have
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: in their minds that, yeah, just because a story is
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: old is not mean it has no value, that it's
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: something to be forgotten, that there are deep, important truths
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: in the old tales.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I appreciate the connection you made with the Romantics,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: because it's really in the Romantic period where, especially in
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: the arts, landscape becomes a character. It becomes a focus
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: of attention in a way that you really just don't see,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: at least predominantly in the art that's comes before it.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: That's one of the things that Lewis says about Bay
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: of bailf obviously not Romantic because it's exceptional in the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: fact that the landscape is a character, something that you
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: don't really see widespread until the Romantic period, and so
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: that definitely does feed into sort of the the Zelda
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: esthetic right where it's about I don't know, being more
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: than becoming, I suppose, And I mean I should caution
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: that the romantics can go a little wild, but focus
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: on exactly what it is that we're talking about. I
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: think that's a good connection.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: I would argue that Shelley, Shelley and Byron probably get
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: more unnecessarily wild in the wrong ways than the others,
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: just for people who don't have that context but read
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: read words worth Guys and Keats and some of Blake.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: But anyway, we won't Alley for that any further. So
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: I think one thing, did you have something David? Before
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: I moved on to.
• 22:25
  Speaker 4: I was just thinking about Link and the way that
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: he doesn't speak. And we've talked before about how often
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: in games the main character won't speak as because you're
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: supposed to feel, you're supposed to be able to put
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: yourself in that position. That's kind of a philosophy that
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: some games take, and this one's definitely one of those.
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: But I think it also works as part of his
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: character because he doesn't really need to speak. You know,
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: he knows what his mission is, he knows right and wrong,
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: he knows the task at hand, so it becomes kind
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: of part of his heroic quality that he doesn't waste
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: his time with words. I think so, I think sticking
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: through that even when they've been able to, you know,
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: have voice actors for everyone else if they want to
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: that they keep links silent as has always just become
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: an aspect of his character that is heroic quality.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's a good perspective, especially because I've
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: definitely seen this generalized like YouTube videossayers or game reviewers
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: is kind of like pick on link because he's like
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: boring or one dimensional, and.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: I think it is.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: It's just like the point that this all exists in
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: a context of higher meaning and you might you cannot
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: like it, like that's fine, but there's more to think
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: about that meets the eye, and that's really a motif
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: for understanding Selda, I think in a lot of ways.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: But another thing I wanted to talk about was and
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: this is certainly important to me, as I'm sure it
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: is to others, but just like the role of music
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: and Zelda and even how that ploys into the world,
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: because not only is the music beautiful, but I think
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: the music is pretty much always beautifully fitting in its
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: right context for where you are in the world, what's
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: going on in the story. But even by itself it
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: is I mean, I think it is some of the best,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: the best video game composition of all time. I think
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: it's sort of some of the most well known. But
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: I can't even it's hard to even go into like
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: a like if I had to make like a top
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: ten list or start just naming off favorites, I just
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: be all over the place. And there's not many game
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: series long standing like this that I can say that for.
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: And it's not it's not just good or iconic in
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: a way that it's catchy, but it's again, it's beautifully composed.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: It's it's harmonious, like everything works in concord with the
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: other parts of it.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: It's like it's like a symphony.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: I live in the Detroit area and the Detroit Symphony
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Orchestra performed the Zelda music a few years ago, and
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: I went and it was wonderful. It was you know,
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: I don't know if I could say on par with
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: like Mozart or Bach, but it's if it's not on
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: par with them, it's a it's a tear or two donal,
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: which is still a massive, massive compliment in my opinion,
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: and I think music is actually one of the best
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: parts of the entire series. And I mean, let's just
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: be very frank here that like, music is important, and
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: it's beautiful and it's there's hardly many things more enchanting
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: than that. In George McDonald's essay The Fantastic Imagination, he says,
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: in quote, the best way with music, I imagine, is
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: upon it, but to be still and let it work
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: on that part of us for whose sake it exists.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. And I
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: think there's a sense there where again, people everything has
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: to be boiled down to like sign and rationalism. Sometimes
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: like oh, the writing has to be completely understandable. That
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: dialogue didn't make sense to me. Therefore it's stupid or
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: it's poorly written, or I don't like this character because
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: they're silent or something. Right, people can say, oh, it's
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: just music, but it's like, yes, it is just music.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: But sometimes music is above and beyond even the writing
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: of a of a video game or a novel or
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: a short story in general, and so I think just
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: the role of music in general. Anything you guys want
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: to say about that, or even if you have some
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: favorite pieces, please feel free to share.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I do think that's an important point that
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: we talked about something like music, or I mean, so
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: much of aesthetics that it does, when it's done well,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: it does speak to not an irrational part of us,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: but the subrational part of us, that part of us
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: that stands beneath our rational nature and upholds it. We
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: talked about this recently in one of the Star Wars
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: conversations over for the Movies and Shows podcast, that the
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Christian position is that it's really also played this position
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: that once you get to the limits of reason and
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: you start to approach that by which you reason, well,
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: now you're outside the bounds of reason, and that's fundamentally
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: where it is that we come from, which is why
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the great most rational medieval Christian thinkers have a mystical
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: component to them, where even your your Thomas Aquinas or
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: whoever like you get to the limits of your reason
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: and now you find that the ultimately the place that
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: you're from rights, as Lewis would say, till we have faces.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: It's like the place where all the beauty comes from,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: this part of us that we know that we belong to,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: but that we can't necessarily comprehend rationally. And music art
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: in generally done well, speaks to that part of us
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: where there may be elements of it that we can
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: kind of point to with words, which words words our signs,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: but they're not the thing in itself, and good music
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: does is sort of like the thing itself, communicating to
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: us as much as possible. And so I definitely agree
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: that in the most enchanting games, the games that are
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: for those part most worth playing, they have incredible soundtracks
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: because they do such a good job of hitting that
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: part of us. So I think that's that's an important point.
• 28:19
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: And the original Zelda, you know, music on the nes
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: was really tricky because they had to you know, they
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: had to keep it short and looping and not drive
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: you insane while you're playing the game. But the original Zelda,
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: which I forgot, I brought visual aid. So here's the
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: here's my American copy of Zelda, and this is the
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: Japanese release that came out about a year and a
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: half earlier.
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: It is.
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: On a little tiny floppy disc the Famicom disc system
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: is what they released itd on, but they couldn't fit
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: a lot of music on those, so I think there's
• 28:55
  Speaker 4: maybe five or six little loops in.
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: The original Zelda.
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: You know, there's the title screen, the overworld, the dungeons,
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: the final dungeon, and then the credits pretty much. So yeah,
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: it it sets the tone and it sets your mood
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: because of the way that music is able to to
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: influence us, as you were saying, Andrew, the way that
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: it touches you in a way I mean you can't
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: even really put into words.
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: So yeah, and as as much as video game music
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: has obviously become more sophisticated with the technology, that there
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: is something charming about the old tunes on the N
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: s and S and e s.
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, designing and creating under constraints is a sometimes creates
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: things that you wouldn't get otherwise because you know, they
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: have like four, four or five channels to work with,
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: and I don't think they could loop something that was
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: very long. So to get such iconic things like the
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: Zelda Overworld theme and you know, the Super Mario theme,
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: stuff like that is pretty impressive.
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: I did actually shut my camera off to provide a
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: not nearly as cool visual aid. But these are for
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: my childhood. Still have them sitting in here. Don't know
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: where my wind Waker and Toilet Princess discs are though,
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: So I.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Said, now, where's your your Japanese Akarina.
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: It's you know, it's in storage. I of course I
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: have one.
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: The Japanese Akarina cover is is. Actually I don't think
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: it's as good as the American one. It's a rare
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: case where that's the case. But that's sorry, that's my more.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll be more impressed with somebody presenting a like
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: an original laser disc of the nineteen eighties Zelda cartoon series.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: So that's what I that's what That's what I need
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: in this conversation.
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: There's another example of why it's good when link doesn't talk,
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: because then you then you can end up with things
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: like that abomination. Yeah, totally American made very obviously that
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: that is not how he would have been portrayed in Japan.
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: Actually, uh actually grew up on the you know teenager
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: in the late two thousands and on YouTube they were
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: like the YouTube poop videos of using that content as
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: the substance of the video or the visual substance of
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: the video. And uh, I don't know if the YouTube
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: poop was any better or worse than the original show,
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: but that's my experience with the show being a late
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: millennial as I am.
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: We mentioned some about the broader mythology and the various
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: things that all these games sort of feed into. Gosh,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: can you elaborate on what is the mythology of Elder
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: or what is what links what links all these together?
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: Pun intended?
• 31:48
  Speaker 5: I guess?
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Was it was it actually intended?
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: I have to know it was not intended? So unintended?
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Got it? Fair enough? Okay?
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: I had to challenge you on that because I was curreedious. Okay, yeah,
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: I will try to cover this to the best of
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: my understanding and my my cheat sheet to the right
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: of me that I will admit that I have because
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: I have no no war Master here. But so basically,
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: and you like get like tidbits of this throughout the game,
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: and honestly, if you really want to know, like just
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: go like buy a copy of the High Rule Historia
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: online and uh, I.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Think it's too expensive on like twenty bucks.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: Or so, and uh, it really just gives you a
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: lot of like information about Zelden. This is like an
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: officially like published thing. So with those sometimes fan theory,
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: fan made stuff can be really good.
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: It's it's helped to it's helped to kind of pull
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: everything together.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: But basically so it's is like it's very mythological, just
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: in the sense of just like the timeline like it
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: has it has like gods and gods who were there
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: either you know, before time. I'm not sure exactly how
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: it's understood in their culture. And one thing to note
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: too is like something like the a lot of the
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: influence on Zelda is going to come from like beliefs
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: about like from like Japanese like the Japanese Shinto religion.
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: And I'm not going to even try to draw those
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: connections because I don't really know anything about it, to
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: be honest, but probably just the difference between the Eastern
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: world and Western world and the sense but people have
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: mythologies all over the place where it's not just the Greeks,
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: the Romans and the Norse and the Celts in the East,
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: they had them too, and so there's this era basically
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: it takes place before the timeline and it's really the
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: uh like the creation of the world. And this is
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: kind of like thinking of just like the gods and
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: like the Greek pantheon and the sense too. But basically,
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: before time, there's this place called the still world where
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: the god Null would just erase whatever was formed whenever
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: it formed. And then there were these three golden goddesses
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: that came upon came upon it, and they imprisoned Null,
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: but n all created rifts. And so these three gods,
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: and they their names pop up a lot through the series.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: But you have Din the goddess of power, the creator
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: of the earth, Nehru, the goddess of wisdom, the giver
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: of order, and then Ferrariri, the goddess of courage and
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: the creator of life. If you know you're Zelda or
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: just kind of given the general you know that power, courage,
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: and wisdom are the three pieces of the Triforce, the
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: logo for Zelda. So that's where that connection ties in.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: They also they possessed the Triforce and they also protect
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: it in a sense. But when they descended from heaven
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: after creating the earthly realm, basically they gave the Triforce
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: to the goddess Hilia to watch over it. But it
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: was the demon king Demiz, who coveted it and wanted
• 34:41
  Speaker 3: to take it as own. And Demise is actually the
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: final boss in So Skywards Sword came out in twenty twelve.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: That's one of the main like console games in the
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: series for those who don't know, And twenty twelve was
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: twenty six years after the original game came out. But
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Skyward Sword is basically the origin story of like the
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: Legend of Zelda series. This really introduces kind of like
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: a lot of the mythology, the lore. It gives us
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: Lincoln Zelda in like Skyloft, which is the original place
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: that they lived, and Demise is actually the antagonist in
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: that game, and basically Demises like it's the more goth
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: or like if you're a Christian reading the Bible, or
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: like even a fan of Milton's Paradise Lost. He's like
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: he's almost like the satanistque character, Like he's the rebellious
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: celestial being that basically causes a lot of problems in
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: the in the Heavenly realm in a sense. But this
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: all like ties in with Skywards Sword basically in a
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: way here, but eventually the goddess Higlia is actually reborn
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: as Princess Zelda, so that's where that name comes from.
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: So the land is high Rule, the people are called
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: the Highlians, and so that's the that's the time with
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: Zelda and and High uh. But basically, like you get
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: in that's like kind of what happens before Skywards Sword,
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: and then that's really the origin story where all those
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: events unfold. You eventually beat defeat Demise. You live in Skyloft,
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: which is like this area that the gods created to
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: sort of like protect humans, but then you end up
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: with like Lincolnzelda end up on Earth afterwards. And then
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: here's where it gets really, uh, really kind of complicated,
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: is there's these timelines that are really introduced in the
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: Zelda universe, and there's no one to be like these
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: three timelines and kind of really the lynchpin that decides
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: where that each timeline goes is actually the game Okerina
• 36:39
  Speaker 3: of Time, which we've already discussed here and so Akarina
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: of Time. It's it's what like almost thirty years old,
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: so I think like a little bit of a little
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: bit of spoiler territory is acceptable at this point. But
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: basically at the end of the game, you go through
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: you go through the passage of time, like probably like
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: thirty forty of the game seven years, you become you know,
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: seventeen year old Link. I think he's like seventeen, maybe nineteen,
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: think seventeen though, but like that's what you play most
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: like the rest of the game as the majority of
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: the game, and at the end you fight You fight Gannendorf,
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: who is generally like the usual antagonist in the series.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: He's like what Bowser is to to Mario, like Ganandorf
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: is to Link in a lot of ways. But then
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: after you defeat him, he becomes the demon, like the
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: demon ghan In, and then you fight gan In and
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: that's the end of the game. So the timeline comes
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: in because you skip time in the game. The timeline
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: actually comes in based on the events at the end
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: of Opera of Time, and that's why I was just
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: talking about all of that. But basically there's a timeline
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: called like the Fallen Hero timeline where Gannin defeats Link
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: at the end of oprat of Time. But these figures
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: called the Seven Sages, which are in that game as well,
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: along with Zelda, they seal they seal Gan into what's
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: called the Dark World, and that leads to the events
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: of a Link to the Past, and then there's another
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: there's another timeline where Link at the end of Ocrine
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: of Time, he goes back to Childlinks time to warn
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: Zelda and the royal family, Zelda being the princess, like
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: the King and Queen being her parents about Gannendorf and
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: where Ganendorf is sealed in the Twilight Realm. And then
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: this is where basically goes off in his own adventure
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: to find Navi his faery, and that leads us to
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: the events of Majora's Mask. Which that's probably why Majora's
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: Mask seems so like kind of disconnected from like the
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: rest of the world, is that it's supposedly in this
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: parallel world called Termina and is really kind of like
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: a self contained adventure.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: But then and that leads to the events.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: Of Twilight Princess as well, which is basically like or
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: Link comes out of all of that. But then you
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: have like the third timeline is the adult timeline, and
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: that's where Link defeats Ganendorf at the end of Operati
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: Have Time, which is really like when you play the game,
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: that's the one that you kind of think happens, so
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: you defeat, you defeat Ganandorf, you defeat gannon ass like
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: the plot of the actual game, and then basically Ganandorf
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: is sent back and or no, we get sent back
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: in time. But Ganandorf eventually escapes in that timeline, and
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: then he commands the Helmarak king to kidnap all the
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: girls with pointy ears because he's hoping one of them
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: is Zelda, and Zelda is, of course, like the bane
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: of his existence in a lot of ways, kind of
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: reminds us of like Herod and the New Testament, like
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: Pharaoh and the Old Testament, like in the beginning of Exodus.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: But that timeline basically leads to wind Waker and then
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: Brother of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: I don't want to.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: Speak to you too much, but they kind of I
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: guess Brother of the Wild kind of takes place in
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: that timeline where all this stuff is basically just mythological
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: in a sense, like it's kind of like we're Homer
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: chronicled the things the like the Trojan War that occurred
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: way before his time via oral tradition. That's kind of
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: in my understanding where Breath of the Wild is taking place.
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: It's in a far gone age way after all of
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: this stuff, where all this stuff is kind of mythological
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: and significance in essence rather than a very clear cut,
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: well defined piece of history, like how we'd understand like
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: I don't know, like Napoleon or the Founding Fathers or
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: something like that. And then I can't speak to Tears
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: in the Kingdom because I haven't had time to play it.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: So maybe Dave can help me out there.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: It would be spoiling Tears of the Kingdom to explain,
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: but it does.
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: It does make Breath of.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: The Wild a little more complicated, But I do I
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: do like the idea that as you're playing Breath of
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: the Wild, you do seem to find things that seem
• 40:48
  Speaker 4: to hint that, oh, this this is in the same
• 40:50
  Speaker 4: world as the other's elder games, which none of the
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: other games had really done before they I mean, obviously
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: some of them are direct sequels to others, like Phantom
• 41:00
  Speaker 4: Hourglass is a direct sequel to wind Waker, and then
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: The Spirit.
• 41:04
  Speaker 5: Tracks is a direct sequel to that. But yeah, it's.
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: Like that there's this perennially returning evil force called Gannon
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: who has been making many many attempts and Breath of
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: the Wild. It's like this is his last He's putting
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: all of his energy into one last attempt to try
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: and achieve whatever his ultimate goal is and destroy the kingdom.
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: But yeah, you talk about No and those sorts of things,
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: I think that's the most recently worked in aspect of
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: the mythology, because No is the villain in Zelda Echoes
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: of Wisdom, the one that came out just recently, where
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: you play as Zelda in that game. And I have
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: never been one to really worry about the chronology. I'm
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: just like, Okay, new Zella the game. I'm going to
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: have fun. But yeah, I saw where the original Zelda
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: and The Adventure of Link, the second Zelda game are
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: supposed to be in this era of decline that is,
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: and that Link to the Past is a prequel to those.
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: But the funny thing about the era of Decline thing
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: is that it's kind of their way of explaining why
• 42:23
  Speaker 4: in the original Zelda there are no houses and no
• 42:27
  Speaker 4: cities and no castle. Everyone's just living in caves around
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: the map, even though it's really the technical limitations of
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: the technology at the time. I think it makes for
• 42:38
  Speaker 4: a funny kind of a retcon for the sake of
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: storytelling that the civilization is just scattered because Gannon has
• 42:46
  Speaker 4: kind of momentarily achieved his goal and everyone is sort
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: of living and hiding. But I one of the things
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: that I love about the Zelda games is that there's
• 42:59
  Speaker 4: a gravity to the stories, like things go wrong that
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: need to be fixed, instead of just being a straightforward
• 43:08
  Speaker 4: there's a bad guy, you've got to defeat him, which
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: you know in the original Zelda, the stories that Gannendorf
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: has he's stolen the Triforce of Power, and Princess Zelda
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: has broken the tri Force of Wisdom into eight pieces
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: and hidden them to prevent him from getting them. So
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: then he kidnaps her and she sends her her nursemaid Impa,
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: to try and find someone who could defeat Gannon, and
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: then Link rescues Impa from some monsters and she tells
• 43:38
  Speaker 4: him about it, and he goes.
• 43:39
  Speaker 5: Off on the quest to do it.
• 43:40
  Speaker 4: But all of that is in the instruction manual and
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: not in the game at all. You know, like there's
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: a little bit of info on the scroll if you
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: don't push start soon enough. But and the second game
• 43:53
  Speaker 4: is a few years later, and Link is now sixteen,
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: So there's some kind of parallels to the young Link
• 44:01
  Speaker 4: and the teen link in Ockering of Time. But he
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: turned sixteen and the high Rule Crest as they called
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: it at the time, which is the try Force, shows
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: up on his hand, and he shows that to Impa
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: and then she reveals, oh, the original Princess Zelda has
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: been locked away in this room, and his.
• 44:20
  Speaker 5: Birthmark or whatever it is, is.
• 44:22
  Speaker 4: Able to open the door to this room where the
• 44:24
  Speaker 4: first Zelda is laying like sleeping beauty, having been sleeping
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: for generations. And then they find a scroll that only
• 44:32
  Speaker 4: he can read. And it's interesting because it says, you know,
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: we couldn't find anyone that was pure enough of heart,
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: that didn't have evil thoughts in the kingdom. So I
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: cast a spell on the whole kingdom. So if someone
• 44:44
  Speaker 4: had been brought up correctly and had had the right
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: set of experiences and this inherent qualities to them, then
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: this seal would appear on their hand and they would
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: go off on the quest to then get the tri
• 44:58
  Speaker 4: Force of Courage. And that's the first place the Triforce
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: of Courage appears is.
• 45:01
  Speaker 5: In the second game.
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: And so I like how they're building the mythos as
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: the games carry on. So yeah, the second one is
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: it's you know, it's an outlier as far as the
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: gameplay goes. But I do think it lays down some
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: of the more important aspects of the series, where with
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: the power and the wisdom and courage sort of a
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: not a circle, but the triangle of power, wisdom and
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: courage and how they work together. And I always felt
• 45:33
  Speaker 4: like it's interesting, you know, it seems wisdom and courage
• 45:39
  Speaker 4: they're just great, great making qualities on their own, and
• 45:43
  Speaker 4: power is always the problem, you know, if you have
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: power without wisdom and power without courage. So I think
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: there's an interesting lesson there.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that is interesting, And you know, well I just
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: can't at all speak to the distinctly Japanese influences in
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: the way that you're laying that out. It sounds very
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: much like a Western fairy tale, right, Like you're sleeping Beauty,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: you know, you get to find the pure in heart
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: to redeem true love essentially into waken the kingdom. Like
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: it's very very Western fairy tale. And in fact, I
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: find it interesting that despite all of these what we
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: might call pagan influences, and like the way that the
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: mythology works out. I find it interesting that in the
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: like the Link to the Past when I was released,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: that there's official artwork coming out of like Link kneeling
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: before a crucifix in a church. You know, I'll throw
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: that up there on the screen when I post this
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: to YouTube, but put in the chat there and so
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: and and even in the I think it was in
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: the first legend of Zelda, in the Japanese version, there's
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: even mentioned of the Bible, and so they're they're they're
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: going out of their way to tie this into Christianity somehow,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: even if it's sort of on the I don't know,
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: on the side.
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: Level, right, And Nintendo of America at the time had
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: a strict policy of wiping out any sort of religious symbolism,
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: Like they even took the crosses out of you know,
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: like the Castlevania games and things like that, which is
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: really hard to believe. But yeah, that's because Link to
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: the Past was actually called something of the.
• 47:16
  Speaker 5: The tri Force of the Gods.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: It was the Japanese name of Link to the Past,
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: and so they weren't gonna they weren't gonna mention gods
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: in the title of their games at all, even even
• 47:26
  Speaker 4: lesser gods, so they had to change it to link
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: to the past.
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: I have to be at least a little bit grateful
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: for that, because I probably wouldn't have in the household
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: I grew up, and I probably wouldn't have been able
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: to play those games if they were called Triforce of
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: the Gods like.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: That lowercase G with the you know, the ass for
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: the plural and.
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: The end like it would have. Yeah, I wouldn't have
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: been able to play him. So I have to be
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: a little grateful for that. Personally, wouldn't have grown up
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: coccer enough time.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I gotten a little bit of a little
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: trouble for playing Diabolo back in the day.
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: So yeah.
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: I was never a lot read Harry Potter, even though
• 48:01
  Speaker 3: those books were huge when I was coming out.
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I had a friend who was made to
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: get rid of a greena of time. Once they got
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: to the Decu Tree, it was it was all pagan.
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: We have this talking tree and yeah, and he's the
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: one that gives the whole mythology that you laid out
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: a while ago, Josh, you know, with the creation by
• 48:19
  Speaker 4: the three goddesses. So yeah, yeah, don't you couldn't play
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: that part in southern Oklahoma with your your parents in
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: the room apparently, Well, my parents were fine, I had,
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: I had reasonable parents. I don't want to judge other
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: people's parents, but maybe they're just overly protective.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: Talking trees are a dead giveaway. God forbid. Some mid
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: twentieth century scholar of Anglo Saxon literature would who's also
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: a traditional Christian, would put talking trees in his in
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: his novel, right, So I think it would be profitable
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: just to and I'm sure people like probably know at
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: least the names of the characters, but just kind of
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: like talk about the actual recurring like main characters, protagonists,
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: antagonist or antagonists in the series.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: So obviously we have link.
• 49:13
  Speaker 3: And there's the thing I want to defend here that
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: gets a lot of hate as a trope, especially in
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: a lot of like different fantasy stories. But link, like
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: a lot of protagonists, is a chosen one figure, right,
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: however you want to hash that out. Sometimes chosen one figures,
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: in my opinion, are really obvious and not as obvious.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: But I actually kind of want to take this chance
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: to like just do like just to defend the fact
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: that tropes are tropes for a reason, like it's fine
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: to have tropes. It's all about the execution of said
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: trope that really matters. And I do think, I do
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: think it's fine to have like and even good to
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: have like Link as a chosen one trope that he
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: is because you know, he's not a or what do
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: the people call it, like a Gary Stew or something
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: as like the boy version of that. But either way,
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: it's like, you know, Link struggles, like he has consequences
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: for his actions, He has weighty decisions to make. He
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: faces daunting intellectual and physical and spiritual battles in all
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: of his journeys in all of the games, right, all
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: of the adventures, but just kind of like to find
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: the chosen one trope. Even from a Christians perspective, it's
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: like is is the Bible like not just full of
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: like chosen one stories in a sense, like it's like
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: you like Moses could if God wanted, Moses could have
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: has been some random guy, and like like Aaron could
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: have been the chosen He kind of is a chosen
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: one in a different sense, or it could have been
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: some random guy like in Israel in Egypt that we
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: never we never ended up hearing of because he wasn't
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: recorded in the Bible, right, Like that guy could have been.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: A chosen one if it was God's choice to make
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: him one.
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: So this is a sense where it's like some people
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: for some reason just have these these grand journeys in
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: their lives that they're that they have to take on,
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: and they're not just a bunch of normal people who
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: are not going to be remembered in history, like probably
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: the three of us and anybody else's listening to this
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: podcast will be right like you'll be forgotten in the
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: historical records in a sense. So I think there's a
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: sense here where just defending like the chosen one trope
• 51:20
  Speaker 3: in general, because another thing I've seen is like a
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: flack for not just Zelda, but just general adventure and
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: fairy stories, if you may, in general. So I kind
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: of wanted to defend that. And that's in a kind
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: of like interesting perspective on the link that I think
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: is perspective enhancing, especially for those who might listen to
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: this and who do have those sort of gripes towards
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: these types of characters.
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think Joseph in the Bible is a good
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: example of that. Sort of a character like he receives
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: a prophecy and from bragging about the prophecy to his brothers,
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: it is the only reason that the prophecy comes true,
• 51:59
  Speaker 4: because it causes the chain of events that leads to it.
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: But he, you know, he just basically Romans eight twenty
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: eight in action that a lot of things are happening
• 52:09
  Speaker 4: to him, but God is carrying him along through a
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: lot of seemingly bad situations, and he is just being
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: faithful to the God that he knows in those situations.
• 52:19
  Speaker 4: And in the end, you know, many many people are
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: saved through him because of what God has done in
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: his life. So yeah, I think Link is like an agent.
• 52:32
  Speaker 4: Like in the first again, he's not a chosen one,
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: He's just a guy that improfound, but then he turns
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: out to be the chosen one in the second game,
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: you know, and an uckering of time. He's he's the elf,
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: but he's not really an elf. He was just like
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: raised with him. Isn't that how it goes? Yeah? And
• 52:51
  Speaker 4: I do think there's probably a little bit of a
• 52:54
  Speaker 4: shallow aspect of that to make the player feel like, oh, yeah,
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: I'm special, I'm a special person and that's why I'm
• 53:01
  Speaker 4: able to do all the things in this game. But
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: it is also the events of the games that make
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: make him great.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: And that's truly.
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: That's like a night and a story. It's different, it's
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: the same in some sense, it's probably different in another,
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: but in a game, it's like it's kind of yeah,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: of course that's the character you're gonna play, right, You're
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: not gonna be like the magic being Sky or like
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: the happy mask shop owner. You're not going to be
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: mid Na, the guy that is always trying to, you know,
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: keep you out from seeing the d Guchrie and such things.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: It's like, of course you're going to be a link
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: in that. Like, that's it's how video games work for
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: the most part. Like it's like you you might not
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: might not always be the most powerful or most chosen character,
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: but a lot of times you are. And that's this
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: is an element in the nature of kind of like
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: subcreation secondary worlds, like via the medium of video games
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: rather than books.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: In a way.
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, in most ethics, I mean that you're
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: going to have a hero of the story, the chosen one.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: I mean obviously that that idea can be kind of hamphested.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: But for the most part, and the chosen one is
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: just the person the story is about, and so why
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: would you expect it to be anything different?
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it might not even always be like an extraordinary person.
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: Might not even always be like an extraordinary adventure in
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: a sense. I mean going back to the Bible thing,
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: It's like, I mean, obviously there's extraordinary aspects to like
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: the character of like Ruth in a way, but she
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: doesn't have this grand like twenty something Bible chapter's long
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: story like David does or something. But it's like, that's
• 54:37
  Speaker 3: the character that the person that God chose to gave
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: us for the story, that that particular story in the
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: in the grander like the local canon in a sense.
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: So but yeah, I think I think for the most part, yeah,
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: it is going to be It is going to be
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: the hero. And it's like, yeah, why wouldn't it be.
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: In a way.
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: Did we want to talk about since we talked about
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: wing Can I already kind of discussed like Zelda's role
• 55:01
  Speaker 3: and relationship too, like the goddesses and such, we want
• 55:05
  Speaker 3: to talk about Gannon and Gannendorf at all. I know
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: we touched on him, but I think This is important
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: because this is really are our antagonists and the story
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: for the most part.
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: I'd love to if you if you have more thoughts
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: in that direction. I do think you know. Gannendorff doesn't
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: appear until a Karina of Time. It's always just this big,
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: fat pig guy. Before that is basically all he is.
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: And he's he's not even in the second one.
• 55:35
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: The story is that his followers are trying to kill
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: you because if they can sprinkle your blood on his ashes,
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: that he will be resurrected. So when you die, and
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: I think this is only the American version of The
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: Adventure of Link, when you die, it shows this shadowy
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: picture of Gannon on the screen and it just says
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: return of Ganon the end. With this, it's like the
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: same laugh that Soda Popinsky has in Mike Tyson's chat.
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: But this little great but yeah, so it's kind of
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: a reveal at the end of a kren of Time
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: that he he becomes this Ganon that we've known from
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: the previous games instead of the more slick, smooth talking.
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: He's like the only male of the garudo right, like
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: they have one. I don't know how they don't talk
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: about how that works. But he's the only one born
• 56:26
  Speaker 4: in however many years or something like that.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't remember.
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: Like that's a good point with like the male thing,
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: and I can't remember if it's like you know, some
• 56:37
  Speaker 3: you know, bizarre and different version of some sort of
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: like immaculate conception where like perhaps the gods interfere to
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: make make Ganandorf a male somehow. I cannot remember how
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: that works. It'd be worth looking into. But you are
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: on the right track here where Gannendorf. That's how they
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: know who's going to be like the king or the
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: leader of the Garudos, right, because every age, however long
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: in ages, I'm not sure there's like the begetting of
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: a male who is basically an heir to lead in
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: all an all female tribe in the sense, right, And yeah,
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: that's like obviously we have that. Like Gandendorf is a Garuda, right,
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: he's from these race. And if you don't know, like Garudos,
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: they're basically like they're basically like kind of like these like.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: Desert nomad like desert bandit groups, they.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: Would probably they would probably whereas like the highway end
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: people probably look more in the vein of like.
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: The you know, some of the.
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: Norse or or Germanic or you know Anglo Sex and
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: kingdoms of like medieval Western Europe. The Garudas are going
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: to be probably more or how we might think of
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: like maybe like even like Assyrians, Babylonians or Persians and
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: like the ancient world or maybe even some sort of
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: other like mostly like desert desert race or tribe. But yeah,
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: that's so that's where Ganndorf ultimately comes from. And uh
• 58:04
  Speaker 3: like that's yeah, that's why, that's like why he's the king.
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: But Ganandorf, I mean, no, I guess we'll I should
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: talk about Gannon two for a second. But so Gannon
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: is he's basically this reincarnation of what's his name, I
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: just said it earlier, Demise, right, like, so that's the
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: uh I think when Demise is defeated. And I'm gonna
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: paraphrase this because I don't have the exact quote, but
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: he's basically say something to the effect of those who
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: share the blood of the Goddess and the spirit of
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: the hero will ever follow in a cycle without it.
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: And it's something like that that's not word for word,
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: but this is like he his reincarnation comes through this
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: this large blue pig demon, which is Gannon, right, But
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: then that's the distinction between A and Ganondorf, who is
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: like Ganon is the incarnation of this this this pig
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: demon incarnation of Demise. Gandorf is the garudo. But interestingly enough,
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: with Gannendorf you really get because again, like it can
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: easily be portrayed as like, is Ganandorf a generic villain?
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: Is he just like a one dimensional guy? Is he
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: even like a twirly mustached villain in some sense?
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: And I don't know really where you'd get that one specifically,
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: But Ganandorf actually has like queer motives in wind Waker, right,
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: like the Highly and and I don't know how much
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: of this is just Ganandorf's perspective or how much of
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: it is the reality of the historic scenario. But the
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: the Highly in people they have a prosperous, vast kingdom.
• 59:40
  Speaker 5: Right.
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: There's there's a castle, there's a market outside of the castle,
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: there's usually like a field, there's CagA eco villages, there's
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: all these places within the Highly. It's a well established,
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: prosperous like western European kingdom. That's kind of how it
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: looks in the games and the Garuda, the guru of people,
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: like I said, are are desert nomad. So there's a
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: sense where Gandendorf has this this vengeance towards the highly
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: ends where his people were left out in poverty, they
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: were left out in the desert just to fend for themselves,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: were and they were impoverished in a way and probably
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: experienced famine, where the Highliens enjoyed the prosperous fat of
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: the land and the prosperity of the kingdom in a sense,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: and so Ganandorf has a vengeance towards the High Liliens
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: and the royal high Rule family because of that, and
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: these motives become clear and fleshed out more in win
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: Wacer specifically, which I do think is one of not
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: just aesthetically an interesting game and a fun game, and
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: I do think it's actually one of the more well
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 3: written games in the series. And that's one of the
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: reasons for that, And that's actually Ganandorf is at his
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: best in in wind Wacer for that reason and for others.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: But I do find we actually do get clear motivations
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: for him and reasons, and they fleshed that out, and
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: I think that's why the ah that makes him a
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: stronger character even retrospectively looking back at the previous games.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and Tears of the Kingdom actually gives a lot
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: of interesting backstory on Ganandorf, a lot of new story
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: for him. And I think it's fair to say without
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: it being a spoiler, that just right at the beginning,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 4: you sort of find the mummified remains of Ganendorf, and
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: by taking a sword from his hand, Zelda gets transported
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: into the ancient past, and so you as link you
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: find some of the memories of her and who she
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 4: was interacting with and the things that Ganandorf was doing.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: So you know, if you if you ever somehow carve
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: out the time to play Tears of the Kingdom, I
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 4: would even say you could skip Breath of the Wild
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 4: and play it. It's the same land, but it is
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 4: a much better game in almost every way. Although I
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 4: love them both, it's I was shocked at how great
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 4: it was. But there's a lot of rich and interesting
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 4: additions to the mythology there that may cause some problems
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: with timelines that people had built in the past, but
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: they seem pretty good at weaving everything back together.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think so we've spent about an
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: hour just kind of like talking about, like meaning the story, characters, themes, mythology, music,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: and all wonderful things that I think video games need
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: a much, much, much more discussion on. But I kind
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: of have we wrapped up these games or these game
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: chats more in the past. I was wondering, Paul, I
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: just like talk about like more like mechanical aspects or
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: even just like stuff as simple as like favorite games,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: favorite dungeons and like all of that stuff. But you
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 3: said something Dave that made me want to kind of
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 3: tie in with that, where it's like I've heard that
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: some people have some really ambivalent opinions on Breath of
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: the Wild. I don't know as much about Tears of
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: the Kingdom, but Birth of the Wild has been out
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: for like eighty years now, so I know more about that.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: But I hear some people have a general ambivalence towards it.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: Some people say this is the greatest Zelda game ever made,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: at least up to that point twenty seventeen, and then
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: some people say, this game has so many mechanical problems
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: and it's really not very substantial because it's a big
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: world with not a lot in it. What would your
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: what is your opinion on Breath of the Wild. I'd
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: be curious to hear it.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: I think any of those things people complain about are
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: were by design, like they were the vision they had
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: for the game. They wanted to create these wide open
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: spaces that you were exploring, but it definitely breaks from
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: the Zelda gameplay formula.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 5: I feel like it was getting a little tired though.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 4: Like Twilight Princess, I think was kind of the perfection
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 4: of the here's a dungeon, you find a compass, a
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 4: big key, fight the boss, get a heart container and
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 4: a new item, and then you move on to the
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 4: next dungeon kind of thing. Breath of the Wild tried
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: to kind of circumvent that. And you can climb and
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 4: you can you know, do cooking to make potions that
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: help you to survive in cold regions and there's hot regions.
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: But it still has it has you know, it's got
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 4: the Zora, it's got the Garudo, it has a bird race,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: the Rito which they're they're in wind Waker as well.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: They're a little more fully realized in these and of
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: course the Gourons, which we haven't really talked about the
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 4: gourons much, but instead of having traditional sort of dungeons,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: there's these four great beasts that are these giant machines,
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 4: like there's an elephant one and a bird one, and
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 4: they are more puzzles to kind of figure out how
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 4: to get around and explore the They are traditional Zelda dungeons.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: But the weird thing was that at the time that
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: it came out, I never heard anything but praise for it.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 4: And then a few years passed and people started, sort
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: of like with Mario sixty four, people started trying to
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 4: act like it was never good and that nobody liked it,
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 4: and I, yeah, things change and attitudes change, and the
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 4: technology changes, like the camera controls on games from in
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 4: sixty four are sometimes pretty hard to deal with now,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: But at the time it all blew our minds just
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 4: to have things in three D, you know.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 5: But I loved it. And there are some areas that.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: Are are kind of empty, but yeah, in Tiers of
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 4: the Kingdom, it's just chock full of things to do,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: and it's where it's the same really expansive map, but
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 4: now it also has an entire world above that map
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: and an entire underworld below that map. Of equal size,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 4: which is pretty insane. So there's, yeah, the childish sense
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: of just I'm gonna start off in this direction and
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: see what I find. That I loved about Mora Wind
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: back when it came out, Like I'm like, okay, I'm
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: gonna go to this town and then I would never
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: get there because I would stop at every cave and
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 4: crypt along the way and forget what I was doing.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 4: It has that kind of an aspect to it that
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 4: I really enjoy.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: I'm glad that Elder Scrolls keeps rearing its head and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: here somehow. I was about ten when Obolivion came out.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: That was my first open world game, and yeah, exact
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: same strategy and approach.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: Kind of further on that one.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: The mechanically, one of the more interesting things to talk
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: about with the Zelda series is the great question of
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: what do you think are the most difficult temple slash
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: dungeons in the series.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: I mean, I still have PTSD from the Water Temple
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: and Acarino. I think that's everyone's go to for that question.
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's famously and I think other dungeons that have
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: that same aspect of where you change one thing somewhere
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 4: and then it you have to find how that allowed
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: you to get somewhere else or how to get here
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: to change you.
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 5: Know, the water level aspect of it. There.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: In Twilight Princess, there's a sky temple I remember had
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: some mind bending sort of puzzles like that where you
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: were were you turning it over? I think you were
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: flipping the whole thing. And some of those four Sacred
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: Beast Temples that I was talking about in Breath of
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: the Wild had some tricky elements like you had to
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 4: one of them looked like an elephant. You had to
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: move the trunk to different places to make water pour
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 4: down through different areas, to turn different wheels that would
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: activate you know, different platforms and stuff. And so yeah,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: that's the less straightforward they are, the more you can
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: change things that make you need to revisit areas you've
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 4: already been to, the harder they are to wrap your
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 4: head around.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, and uh yeah, I definitely remember playing uh the
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: city in the Sky Temple that was. It's one of
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 3: my one of my actual favorites aesthetically in terms of
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: like just the puzzles too. It's actually one of my
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: favorite favorite dungeons. But yeah, it was certainly challenging, but
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: I think one that doesn't get enough talk. The Water
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: Temple in a Karina time is hard, there's no doubt
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: about it. But the Water Temple formerly known as the
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: Great Bay Temple and Majora's Mask, I don't know if
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 3: it's just harder because for those who don't know, Majora's
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: Mask has like a time component where the timer runs
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 3: out and basically your game it's game over like as
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: a time based system to it, which some people obviously
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: absolutely despise. But you gotta just you gotta play the
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: uh was it the song of Time backwards and you
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: get double the time. By the way, there's there's my
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: cheat for you. But the Great Bay Temple and Majora's
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: Mask is also just a very complex and difficult, difficult
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: water dungeon or water temple. And it might just be
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: because of the timeline, but that I thought it was harder.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: But I don't think I've ever been more stuck on
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: a uh like just having to redo and revisit a
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 3: temple until I finally beat it for the first time.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever spent that much time on
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 3: a temple for like that in that purpose, And then
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: the Stone Tower Temple right after it Majora's Mask, which
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: is those are those are the last two temples in
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 3: the game, and they really brought out, uh they're really
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: brought out all the difficulty and those like those they're
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: they're they're very challenging.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: I think this was really the harder ones in the
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: in the series for me.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 4: That the the clock being you know, the main boss
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: in Majora's Mask was it was a great aspect of it.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: There was just this tension and this moon getting ever
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: closer as you play. Like again, I love when developers
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: put constraints on themselves and limited what they could do
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: in the game by this time limit that they had
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: imposed on it. And so I think Majora's Mask is
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: just a really yeah it is. It's very polarizing, but
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: I like those kinds of time loop and uh oh,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: I've got to I've got to try to make some
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: tangible effort in these three days that I will keep
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: with me when I have to start it back over
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 4: and going to the next thing that was that was
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 4: a lot of fun, all right.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: Ilis ask the ever so controversial Zelda question of and
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: you don't have to give a particular order and if
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 3: you can't give five, it's fine, But if you can,
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: what are your five favorite overall lections of Zelda games.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: I don't know if Andrew has five, you know, that's fine.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all I can go with is a Akarita Majoria
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: link to the Past.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 4: I would say Tears of the Kingdom link to the
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 4: Past is amazing. I do love wind Waker, but also
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: at the time Twilight Princess. Like I said, I feel
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: like it perfected the formula, like it. But one of
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 4: the things about Twilight Princess that I loved is is
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 4: one of the only ones where the economy made any sense.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: Like you you know, like in akreena of time, doing
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: the most difficult thing in the game gets you the
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 4: biggest wallet, and by the time you have it, you
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: have nothing to spend any money on, so it's really
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: pretty pointless. But Twilight Princess you can do like all
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: these building investments, you know, to get bridges rebuilt, and like,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: you can carry a ton of money and there's actually
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: stuff to spend it on, which I found satisfying. But yeah,
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 4: and I I've got a soft spot for the original
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 4: as well, so I have to throw that in there.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: Well, let's never underestimate the h the power of nostalgia
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: and these kind of decisions, and so like, I don't
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: think Akaranaugh Time could ever not be my favorite. It
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: was the most important game of my childhood. But if
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: it wasn't for that, I mean, Twilight Princess might actually
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: be my favorite. It certainly is in terms of like
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: the dungeons and the boss fights all low and it
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: has my favorite of each of those respectively, like in Summation,
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: in the entire series, Like, I just think most almost
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: all of the dungeons are excellent. The best ones are
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: my favorite ones in the series. The boss fights are great,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: the whole Wolf mechanic. I can take it or leave it.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: That's fine. If people hate it or love it.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: I'm pretty I don't really have strong opinions either way,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: I guess, But I also like, I also love wind
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: Waker Majora's mask, and i'd probably I'd probably have to
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: throw Breath at the Wild, and they're just because I
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: actually did play it and complete it. I feel like
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: if Skywards Sword came out in the game Cube or
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: even the Switch.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: I'd put it. I would have put it on there
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: instead of Breath of the Wild.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: But again, I was just really burnt out on using
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: the Wii motes for stuff by twenty twelve when it
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: came out, because I had already had a wi for
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: six years. And I also if I was a little
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: bit older, maybe a link to the past would be
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: on there.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: But I respect it. I think it's great.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: But that game did come out before I was born,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: and so I think my perspective on it is being
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: like sixteen bit and all that, it's just probably a
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: little bit different. So I probably there's probably all level
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: of appreciation that I just maybe I just lack the
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: air because of my age, But I recognize it's a
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: great game, that's for sure.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 5: It's hard to pick.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: I forgot some of the games that you then mentioned, like,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 4: but there's not been one that I did not enjoy, frankly, and.
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: Even just like a plug for some of the uh
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: the games I mentioned, those are all main they came
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: out on the consoles. They're all like the games that
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 3: come out on the consoles are generally like the big
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: games like massive budgets, massive production, they're hyped up for
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: like a year or two or more like before they
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: come out. But even some of the handheld games like
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: minish cap was really cool. It's like Phantom our Glasses
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: probably kind of hit or miss. There might have been
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: some weird DS mechanics like the stylists on the bottom
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: screen that kind of messed with that a little bit.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 3: But Four Swords Adventures on the GameCube, but my brother
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: and I played that together as kids.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: And I had a lot of fun with that.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: So there's there's all sorts of stuff, and its crossed
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: training on the Wii obviously, how can you And I'm
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 3: just kidding. It was it was okay, I mean it
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: was for what it was in the time.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: It was fun.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: But a lot of a lot of great uh, a
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: lot of great like hand held games that are maybe
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: it don't get as much talk.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 2: They're still good though. There's there's a lot of those
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: that are still worth playing.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, yeah, I can't remember enough to say
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: anything significant, but I do vaguely recall enjoying Links Awakening,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: but I can only comment on it.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 4: My wife loves links Awakening. It's a pretty short adventure
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 4: and it falls pretty much completely outside of the cannon
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 4: just by nature of what the story is.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 5: There's kind of a hint in the name of the
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 5: game right there, But.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 4: I I enjoyed the most recent one, the Echoes of
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 4: Wisdom that I mentioned earlier, where Nolh is the villain
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 4: and these rifts are appearing around the world. It kind
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 4: of has the aesthetic of the Links Awakening remake that
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 4: they did, but you play as Zelda in that game,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 4: and I've liked the way that throughout all these games
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 4: they have increasingly given Zelda a bigger role without emasculating
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 4: Link or taking away from his role as the hero
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 4: in any way. And they even managed to do that
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: in Echoes of Wisdom because at the very beginning, you
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 4: play as Link trying to rescue Zelda. She's been captured
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: by Gannon and she's into Crystal. But after you defeat
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 4: Gannon and basically the tutorial stage, which is funny, you're
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: getting suck down into the darkness and Link shoots one
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 4: arrow that cracks her crystal before he gets swallowed up,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 4: so then she's able to break free, and then she's
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 4: kind of going on a quest to get rid of
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: these rifts as the priestess basically, and to find and
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: rescue Link. But as you're on your adventure, people are
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 4: telling you about how great Link is and things that
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: he's done for them, which I think is funny. And
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: also they've made it a part of the story that
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 4: Link has literally lost his voice in that game, so
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: they can have him still not speak even though he's
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 4: not the protagonist. But even some of Zelda's most powerful abilities,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 4: she just kind of takes on sort of a spirit
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 4: form of Link for a few seconds until the meter
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: runs out, where she has a sword and can do
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 4: some of his moves. So I thought they handled it
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: really well without without detracting from Link or the main
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: series at all.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: I'm okay if we ended there, unless other people have
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: more things. Just kind of thinking of time here, I
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 3: know there's a lot more we could say. I mean,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 3: I could probably like sit here and put David on
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: trial and you know, try to play Socrates and try
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: to get into defend WI Broth of the Wild is great,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 3: and I'd be interested in hearing more of those opinions.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 2: But yeah, a lot of things we could talk about.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But good news is that we'll be meeting in
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: to talk Zelda in just a couple of days, although
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: anyone listening to this will have to wait at least
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: a week, but that will be coming up soon, and
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: so Josh, thank you for leading this conversation. David, of course,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: thank you for your your insights here, and I guess
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: we will go ahead and closer there, and next time
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: we will continue to talk Zelda with our esteemed guest.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: All right, until then, godspeed? All right, thank you for listening,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: and I hope that you enjoyed that, and I hope
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: that you'll consider supporting what we're doing here. You know,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: I this is not my full time job, but I
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: would love for it to be, right. I would love
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: for Mythic Mind to be my full time job so
• 1:17:41
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• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: content between looking at video games, looking at movies and
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: shows and the other podcast looking at literature and great
• 1:17:51
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• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: just making content in this sort of domain of the
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: Christian humanities, engaging with literature, ideas, culture, popular media and
• 1:18:04
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• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: to Patreon dot com slash Mythic Mind. And you know
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• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: your interest in schedule allows, and to just generally be
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: part of our our insider talks and planning. But for
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: next time, as I said, we will continue our conversation
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: on Zelda, but we will be joined by Anthony Soirilla,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: who is something of an expert in this field. Until then,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: God's been The Elder Scrolls in Philosophy is six week
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: course beginning of September twenty twenty five. I don't play
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: many video games these days, but there are certain titles
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: that have stuck with me, enchanting the mind of my
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: youth and never entirely fading away. One of the chiefs
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: among these titles is the Elder Scrolls name Marwin, Oblivion
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: and Skyrim. The level of artistry, mythology, and lore of
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: this universe is vast and provides a strong representative for
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: asking the question as to how video games might relate
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: to literature as an art form. Where might it rise
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: to such a level, where must it fall short? And
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: what unique advantages does it possess. For this eight week study,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: we'll be seeking to answer these questions while analyzing various
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: elements of this franchise, specifically focusing on content related to
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: Morow and Oblivion and Skyrim. Will be taking a look
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: at the philosophy of RPGs and considering the philosophical implications
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: of character creation and formation in an open ended series
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: such as this, and will be looking at the relationship
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: between in game religion, lore, and ideas with our primary
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: world philosophical and religious concepts. Each week will include one
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: to two videos addressing these topics, ongoing discord conversations, and
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: live meetings. You are also encouraged to spend at least
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: a little time playing one of these titles each week
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: as a launching pad.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 2: For com.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 1: Join us in Tamreil that we might better understand our
• 1:20:04
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• 1:20:21
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