#spoilers for a 20yo game I guess

[charlesoberonn]

A lot of fans probably missed it because they don't know the 't' in Godot is silent. But Godot's alias is made up of the last syllables of his first and last name (Diego Armando)

[phoenixcatch7]

Just finished oracle of ages!!! Good game, good game. I have Thoughts.

I actually really enjoyed the story and characters! I figured going into the oracle games that it'd be a simple, cliché story, not much nuance or depth, and with Seasons that's basically what I got: din gets fridged in a crystal at the start of the game -> go get her -> you need a set of maguffins to do so -> fight big monster.

Admittedly it was the first game, which meant less story, but even if I hadn't linked (heh) the games for extra end game content Ages just did so much more.

Unlike din, naryu has someone else willing to help her. Ralph (the twinkiest twink to ever twink) was a young man who was her devoted friend (there was a weird crush triangle thing going on with him, Link and naryu, I always felt like I was missing subtext) and, spoilers for a 20yo game?? I guess?

He was the dethroned descendant of the ancient queen Ami. His family definitely still have big money though. He was pretty clearly supposed to be a comic relief character with a twist, but I ended up really liking him! He was over enthusiastic and over confident, but not unintelligent, a decent swordsman (I think) who was incredibly loyal to his friends and held some deep rooted responsibility for the people his family used to rule. Kind, determined, good with kids and people in general, he was terrified but willing to sacrifice his very existence to save the people.

The world building was also great! I don't think I've ever played a zelda game without gorons, but hylians were in short supply. To be expected outside of hyrule, I guess? Anyway, there were also lizard people on an island (tokay!) whose entire deal was.. A bit outdated? Rude, brazen and aggressive to outsiders, they lived in crude huts, worshipped things they didn't quite understand and were generally the old Hollywood stereotype of an isolated jungle tribe.

There was also, like, zora racism? There's a zora village underwater, and one of them was like 'us sea zora are nothing like those river zora 😒' which handily solved both my question of if the river/ocean zora divide was canon or fanon and the relationships between the two. Are they even the same species?? It just makes the rito even weirder but hey lmao. In all honesty I was pretty sick of the river zora at that point too, I swear there were two of them popping up in every screen that had even a sliver of water deeper than the knees and they CONSTANTLY shot fireballs istg they were such a pain. They were literally everywhere and so hard to kill.

On the plus side mermaid suit ^u^!! A dungeon item (the mermaids cave), the item had a desc like 'the skin of the mythical beast' which raised SO many more questions than it answered. The zora were delighted to see a young mermaid! The use of 'maid' implied either a) the zora all thought link was a girl and he didn't correct them (eyo genderqueer androgeny) b) the zora don't subscribe to gender the way humans do (eyo genderqueer androgeny) or c) all fish people look like mermaids regardless of their specific gender (eyo genderqueer androgeny). It literally could have been all three who knows. Maybe one day we'll actually meet a mermaid in zelda.

Also, there's a mini game in Seasons, which I played first, the subrosian dance. It's a pretty popular part of their culture, it's got music, it's got professional dancers. In Ages, you find the gorons doing the exact same dance! Rosa, a subrosian performer you meet in Seasons, is also there, saying her people's dance is better (tbf it is), but if you go to the past you'll find the gorons actually invented the dance first, as part of their love of games and entertainment, and you can talk to two subrosians who are talking about bringing the dance home! It's so interesting to see little details like this, where the travelling subrosians visited their fellow cave dweller lava eating people centuries ago, brought it back home where it exploded in popularity and centuries later became refined as a whole folk dance with spinning and everything, with the people forgetting where it came from, where the gorons keep their dance exactly the same (having to do a rhythm game without rhythm is hard).

Actually, there was so much political fantasy drama going on in the past?? Like, you've got the childless queen taking care of her people, a budding village and a few more settlements across the kingdom. Early in her reign she tried to build a tower to act as a beacon to her fiancé lost at sea, which is a romance story all on its own, but it was cut short (maybe because of funding?). Centuries in the future, it's just ruins. You've got people living on an ACTIVE VOLCANO starting a symmetry cult around a artifact called 'tuni nut' which, presumably, stabilises the volcano? And it's entirely cut off from the outside world. The goron elder is crushed under rocks and their economy is failing. The zora king got poisoned and he's about to die without an heir because a witch turned the fairy queen into an octorock, but the man in charge of the only cure refuses to hand it over until someone passes his tests.

Most of it is solved relatively easily by link and a copious amount of time travel, but the thing with the ruling queen only gets worse. When the evil witch invades the kingdom, she possesses the oracle of ages, naryu (who's a little implied to be the Actual Creation Goddess Naryu reincarnated) and travels back to the past to bring about an age of despair in the present. She does this by slipping into the royal court and befriending the queen as a serving girl, rising up the ranks to become her closest advisor and corrupting her (pretty sure mind control magic is used a li'l). She convinces her to restart the black tower project, pouring all of her and the towns resources into it - forcibly conscripting every able bodied worker and working them to the bone, all while monsters start to circle the tower. With all the fear and resentment, it quickly becomes a beacon of dark energy, a perfect focal point to perform black magics.

Link (and Ralph) end up in the past and get hauled in front of the queen, with possessed naryu at her side, who basically jeers at them and ensures the queen won't listen to their untrustworthy lies. The townsfolk are getting increasingly stressed as their village fills with rubble and their men are worked to the point of collapse. Armed guards start to appear to keep the workers under control. Eventually, Ralph uncovers a hole in the guard rotation, and he and link sneak into the palace through a secret entrance Ralph oh so casually knows about. Link and naryu fight, but with stupendous timing the queen walks in to see naryu collapsed on the floor, Link standing over her with a sword. She calls for the guards, but before anyone can react, the witch, banished form her first vessel, leaps into the queen herself instead. Ralph shoves past the arriving guards and into naryus arms, while link moves in from of them. The queen orders the guards to attack, but naryu, reawakened, pulls them back to the present in the nick of time. In the present, the black tower is magically growing, reaching higher and higher into the sky, terrifying the people of the city.

Then! Ralph, who at this point is suspiciously invested now his actual goal is completed and naryu is safe, vows to go back into time again, away from naryu, to live under the now evil queen and bring protection and comfort to the villagers as a direct act of resistance, because the witch is feeding on their sorrow to power an unknown ritual (link knows. Link, canonically, has told nobody). So this teen in fancy robes and cape goes back to the oppressed, poverty stricken town under the thumb if someone who wants him dead and lives there for weeks if not months dedicating himself to supporting the village and bringing people's hopes and spirits back up, presumably while living out of someone else's wooden hut. In the middle of a literal depression inducing miasma that's sapping everyone's joy and will to live.

That just. Takes insane strength of character. That's a feat of pure, distilled, compassion as anarchy.

Link's off bouncing between past and present doing dungeons and solving easier issues through either sword or magic item, but Ralph is out here doing the long hard slog for little reward.

Link finally returns to the black tower completed, affecting even the people of the present, and, preparations complete, rushes to the past. Ralph is nowhere be seen. Talking to the villagers reveals several have a crush on him, but an old man saw him running for the tower, sword drawn. There's a man pacing by the entrance, who saw the kid run in, tried to stop him. He said Ralph said that he no longer cared what happened to him. That the man realised that Ralph had quietly succumbed to the same curse of despair they all were under. Link fights his way up to the top of the tower, where Ralph confronts the evil queen, sword at her heart, but every step she takes into it, he steps back. The witch laughs. She asks him if he's really willing to write himself out of existence - being the queens descendant, and all. Ralph leaps back, into links chest. He's shaking and stuttering, but he lunges, and is knocked out in one blow. The queen now asks link the same question: is he willing to erase Ralph? If he strikes her, kills her, the queen will die, childless, and he will never live. She leaves, and link rushes to Ralph. He's awake but unresponsive, defeated. With a heavy heart, Link leaves him to chase the queen. It's naryu who finds him, brings him out of the tower.

When the witch is defeated, the curse is lifted, and Ralph is once more energetic and kind. He's a little quieter now, though, sticking close to naryu. For all he was a loud and headstrong kid, I gotta say I was very impressed.

He would have made a good king.

[bonemarrowbestfriend]

alright no one asked but here are my final opinions on the kids. obviously spoilers for the quarry ahead

jacob: super mixed feelings. idiot who ruins everything, but most realistically 18-20yo in his behavior. makes stupid mistakes because he thinks with his dick, but also openly cries and shows fear often which i appreciate. didn’t like how he tried to force emma into a relationship at all, but the “i wish i could tell you i’m sorry; i don’t know what to do” lines were deeply satisfying for me. he was also actually funny to me in a couple scenes which is more than i can say for some of the others. “hhhngng skill”

emma: liked her, then didn’t like her, then was mostly distracted by her awful dialogue and strange mouth animation, not that that’s her fault. i think i understand her to an extent from her conversations with abi—she believes her talent and therefore her value lies in being entertaining, so everything she does has to be some kind of spectacle. unfortunately, it just wasn’t the kind of spectacle i found fun to watch, i.e. flirting with someone despite not reciprocating their feelings, creating drama where it wasn’t necessary, etc

kaitlyn: easily one of my favorite characters. i don’t find her funny at all, but just as it was with emma, that’s more the writers’ fault than anything. regardless, once the lighthearted tone of the night finally dropped and shit hit the fan, i liked her character infinitely more. she’s so clever!! and i love how handy she is. honestly many of the hacketteers wouldn’t have survived if it hadn’t been for her taking the reigns when necessary. what a total badass—and i’d say a semi realistic one, who still exhibits fear and panic

ryan: love this kid. everyone in-game seems to think he’s mysterious and brooding but he’s actually mostly just awkward and shy—at least that’s how i read him. and even though i saw other people getting annoyed with him for pushing back against laura at first, i really admired his loyalty and his sticking to his personal morals until he couldn’t anymore. he helped her in the end anyway, isn’t that telling enough that he ultimately does what needs to be done? also love the headcanon that he’s autistic, i definitely see it.

dylan: right up my alley. slightly annoying smartass? check. actually quite genuine and kind? check. secret genius? fuckin check babe. hard for me to pick a favorite scene of his; i enjoyed watching him interact with the others regardless of who he was with. maybe that’s because i think his dialogue sounds the most naturally human? at least in the playthroughs i observed. i’m also a bit embarrassed to admit i actually found him pretty funny, but let me know if that’s just favoritism lol

abi: sweetheart, but pretty one-note to me. i admired her kindness towards the other characters but i spent most of her screentime feeling bad for her. i think she’s very cute and would’ve been open to seeing more from her, though i suppose i understand why she fell to the wayside a little bit. not everyone needs to be a fearless badass, i can appreciate her role of needing more protection than the others. she felt the most like a typical 18-20yo girl to me.

nick: i guess he seemed like a sweet kid before shit went south for him. obviously i enjoyed watching his behavior change from “baby deer” to “cause for concern” over the course of his transformation. his… let’s call it “food aggression” over abi was incredibly uncomfortable and delightfully creepy to me. i was glad when she pushed him away of course, i just appreciated seeing the progression. besides that i didn’t particularly care for him one way or the other.

max: not gonna lie i love this dude. i unironically find him funny, i appreciate that he wasn’t overly skeptical of laura when she was scared in the woods, and even when he snapped at her he apologized right away calmed himself down. i also liked that he was primarily the one who needed saving. his takes never missed he was always right, they should’ve just gone to the motel and leaving a voicemail is absolutely not the same as calling ahead. love u puppy boy

laura: took me a hot min but i did in fact warm up to her a bit. obviously the mess she got them into was largely avoidable, but seeing as this is a horror game, i won’t fault her for that. i can even admire her stubbornness for the sake of character depth. i also liked her intelligence and resourcefulness, and sort of enjoyed watching her grow more ruthless towards the hacketts in order to save max. corruption in the name of love is what horror is all about baby