6 - The Legend of Zelda - Mythic Mind Games

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hello, and welcome to Mythic mind Games, where we discuss
video games through the lens of the Christian humanities. I'm
doctor Andrew Snyder, and I'm glad that you're here. Hey there,
welcome back to our first episode in a two parter
on Zeldam. And if you're listening to this on the

(00:24):
public feed, the non Patreon feed, then you'll notice that
we are. We have back to back episodes here that
we just had episode last week. We can have another
episode next week, and so you know, originally my design
was for us to start off every other week, but
we things just happened, so we kind of had some
some episodes stockpiled here. I didn't want to hold on
to him for too long, and so we're going back

(00:45):
to back for now. But I can't guarantee that we're
gonna be able to keep that up, and in fact,
we probably won't unless I guess more support that allows
me to divert attention from elsewhere to really get into
providing weekly episodes here, maybe even more than weekly eventually,
if we hit the right levels of support that allowed
me to do that. And so if you like what
we're doing here, if you like this conversation that you're
about to listen to today, then head over to patreon

(01:06):
dot com slash Mythic Mind and lend your support. Get
involved in this community, whether you are a silent supporter
or you're more actively involved in joining some of our
shows and whatnot. I definitely welcome your company. But today,
as I said, it's the beginning of a two parter
on Zeldam and Zelda is obviously a major franchise. It
has a major grip on our culture. You know, even

(01:28):
people who aren't really active in video games are at
least generally familiar with Zeldam. It's one of those franchises
that extends from the nes up to the current iterations.
You know, it's about as much of a mainstay at
as Mario, which which is pretty significant. And you know,
whenever you have a franchise that has this kind of

(01:50):
enduring value, I'm convinced that it has that enduring value,
it has that staying power because it resonates with certain
eternal reality of the human experience, certain desires, certain longing,
certain things that we're looking for, whether we consciously recognize
that or not. In our Star Wars conversation, I've talked
about how how Star Wars is something like a modern mythology,

(02:15):
and what makes mythology significant is it's something like a
public dream, as Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell would say,
in that it speaks to to something that happens kind
of our own in our own psyches, but in a
way that we can visibly and communally recognize that together
and engage with. And so I think that Zelda has

(02:35):
that kind of mythological power to it, which is why
it's such a major franchise. And that being said, in
the conversation we're about to listen to with as I'm
joined by David and Josh, they really lead this conversation.
As as I mentioned, my experience with Zelda really ends
with the N sixty four back with Okreen of Time

(02:58):
in Major's Mask, and so I participate to the Cynthia
mable here, but really Josh and David are going to
be carrying this conversation, and so I appreciate them. But
next week we'll have more of a targeted kind of conversation.
We'll have an interview with Anthony Cirilla, who is as
a professor at the College of the Ozarks, and he
has co edited a book of essays on Zelda and Mythopoia,

(03:22):
and so he's gonna be a good resource to go
even further with this investigation into the legend of Zelda.
But for now, I hope that you enjoy this general
conversation with Josh, David and me, and let's go ahead
and get to it now. All right, welcome to our
latest episode of Mythic mind Games, as we talk about Zelda. Now,

(03:44):
this is I mean, I haven't played Zelda since in
sixty four days majoris Mask and Nakarinam played Link to
the Past, but not since Superintended Days. So I'm gonna
be a little bit out of loop on this conversation,
but I fully expect that Josh and David will be
able to carry it to I'm gonna let Josh really
sort of see this this conversation, and so Josh go

(04:05):
ahead and take it over.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, thanks, Andrew, thanks for the honor and privilege of
I'm seeing this.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
So this should be fun, Sorr. Yeah, just typical mythic
mind fashion. I figured it would be best if we
just talked about our just general overall experience at the
Zelda So, Andrew, you kind of explained yours, But did
you want to say anything further on that?

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Yeah, I mean that's about it. I mean I I
had the uh, I had older brothers and so I
had the gold cartridge in es Zelda, I had the
the link to the past. That Okarina is really what
iut considered to be my Zelda game, the one that
with so many people right that that's the one that
stuck with my imagination, that stuck with me over time.

(04:48):
My cat comes to me when I whistle oppone a song,
it's it's it's the one that stuck with me, and
I just especially taking a pretty much a hiatus from
playing games, I just I miss a lot of what
happened since then in the world of Zelda. And so
that's about where I am for for this topic.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
Dave, you can go next.

Speaker 4 (05:09):
Oh yeah, Well for me, I'm video game wise. I
feel like I'm probably the biggest geek in this group.
So I I think it was in sixth grade, maybe
seventh grade, when the Legend of Zelda came out and
I blew through it in like a week. And I've
played all of the other ones at release pretty much.

(05:30):
So yeah, I've it's been a part of my life
since the early teenage years on, and I've always really
enjoyed the themes and the sense of exploration and all
that aspect of it. So I'm looking forward to talking
about it, and.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
I'll definitely want to really lead into your insight a
lot on those those early games.

Speaker 2 (05:56):
I'm not calling you old by the way your wisdom is.

Speaker 3 (05:59):
Appreciated, did and that is not I'm not just saying
that is sincere and genuine. So for me not really
having the experience of a lot of the NES and
SNS games, I I dabbled in them when I was older,
and there's like emulators and things like that, but based
only the timing and I was born. Okeraina of Time
was the first Celda game to come out in my lifetime.

(06:23):
I was like three or four when it came out,
and it's kind of same thing with me Andrews, like
that was like the game that was really that was
like the game of like my entire childhood. There's not
a single game that was really more influential, and uh
really that stuck with me more probably in like the
first like sixteen years of my life or so than

(06:43):
the not Okerina of Time. So it was like a
nine year span of me like be like playing that game,
getting a little bit further, getting frustrated, taking a break,
coming back to it because I was I was a
little kid, and I just wasn't smart enough to up.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
I just wasn't smart enough to.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
Get past Joba Jobbers Belly and then the Forest Temple,
than the Water Temple, and then the Shadow Temple after that.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
So but I yeah, I played.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
I mean I played Majora's Mask when it came out,
revisited and beat that one later. I think Windwaker was
the first one that I actually would when it came out.
I was actually able to beat it, like all the
way through without having to take breaks. But Twilight Princess
was probably the one that also really hit me at
a really good time too, because I was about I
was about eleven when that came out. Got it when

(07:25):
the release of the Wei itself that came that was
one of the games that came with it, or one
of the options you had, I think, and uh so
I played that one. I was like, I felt like
it was just dark enough where I was just the
right age to play that at the right time. So
they all stuck with me I liked Skyward Sword too,
but I was so fed up with the WE remote
system by the time Skyward Sword came out that I

(07:46):
actually never finished it because I was I was sick
of like fighting like this all the time, so I
admit ed never I never finished it. But I know
the story and it was an excellent origin story.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
I guess.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Since I'm driving this discussion and less say have something
to say, I I don't want to rant too much
about my experiences because they're lengthy. They'll probably come out
as we go through this, but I think one thing
I did want to talk about this and we have this,
We have this interview scheduled with Anthony Sirilla, who's really
really a great voice in this uh this realm. He

(08:21):
he edited a uh a book on like the basically
mythopoea in Zelda. I can get you the exact title
if you want. But this whole idea there is that
like Zelda is not just like the legs of the
Zela's here was just not just like a childish game.
It is in some sense, but it's it's it's also
it's childish and all of the best ways, right, Like

(08:43):
just like as the Great fairy tales and the great
romances of the medieval and Renaissance and even like to
some extent, the modern era are as well. And I think,
you know, one of my goals here this in this chat,
in with the chat with Anthony two days from now,
that this really debunks the idea that watch of Zelda

(09:05):
is just an adventure game for kids, in that there's
not a lot of literary or philosophical depth in it.
Because I think one of the really interesting things about
Zelda is that so Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator, also created Mario,
also created Donkey Kong, later created Star Fox in the nineties,
so that was all those others were created in the eighties,

(09:28):
and this game really in Dave, perhaps you could speak
to this in a second, but it's like it really
pushed like from my understanding, at least just reading the
history of video games, it really kind of pushed like
the uh, really the literary and narratival elements of a
video game was kind of revolutionary a sense like you're
not you're not playing pong with your buddy in his garage,

(09:50):
Like you're not Mario jumping over the barrels that Donkey
Kong throws at you right, like you're not Super Mario Bros.
Like there was an actual like you know, the original
Zelda game from eighty six is it's a role playing
game and there's a story and there's text, and there's
there's items, and like a not an open world, but
for its time, a pretty open worlds to explore in

(10:12):
a way. So Dave, if you want to actually say
more about that, I think you'd be the right person
for for that topic.

Speaker 4 (10:19):
Yeah, I think, uh, that's something that was really revolutionary
about the first one was that it doesn't have a score.
You know, you don't get a hundred points for stabbing
an octorock or anything. The whole point of the game
is just to explore this world and your your hand
isn't really held, you know. You you have to walk

(10:40):
into that first cave and the old guy gives you
a sword, and from there you can go in any
direction and just you know, when you run up against
a wall, you try to figure out how to get
past that. And I've seen where Miamoto said that was
kind of inspired by just exploring the countryside when he
was a kid. You know, he'd find caves or ponds

(11:00):
and things like that, and he wanted to to kind
of latch onto that sense of wonder and exploration and discovery,
which I really feel like they didn't capture again until
all the way to Breath of the Wild, where you
could just go in any direction and you would stumble
across things to do. But I mean even the dungeons

(11:23):
in the original Zelda, like sometimes you would have to
burn the right bush and a staircase would appear, and
that's how you found the dungeons. So like, you know,
as a middle schooler, I would pass friends in the
hallway between classes and be like, well, hey, I found
you know where the fourth dungeon is or whatever. So
there was there was a lot of fun, especially before
the Internet, when you know, now you're only stuck for

(11:44):
two minutes until you google a video where somebody's got
a complete walk through. But yeah, before this, most games
were arcade games where the goal was to try and
convince people to put more quarters in a machine, so
the score and getting your name on the scoreboard was

(12:05):
the only goal. But they started to slowly realize, hey,
we can tell real stories that people have already bought
the game. Let's just make it an engaging enjoyable experience.

Speaker 5 (12:15):
So yeah, that was a good point.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yeah, I appreciate your perspective. I had.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
I think there was like a version of that that
released on like it was like a re release for
the game Boy Advance when I was a little kid,
probably two and one, two and two roughly, and that
was like the only time I played it, And of course,
growing up playing like Operato of Majora's Mask, I was like,
this is hard, and he's like eight.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Bit, and as a kid, I just didn't get it.

Speaker 3 (12:37):
But one day I will go back and probably try
to play those, so we will see if I can
actually do it. They're they're very challenging in their own
right too. But I kind of want to like talk
about like just this idea of like just there being
just beauty meaning and such things in the Zelda series.
So I kind of see like High Rule as something

(13:00):
of it's kind of like something like of like a
like a adventurous world in like a romantic sense, right
like where it it draws you in, it's imaginative. It's
kind of like it's almost like reading like a George
McDonald novel like Fantastes or something where it's like there's this,
there's this beautiful world that draws you in and not
everything's just explained to you. And I think in our

(13:23):
postmodern society, and not directly picking on post modern ideologies directly,
but just just in general how people today like view
literature and writing and TV. And Andrew is comment maybe
maybe more comments later, but people like just are very critical.

(13:43):
People have a very critical spirit today, and sometimes I
think Zeldic almost get passed over in a conversation because
it's not always as obviously written through, you know, explicit
dialogue in the way like Final Fantasy is right, where
you have these back and forth between a whole cast

(14:04):
of characters for thirty to seventy hours sometimes of like
gameplay and where things are explained to you and cut
scenes maybe a little bit more at times, even I
think Zell that can kind of get over passed, And
I would say, like wrongfully so in that for sure,
but I also think in general too, what I'm also
getting at there is there's no uh A story doesn't

(14:27):
have to always be on the nose and told with
a really rich and robust narrative. Like I am a
fan of novels just as much as I am a
fan of poetry, and I teach both of those things
to middle schoolers, and they both have their purpose.

Speaker 5 (14:46):
Right.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
It's good to read like a well fleshed out, four
hundred page book. It's also good to work through a
poetry collection where sometimes you only have, like you know,
sixteen lines of poetry that paints you a picture, and
it's right. And so I think there's something about the
world of Zelda that's just incredibly poetic in its own right.

(15:07):
But there's paired another sense too, I think with yes,
like the characters are fleshed out in a way, it's
just not there's there's not be as much dialogue, but
it's mythological in a sense too. And it's mythological in
the sense that you've got basically every game is like
its own episodic tale, right, like you have you have

(15:29):
an introduction, and there's there's tension, and there's a plot,
and there's a beginning, and there's a middle, and there's
an end. There's an antagonist, often Gan or Gannendorf. Right,
there's the protagonist is always link. Zelda is usually, if
not always in the game, and she's sometimes a damsel
in distress often but she's also more than that. But
these episodic encounters they all roll up to a higher

(15:56):
a higher meaning, and a higher really meta narrative overall,
if you may, And it makes it kind of the
same things that we appreciate about mythology, right like you read,
you read like you know, the story of Prometheus, or
then you go read one of Homer's epics, or then
you go read like Hessi. It's theogony, like the tales

(16:17):
of like the Greek gods, and they're all part of
a greater mythos, right And I think in a sense
Zelda is the same way. And it's really we can
talk about this more later if if you all desire
to do so, But there's a higher mythological significance to it,
and there's beauty just even in the way that they interconnect.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
In my opinion, Yeah, I'd like to get to some
of that mythology in a second, but first in emphasizing
that Zelda perhaps tends to be more of a poetic
experience than strict narrative, which it is, I mean, at
least in my experience. Again, it's it's fairly limited at
this point that there's not a lot of story again

(17:00):
from going like in sixty four days and behind that,
there's not a lot of story built into it. I
guess you can outline the story pretty quickly. And so
when you describe it as being poetic, what do you
mean by that? What makes the Zelda franchise poetic?

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question, and I
think just kind of speaking, uh, just very like high level.
I think one of the I mean, and I kind
of hint to this earlier, but one of the biggest
differences in poetry like pro is really is sometimes just
merely the fact that like you get you get word

(17:33):
images in a sense, right, and they're not just word images,
but you get these they're almost like mosaics in a way,
where you get these different lines.

Speaker 2 (17:40):
Of poetry that come together and they're beautiful in.

Speaker 3 (17:44):
Their own in their own right, like as their own
fragments of their own pieces, but they as pieces and
fragments come together to a hole and make a picture
that's you know, ten times maybe one hundred times more
beautiful at times because they all come together in concord
and they work in a harmony in a sense. And
I think there's something about and maybe it's just as

(18:07):
simple with zelda As and this conviction probably grows deeper
just again in context of our postmodern society, that it's
it's really just enchanting. And people might say, well, it's
just like a forest, it's just a castle. It's just
there's just choros and there's just fairies and high leans,

(18:28):
and it's like yes, but it's like that's that's where
you want to spend your time sometimes and especially just
in them, you know, argue by the most disenchanted society
we ever lived in, right. I mean, this is why
in the nineteenth century the Romantics like like Wordsworth and
Coleridge and Keats and later on MacDonald and others were

(18:49):
really pushing back because there was about one hundred years
of just disenchantment post Enlightenment, in the Enlightenment and post Enlightenment,
and I think we are honestly seeing a lot of
parallels there in our time where it's like postmodernism is
really ugly in every form, and I think sometimes it's
immersing yourself in a beautiful world and of itself is

(19:12):
profound and meaningful, and like you do get characters within that,
and sometimes it's just a mere matter of show rather
than tell, things get explained to you in a lot
of more RPG based Like we talk about the Elder
Schools sometimes here, and it's like the amount of conversations
you can have in the Elder Schools are in Knights
of the Old Republic, and I love that they're made

(19:34):
that way. But it doesn't mean that Zelda is not meaningful,
because you can't just walk around the town and talk
to like, you know, twenty different guys, even though they
all have the same voice a lot of the time.
In Elder Schools, there's something to it where it's like
you're being shown a lot of things, but you're not
always being told. And when you're not being told, you
can ask questions, and when you're not being told the answer,

(19:56):
you can ask more questions and you can think about
it longer, and you don't always get a direct answer.
Sometimes that's really fun and really evoking of wond Artist
in general.

Speaker 4 (20:09):
And I I'm thinking back on a lot of these games.
Most of them open by showing, you know, carvings on
a wall or tapestries, explaining something that happened in the
ancient past. I think of like wind Waker and even
the beginning of Link to the past and what's the

(20:33):
most recent one. Tears of the Kingdom and Breath of
the Wild. They have that aspect going to them, so
it's like, Okay, we have these old stories and then
we're put into the modern world where people are just
living their lives, and then lo and behold, there's truth
in these stories. They're not just stories, you know. And

(20:53):
I think that's an important thing for people to have
in their minds that, yeah, just because a story is
old is not mean it has no value, that it's
something to be forgotten, that there are deep, important truths
in the old tales.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, and I appreciate the connection you made with the Romantics,
because it's really in the Romantic period where, especially in
the arts, landscape becomes a character. It becomes a focus
of attention in a way that you really just don't see,
at least predominantly in the art that's comes before it.
That's one of the things that Lewis says about Bay

(21:30):
of bailf obviously not Romantic because it's exceptional in the
fact that the landscape is a character, something that you
don't really see widespread until the Romantic period, and so
that definitely does feed into sort of the the Zelda
esthetic right where it's about I don't know, being more
than becoming, I suppose, And I mean I should caution

(21:50):
that the romantics can go a little wild, but focus
on exactly what it is that we're talking about. I
think that's a good connection.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
I would argue that Shelley, Shelley and Byron probably get
more unnecessarily wild in the wrong ways than the others,
just for people who don't have that context but read
read words worth Guys and Keats and some of Blake.
But anyway, we won't Alley for that any further. So

(22:18):
I think one thing, did you have something David? Before
I moved on to.

Speaker 4 (22:25):
I was just thinking about Link and the way that
he doesn't speak. And we've talked before about how often
in games the main character won't speak as because you're
supposed to feel, you're supposed to be able to put
yourself in that position. That's kind of a philosophy that
some games take, and this one's definitely one of those.
But I think it also works as part of his

(22:48):
character because he doesn't really need to speak. You know,
he knows what his mission is, he knows right and wrong,
he knows the task at hand, so it becomes kind
of part of his heroic quality that he doesn't waste
his time with words. I think so, I think sticking
through that even when they've been able to, you know,
have voice actors for everyone else if they want to

(23:10):
that they keep links silent as has always just become
an aspect of his character that is heroic quality.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
Yeah, I think that's a good perspective, especially because I've
definitely seen this generalized like YouTube videossayers or game reviewers
is kind of like pick on link because he's like
boring or one dimensional, and.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
I think it is.

Speaker 3 (23:34):
It's just like the point that this all exists in
a context of higher meaning and you might you cannot
like it, like that's fine, but there's more to think
about that meets the eye, and that's really a motif
for understanding Selda, I think in a lot of ways.
But another thing I wanted to talk about was and

(23:54):
this is certainly important to me, as I'm sure it
is to others, but just like the role of music
and Zelda and even how that ploys into the world,
because not only is the music beautiful, but I think
the music is pretty much always beautifully fitting in its
right context for where you are in the world, what's

(24:15):
going on in the story. But even by itself it
is I mean, I think it is some of the best,
the best video game composition of all time. I think
it's sort of some of the most well known. But
I can't even it's hard to even go into like
a like if I had to make like a top
ten list or start just naming off favorites, I just

(24:38):
be all over the place. And there's not many game
series long standing like this that I can say that for.
And it's not it's not just good or iconic in
a way that it's catchy, but it's again, it's beautifully composed.
It's it's harmonious, like everything works in concord with the
other parts of it.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
It's like it's like a symphony.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
I live in the Detroit area and the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra performed the Zelda music a few years ago, and
I went and it was wonderful. It was you know,
I don't know if I could say on par with
like Mozart or Bach, but it's if it's not on
par with them, it's a it's a tear or two donal,
which is still a massive, massive compliment in my opinion,

(25:19):
and I think music is actually one of the best
parts of the entire series. And I mean, let's just
be very frank here that like, music is important, and
it's beautiful and it's there's hardly many things more enchanting
than that. In George McDonald's essay The Fantastic Imagination, he says,
in quote, the best way with music, I imagine, is

(25:42):
not to bring the forces of our intellect to bear
upon it, but to be still and let it work
on that part of us for whose sake it exists.
We spoil countless precious things by intellectual greed. And I
think there's a sense there where again, people everything has
to be boiled down to like sign and rationalism. Sometimes
like oh, the writing has to be completely understandable. That

(26:05):
dialogue didn't make sense to me. Therefore it's stupid or
it's poorly written, or I don't like this character because
they're silent or something. Right, people can say, oh, it's
just music, but it's like, yes, it is just music.
But sometimes music is above and beyond even the writing
of a of a video game or a novel or

(26:26):
a short story in general, and so I think just
the role of music in general. Anything you guys want
to say about that, or even if you have some
favorite pieces, please feel free to share.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
Yeah, man, I do think that's an important point that
we talked about something like music, or I mean, so
much of aesthetics that it does, when it's done well,
it does speak to not an irrational part of us,
but the subrational part of us, that part of us
that stands beneath our rational nature and upholds it. We
talked about this recently in one of the Star Wars

(26:58):
conversations over for the Movies and Shows podcast, that the
Christian position is that it's really also played this position
that once you get to the limits of reason and
you start to approach that by which you reason, well,
now you're outside the bounds of reason, and that's fundamentally
where it is that we come from, which is why

(27:19):
the great most rational medieval Christian thinkers have a mystical
component to them, where even your your Thomas Aquinas or
whoever like you get to the limits of your reason
and now you find that the ultimately the place that
you're from rights, as Lewis would say, till we have faces.
It's like the place where all the beauty comes from,
this part of us that we know that we belong to,
but that we can't necessarily comprehend rationally. And music art

(27:43):
in generally done well, speaks to that part of us
where there may be elements of it that we can
kind of point to with words, which words words our signs,
but they're not the thing in itself, and good music
does is sort of like the thing itself, communicating to
us as much as possible. And so I definitely agree
that in the most enchanting games, the games that are

(28:05):
for those part most worth playing, they have incredible soundtracks
because they do such a good job of hitting that
part of us. So I think that's that's an important point.

Speaker 5 (28:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (28:19):
And the original Zelda, you know, music on the nes
was really tricky because they had to you know, they
had to keep it short and looping and not drive
you insane while you're playing the game. But the original Zelda,
which I forgot, I brought visual aid. So here's the
here's my American copy of Zelda, and this is the

(28:41):
Japanese release that came out about a year and a
half earlier.

Speaker 5 (28:44):
It is.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
On a little tiny floppy disc the Famicom disc system
is what they released itd on, but they couldn't fit
a lot of music on those, so I think there's
maybe five or six little loops in.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
The original Zelda.

Speaker 4 (28:59):
You know, there's the title screen, the overworld, the dungeons,
the final dungeon, and then the credits pretty much. So yeah,
it it sets the tone and it sets your mood
because of the way that music is able to to
influence us, as you were saying, Andrew, the way that

(29:19):
it touches you in a way I mean you can't
even really put into words.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
So yeah, and as as much as video game music
has obviously become more sophisticated with the technology, that there
is something charming about the old tunes on the N
s and S and e s.

Speaker 4 (29:37):
Yeah, designing and creating under constraints is a sometimes creates
things that you wouldn't get otherwise because you know, they
have like four, four or five channels to work with,
and I don't think they could loop something that was
very long. So to get such iconic things like the
Zelda Overworld theme and you know, the Super Mario theme,

(29:58):
stuff like that is pretty impressive.

Speaker 3 (30:03):
I did actually shut my camera off to provide a
not nearly as cool visual aid. But these are for
my childhood. Still have them sitting in here. Don't know
where my wind Waker and Toilet Princess discs are though,
So I.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Said, now, where's your your Japanese Akarina.

Speaker 3 (30:24):
It's you know, it's in storage. I of course I
have one.

Speaker 4 (30:29):
The Japanese Akarina cover is is. Actually I don't think
it's as good as the American one. It's a rare
case where that's the case. But that's sorry, that's my more.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, I'll be more impressed with somebody presenting a like
an original laser disc of the nineteen eighties Zelda cartoon series.
So that's what I that's what That's what I need
in this conversation.

Speaker 4 (30:54):
There's another example of why it's good when link doesn't talk,
because then you then you can end up with things
like that abomination. Yeah, totally American made very obviously that
that is not how he would have been portrayed in Japan.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
Actually, uh actually grew up on the you know teenager
in the late two thousands and on YouTube they were
like the YouTube poop videos of using that content as
the substance of the video or the visual substance of
the video. And uh, I don't know if the YouTube
poop was any better or worse than the original show,

(31:30):
but that's my experience with the show being a late
millennial as I am.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
We mentioned some about the broader mythology and the various
things that all these games sort of feed into. Gosh,
can you elaborate on what is the mythology of Elder
or what is what links what links all these together?
Pun intended?

Speaker 5 (31:48):
I guess?

Speaker 2 (31:49):
Yeah? Was it was it actually intended?

Speaker 1 (31:52):
I have to know it was not intended? So unintended?

Speaker 2 (31:57):
Got it? Fair enough? Okay?

Speaker 3 (31:58):
I had to challenge you on that because I was curreedious. Okay, yeah,
I will try to cover this to the best of
my understanding and my my cheat sheet to the right
of me that I will admit that I have because
I have no no war Master here. But so basically,
and you like get like tidbits of this throughout the game,
and honestly, if you really want to know, like just
go like buy a copy of the High Rule Historia

(32:20):
online and uh, I.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Think it's too expensive on like twenty bucks.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Or so, and uh, it really just gives you a
lot of like information about Zelden. This is like an
officially like published thing. So with those sometimes fan theory,
fan made stuff can be really good.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
It's it's helped to it's helped to kind of pull
everything together.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
But basically so it's is like it's very mythological, just
in the sense of just like the timeline like it
has it has like gods and gods who were there
either you know, before time. I'm not sure exactly how
it's understood in their culture. And one thing to note
too is like something like the a lot of the
influence on Zelda is going to come from like beliefs

(33:01):
about like from like Japanese like the Japanese Shinto religion.
And I'm not going to even try to draw those
connections because I don't really know anything about it, to
be honest, but probably just the difference between the Eastern
world and Western world and the sense but people have
mythologies all over the place where it's not just the Greeks,
the Romans and the Norse and the Celts in the East,
they had them too, and so there's this era basically

(33:24):
it takes place before the timeline and it's really the
uh like the creation of the world. And this is
kind of like thinking of just like the gods and
like the Greek pantheon and the sense too. But basically,
before time, there's this place called the still world where
the god Null would just erase whatever was formed whenever
it formed. And then there were these three golden goddesses

(33:47):
that came upon came upon it, and they imprisoned Null,
but n all created rifts. And so these three gods,
and they their names pop up a lot through the series.
But you have Din the goddess of power, the creator
of the earth, Nehru, the goddess of wisdom, the giver
of order, and then Ferrariri, the goddess of courage and
the creator of life. If you know you're Zelda or

(34:10):
just kind of given the general you know that power, courage,
and wisdom are the three pieces of the Triforce, the
logo for Zelda. So that's where that connection ties in.
They also they possessed the Triforce and they also protect
it in a sense. But when they descended from heaven
after creating the earthly realm, basically they gave the Triforce

(34:33):
to the goddess Hilia to watch over it. But it
was the demon king Demiz, who coveted it and wanted
to take it as own. And Demise is actually the
final boss in So Skywards Sword came out in twenty twelve.
That's one of the main like console games in the
series for those who don't know, And twenty twelve was

(34:54):
twenty six years after the original game came out. But
Skyward Sword is basically the origin story of like the
Legend of Zelda series. This really introduces kind of like
a lot of the mythology, the lore. It gives us
Lincoln Zelda in like Skyloft, which is the original place
that they lived, and Demise is actually the antagonist in

(35:15):
that game, and basically Demises like it's the more goth
or like if you're a Christian reading the Bible, or
like even a fan of Milton's Paradise Lost. He's like
he's almost like the satanistque character, Like he's the rebellious
celestial being that basically causes a lot of problems in
the in the Heavenly realm in a sense. But this

(35:38):
all like ties in with Skywards Sword basically in a
way here, but eventually the goddess Higlia is actually reborn
as Princess Zelda, so that's where that name comes from.
So the land is high Rule, the people are called
the Highlians, and so that's the that's the time with

(35:58):
Zelda and and High uh. But basically, like you get
in that's like kind of what happens before Skywards Sword,
and then that's really the origin story where all those
events unfold. You eventually beat defeat Demise. You live in Skyloft,
which is like this area that the gods created to
sort of like protect humans, but then you end up

(36:18):
with like Lincolnzelda end up on Earth afterwards. And then
here's where it gets really, uh, really kind of complicated,
is there's these timelines that are really introduced in the
Zelda universe, and there's no one to be like these
three timelines and kind of really the lynchpin that decides
where that each timeline goes is actually the game Okerina

(36:39):
of Time, which we've already discussed here and so Akarina
of Time. It's it's what like almost thirty years old,
so I think like a little bit of a little
bit of spoiler territory is acceptable at this point. But
basically at the end of the game, you go through
you go through the passage of time, like probably like
thirty forty of the game seven years, you become you know,

(37:03):
seventeen year old Link. I think he's like seventeen, maybe nineteen,
think seventeen though, but like that's what you play most
like the rest of the game as the majority of
the game, and at the end you fight You fight Gannendorf,
who is generally like the usual antagonist in the series.
He's like what Bowser is to to Mario, like Ganandorf

(37:26):
is to Link in a lot of ways. But then
after you defeat him, he becomes the demon, like the
demon ghan In, and then you fight gan In and
that's the end of the game. So the timeline comes
in because you skip time in the game. The timeline
actually comes in based on the events at the end
of Opera of Time, and that's why I was just
talking about all of that. But basically there's a timeline

(37:49):
called like the Fallen Hero timeline where Gannin defeats Link
at the end of oprat of Time. But these figures
called the Seven Sages, which are in that game as well,
along with Zelda, they seal they seal Gan into what's
called the Dark World, and that leads to the events
of a Link to the Past, and then there's another

(38:09):
there's another timeline where Link at the end of Ocrine
of Time, he goes back to Childlinks time to warn
Zelda and the royal family, Zelda being the princess, like
the King and Queen being her parents about Gannendorf and
where Ganendorf is sealed in the Twilight Realm. And then
this is where basically goes off in his own adventure

(38:31):
to find Navi his faery, and that leads us to
the events of Majora's Mask. Which that's probably why Majora's
Mask seems so like kind of disconnected from like the
rest of the world, is that it's supposedly in this
parallel world called Termina and is really kind of like
a self contained adventure.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
But then and that leads to the events.

Speaker 3 (38:50):
Of Twilight Princess as well, which is basically like or
Link comes out of all of that. But then you
have like the third timeline is the adult timeline, and
that's where Link defeats Ganendorf at the end of Operati
Have Time, which is really like when you play the game,
that's the one that you kind of think happens, so
you defeat, you defeat Ganandorf, you defeat gannon ass like

(39:11):
the plot of the actual game, and then basically Ganandorf
is sent back and or no, we get sent back
in time. But Ganandorf eventually escapes in that timeline, and
then he commands the Helmarak king to kidnap all the
girls with pointy ears because he's hoping one of them
is Zelda, and Zelda is, of course, like the bane

(39:33):
of his existence in a lot of ways, kind of
reminds us of like Herod and the New Testament, like
Pharaoh and the Old Testament, like in the beginning of Exodus.
But that timeline basically leads to wind Waker and then
Brother of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
I don't want to.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Speak to you too much, but they kind of I
guess Brother of the Wild kind of takes place in
that timeline where all this stuff is basically just mythological
in a sense, like it's kind of like we're Homer
chronicled the things the like the Trojan War that occurred
way before his time via oral tradition. That's kind of
in my understanding where Breath of the Wild is taking place.

(40:08):
It's in a far gone age way after all of
this stuff, where all this stuff is kind of mythological
and significance in essence rather than a very clear cut,
well defined piece of history, like how we'd understand like
I don't know, like Napoleon or the Founding Fathers or
something like that. And then I can't speak to Tears

(40:28):
in the Kingdom because I haven't had time to play it.
So maybe Dave can help me out there.

Speaker 4 (40:33):
It would be spoiling Tears of the Kingdom to explain,
but it does.

Speaker 5 (40:38):
It does make Breath of.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
The Wild a little more complicated, But I do I
do like the idea that as you're playing Breath of
the Wild, you do seem to find things that seem
to hint that, oh, this this is in the same
world as the other's elder games, which none of the
other games had really done before they I mean, obviously
some of them are direct sequels to others, like Phantom

(41:00):
Hourglass is a direct sequel to wind Waker, and then
The Spirit.

Speaker 5 (41:04):
Tracks is a direct sequel to that. But yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 (41:09):
Like that there's this perennially returning evil force called Gannon
who has been making many many attempts and Breath of
the Wild. It's like this is his last He's putting
all of his energy into one last attempt to try
and achieve whatever his ultimate goal is and destroy the kingdom.

(41:34):
But yeah, you talk about No and those sorts of things,
I think that's the most recently worked in aspect of
the mythology, because No is the villain in Zelda Echoes
of Wisdom, the one that came out just recently, where
you play as Zelda in that game. And I have

(41:56):
never been one to really worry about the chronology. I'm
just like, Okay, new Zella the game. I'm going to
have fun. But yeah, I saw where the original Zelda
and The Adventure of Link, the second Zelda game are
supposed to be in this era of decline that is,

(42:16):
and that Link to the Past is a prequel to those.
But the funny thing about the era of Decline thing
is that it's kind of their way of explaining why
in the original Zelda there are no houses and no
cities and no castle. Everyone's just living in caves around
the map, even though it's really the technical limitations of
the technology at the time. I think it makes for

(42:38):
a funny kind of a retcon for the sake of
storytelling that the civilization is just scattered because Gannon has
kind of momentarily achieved his goal and everyone is sort
of living and hiding. But I one of the things
that I love about the Zelda games is that there's

(42:59):
a gravity to the stories, like things go wrong that
need to be fixed, instead of just being a straightforward
there's a bad guy, you've got to defeat him, which
you know in the original Zelda, the stories that Gannendorf
has he's stolen the Triforce of Power, and Princess Zelda

(43:22):
has broken the tri Force of Wisdom into eight pieces
and hidden them to prevent him from getting them. So
then he kidnaps her and she sends her her nursemaid Impa,
to try and find someone who could defeat Gannon, and
then Link rescues Impa from some monsters and she tells
him about it, and he goes.

Speaker 5 (43:39):
Off on the quest to do it.

Speaker 4 (43:40):
But all of that is in the instruction manual and
not in the game at all. You know, like there's
a little bit of info on the scroll if you
don't push start soon enough. But and the second game
is a few years later, and Link is now sixteen,
So there's some kind of parallels to the young Link

(44:01):
and the teen link in Ockering of Time. But he
turned sixteen and the high Rule Crest as they called
it at the time, which is the try Force, shows
up on his hand, and he shows that to Impa
and then she reveals, oh, the original Princess Zelda has
been locked away in this room, and his.

Speaker 5 (44:20):
Birthmark or whatever it is, is.

Speaker 4 (44:22):
Able to open the door to this room where the
first Zelda is laying like sleeping beauty, having been sleeping
for generations. And then they find a scroll that only
he can read. And it's interesting because it says, you know,
we couldn't find anyone that was pure enough of heart,
that didn't have evil thoughts in the kingdom. So I
cast a spell on the whole kingdom. So if someone

(44:44):
had been brought up correctly and had had the right
set of experiences and this inherent qualities to them, then
this seal would appear on their hand and they would
go off on the quest to then get the tri
Force of Courage. And that's the first place the Triforce
of Courage appears is.

Speaker 5 (45:01):
In the second game.

Speaker 4 (45:04):
And so I like how they're building the mythos as
the games carry on. So yeah, the second one is
it's you know, it's an outlier as far as the
gameplay goes. But I do think it lays down some
of the more important aspects of the series, where with
the power and the wisdom and courage sort of a

(45:27):
not a circle, but the triangle of power, wisdom and
courage and how they work together. And I always felt
like it's interesting, you know, it seems wisdom and courage
they're just great, great making qualities on their own, and
power is always the problem, you know, if you have
power without wisdom and power without courage. So I think

(45:49):
there's an interesting lesson there.

Speaker 1 (45:53):
Yeah, that is interesting, And you know, well I just
can't at all speak to the distinctly Japanese influences in
the way that you're laying that out. It sounds very
much like a Western fairy tale, right, Like you're sleeping Beauty,
you know, you get to find the pure in heart
to redeem true love essentially into waken the kingdom. Like
it's very very Western fairy tale. And in fact, I

(46:14):
find it interesting that despite all of these what we
might call pagan influences, and like the way that the
mythology works out. I find it interesting that in the
like the Link to the Past when I was released,
that there's official artwork coming out of like Link kneeling
before a crucifix in a church. You know, I'll throw
that up there on the screen when I post this

(46:35):
to YouTube, but put in the chat there and so
and and even in the I think it was in
the first legend of Zelda, in the Japanese version, there's
even mentioned of the Bible, and so they're they're they're
going out of their way to tie this into Christianity somehow,
even if it's sort of on the I don't know,
on the side.

Speaker 4 (46:54):
Level, right, And Nintendo of America at the time had
a strict policy of wiping out any sort of religious symbolism,
Like they even took the crosses out of you know,
like the Castlevania games and things like that, which is
really hard to believe. But yeah, that's because Link to
the Past was actually called something of the.

Speaker 5 (47:16):
The tri Force of the Gods.

Speaker 4 (47:19):
It was the Japanese name of Link to the Past,
and so they weren't gonna they weren't gonna mention gods
in the title of their games at all, even even
lesser gods, so they had to change it to link
to the past.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
I have to be at least a little bit grateful
for that, because I probably wouldn't have in the household
I grew up, and I probably wouldn't have been able
to play those games if they were called Triforce of
the Gods like.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
That lowercase G with the you know, the ass for
the plural and.

Speaker 3 (47:43):
The end like it would have. Yeah, I wouldn't have
been able to play him. So I have to be
a little grateful for that. Personally, wouldn't have grown up
coccer enough time.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
Yeah, Yeah, I gotten a little bit of a little
trouble for playing Diabolo back in the day.

Speaker 5 (47:58):
So yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
I was never a lot read Harry Potter, even though
those books were huge when I was coming out.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
So yeah, I had a friend who was made to
get rid of a greena of time. Once they got
to the Decu Tree, it was it was all pagan.
We have this talking tree and yeah, and he's the
one that gives the whole mythology that you laid out
a while ago, Josh, you know, with the creation by
the three goddesses. So yeah, yeah, don't you couldn't play
that part in southern Oklahoma with your your parents in

(48:26):
the room apparently, Well, my parents were fine, I had,
I had reasonable parents. I don't want to judge other
people's parents, but maybe they're just overly protective.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
Talking trees are a dead giveaway. God forbid. Some mid
twentieth century scholar of Anglo Saxon literature would who's also
a traditional Christian, would put talking trees in his in
his novel, right, So I think it would be profitable
just to and I'm sure people like probably know at

(48:59):
least the names of the characters, but just kind of
like talk about the actual recurring like main characters, protagonists,
antagonist or antagonists in the series.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
So obviously we have link.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
And there's the thing I want to defend here that
gets a lot of hate as a trope, especially in
a lot of like different fantasy stories. But link, like
a lot of protagonists, is a chosen one figure, right,
however you want to hash that out. Sometimes chosen one figures,
in my opinion, are really obvious and not as obvious.

(49:35):
But I actually kind of want to take this chance
to like just do like just to defend the fact
that tropes are tropes for a reason, like it's fine
to have tropes. It's all about the execution of said
trope that really matters. And I do think, I do
think it's fine to have like and even good to
have like Link as a chosen one trope that he

(49:56):
is because you know, he's not a or what do
the people call it, like a Gary Stew or something
as like the boy version of that. But either way,
it's like, you know, Link struggles, like he has consequences
for his actions, He has weighty decisions to make. He
faces daunting intellectual and physical and spiritual battles in all

(50:18):
of his journeys in all of the games, right, all
of the adventures, but just kind of like to find
the chosen one trope. Even from a Christians perspective, it's
like is is the Bible like not just full of
like chosen one stories in a sense, like it's like
you like Moses could if God wanted, Moses could have
has been some random guy, and like like Aaron could

(50:38):
have been the chosen He kind of is a chosen
one in a different sense, or it could have been
some random guy like in Israel in Egypt that we
never we never ended up hearing of because he wasn't
recorded in the Bible, right, Like that guy could have been.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
A chosen one if it was God's choice to make
him one.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
So this is a sense where it's like some people
for some reason just have these these grand journeys in
their lives that they're that they have to take on,
and they're not just a bunch of normal people who
are not going to be remembered in history, like probably
the three of us and anybody else's listening to this
podcast will be right like you'll be forgotten in the

(51:13):
historical records in a sense. So I think there's a
sense here where just defending like the chosen one trope
in general, because another thing I've seen is like a
flack for not just Zelda, but just general adventure and
fairy stories, if you may, in general. So I kind
of wanted to defend that. And that's in a kind
of like interesting perspective on the link that I think

(51:35):
is perspective enhancing, especially for those who might listen to
this and who do have those sort of gripes towards
these types of characters.

Speaker 4 (51:45):
Yeah, I think Joseph in the Bible is a good
example of that. Sort of a character like he receives
a prophecy and from bragging about the prophecy to his brothers,
it is the only reason that the prophecy comes true,
because it causes the chain of events that leads to it.
But he, you know, he just basically Romans eight twenty

(52:06):
eight in action that a lot of things are happening
to him, but God is carrying him along through a
lot of seemingly bad situations, and he is just being
faithful to the God that he knows in those situations.
And in the end, you know, many many people are
saved through him because of what God has done in

(52:28):
his life. So yeah, I think Link is like an agent.
Like in the first again, he's not a chosen one,
He's just a guy that improfound, but then he turns
out to be the chosen one in the second game,
you know, and an uckering of time. He's he's the elf,
but he's not really an elf. He was just like
raised with him. Isn't that how it goes? Yeah? And

(52:51):
I do think there's probably a little bit of a
shallow aspect of that to make the player feel like, oh, yeah,
I'm special, I'm a special person and that's why I'm
able to do all the things in this game. But
it is also the events of the games that make
make him great.

Speaker 2 (53:09):
And that's truly.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
That's like a night and a story. It's different, it's
the same in some sense, it's probably different in another,
but in a game, it's like it's kind of yeah,
of course that's the character you're gonna play, right, You're
not gonna be like the magic being Sky or like
the happy mask shop owner. You're not going to be
mid Na, the guy that is always trying to, you know,

(53:31):
keep you out from seeing the d Guchrie and such things.
It's like, of course you're going to be a link
in that. Like, that's it's how video games work for
the most part. Like it's like you you might not
might not always be the most powerful or most chosen character,
but a lot of times you are. And that's this
is an element in the nature of kind of like
subcreation secondary worlds, like via the medium of video games

(53:54):
rather than books.

Speaker 2 (53:56):
In a way.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah, I mean, in most ethics, I mean that you're
going to have a hero of the story, the chosen one.
I mean obviously that that idea can be kind of hamphested.
But for the most part, and the chosen one is
just the person the story is about, and so why
would you expect it to be anything different?

Speaker 3 (54:13):
Yeah, it might not even always be like an extraordinary person.
Might not even always be like an extraordinary adventure in
a sense. I mean going back to the Bible thing,
It's like, I mean, obviously there's extraordinary aspects to like
the character of like Ruth in a way, but she
doesn't have this grand like twenty something Bible chapter's long
story like David does or something. But it's like, that's

(54:37):
the character that the person that God chose to gave
us for the story, that that particular story in the
in the grander like the local canon in a sense.
So but yeah, I think I think for the most part, yeah,
it is going to be It is going to be
the hero. And it's like, yeah, why wouldn't it be.

Speaker 2 (54:53):
In a way.

Speaker 3 (54:55):
Did we want to talk about since we talked about
wing Can I already kind of discussed like Zelda's role
and relationship too, like the goddesses and such, we want
to talk about Gannon and Gannendorf at all. I know
we touched on him, but I think This is important
because this is really are our antagonists and the story
for the most part.

Speaker 4 (55:18):
I'd love to if you if you have more thoughts
in that direction. I do think you know. Gannendorff doesn't
appear until a Karina of Time. It's always just this big,
fat pig guy. Before that is basically all he is.
And he's he's not even in the second one.

Speaker 5 (55:35):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (55:37):
The story is that his followers are trying to kill
you because if they can sprinkle your blood on his ashes,
that he will be resurrected. So when you die, and
I think this is only the American version of The
Adventure of Link, when you die, it shows this shadowy
picture of Gannon on the screen and it just says
return of Ganon the end. With this, it's like the
same laugh that Soda Popinsky has in Mike Tyson's chat.

(56:00):
But this little great but yeah, so it's kind of
a reveal at the end of a kren of Time
that he he becomes this Ganon that we've known from
the previous games instead of the more slick, smooth talking.
He's like the only male of the garudo right, like
they have one. I don't know how they don't talk

(56:23):
about how that works. But he's the only one born
in however many years or something like that.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Yeah, I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Like that's a good point with like the male thing,
and I can't remember if it's like you know, some
you know, bizarre and different version of some sort of
like immaculate conception where like perhaps the gods interfere to
make make Ganandorf a male somehow. I cannot remember how
that works. It'd be worth looking into. But you are

(56:52):
on the right track here where Gannendorf. That's how they
know who's going to be like the king or the
leader of the Garudos, right, because every age, however long
in ages, I'm not sure there's like the begetting of
a male who is basically an heir to lead in
all an all female tribe in the sense, right, And yeah,

(57:14):
that's like obviously we have that. Like Gandendorf is a Garuda, right,
he's from these race. And if you don't know, like Garudos,
they're basically like they're basically like kind of like these like.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Desert nomad like desert bandit groups, they.

Speaker 3 (57:26):
Would probably they would probably whereas like the highway end
people probably look more in the vein of like.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
The you know, some of the.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
Norse or or Germanic or you know Anglo Sex and
kingdoms of like medieval Western Europe. The Garudas are going
to be probably more or how we might think of
like maybe like even like Assyrians, Babylonians or Persians and
like the ancient world or maybe even some sort of
other like mostly like desert desert race or tribe. But yeah,

(58:00):
that's so that's where Ganndorf ultimately comes from. And uh
like that's yeah, that's why, that's like why he's the king.
But Ganandorf, I mean, no, I guess we'll I should
talk about Gannon two for a second. But so Gannon
is he's basically this reincarnation of what's his name, I
just said it earlier, Demise, right, like, so that's the

(58:22):
uh I think when Demise is defeated. And I'm gonna
paraphrase this because I don't have the exact quote, but
he's basically say something to the effect of those who
share the blood of the Goddess and the spirit of
the hero will ever follow in a cycle without it.
And it's something like that that's not word for word,
but this is like he his reincarnation comes through this

(58:44):
this large blue pig demon, which is Gannon, right, But
then that's the distinction between A and Ganondorf, who is
like Ganon is the incarnation of this this this pig
demon incarnation of Demise. Gandorf is the garudo. But interestingly enough,
with Gannendorf you really get because again, like it can

(59:06):
easily be portrayed as like, is Ganandorf a generic villain?

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Right?

Speaker 2 (59:10):
Is he just like a one dimensional guy? Is he
even like a twirly mustached villain in some sense?

Speaker 3 (59:15):
And I don't know really where you'd get that one specifically,
But Ganandorf actually has like queer motives in wind Waker, right,
like the Highly and and I don't know how much
of this is just Ganandorf's perspective or how much of
it is the reality of the historic scenario. But the

(59:36):
the Highly in people they have a prosperous, vast kingdom.

Speaker 5 (59:40):
Right.

Speaker 3 (59:41):
There's there's a castle, there's a market outside of the castle,
there's usually like a field, there's CagA eco villages, there's
all these places within the Highly. It's a well established,
prosperous like western European kingdom. That's kind of how it
looks in the games and the Garuda, the guru of people,
like I said, are are desert nomad. So there's a
sense where Gandendorf has this this vengeance towards the highly

(01:00:05):
ends where his people were left out in poverty, they
were left out in the desert just to fend for themselves,
were and they were impoverished in a way and probably
experienced famine, where the Highliens enjoyed the prosperous fat of
the land and the prosperity of the kingdom in a sense,
and so Ganandorf has a vengeance towards the High Liliens

(01:00:29):
and the royal high Rule family because of that, and
these motives become clear and fleshed out more in win
Wacer specifically, which I do think is one of not
just aesthetically an interesting game and a fun game, and
I do think it's actually one of the more well
written games in the series. And that's one of the
reasons for that, And that's actually Ganandorf is at his

(01:00:50):
best in in wind Wacer for that reason and for others.
But I do find we actually do get clear motivations
for him and reasons, and they fleshed that out, and
I think that's why the ah that makes him a
stronger character even retrospectively looking back at the previous games.

Speaker 4 (01:01:07):
Yeah, and Tears of the Kingdom actually gives a lot
of interesting backstory on Ganandorf, a lot of new story
for him. And I think it's fair to say without
it being a spoiler, that just right at the beginning,
you sort of find the mummified remains of Ganendorf, and

(01:01:28):
by taking a sword from his hand, Zelda gets transported
into the ancient past, and so you as link you
find some of the memories of her and who she
was interacting with and the things that Ganandorf was doing.
So you know, if you if you ever somehow carve

(01:01:49):
out the time to play Tears of the Kingdom, I
would even say you could skip Breath of the Wild
and play it. It's the same land, but it is
a much better game in almost every way. Although I
love them both, it's I was shocked at how great
it was. But there's a lot of rich and interesting

(01:02:10):
additions to the mythology there that may cause some problems
with timelines that people had built in the past, but
they seem pretty good at weaving everything back together.

Speaker 3 (01:02:21):
Yeah, I mean I think so we've spent about an
hour just kind of like talking about, like meaning the story, characters, themes, mythology, music,
and all wonderful things that I think video games need
a much, much, much more discussion on. But I kind
of have we wrapped up these games or these game
chats more in the past. I was wondering, Paul, I

(01:02:43):
just like talk about like more like mechanical aspects or
even just like stuff as simple as like favorite games,
favorite dungeons and like all of that stuff. But you
said something Dave that made me want to kind of
tie in with that, where it's like I've heard that
some people have some really ambivalent opinions on Breath of
the Wild. I don't know as much about Tears of

(01:03:04):
the Kingdom, but Birth of the Wild has been out
for like eighty years now, so I know more about that.
But I hear some people have a general ambivalence towards it.
Some people say this is the greatest Zelda game ever made,
at least up to that point twenty seventeen, and then
some people say, this game has so many mechanical problems
and it's really not very substantial because it's a big

(01:03:25):
world with not a lot in it. What would your
what is your opinion on Breath of the Wild. I'd
be curious to hear it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:34):
I think any of those things people complain about are
were by design, like they were the vision they had
for the game. They wanted to create these wide open
spaces that you were exploring, but it definitely breaks from
the Zelda gameplay formula.

Speaker 5 (01:03:53):
I feel like it was getting a little tired though.

Speaker 4 (01:03:56):
Like Twilight Princess, I think was kind of the perfection
of the here's a dungeon, you find a compass, a
big key, fight the boss, get a heart container and
a new item, and then you move on to the
next dungeon kind of thing. Breath of the Wild tried
to kind of circumvent that. And you can climb and
you can you know, do cooking to make potions that

(01:04:19):
help you to survive in cold regions and there's hot regions.
But it still has it has you know, it's got
the Zora, it's got the Garudo, it has a bird race,
the Rito which they're they're in wind Waker as well.
They're a little more fully realized in these and of

(01:04:39):
course the Gourons, which we haven't really talked about the
gourons much, but instead of having traditional sort of dungeons,
there's these four great beasts that are these giant machines,
like there's an elephant one and a bird one, and
they are more puzzles to kind of figure out how
to get around and explore the They are traditional Zelda dungeons.

(01:05:02):
But the weird thing was that at the time that
it came out, I never heard anything but praise for it.
And then a few years passed and people started, sort
of like with Mario sixty four, people started trying to
act like it was never good and that nobody liked it,
and I, yeah, things change and attitudes change, and the

(01:05:23):
technology changes, like the camera controls on games from in
sixty four are sometimes pretty hard to deal with now,
But at the time it all blew our minds just
to have things in three D, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:05:36):
But I loved it. And there are some areas that.

Speaker 4 (01:05:39):
Are are kind of empty, but yeah, in Tiers of
the Kingdom, it's just chock full of things to do,
and it's where it's the same really expansive map, but
now it also has an entire world above that map
and an entire underworld below that map. Of equal size,
which is pretty insane. So there's, yeah, the childish sense

(01:06:05):
of just I'm gonna start off in this direction and
see what I find. That I loved about Mora Wind
back when it came out, Like I'm like, okay, I'm
gonna go to this town and then I would never
get there because I would stop at every cave and
crypt along the way and forget what I was doing.
It has that kind of an aspect to it that
I really enjoy.

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
I'm glad that Elder Scrolls keeps rearing its head and
here somehow. I was about ten when Obolivion came out.
That was my first open world game, and yeah, exact
same strategy and approach.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Kind of further on that one.

Speaker 3 (01:06:38):
The mechanically, one of the more interesting things to talk
about with the Zelda series is the great question of
what do you think are the most difficult temple slash
dungeons in the series.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
I mean, I still have PTSD from the Water Temple
and Acarino. I think that's everyone's go to for that question.

Speaker 4 (01:06:58):
Yeah, it's famously and I think other dungeons that have
that same aspect of where you change one thing somewhere
and then it you have to find how that allowed
you to get somewhere else or how to get here
to change you.

Speaker 5 (01:07:13):
Know, the water level aspect of it. There.

Speaker 4 (01:07:16):
In Twilight Princess, there's a sky temple I remember had
some mind bending sort of puzzles like that where you
were were you turning it over? I think you were
flipping the whole thing. And some of those four Sacred
Beast Temples that I was talking about in Breath of
the Wild had some tricky elements like you had to

(01:07:38):
one of them looked like an elephant. You had to
move the trunk to different places to make water pour
down through different areas, to turn different wheels that would
activate you know, different platforms and stuff. And so yeah,
that's the less straightforward they are, the more you can
change things that make you need to revisit areas you've
already been to, the harder they are to wrap your

(01:07:58):
head around.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
Absolutely, and uh yeah, I definitely remember playing uh the
city in the Sky Temple that was. It's one of
my one of my actual favorites aesthetically in terms of
like just the puzzles too. It's actually one of my
favorite favorite dungeons. But yeah, it was certainly challenging, but
I think one that doesn't get enough talk. The Water

(01:08:21):
Temple in a Karina time is hard, there's no doubt
about it. But the Water Temple formerly known as the
Great Bay Temple and Majora's Mask, I don't know if
it's just harder because for those who don't know, Majora's
Mask has like a time component where the timer runs
out and basically your game it's game over like as
a time based system to it, which some people obviously

(01:08:45):
absolutely despise. But you gotta just you gotta play the
uh was it the song of Time backwards and you
get double the time. By the way, there's there's my
cheat for you. But the Great Bay Temple and Majora's
Mask is also just a very complex and difficult, difficult
water dungeon or water temple. And it might just be
because of the timeline, but that I thought it was harder.

(01:09:06):
But I don't think I've ever been more stuck on
a uh like just having to redo and revisit a
temple until I finally beat it for the first time.
I don't think I've ever spent that much time on
a temple for like that in that purpose, And then
the Stone Tower Temple right after it Majora's Mask, which
is those are those are the last two temples in
the game, and they really brought out, uh they're really

(01:09:29):
brought out all the difficulty and those like those they're
they're they're very challenging.

Speaker 2 (01:09:33):
I think this was really the harder ones in the
in the series for me.

Speaker 4 (01:09:38):
That the the clock being you know, the main boss
in Majora's Mask was it was a great aspect of it.
There was just this tension and this moon getting ever
closer as you play. Like again, I love when developers
put constraints on themselves and limited what they could do

(01:09:58):
in the game by this time limit that they had
imposed on it. And so I think Majora's Mask is
just a really yeah it is. It's very polarizing, but
I like those kinds of time loop and uh oh,
I've got to I've got to try to make some
tangible effort in these three days that I will keep
with me when I have to start it back over

(01:10:19):
and going to the next thing that was that was
a lot of fun, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
Ilis ask the ever so controversial Zelda question of and
you don't have to give a particular order and if
you can't give five, it's fine, But if you can,
what are your five favorite overall lections of Zelda games.
I don't know if Andrew has five, you know, that's fine.

Speaker 1 (01:10:39):
Yeah, all I can go with is a Akarita Majoria
link to the Past.

Speaker 4 (01:10:44):
I would say Tears of the Kingdom link to the
Past is amazing. I do love wind Waker, but also
at the time Twilight Princess. Like I said, I feel
like it perfected the formula, like it. But one of
the things about Twilight Princess that I loved is is
one of the only ones where the economy made any sense.

(01:11:07):
Like you you know, like in akreena of time, doing
the most difficult thing in the game gets you the
biggest wallet, and by the time you have it, you
have nothing to spend any money on, so it's really
pretty pointless. But Twilight Princess you can do like all
these building investments, you know, to get bridges rebuilt, and like,
you can carry a ton of money and there's actually
stuff to spend it on, which I found satisfying. But yeah,

(01:11:29):
and I I've got a soft spot for the original
as well, so I have to throw that in there.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
Well, let's never underestimate the h the power of nostalgia
and these kind of decisions, and so like, I don't
think Akaranaugh Time could ever not be my favorite. It
was the most important game of my childhood. But if
it wasn't for that, I mean, Twilight Princess might actually
be my favorite. It certainly is in terms of like
the dungeons and the boss fights all low and it

(01:11:55):
has my favorite of each of those respectively, like in Summation,
in the entire series, Like, I just think most almost
all of the dungeons are excellent. The best ones are
my favorite ones in the series. The boss fights are great,
the whole Wolf mechanic. I can take it or leave it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
That's fine. If people hate it or love it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):
I'm pretty I don't really have strong opinions either way,
I guess, But I also like, I also love wind
Waker Majora's mask, and i'd probably I'd probably have to
throw Breath at the Wild, and they're just because I
actually did play it and complete it. I feel like
if Skywards Sword came out in the game Cube or
even the Switch.

Speaker 2 (01:12:32):
I'd put it. I would have put it on there
instead of Breath of the Wild.

Speaker 3 (01:12:35):
But again, I was just really burnt out on using
the Wii motes for stuff by twenty twelve when it
came out, because I had already had a wi for
six years. And I also if I was a little
bit older, maybe a link to the past would be
on there.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
But I respect it. I think it's great.

Speaker 3 (01:12:50):
But that game did come out before I was born,
and so I think my perspective on it is being
like sixteen bit and all that, it's just probably a
little bit different. So I probably there's probably all level
of appreciation that I just maybe I just lack the
air because of my age, But I recognize it's a
great game, that's for sure.

Speaker 5 (01:13:08):
It's hard to pick.

Speaker 4 (01:13:09):
I forgot some of the games that you then mentioned, like,
but there's not been one that I did not enjoy, frankly, and.

Speaker 3 (01:13:19):
Even just like a plug for some of the uh
the games I mentioned, those are all main they came
out on the consoles. They're all like the games that
come out on the consoles are generally like the big
games like massive budgets, massive production, they're hyped up for
like a year or two or more like before they
come out. But even some of the handheld games like

(01:13:39):
minish cap was really cool. It's like Phantom our Glasses
probably kind of hit or miss. There might have been
some weird DS mechanics like the stylists on the bottom
screen that kind of messed with that a little bit.
But Four Swords Adventures on the GameCube, but my brother
and I played that together as kids.

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
And I had a lot of fun with that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:56):
So there's there's all sorts of stuff, and its crossed
training on the Wii obviously, how can you And I'm
just kidding. It was it was okay, I mean it
was for what it was in the time.

Speaker 2 (01:14:06):
It was fun.

Speaker 3 (01:14:07):
But a lot of a lot of great uh, a
lot of great like hand held games that are maybe
it don't get as much talk.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
They're still good though. There's there's a lot of those
that are still worth playing.

Speaker 1 (01:14:16):
I think, yeah, yeah, I can't remember enough to say
anything significant, but I do vaguely recall enjoying Links Awakening,
but I can only comment on it.

Speaker 4 (01:14:26):
My wife loves links Awakening. It's a pretty short adventure
and it falls pretty much completely outside of the cannon
just by nature of what the story is.

Speaker 5 (01:14:38):
There's kind of a hint in the name of the
game right there, But.

Speaker 4 (01:14:42):
I I enjoyed the most recent one, the Echoes of
Wisdom that I mentioned earlier, where Nolh is the villain
and these rifts are appearing around the world. It kind
of has the aesthetic of the Links Awakening remake that
they did, but you play as Zelda in that game,
and I've liked the way that throughout all these games

(01:15:04):
they have increasingly given Zelda a bigger role without emasculating
Link or taking away from his role as the hero
in any way. And they even managed to do that
in Echoes of Wisdom because at the very beginning, you
play as Link trying to rescue Zelda. She's been captured

(01:15:24):
by Gannon and she's into Crystal. But after you defeat
Gannon and basically the tutorial stage, which is funny, you're
getting suck down into the darkness and Link shoots one
arrow that cracks her crystal before he gets swallowed up,
so then she's able to break free, and then she's
kind of going on a quest to get rid of

(01:15:45):
these rifts as the priestess basically, and to find and
rescue Link. But as you're on your adventure, people are
telling you about how great Link is and things that
he's done for them, which I think is funny. And
also they've made it a part of the story that
Link has literally lost his voice in that game, so

(01:16:06):
they can have him still not speak even though he's
not the protagonist. But even some of Zelda's most powerful abilities,
she just kind of takes on sort of a spirit
form of Link for a few seconds until the meter
runs out, where she has a sword and can do
some of his moves. So I thought they handled it
really well without without detracting from Link or the main

(01:16:29):
series at all.

Speaker 3 (01:16:31):
I'm okay if we ended there, unless other people have
more things. Just kind of thinking of time here, I
know there's a lot more we could say. I mean,
I could probably like sit here and put David on
trial and you know, try to play Socrates and try
to get into defend WI Broth of the Wild is great,
and I'd be interested in hearing more of those opinions.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
But yeah, a lot of things we could talk about.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Yeah, But good news is that we'll be meeting in
to talk Zelda in just a couple of days, although
anyone listening to this will have to wait at least
a week, but that will be coming up soon, and
so Josh, thank you for leading this conversation. David, of course,
thank you for your your insights here, and I guess

(01:17:14):
we will go ahead and closer there, and next time
we will continue to talk Zelda with our esteemed guest.
All right, until then, godspeed? All right, thank you for listening,
and I hope that you enjoyed that, and I hope
that you'll consider supporting what we're doing here. You know,

(01:17:34):
I this is not my full time job, but I
would love for it to be, right. I would love
for Mythic Mind to be my full time job so
I can spend more time giving you more and better
content between looking at video games, looking at movies and
shows and the other podcast looking at literature and great
books and the other podcast, and you know, making just

(01:17:56):
just making content in this sort of domain of the
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to do that even more, then you can head over
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that will also allow you to join these conversations as
your interest in schedule allows, and to just generally be

(01:18:18):
part of our our insider talks and planning. But for
next time, as I said, we will continue our conversation
on Zelda, but we will be joined by Anthony Soirilla,
who is something of an expert in this field. Until then,
God's been The Elder Scrolls in Philosophy is six week

(01:18:43):
course beginning of September twenty twenty five. I don't play
many video games these days, but there are certain titles
that have stuck with me, enchanting the mind of my
youth and never entirely fading away. One of the chiefs
among these titles is the Elder Scrolls name Marwin, Oblivion
and Skyrim. The level of artistry, mythology, and lore of

(01:19:05):
this universe is vast and provides a strong representative for
asking the question as to how video games might relate
to literature as an art form. Where might it rise
to such a level, where must it fall short? And
what unique advantages does it possess. For this eight week study,
we'll be seeking to answer these questions while analyzing various
elements of this franchise, specifically focusing on content related to

(01:19:28):
Morow and Oblivion and Skyrim. Will be taking a look
at the philosophy of RPGs and considering the philosophical implications
of character creation and formation in an open ended series
such as this, and will be looking at the relationship
between in game religion, lore, and ideas with our primary
world philosophical and religious concepts. Each week will include one

(01:19:49):
to two videos addressing these topics, ongoing discord conversations, and
live meetings. You are also encouraged to spend at least
a little time playing one of these titles each week
as a launching pad.

Speaker 2 (01:19:59):
For com.

Speaker 1 (01:20:01):
Join us in Tamreil that we might better understand our
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(01:20:24):
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6 - The Legend of Zelda

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