Zelda Skyward Sword Comic Well Meet Again -pinterest

On 19/02/2021 at 09:56, Majora said:

Skyward Sword is the most restrictive 3D Zelda ever made, Breath of the Wild is the near open. Skyward Sword focussed and so much on puzzles information technology had no sense of place, in Breath of the Wild the sense of identify arguably came at the expense of some puzzle, and especially dungeon, focus.

A few isolated elements being in both games does not a throughline make when the games are and then completely reverse in approach. 'Collecting things to upgrade equipment' is so broad you could utilise information technology to practically every action gamble or RPG always made, including most Zeldas. I forgot Skyward Sword even had a glider, so limited was its usage compared to BOTW. I'll give you the stamina meter but even the pulling puzzles out of the dungeons flake is contestable. In Skyward Sword, the puzzles were the world. In Jiff of the Wild the puzzles were a very modest role of the world. Once again, completely opposite approaches to world design.

This whole 'Skyward Sword was Jiff of the Wild 0.5' type argument doesn't really work for me and feels like more of a way for them to endeavour to flog this remaster to people who jumped into the franchise after BOTW.

I'yard certain this will prove a wounding experience for me – all the more so because the length of what'south to follow invites ridicule, if not outright dismissal – only here goes: I profoundly disagree with your assessment of Skyward Sword in general, and this assertion about its environments in item. Far from existence adulterate and vestigial – serving every bit a mere container for otherwise isolated setpieces – the globe of Skyward Sword is replete, sophisticated, and holistically integrates with the game's themes and motifs to dazzling effect. In this category, it's an exemplar of the medium. Furthermore, its treatment of setting was best in class for its series prior to Breath of the Wild, well, widening our horizons.

Provocative declarations possibly, but no more and then than the harshest judgements establish in this thread. I love this game to $.25 and wish to offer a partisan's interpretation of its environments in lodge to help widen the discussion. Although I had planned a unlike post to this one, covering far more ground, I realised that the subjects I nigh wished to speak about could all be found in closely examining the Ancient Cistern, the game's fourth dungeon.

I have two reasons for selecting this specific locale. The showtime is in response to your assertion that this game favours "puzzles" at the expense of "place". The Aboriginal Cistern challenges this perspective: inside it, puzzles are place. Interestingly, they distinguish themselves in a dungeon context past serving as part of an ensemble of challenges and activities – they are excellent, just not domineering. This area has a marvellous evenness to it that is achieved through its elective parts flowing together, passing freely and fluidly from one chemical element to the next, in sympathy with its (mostly) tranquil ambience. By immersing oneself within the puzzles' forms, a wealth of subtextual detail nigh the wider surroundings can exist gleaned, along with the narrative information technology hosts.

A collection of Akutagawa'south shorter works – no prizes for

guessing the story featured on the cover

Which brings me on to my second reason for choosing the Aboriginal Cistern: this section of the game famously draws upon The Spider Thread, a parable by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, i of Japan'due south virtually cherished authors. The tale's denouement receives a handling in SS that is as perfectly matched with its surroundings as it is an exhilarating disruption of them – a consummate bout de force, and seminal demonstration of Nintendo'southward mastery of the class. However, for all the (fully earned) praise heaped at the feet of this episode, scant attention has been paid to the fact that the scope of the adaptation extends well across it: nearly of The Spider Thread's major plot points are touched upon elsewhere, with even a specific simile approximated at i juncture. (Indeed, the game is so respectful of the text that information technology defers to it in commencing its retelling outside of and prior to the Ancient Cistern itself.) It's a singular meeting between literature and videogames, and I would like to delve into its underexplored aspects, highlighting the artistry of the game's design as I go. I don't actually know what to call the following – a travelogue and critical commentary, I suppose. I hope it proves interesting.

And yes, I am perfectly aware of how absurd this gargantuan, metastasized mail is. Perfectly aware. Mortified nigh it.

Familiarity with the unabridged game is assumed – spoilers range the length and breadth of Skyward Sword.

All Spider Thread excerpts and quotations featured below are taken from the superb translation by Jay Rubin, whose notes too proved invaluable in writing this mail service. I recommend his drove of Akutagawa's short fiction published by Penguin; in lieu of that, this translation conveys the gist of the story well enough.

Preamble and the return to Skyview Temple

Spoiler

Before getting into the thick of it, I'd like to comment on the general character of Skyward Sword, at least as I perceive information technology. To that end, here's a comparison of the worlds of Jiff of the Wild and Skyward Sword, and how each informs the temper of their corresponding game.

In BotW, the environment is a consistent, self-contained entity, and it completely overawes every bit a living landscape. Rivers meander as the force of their currents and the inclines they travel permit; rich loam gives way to spartan scrubland, that so segues into arid mountain slopes; ecosystems observe the strictures of topography and climate to adjust life in its right measure. Everything, from frogs to snowbanks to volcanic plumes, feels every bit if information technology is the sum of an integrated, coherent natural history, and so the world and its treasures (ostensibly) savour a regal independence from such game organization vulgarities as 'function' or 'utility'. Even man'due south grandest designs are just bagatelles here: the Divine Beasts, for all their thunderous thudding and stomping, tin only claim the dignity of tin toys; the ruins dotting the globe, less still than that.

Satori Mountain

Unsurprisingly, the human relationship between the role player and all this inviolate magnificence is marked by a certain distance. BotW's adventurer is placed at a remove from a world which grants nothing salvage an opportunity to participate. You won't exist kept from scaling cliff faces, nor are there any prohibitions on bear hunting – but rainfall and the animate being's claws take the same licence. Nature picks no favourites. The brilliance of this teeming, exuberant, responsive, tight-spun Hyrule resides, curiously, in a discreet indifference on the part of that world to its protagonist. Not that an estrangement makes itself felt; rather, what value there is to be establish in foraging, gliding, fighting, and so on is left exclusively to the thespian's unprompted sentence. Breath of the Wild leaves the full general impression of two factors operating in strict parallel, with the thespian'due south gratuitous-ranging will and resourcefulness being set-off by an aloof, studiedly neutral backdrop.

The Lanayru Sand Sea

Skyward Sword takes the contrary tack: in this adventure, there is the closest possible intimacy between the player and the world they inhabit. In fact, to speak of a 'between' at all is somewhat misleading equally SS does its utmost to confound those distinctions – the world is an extension of Link, and Link a microcosm of the whole. Through severity and guile, the motivated landscapes structure the player's awareness, cultivating a cluster of precepts which beautifully undergird the immediate business of combat, traversal, and puzzling, and which by their very deliberateness confer a richness upon those express activities.

If all of this sounds quite abstract that's considering the game's concerns very much are – whereas BotW may exist labelled a piece of work of materialism, SS is a written report in idealism. (A game of mandalas over maps, as nosotros will see.) Locales and their contents ought to be chiefly viewed through a psychogeographical lens: metaphor, chain, allusion, juxtaposition, affect, deportation, symbolism, reification and allegory are to the fore, and with them a reflexive quality which makes playing the game so succulent – not only is information technology a matter of 'what'southward the adjacent thing?' but also 'what's the next affair going to be about? And what will that be similar in relation to this?' Not that it's a ane-way street, as the actor's progress alters the textile of SS in ways ranging from the unassumingly slight (opening a shortcut with a rolled log, afterwards much huffing and puffing) to the demiurgically decisive (blooming stone flowers on rivers of burn down with a magician's nonchalant sword film). Places are regulated by the contours of a subjective, internal mural – whole complexes of rooms and expanses of terrain may swivel on the tiniest of cues or slightest of actions. ¹ The experience of this overjoyed and dialectical globe's unfolding is that of a warm conversation which gains its zest from never being completely one-sided, either in pandering to the thespian, or by having the environments suborn one'due south will – reciprocity is paramount. 'Thoughtfulness', in the fullest and nearly humanly generous sense, is an attribute that comes to mind whenever I look back on SS and how information technology arranges itself.

Of course, opinions differ: one of the most frequent complaints is that the game is mind-numbingly padded out, with the revisiting of Skyview Temple – the kickoff dungeon – cited as a prime example of the game lapsing into purposelessness, of its tendency to insist upon ho-hum detours and recapitulations. With this trip prefacing the Ancient Cistern, let's take a closer wait at both it and the naysaying it's engendered.

Never the liveliest of dungeons, its gloom and dreariness weigh more heavily than ever upon your return. Weeds and fungi have colonised the margins. A subterranean tree licks the masonry with a tongue of bark. Grit motes idle in the air. The score drags its feet, lurching from a sustained note to the hurried completion of its main phrase. Zilch new except (ironically) the tinge of staleness. In retracing your steps, the expanse now seems a castoff, a moated grange of blackest moss and rounding grays. What utilize is there for a completed dungeon? An errand to fetch a healing water serves as the immediate pretext for coming hither, only there must surely be a deeper reason for this particular place at this point in the gamble. Already, at the threshold of the expanse, an of import conceptual shift has been effected that decouples the repeat engagement from the initial experience: in passing through the space at leisure rather than nether the driving excitement of conquest, the actor is prompted to consciously dwell upon information technology, interrogate information technology at a newfound distance – "OK, I'one thousand here over again. Why?" Teasing out any hidden meaning necessitates an belittling, sober frame of mind which departs from the chipper pragmatism that is Zelda dungeoneering's habitual mode. A certain reserved considerateness is called for which nicely complements the prevailing calm.

Not that your visit will be entirely without incident. A brusk way in and one of the burrowing mogma creatures from the volcanic region makes an unexpected appearance. As chary and avaricious as ever, he asserts – despite your protestations to the reverse – that you're a beau ransacker, before scrabbling away to stake his ain claim on the loot. Cheeky git, branding you low-cal-fingered – you lot're the destined hero, and any appropriations you make in your quest are a result of exigencies beyond your control (if those requisitions happen to include absurd gadgets and piles of rupees, you can inappreciably demur). Continuing on, you're stymied by a locked door; whilst yous're searching for a key, who should popular back up simply Mr Libel. He says he swiped the central from a monster but can't remember now where he buried it. A spot of digging afterward the pair of yous office and, gosh, yous now accept a brand new, one-of-a-kind, custom fit lock loosener. Onwards.

Before concluding your dealings with the mogma, a few things you (re)meet on this flying visit must be noted for futurity reference:

• The circular central chamber of Skyview Temple, reached afterward passing through a series of dark, dank anterooms. It features a lightwell, with a biomorphic structure occupying pride of identify (its lines are reminiscent of your flying beetle, or a nesting bird).

• The completeness separating the dominate chamber from the balance of the dungeon, its 2 sides spanned by a tightrope. Your crossing was imperilled the first time by a pair of daredevils who avant-garde out to accost you midway, whilst this second one involves some sniping archers. In any result, whether it be by hand or arrow, funambulism and physical contact don't mix.

• A trio of stalfos who take taken upward residence in Ghirahim's old boss chamber. At that place are six swords between them.

Between those last two items you have your final meeting with the mogma. Disappointed and empty-handed, he'due south had his fill of treasure hunting and is going to render habitation. Your attending is seized, strangely enough, past the post-obit judgement:

Odd that this should experience so pers– oh. I understand now. He's talking about you lot. You're the thief. Your attention was seized considering you lot're guilty. He's probably alluding to the key, or if non that then the artefacts which once resided here, simply either manner, you lot did it. From a sure point of view, yous are indeed a ransacker, and you definitely took what was – again, from a certain bespeak of view – his primal. Hmm.

All the same, he's a fine ane to talk, isn't he? Nought simply hypocrisy from this rodent. Let this be a lesson to him that there's no honour amongst thieves. Yep, y'all're sort of, arguably, robbing, but information technology's all for the greater good. Now that you've thoroughly ambiguated the matter to your satisfaction you can move on, secure in a righteousness that is all the stronger for having been lightly challenged.

Stand aside, permit that fatheaded mindset to proceed – we'll resume contact with it when we reach the Ancient Cistern. Reverting back momentarily to the cogitations arising from the 'why' of this irregular, repeated dungeon: one senses that this business concern with the key and its theft is of some importance. It hasn't been included merely to freshen up this retread equally it'south altogether too slight to serve as sufficient lark from the recycling. No, it's more like the game is urging you to focus on the essential elements and interplays of this little narrative by having them take place in an area that, because it'south familiar if non exhausted, won't get in the way. What's the deal with this microstory? It has the concision and ethical profile of a legend, yet at that place's no particular conclusion or discernible moral to be drawn from it. Puzzling. One will just have to put it to the side for now, despite suspecting that there'due south more than to information technology than meets the eye.

That was the drift of my thinking when I originally played this section. The subsequent dungeon does provide a capper to the story here, every bit I guessed it might, but what I didn't have the slightest clue of at the time was that the belting brusque story I recognised as being integral to the Ancient Cistern first slips into the game here, in Skyview Temple, and in such an intelligent and witty fashion that to know it is to marvel at it. Let'due south beginning addressing The Spider Thread and how Skyward Sword adapts it to its own ends.

Whilst bearing in mind everything gleaned thus far, rewind to this bespeak, where you first met the mogma. The conduit in the top-centre of the pic was something of a loose end or curiosity when first exploring here: upon opening, it offers a shortcut between the archway (where Link is standing) and a major hub room. Quite why you would want such a thing is a bit of a mystery equally only a unmarried, tiny chamber separates archway from hub, and there's no demand to travel backwards anyway.

On your return, with the curve of the staircase cartoon your eye to its recess, the purpose of the conduit – equally an expedient for this second bout – becomes clear. Following the conversation with the mogma (complete with those plundering allegations), the majority of players volition make employ of the shortcut and exist on their merry way. An archer in the hub room monopolises y'all when you enter, hastily pulling you lot forrard and abroad from the wall you've just leapt down. (Information technology should be noted here that this is the most arboreal part of Skyview Temple, with trunks and branches dominating the upper half of the space.) What are present on the wall, and afforded only a moment'south diversion when creating the shortcut ii dungeons and several hours prior:

Spiders. Negligible, nuisance grade spiders. When using the shortcut, jumping over their heads and into the room, they are literally beneath your find. Later, in searching for the key, you're likely to cast a glance their style without paying them any mind. There's zilch to be gained by killing them, not even the sport of it.

A lateral motility is necessary here in order to introduce The Spider Thread. The story begins one morning time in the garden of Paradise; the Buddha is strolling through it with perfect equanimity. From his supreme metaphysical vantage point, the Buddha peers down through the garden's swimming and beyond an unfathomable distance to behold the grisly spectacle of Hell (aka Naraka). He regards Kandata, a robber and murderer in his onetime life now subject to endless drownings in the Swimming of Blood, Hell's deepest and worst region. "But it seems that Kandata had performed ane single act of goodness":

Passing through a deep wood 1 day, he had noticed a tiny spider creeping forth the wayside. His get-go thought was to postage stamp information technology to death, simply as he raised his foot, he told himself, "No, no. Fifty-fifty this puny creature is a living thing. To have its life for no reason would be besides cruel." And and then he had let it pass unharmed.

The "deep wood" is, of course, what surrounds you in this hub room. You are a murderer (understanding information technology in your basic, thanks to the sword's motility controls) and a thief. The game even replicates – inside the constraints of its language – Kandata's foot pausing in a higher place the spider, by having yours sail overhead. Without the role player existence fully enlightened of information technology, Skyward Sword is inducting them into the role of this sinner, steering them towards the moment where they grasp the thread of conservancy and first to climb. (The theme of destiny receives from SS its most complete and emotionally perceptive treatment in the medium, with the ensnaring of the histrion here a choice instance.)

Aside from the infrequent elegance and startling cogency achieved here, what absolutely thrills me is how appreciating that this reheated dungeon has been woven into the plot of Akutagawa's work radically recontextualises and enriches it. If interpreted every bit a world of vanities, equally the transient realm of the unenlightened degraded by the likes of Kandata, its flyblown, withered qualities gain a new currency as proofs of a wider spiritual corruption, which is intriguingly start by it also existence the game'due south forest dungeon (with its connotations of vitality and wholesome growth). ² Similarly, there being no explicit resolution to the (tawdry?) mogma storyline is in keeping with our naïve experience of this life; information technology is not the way of the world for things to exist tied up neatly. Any catharsis or anticipation of solace must be provided by something beyond the everyday. By an afterlife, perhaps. Skyview Temple being both a seat of worship and in the throes of terminal disuse, it doubly anticipates that undiscovered country, points the way to the ultimate: it makes an inevitability of its successor, the Aboriginal Cistern.

Notes

¹ This subjectivised, psychological formula is highly unusual for a Zelda title, though not without precedent in the wider medium. Honestly, I believe it's more productive to approach SS with the notion that information technology's closer to the pensive and nuanced interiority of Silent Hill 2 than to the phlegmatic simplicity of, say, A Link to the Past.

² A union of opposites which too figures prominently in Ocarina of Time's ii woodland dungeons, the Deku Tree and the Forest Temple. A spiral motif further links the pair with Skyview Temple, furnishing the states with a subtle case of how SS echoes its predecessors in both symbol and substance, advancing the game's discourse outwards, past its ain borders.

'Padding'

Spoiler

Oh, yep, 'padding' – I did say I'd wait at it, and this is a good identify to practice and so, betwixt dungeons. I think the higher up is sufficient to get this role of the game off the hook, but I'll get farther and say the charge strikes me as completely untenable against SS in full general. Although not each and every ane of the near harumphed sections is as slyly bountiful equally the return to Skyview Temple, all of them can claim a distinction of their own and a suitable place in the overall empyrean (especially the tadtones). The extended and delightful opening makes perfectly clear, in both feeling and grade, by alternating between The Breakfast Club and Beowulf, that the forthcoming adventure will be one of divertissements and frivolities every bit much as it is of epiphanies and grandeur, and this admixture ethos produces some rather wonderful things when the ii extremes are forced to cohabit.

Take that old bugbear, the Imprisoned: Calashnikov is right near the first battle, information technology can exist a (bracing) slog hacking away at the toes, darting between redwood-trunk legs as it laboriously slouches towards the pinnacle to be reborn – but there's also the germ of the cool, the humorously grotesque in its lolloping and your hurrying. That comedy is iterated upon to the point where you notice yourself, during the third and terminal clash, frenziedly circus cannoning out from a zippy, jury-rigged contraption congenital by your new mensch and weapons researcher Groose, aiming to bop the head of a creature which has now sprouted a cartoon halo that's hoisting it up – a Quetzalcoatl by fashion of Abner Dean, or perchance Tex Avery'southward Leviathan. Don't get me wrong, information technology'southward all still very much a stern competition betwixt good and evil, information technology's simply that there's at present a buddy one-act, model railway, acrobatics and shooting gallery involved. Somehow. This progression doesn't come beyond equally hollowly repetitious because the respective tones, tempos, intensities, scales and framings of each bout are also unalike for that. The 'congestion' bending doesn't bear scrutiny either, there being a dozen hours or and then separating the first encounter from the 2nd, while the unmarried i between the second and 3rd lets the endearing Groose storyline prune along very punchily. No, pleasure argues decisively against this idea of padding. ^three Rather than being vacantly drawn out, SS is whipsmart in marshalling its resources with the frugallest economy and greatest poise.

³ Which isn't to say that SS is without its longueurs. The retrieval of the pinwheel, for instance, is a needless job, whilst the commencement part of the volcanic dousing quest feels boring. Such errata add up to maybe thirty minutes in a game tens of hours long and then must be considered like they are here – as footnotes. Fifty-fifty Homer nods.

The Aboriginal Cistern – Paradise in mind

Spoiler

The opening of the Aboriginal Cistern and its ambience are a example in point. Coming from a space that had, in every sense, been emptied out, you arrive here to find affluence and lushness – indeed, you lot're almost actively greeted by them, such is the vitality enveloping you.

Instead of dust, a crimson fenghuang is in the air. The camera can't assistance itself, it flies along with the bird, taking in the doors (where do they atomic number 82 to?) and ledges (how do you reach them?) of the surrounding wall earlier coming to balance on this bogus waterfall, which descends like silk on marble to the lilting music. Lotuses blossom like "perfect white pearls", wafting forth a "never-catastrophe fragrance wonderful beyond description", sumptuous in the gilded rays oozing from their glass facsimile in the ceiling above. The round space, central construction, flora and yellowish hues invite comparison straight away with Skyview Temple'southward main room, though it's really not fair to do so: at that place, you lot staggered from darkness into the drab light of sunset; here, it's "forenoon in Paradise", passed into with the assurance of the blessed (or fatheaded).

Whilst preserving the ghost of the earlier temple as a contrapunt, SS places the player in one of the primary settings of The Spider Thread, the garden of Paradise, and lavishly lays on what an adventurer would deem heavenly: doors, advantageous ledges, treasure chests, switches – all possibilities to be explored and exploited. It leaves a good first impression, and restores back to the player that dungeoneering yen. Still, non content with juggling 2 discrete areas of its own and an external short story, the opening room adds another layer of reference. In the picture in a higher place, at that place is a large metal cog; together with the wall switches, pipes and full general salutary character of the place, it suggests something like a municipal waterworks (the false organic decor even puts me in heed of Bazalgette and Paxton'south great industrial cathedrals). The 'Ancient Cistern' title by itself indicates a degree of straddling high and low, announcing a dynamic of headbutting between the sacred and profane that will work itself out over the course of the dungeon.

It's a locale filled to bursting with personality and freighted with meaning. To talk of the game having no sense of place: I think quite the reverse is in evidence, which is to say SS maximises its spaces past braiding diverse subjects, conceits and styles, all whilst being disciplined plenty to permit each component to come up through conspicuously and inflect the overall system, as they do hither. ⁴ (The Lanayru Desert, with its fourth dimension-shift stones, constitutes the summit of this approach.) However much this mode may jar with a sensibility insisting things not overlap and remain essentialised, it seems thoroughly perverse to hold that SS'south environments are without any flavour because they elect to offer many.

The dungeon'south star attraction underlines my statement. Over again, it'southward very multum in parvo, beingness equal parts monumental religious statue, pavilion and Mechanical Turk. I would like to concentrate for the time being on that get-go attribute: those acquainted with The Spider Thread and alert to its influence in SS will recognise Akutagawa's Shakyamuni Buddha, who compassionately extends the titular strand to Kandata. In due class this equivalent will exercise the same for you – and therein lies a problem for the game.

Every bit it proceeds, the Ancient Cistern splits itself in 2, polarising around a heavenly realm of lotuses and lite at one extreme, an infernal cavern of blood and damned souls at the other. Your rescue from the latter is at the discretion of a gracious thespian, with this Buddha the simply plausible 1 to be plant in the backwash of your escape. Naturally, one would appreciate something of their goodness by that act alone, yet to have this virtue demonstrated all in ane burst would seem a tad pat, likewise bluntly deus ex machina-ish. Association with a welcoming space simply goes so far: the wisdom and benevolence of this Buddha need to be actively vouched for alee of time and so as to lend ripeness and internal logic to the act of mercy. How does SS attain this?

In this instance, information technology pursues a strategy of characterisation past guided inference. An orthodox puzzle is adapted to an unusual end past having it illuminate a state of mind, and bridge the gap between 2 beings through a shared "eureka!" Though dense in its cultural allusions, its best parts can even so be understood without prior knowledge of either The Spider Thread or Buddhism, every bit the game lucidly expresses itself in immediate formal terms (for example, the sense of 'transference' I outline below is readily intuited via gameplay alone).

The cultural sphere enlisted to help flesh things out here is, predictably, the religious i: the positioning of the statue constructing at the eye of a circular room (and, indeed, the entire dungeon), combined with its, er, Buddha-ness, recalls South Asian cosmograms. An immense and circuitous body of tradition(south), these cosmograms include both illustrative visualizations (such as mandalas, varieties of which do middle on Buddhas) and psycho-corporal practices (eastward.g. yoga) which aim to reach a "move from subtle, hidden, and potential space into external, visible space" ⁵ as a means of parsing the universe and comprehending one's place inside it. Your outset task here finds y'all making use of these schemas in social club to access and conceptualise not the universe but a sacralised model of it – the Ancient Cistern.

After the opening cutscene, you begin exploring the dungeon. In a room leading off from the central chamber, your progress is halted by:

A combination lock, removed by hitting its jewelled petals in the correct sequence. If you lot choose to consult information technology, an next stele mentions the temple possesses a "clandestine order", knowledge of which is required to advance farther. Either way, it's dorsum to the primary room in search of a solution.

From the entrance, a couple of quick hops bring you to the base of the Frankenbuddha and some other stele. It reads (emphases in original):

Carved into the keen statue are inscriptions of gratitude. They reveal the secret order of this temple.

An itinerary of points on the statue's body follows. The spiritual ("gratitude") and mystical ("secret order") import of these sentences helps bed in the tone of the Ancient Cistern. A hierarchy is besides established, with the surroundings – the construct containing and divulging the esoteric whatsits – in a senior position to the actor/initiate. (The air of tutelage and idea of orderliness fixed upon the Buddha should be borne in mind for later.) Touring the "great statue", you lot come up across these emblems –

The consonance with the jewelled lock is obvious, and then too is the homage paid to venerated artistic forms by these roundels. They range from the interreligious dharmachakra to works like this:

A Buddhist cosmic mural from Punakha, Kingdom of bhutan (photograph by Eric Huntington)

Simple though they are in comparing, the roundels are definitely derived from Dharmic geometricizations. So far as purpose is concerned, in that location is an appreciable correspondence between the ii groupings, with mandalas and other devices importantly serving equally aids to unlocking inner knowledge, or orienting the individual within an interfolded, multiplanar space (broadly defined) – puzzle clues stake out the same territory within their smaller domain. Furthermore, the emblems' symmetrical placements on the Buddha's torso calls to listen related mystical frameworks such as chakra, wherein a noncorporeal physiognomy may be affected by exercises directed towards focal points of the human anatomy. For unassuming textures, their semiotic accomplish is gargantuan. Those with an eye for such details may consider it a shame – bathetic, really – to squeeze them for information and move on, but needs must. It's exceedingly rare for a videogame to deploy such dense symbols every bit appositely equally this, and i should exist content in enjoying the fleeting harmonisation of a mere hazard championship with several earth religions. ⁶

A brief check that you've got the emblems in the right order (i.due east. committing them to memory) and so you render to the lock. Four swift slices and you lot'll see what lies ahead. A one and a — it's hither, in the rumbling afterquake of the first accident struck, that it dawns on you, all at once, just what'due south happened. Sighted on the Buddha, and then carried in the mind back to this door, at present entering into your own person through the labour of your muscles and the reverberation in your mitt – those cosmograms have synaesthetically leapt from visual geometries to ordinal abstractions to ritualised physical acts, preserving their essence whilst flashing through their conventional religious expressions. (Yet not beholden to them. The continuity in the play of form is eminently intelligible without giving a moment'south thought to the nondiegetic world.) You weren't moving away from a puzzle but internalising information technology in the most palpable way, ensorcelling your body and decentring your consciousness inside an infinity every bit virtually every bit it is far. One word captures the mental and sensational blitz, the unabridged sweep of the sequence: transcendent.

Racing back from the puzzle's climax to its get-go, you can see that what ended in a body besides started on one. If your being can be said to incarnate the 'journey' of this episode, the same holds for the Buddha; the difference is only one of serene anticipation versus fresh realisation. Whether subliminally or catching all the details, the player becomes simpatico with the resident luminary – after all, they grant passage and assist you towards insight. Shorn of an everyday personality and depicted through a graven image, they seem to exist goodness itself. This may pb adventurers with a high opinion of themselves to feel a deeper connection, that they are one and the aforementioned…

Airily breaking downwards barriers and fostering novel connections betwixt disparate things is a loftier-minded, syncretic manner of manifesting the multiplicity discussed earlier. A Gothic culling arroyo towards the aforementioned ends is dualism, whereby internal divisions are erected and items swing violently between opposed, morally-charged aspects of themselves. These syncretic and dualistic modes together form a schema that underlies the construction and organisation of the Aboriginal Cistern. During the preceding cosmogram puzzle, dualistic elements are also introduced, allowing the dynamics of the schema to commence operating at the very showtime of the dungeon. As a couple of small occurrences intimate, not all is holy low-cal and beatific smiles.

When outset inbound the room with the jewelled lock, you come to a drib. Boldly leaping down –

– you expect the wide lotus foliage to back up your weight. Jumping along and skydiving are mutual actions in the game, unremarkably conjoined with opportunities to demonstrate your heroism and strength ('death from above' gainsay, threading past hazards to state on a miniscule target, etc).

But non here. The pad gives way from the force of the affect and…

… flips to reveal a previously unseen organization of spiky tendrils and hooked roots…

… whilst leaving you in the drink, encircled by the same prickly plant thing. You'll practise yourself a mischief swimming into them; at the same fourth dimension, there'southward no promise of punching through the leaf to a higher place – it has closed over you like an oubliette's trapdoor. Chastened, y'all circumspectly swoop under and out from the organic barbwire.

Chalk up the misadventure to overlooking the laws of physics, non anything untoward from the locale. Minutes later, you're surveying the dandy statue, collating the roundels for the lock. Two of them are located on the idol'south submerged hands.

Nothing on the open palm. Is there a way to see the dorsum of the hand? Mayhap if you lot were to remove that rupee…

Too irksome a laissez passer by and the fingers roll, trapping you lot within a fist. Writhing and flailing, you lot practise manage to break loose, though not without a scare at the sudden violence, which is unnervingly heightened by the placid atmosphere. This 1 you tin besides have the blame for: interfering with a balanced system of pulleys and counterweights is sure to invite disaster. It'due south what yous'd expect to happen if you were to look at all the elemen– expect. Why would the Buddha be holding on to cold, hard greenbacks, crushing anyone who dares to relieve him of such worldly dross?

Elevating you heavenwards to meet with the divine, SS simultaneously thrusts out from beneath to tug you dorsum down and fill up your ears with innuendo of trickery, seediness and charlatanism – the Buddha yoked with the Mechanical Turk. Yes, yeah, maybe you lot tin can discount the unseemlier stuff because there's a presiding sense of probity and faith – but aren't 9 tenths of that noise the suggestion of virtue? If information technology's a thing of picking upwardly on cues, one shouldn't be selective, so shove to ane side the cosmograms and insight and all that vaporous piety – what is brought to mind past your visceral experiences of drowning, hurting and entrapment? Something vaguely threatening for the ingenuous player; for Spider Thread readers, nonetheless, there is ane obvious, specific answer: Kandata, who at this bespeak in the story is afflicted by the posthumous agonies of the Pond of Blood. In the same way that Akutagawa's Buddha gazes down into the Lotus Swimming and witnesses the murderer's degradation, your immersion in its videogame counterpart have brought you to apprehend the damned man's suffering without placing you directly within Hell itself. (This deftly handled and innovative vicariousness volition exist returned to.) Conspicuously information technology is not just the dungeon that has a lot going on: perhaps x minutes or and so in, the player is a bodhisattva, fire-and-brimstone provender, and cognitive dissonance personified.

Notes

⁴ This eclectic yet slightly noncommittal globe building/ecology design tendency is shared past Link's Awakening and Majora's Mask. Together with SS, they form the core group of philosophical Zeldadue south (for want of a better commonage term).

⁵ David Shulman, 'Buddhist Baedekers' – The New York Review of Books, 26 March 2020.

^six Serendipitously, the David Shulman review I quoted above contains a description of Himalayan mandalas that would serve every bit a fantastic precis for the Zelda series – I include it here merely considering the coincidence is delightful:

A Himalayan mandala is ordinarily a crowded infinite: in that location are godly and demonic spheres, labyrinths, palaces, gateways guarded by terrifying gatekeepers, mantric buzzes and hums, disorienting temporal rhythms, and hosts of deities, some ominous, others beneficial. With persistence, a meditator learns to create in open (mental) space the entire three- or four-dimensional universe with all its objects and living beings.

Eyes, mouths and keys

Spoiler

Moving on, with the agreement that the Ancient Cistern is an uplifting place possessing a dark undercurrent: the room past the jewelled lock has you sending giant arachnids to watery graves and learning to have advantage of the lotus flipping mechanic (falling on ane turns it over and stops its roots from blocking an leave). A minor key is the reward, allowing you to open up a door into the keen statue. Upon entering this (slightly ascetic) silo, a brief cutscene plays. To a higher place –

– a reaffirmation of the providential ordering of the dungeon, centred on this lotus flower/dominate room door (note the brief reprise of Skyview Temple'south spiral motif). Below, where you drop down later on the cutscene finishes –

– a 4-armed skeleton in golden armour. Huh. Well, the Ancient Cistern is a Zelda dungeon after all: notably vicious adversaries are to be expected. What enemies in that location are hither must exist gatecrashers, in the dungeon but non of it (restoring dungeons to their prelapsarian dignity is a series staple). In fact, it doesn't detract from the peaceful splendour at all. No, this is obviously an allegorical enemy: a mouldering handbag of bones, bitterly clinging to life and treasure, dwarfed by the m monument to nirvana imprisoning information technology? If that isn't an authoritative statement on the superiority of the ascending spirit to the recalcitrant flesh then I don't know what is. Barbarous this vice effigy and move on.

It puts up fierce resistance, though, keeping you lot on your toes and at the limit of your swordsmanship. Part style through, it brings out an axe and another sword to supplement its existing two. Thrusts, swipes, the clanging of metal on metal, shield bashes, limbs strewn everywhere, golden plate clattering to the ground, bedlam. Towards the end the skeleton's helmet is lost, so move in for the kill, another flurry of blows and – there! Done!

Exulting in your hard-fought victory, it would be easy, all too piece of cake to overlook something that but came into view at the frenetic climax of the battle, and which vanishes with the disintegration of the skeleton moments afterwards it concludes.

A third middle in the eye of the forehead. The nearly ominous sign yet of the Ancient Cistern'southward intrinsic two-facedness, its introduction here is and so very cunning. Blink-and-y'all'll-miss-it to the letter, information technology arrives when your assumptions near the justice of your boxing (and, past extension, the wider environment) are at their zenith, blinding you with action and its triumphant hangover to let this sideslip by. Information technology really borders on a visual joke – simply those who know what they're looking for will be able to catch sight of a higher consciousness. ⁷ (A further structural grace note: the third center is another motif from Skyview Temple, leading to the pinnacle and lesser of the statue interior having matched second-paw symbols.)

Allow's presume you saw nada markedly sinister in the fight and that yous're still enjoying this fool's paradise. Good news, you're nearly to like it even more every bit it's time to collect the dungeon particular, your new plaything. The holy ritual of the chest opening, that tune, a outburst of light and —

Ooo, a whip! It's brilliant fun, and really the, erm, whippiest to be found in videogames by virtue of the motion controls. Using it feels liberating, adroitly swinging, cracking and curling it round things through natural arm and paw movements. Whilst it's a near atomic number 26 police of games that new equipment and powerups allow you lot do more than and with greater latitude, the degree of accent placed here upon liberty, in both action and as a concept, is noteworthy. The sense of licence it affords is enhanced commencement by what the game asks you to do with it (brushing aside 1 of the series' oldest conventions, as we will see presently), then by coupling it with the dungeon'due south foremost token of emancipation, the spider thread (their forms resemble one some other; you hang from both; they appear to exist gifts of the Buddha).

But all that in due time. At the base of the statue interior, a new type of valve presents itself. Latching on with the whip and pulling it like a spinning top cord turns on a water spout, which lifts you dorsum to the statue's entrance. In the key room again, you tin now swing across a gap, leading you to the chest with the dungeon map (reinforcing, in passing, the space'south cosmogrammatic connections). Downwardly on the pond, your new whip helps you to flip a lotus pad, providing you with a platform to actuate a previously unreachable switch using that aforementioned particular. Information technology closes a sluice, stopping the artificial waterfall; now you tin dive downwardly to enter –

The maw of this rock fish. Although innocuous enough in itself, it also instantiates one of SS's more macabre leitmotifs: the gulping down of prey past beasts, Jonah style. ⁸ A nightmare early in the game codifies it quite forcefully:

Tread warily – that is, if y'all can avert distractions. At the other end of the gullet/pipe, you go out from the mouth of an even larger fish. You acceleration a scuttling spider and are then checked by a barred doorway. Anything else in the room? Salvage for a small rupee chest backside the fish's head, no. What about the ceiling? Goose egg. Perhaps y'all weren't meant to come up this way notwithstanding, amend consult the map… argh, no, this is the simply path forward. Let's have a closer look at those confined, perchance one of them is loose (actually hoping against hope here). Wait, there's a switch on the other side! Y'all just have to go circular – shit, you can't! OK, there must exist a style to flip information technology… Oh! Volition it work?

It does! Against all expectations, you can yank that sucker down from where you lot stand, raising the gate. Quaint now in an age of systems-driven games boasting refined, subtle physics engines, this reaching through the bars struck me at the time every bit a meaning difference, even if simply in the context of the series. (Projectiles making their fashion past a barrier, maybe, but a held item? I don't recall that happening in a Zelda before, though I'1000 open to correction.) In whatsoever event, it's unprecedented in SS, and very satisfying to upshot. Found close to the Buddha, the whip might be taken (albeit with a measure of fancy) as a gift from him, and its role hither in crossing boundaries and freeing upwardly space is congruous with the themes explored by the cosmogrammatic puzzle that is tied to the figure. Taking information technology all into consideration, this appears to exist another occasion that subconsciously encourages you to care for the Ancient Cistern as your own: you needn't experience constrained by such things every bit gates and locks, for y'all can brand them disappear like so. Going by the cheeky impunity with which you've violated age-old dungeon norms here, laws of all stripes likely don't utilize to y'all. If the Buddha's influence pervades the tranquil ambience, yours is a presence that falls only a hair's breadth curt of his, existence the chosen hero and next best thing to a divinity. An additional factor buttressing that doltish, smug sense of self is that – aside from the small-scale perils of drowning and the skeleton warrior – this has been a remarkably easygoing dungeon thus far, more stroll than struggle. Such is life in Paradise, where the lotuses flower radiantly and all things are every bit one…

The next space is seemingly a expressionless-end, containing just a pool, a abysmal pit, and some raised platforms. After making your way by the obstacles effectually the sides of the room (which include a prayer wheel-similar roller), y'all accomplish another valve. Pulling it opens a drainage hole at the lesser of the pool, creating a sucking vortex.

It can scarcely be considered inviting, and the context doesn't abate any fears (that premonitory fish; the neighbouring completeness; drowning every bit a recurrent fear). Sensing that you're venturing into a threatening unknown, you pace from the ledge, swoop, and are tugged downward, down, downwards…

Transitioning between areas, the music slows – infarcted, torpidly warped. A copper pipe spits you out into a purplish half-light. It's your imagination simply this water seems stagnant, or even poisonous. Perhaps it's because of the bruised color information technology has. Bars array the near horizon over again, though now in that location's the stench of the sewer and misery of the cell hanging about them. Paddling towards a lotus pad, a great spider descends to assert jealous buying. The trappings of the dungeon above are present, their warmth and welcome absent. Such is life… where, exactly?

A small landing permits access to dry land. Using your flight beetle to sever its thread, you can accept the spider emulate you earlier, crashing down on to the lotus pad and flipping it over. That there is a continuity of puzzle logic above and below is strongly reassuring. This might actually prove tolerable. The lotus roots now out of the way, y'all can swim through a pocket-size opening and follow the waterway. More confined, but likewise a locked door. A goblin patrols the far side, with something on its chugalug catching the light.

Ane instant, from inspiration to culmination:

Accomplish out –

– and pull dorsum! Yep, this is more than like it: another smart extension of what you learned in a higher place and a casual display of your limitless, shining hero-of-the-game prowess. An offkey couple of minutes there only now you're back in sync with the Geist of the Ancient Cistern. The goblin squeals in frustration at having been whip-pocketed by a master. Open the door and deliver your apologies in short, abrupt club.

Hold on a moment though, some things are awry. Why is the dungeon giving you the cold shoulder, near plenty imprisoning yous in fact, so letting you completely shrug that off in ecstatic freedom? It'southward all too convenient, too calculated to delight. When information technology does knock you downward, it lifts you upward subsequently to an even greater height than earlier, with the bicycle then repeating itself. True, it didn't feel that strange upstairs, just down here in the murk information technology sits differently.

Also, why do you have this whip? Information technology doesn't and then much aid in solving the puzzles as it mockingly dispenses with them birthday. Come down from the dopamine high, wait at things in the cold low-cal of day, and realise that you've had a crook code pressed into your eager, addled hands. It seems wrong to so blithely violate established dungeon procedures – sure, new items e'er turn the tide in your favour when advancing through these catacombs and mazes, only this is, well, facile. Come to recollect of it, didn't this whip turn up far earlier than is normal? Before the dungeon map, even. In the Ancient Cistern, mastery precedes understanding.

Consider this latest incident, where you eschew confronting the monster, instead just reaching into the depth of the space and extracting what you need. Really, that doesn't seem in character for a noble adventurer, cowardly stealing a key and – no, no, no, not that thought, not those memories stepping into focus, not that place in this one. The past is over, gone, dead, and it never really applied to you anyway. Go through the door, now. Now.

Notes

⁷ It would be remiss of me not to insert a caveat hither, namely that the third eye is rather difficult to brand out as a result of SS being an SD game, and a visually lengthened i at that. (It will be interesting to run across whether it'south more prominent in the HD release, and how that colours interpretations.) Similarly, the timing of the helmet coming off may be looser than my account implies. Still, I feel my characterisation of the dynamics involved is substantially correct.

⁸ Incidentally, this conceit is combined with the leaping/skydiving activity for their shared 'conclusion' in the Burn Sanctuary, the sixth dungeon, where you fall from a high gantry onto the invisible natural language of a yawning behemothic.

This post will exist connected in a separate entry beneath.

greencomiscrikend.blogspot.com

Source: https://rllmukforum.com/index.php?/topic/320644-the-legend-of-zelda-skyward-sword-hd/page/15/

Share this post