Lord Together is proud to be part of the Boss Rush Games Network. Feel free to find out more at bossrushgames.com slash network. Just to let you guys know, we had some audio problems when recording this episode, so just be aware of that, especially on Safi's end, but we will fix it for the next episode. Thank you.
Hi, I'm Safi. And I'm Mystic. And this is Lord Together. This is the podcast where our husband and wife team get together to talk about all the stories, characters, plot lines, and other such things of the video games that we love so much, because that's what we love to do together.
We Lord Together. Yep, and this is episode 32. Now, a couple things at the beginning. We do this every episode.
You may hear a little buddy in the background. He is a very wee entrant. He's a wee boy, indeed. But we try to cut out his outbursts.
Indeed. Because we're here for lore, not baby cries. If you'd like to discuss lore, you can do so on Twitter by tweeting at us at Lord Together, on Instagram at Lord Together, through email at lordtogether at gmail.com. And if you'd like to support the podcast, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash lordtogether.
We can pay a per-episode pledge to get early access to episodes, access to our mini-episodes, which we have one on the way, and our Q&A episodes, which we have our first one on the way. Yes, yes, we remembered. We promised Q&As, so we've got one. Well, we also have.
We actually have a Q, so. So we have to give the A. And so, yeah, you can do that, and this is episode 32. Shall we begin?
Yes, I, once again, have no idea what the heck that we're talking about today. I'll give you a couple details. What do you remember so far of what we've told them? I hinted at this during the livestream, which, by the way, we have livestreams every non-release week.
Yeah, every other week. It's hard for me to remember, because we were playing Mortal Kombat last time, which means that I was busy button-mashing for my life. And that's kind of stress-educing. Okay, I will tell you, this is a large franchise.
It has many games. Okay. First one came out in 1986. Final Fantasy?
No. Okay. It'd be kind of hard to do lore of Final Fantasy, because each game is separate. Well, there's connecting parts that you mentioned.
I did mention that during the stream, but you remember parts. I do remember that. 1986? Mm-hmm.
I want to say it's one of those D&D-based computer games where you have to choose the path. Go north, south, east, west, and it's all... No. Okay.
Okay. I will say, the creator of this game was inspired by his childhood adventures in the forest. Oh, are we doing Legend of Zelda? Yes, we are.
There it is. There it is. It's been a long time coming. It's been in our header image since the beginning.
Well, okay, so, and I'll explain for me, it's a game that I always go back to, because my brother in particular was obsessed with Majora's Mask. I know that Ocarina of Time is the one everybody fell in love with on N64, but for whatever reason, my brother was... So, my brother was much more into Majora's Mask, for whatever reason. And they were just...
He got one of those strategy guides where he kept looking up, okay, what day am I supposed to go to? What mask am I supposed to use? Which Ocarina tune am I going to use? Because it's all about backward-forward movement in that specific game.
So, yeah, that I have a lot of memories of. We're not going to be touching Majora's Mask. I figured we wouldn't, but I just have a lot of memories of just, like, watching my brother play it. So, back in 1986, when Shigeru Miyamoto created it, it is unlikely he, or any of the Nintendo, had an actual timeline planned.
Okay. Who knew if the game was going to be a success? You know, it's a one-off at this point. Right.
And I'd say it's unlikely that they had one planned for many years. Right. I think... This is famously just a, like, one-off, he-metic kind of thing like Mario.
However, in 2005, it was rumored that there was a secret timeline document around that time. Oh. And in 2007, we finally had confirmation via Eiji Aonuma that the series had a split timeline, something we've come to see in many games that we've covered. It's a great way to retcon.
It's a great way to settle your inconsistencies. Yeah, it's kind of like if you have to make a patchwork quilt of the worlds that you've made, then it's how to do it. And then once that timeline is set, then you can start fleshing it out more. Exactly.
In 2011, they released Hyrule Historia, a book we sadly do not yet have in our gaming collection. I'm actually really sad. I never thought about it. But you're not the hugest Legend of Zelda fan.
There are other games that are ahead of it. Yes. This was not like, I must have this book. I think, as gamers, we should have this book.
Fair. Just like how we have the Art of Video Game book from the Smithsonian. Right. And this is in the same line as the Thedas books we do have.
Okay. Yeah, kind of fleshing out everything and a lot of stuff. And they're kind of the ones, this book is kind of where we get the first occurrence of a timeline that has more splits than people thought. Okay.
We'll get to that at the end. Because we're only going to cover the unified timeline, the beginning up until it splits. And we're going to do broad strokes here, because each of these games could be at least half an episode or an episode of itself. Yeah, sometimes I think there's certain games like Legend of Zelda, where if we did an episode, it might make more sense to focus on not necessarily one story, but one singular part or character or theme.
Right. Like Ganon or even Epona or things like that. So you know stuff going in. I like the series.
I think I've owned almost all of them. I've never actually beaten one. I just don't quite sometimes grasp onto, I must play this game. Okay.
That's why I do love them. And of course, it may just be, we discussed this recently, where my very first video game I ever owned, period, that was mine, was Super Mario Bros. 3. Right.
I just beat that. Right. Last month. Because I was able to pause the game and go back.
I always wonder, too, if that's part of the reason why. There's a lot of great podcasts out there where basically people are giving their commentary on certain games, but they're really good at beating games. And you and I, we love games. I'm not good at beating them.
Yeah, but we're not good at beating them. But we appreciate the work, the effort of all the different parts of it. Give me a miss. I beat miss without the walkthrough.
Right. Well, yeah. You know, each of us has certain games that we take more of a shine to. There was a big phase of my life where I was into Kirby, Kirby Land Adventures.
There was a big phase of my life where Tetris was the biggest thing I was playing. Everyone's playing at one point. So we're going to split this. Again, one of the other things I could have said at the beginning to lead you into what the game was, was this fan wiki is really well done.
More shade. Gosh, we're not going to get off this high horse, are we? Speaking of Epona, we are riding our high horse into Hyrule on wiki citations. Of course, a lot of that is because you have something like Hyrule Historia, which details a lot of stuff.
In fact, the wiki references Hyrule Historia for a lot of the stuff we'll be talking about because Hyrule Historia is compiling stuff that's disparate in one line here, one line there, and, you know, looks all together. Yeah, exactly. So we're going to start. We have seven different eras, kind of, that we're going to go into.
Several different eras? Seven. Seven. Seven.
Okay, I just want to make sure I heard you correctly. And some of these are a game. Some of these are between games. Some of these are just lines of backstory from a game.
Yeah. And I have vague ideas of what some of them are, but I'll be honest because I've always been watching the game from afar. I don't really know exactly what ties everything together other than, like, the main characters that you find. You find Link, you find Zelda, you find Ganon most of the time.
No, not really. So here's the interesting thing. We'll touch on why you keep seeing Zelda. Right.
But remember that Link is just the default name. Kind of like 007? No, Link is just the name that the game gives you as a default. You can always change it.
So Link is not exactly always Link. Ah. That's the thing that, like, I just, it's hard for me to understand because we now are in an era of games and I didn't really start gaming until you got to the point where you can customize your character. So there's always this idea that, like, yeah, this is your Ganon playthrough.
Right. And I guess what you're indicating is that that technically was always true for the Legend of Zelda games. It's just that you weren't able to customize what your Link looked like, just what his name was. Now, I hate to draw this comparison because it's one that comes to mind, though, is the Link in each game is kind of like the protagonist in Fallout.
Each one is... Really? As in, you have the Hero of Time is one Link. Oh.
Yeah, so the Hero of Time is one Link. You know, and so each one has, like, a different name that they go by if you're talking about them, you know, storylines like that. Right. That sounds, yeah, I mean, that does sound like a Bethesda game, not just Fallout, but also in Elder Scrolls.
Yeah. Now, it's not a thing, you know, it's not a thing that's, like, a thing in the universe. It's not like people call you that, people will call you Link, or whatever name you pick. They'll call you parts if you're really feeling immature that day.
Right. Within the canon, you have, to reference a specific Link, you don't mention the Link from Optimum Time, you would say the Hero of Time. The Hero of Time, yeah. Okay.
So we're going to start with the creation of the world, because we frequently do that. I just, okay, so I just want to say this very quickly. There's a convention I've mentioned before called Anime Central that happens right outside of Chicago. My mother and I try to go every year.
Obviously it didn't happen last year for obvious reasons. Probably not going to happen this year either. Yeah, because it's usually in May, so it doesn't make sense for it to happen. We should probably wait until next year.
But one of the things we were interested in was a Legend of Zelda introduction to the universe. And we said, okay, great, let's try it. Let's sit in there. The problem is that not every panel is, are made equal when it comes to conventions.
Well, we've had that experience for Gen Con. Yeah, I think, you know, so just keep that in mind, if you ever go to a convention, and you go to one panel, and you're like, ugh, don't judge the whole convention on that panel, because we've been to Anime Central so many times, had so many great panels, and we go to that one, and I just think, there are just some people who want to talk about things they love, but they're not good about talking about it in front of an audience. Right. So they will do things like they'll start talking really quickly.
I've been guilty of that. Three awkward minutes of watching this video with this text that was hard to read. I'm assuming it was going to be entirely cut from Ocarina of Time. Probably, because there's like three...
No voiceover, no. No voiceover. It was from Ocarina of Time, probably. Yeah, and in concept, it's interesting, but for my mother and I, there's so much other stuff going on.
At Anime Central, we were like, we can find something else that's worth our time. That is a classic cutscene, though. And you can add a scene from a movie or a video game where it's informational, and it helps your presentation. I don't remember who these people were, and I think that's...
And to be honest, if I remember who they were, I wouldn't tell you, because I think some people just don't know that they're not good at something until they try to do it. Public speaking is also hard. Yeah, it's very hard for a lot of people. I really like doing it.
Mystic hates doing it, and that's why we compromise with the podcast. But I just... Just like a little aside. Like, I remember some of the visuals, probably, of what you're going to tell me before we snuck out and we went to do something else at that convention.
A note on names here. I know that there are pronunciation keys for allow this. I'm terrible with names. Okay.
So some of my pronunciations might be wrong. I hope everyone will forgive me. Also, we're going from the wiki because it has a really good synopsis. Right.
Add more together if you want to help us with any pronunciation. In our first episode, we didn't know how to pronounce... Spokane. Spokane.
So it happens. Creation of the world. Before time began... Before time began...
Wait a second now. I don't know if that's physically possible, but okay. Go with it. The three golden goddesses descended upon the chaos that was Hyrule.
This is definitely the cutscene that we were trying to watch in that panel. Din, the goddess of power, created the earth. Nehru, the goddess of wisdom, bestowed order upon the world. Faror, the goddess of courage, created life.
Their labor complete, the goddesses departed for the heavens. They left behind the Triforce, an all-powerful artifact which were granted to hold their heart's desire. It is understood that the golden goddesses have always existed. They're just a constant.
Yes. And they are omnipotent and eternal. Now do all three of them like each other? Uh-oh.
They are... It's weird to kind of personify them. Again, when we're talking about deities like these, it's more kind of like a deistic thing. Rarely do they intervene, and really you can almost perceive them as forces for the most part.
Right, so they're more metaphysical than anything else. Though the golden goddesses are the most important gods of the world, they are mentioned by few people, and knowledge of them has been shown to be limited to the people of Hyrule alone. Okay. Most races worship their own patron deities.
Which makes sense to me. Yes. Each of the three goddesses is associated with a characteristic, a common element, and a color. Okay.
Din is power, fire, and a color red. Nehru is wisdom, water, and a color blue. And Faror is courage, wind, and green. Okay.
They are the creators of the sacred triforce that has made up their three associated characteristics, power, wisdom, and courage. Power, wisdom, and courage. And they leave. For the most part, they're done.
Why did they... When you said that, I immediately just thought, ding, for the rest, they're done. And they just like move on. They depart, and they entrust the triforce to the goddess Hylia.
Okay. And so we begin the era of Hylia and the ancient battle. Against what? Wait, I thought...
So they made stuff, and they were like, here, we made... Did they make Hylia? We're talking... Yes.
And they were like, okay, we need to watch this. That's the assumption. Yeah. You kind of have to go with it.
A lot of the stuff is a character telling your backstory in legendary or mythological terms. No, I understand that, but there's still this part of me... That wants more. ...the reasoning part of me that just wants to understand what that means.
And then, of course, I think about it, then I'm reasoning it as human relationships. So it's kind of like, we have created this child, so you can watch our other child. Bye. And, like, leaves.
That just feels so much like abandonment. But I understand that that's not necessarily how we're supposed to think of it. True. I mean, you have to remember when we were talking about...
We talked about this last time, too, actually. We talked about Elder Scrolls. Yeah. We were talking about Anu and Padme and, like, these forces that people have personified...
Yes. ...through myth, but in actuality, we're not. Yeah. You know, so Hylia may just have been one of the creations, and that's it.
You know, there's no reason for her to be there. They're just, oh, you can do this. You can handle this. It's not like...
The story of Hylia's birth isn't there. You know? Wow. She just is there.
She just exists. Yeah. So the era of Hylia in the ancient battle. Time between these eras...
Yeah. ...some time after. Okay. So that's why they broke into eras, because what comes between is maybe a line of dialogue that tells you, if you're lucky.
It's a very interesting timeline going on. Okay. But it is chronological. I appreciate that.
It's chronological. One day, the demon king, Demise, sought to take the Triforce and make the world his own. He's literally named Demise? Yes.
Dang. Nintendo. What are these punny names? He rose an army of benevolent forces against Hyrule.
Hylia gathered the surviving Hylians. They were not called this at the time, but that's what they end up being. Wait. Where did these Hylians come from?
Life was created. So they're just the life? They're not the only life. This is sometime later.
We're talking... Okay. So there's things that are not being explained, but we're just assuming that, oh, you know that these things are here, right? Yeah.
Okay. Pretty much. You can just say evolution took part, you know, and this is a million years later. Okay.
Or two million years, or billions of years later. We don't know. We have no idea. So Hylia gathers these surviving Hylians.
Sorry. Sorry. I'm saying Hylia. It's not Hylia.
It's Hylia. Wow. That's like a good solid seven, eight minutes of you saying that wrong. Here's why I got thrown off.
It's because in my back of my brain, when I was writing this and reading through it, I was like, oh, it looks like it's spelled like Hillis from Beyond Good and Evil. And that's where my brain was. So it's Hylia. It's Hylia.
It's Hylia. And Tyrol. So I'm sorry to spoil all those emails people were already sending. Yep.
We're fine. We got this. We got you, guys. So Hylia, gather the surviving Hylians.
Hylians. There we go. And, again, they're not called Hylians at this time. They will be eventually, but these are the main reason Hyrule.
Blaine, Zelda, all these characters are Hylians. Okay, that kind of sounds like the same idea of, like, when you say ancient Chinese, even though China hasn't always existed in the same way. Yeah, they are, they're the humans. Okay.
You know, they're the humans, except they have pointed ears. Like, that's about it. All right, yeah. She gathers them on this outcrop of Earth and sends it into the sky beyond a cloud barrier of her creation.
Okay. The outcrop would later become known as Skyloft, and she hides the Triforce in there as well. Okay, I feel like I've heard about the Skyloft plenty of times. And the Zora.
Zora, and, yeah, there's a bunch of them, actually. I believe the Sheikah, the Sheikah part of this, too. Right, I just remember Deku, Zora, and Goran. The Goran.
Yes, exactly. And they fight back against these evil forces led by Demise, and Hylia seals them away. Okay. However.
So Demise is in a cage. Great. In a glass case of emotion. However, Hylia sustained grave injuries during this battle, and knowing the seal and Demise would not hold, she devises this plan.
The Triforce cannot be wielded by a god. Okay. Frankly, I would see a little point if you were a divine wielding it, and you could probably do all of its stuff anyway. Right.
Well, the only reason you'd have it is then to negotiate power with people below you. Hylia renounced her divinity, and transferred her soul to the body of a mortal who would come of age when Demise returned. Interesting. She created the goddess sword and the spirit phi, who inhabited the sword, to aid her chosen hero, who would reveal himself when he drew the sword from its pedestal.
So this is kind of like an Arthurian legend to a certain extent. Yeah. Except it's not the lady in the water, it's the lady in the clouds. Okay.
So now we move into the Sky Era, and the events of the return of Demise. Return of Demise. Also known as the events of Skyward Sword. Okay.
Thousands of years later, there we go. All right, so we have a really good idea of how long this took, compared to some other time ago. Right. Hylia is reborn in Skyloft as Zelda.
Okay, so she's reborn as this princess. Not princess, just Zelda. Just regular old Zelda. Just regular Zelda at this point.
On the day of the 25th annual wing ceremony, she is taken down to the surface in a tornado created by Ghirahim, who attempts to have her kidnapped to revive his master, Demise. Ghirahim is kind of the ruler on the surface at this point. Yeah, I was going to say, Ghirahou, what? Zelda is rescued from his minions by Impa, whom Hylia has allegedly sent through time to help her mortal self.
Oh, okay. I say allegedly there because literally on the wiki it says citation needed. I mean, if this is the first time we're getting to a citation needed, I think that... It's not the first.
In this episode, Impa, I would like to note, is not a singular character in the franchise. Impa is a family name of a lineage of female Sheikah, a singular tribe of chosen guardians of the royal family. So they are kind of an ever-present guardianship. And is this later on present in, like, when we have Zelda who can turn into Sheik?
Yes. Okay. That is what she's doing. She's impersonating a member of the Sheikah.
Okay. And Impa is always female, but has been young, old, and everything between. Okay. All right.
So it's just a feminine protector of some sort. Okay. Zelda eventually regains her memories as Hylia. Her childhood friend, Link, is led by Fi to draw the goddess sword and is revealed to be Hylia's chosen hero.
So... Trumpets flare. I should say ocarinas. At the Temple of Time, Zelda and Impa flee from Gera him by going through the Gate of Time.
There's going to be a lot of names like that, just to just keep that in mind. Okay. They destroy the Gate of Time behind them as they go through. Link is then forced to seek out three sacred flames to temper his goddess sword into the master sword, which he uses to activate the second Gate of Time at the sealed temple.
So when Hylia sent the humans to Skyloft, and basically sent that chunk up, part of the temple that they were sent into is this sealed temple. So it's kind of like below Skyloft. And this is where there's this second Gate of Time that he can use. He finds Zelda by using the Gate of Time to travel back to the era of Hylia, to a time shortly after when Demise was sealed.
At this point, Zelda places herself in a thousand-year slumber to sustain the seal. Ah, okay. So... And at this point, she's a reincarnated...
Deity. Deity. Yeah. But in this current life, she's only how many years old?
25? Not even, I don't think. Not even? So possibly just a teenager.
Yeah. But she has memories that resurface, so... Right. Link returns to the present.
The series deals a lot with time travel, as you know. Yes. Absolutely. It's a constant theme.
He gathers the tripod and uses it to destroy Demise. Zelda awakens from her age-long slumber, only to be kidnapped again by Gera him. Gera who? Gera him takes her to the past, where Demise is still alive, and uses her soul to revive his master.
So Link defeats Demise again in battle, and the Demon King is permanently sealed away within the Master Sword. With his last words, Demise vows an incarnation of his hatred shall ever follow, quote, those who share the blood of the goddess and the spirit of the hero, end quote, in a cycle without end. And hence why the story is retold again and again and again. Okay.
Very convenient. Now, you're saying Skyward Sword is this original, this origin story of sorts. But... It is the first part of the timeline at this point.
But a lot of what else we've encountered, essentially, is a reincarnation of this struggle. Yeah. Okay. Okay.
Link puts the Master Sword back into the Pestad on the Seal Temple. And forever dormant within the Sword, Link and Zelda return to the present, but Impa stays in the past in her own time to watch over the Master Sword. Okay. Zelda resolves to live on the surface and watch over the Triforce, and Zelda, who is a goddess, Right.
and the others from Skyloft repopulate the surface world. Their descendants become known as Hylians. During this time, the land was finally named Hyrule. Right.
Now we get to the Era of Chaos and the Interloper War. The Interloper War. Very high-flute word. This is one of those ones that's backstory.
It's just in backstory. So we're between games again. Okay. After many years of peace in Hyrule, word spread of the supreme power of the Triforce.
We're not talking everybody knows about it, but some people are starting to hear things. Okay. War engulfed the land, heralding the Era of Chaos. In particular, a group of powerful sorcerers, known as the Interloper, sought dominion over the Sacred Realm, where the Triforce was located.
The goddesses sent the spirits of light to banish them to the Twilight Realm. To protect the Triforce, the sage Raturu built a new Temple of Time at the location of the sealed temple around the pedestal holding the Master Sword, the location of the only entrance to the Sacred Realm. I still can't get over the name Raturu, which sounds like a Scooby-Doo phrase. Raturu, he placed the Triforce in the Temple of Light and sealed off the Sacred Realm with him inside of it.
The Master Sword became the key that joined the Temple of Time to the Temple of Light, and it was closed behind the door of time. We'll get back to another story of everyone hearing about the power of the Triforce. Okay. Which is kind of interesting because, well, we'll talk about that later.
And that's all we get for the Interloper War. So it sounds like it wasn't really resolved. It is, and yet it isn't. It's kind of the backstory for Twilight Princess, which is where it gains the Twilight Realm and stuff.
Also, I don't know. This is me guessing. Right. But I'm wondering if it has anything to do with an ever-present antagonist Shadow Link.
But it may not. I don't know. Okay. So more research needed for us to confirm that theory.
Yeah. The Era of Peace and Prosperity. Yay. I like those.
During the Era of Prosperity, Zelda's descendants established the kingdom of Hyrule and became its royal family. Uh-huh. They built Hyrule Castle at the center of Hyrule near the Temple of Time. Years afterwards, many members of the royal family were born with special powers, given that they were blood relatives of the goddess Hylia.
So we're going back to the idea of divine right of a rule? Yeah. I mean, this isn't anything unusual. In a fantasy setting, no, it is not.
It's just interesting that, to me, it feels like a very Western concept. And Shigeru Miyamoto is obviously, well, I mean, he's technically part of the West. Yeah. Princesses born into the royal family were named Zelda after the goddesses reincarnate.
Okay. So it's kind of like any royal family where it's like, well, we haven't, you had a great uncle Eric, so you should be an Eric or something like that. They're all Zelda. Right.
Then we get to the Force Era. The Minish, the Force Sword, and the legend of the Hero of Men. Hero of Men. During the Force Era, Hyrule was attacked by evil beings.
This is a thing that happens frequently. I don't know. I have this image of, like, saying, like, let us hope that we will never be attacked by such evil beings ever again, narrator in the background. This was to happen again and exist again.
Yeah. The Minish, known to the Hylians as the Pickery, descended from the sky to save Hyrule. The Pickery sounds like a bar that a bunch of hipsters go to. That's in the, like, people know Chicago Wicker Park is where I'm thinking right now.
They brought the Pickery Blade and the Light Force to the Hero of Men. Both drinks served as Pickery. The Hero sealed the evil beings in the bound chest and locked it with the Pickery Blade. Literally, this is a chest.
Yeah. That has the blade running through it, and that locks it somehow. Is that mechanically possible? Yes.
Is that logical? Absolutely not. Makes sense in a fantasy game. Yeah, in a fantasy game.
Okay, yeah. We can run with this. The Light Force was sealed within the body of the then-Princess Zelda and has been passed down through the Royal Bloodline. Okay.
To commemorate the event of the victory over evil, a Pickery Festival was held once a year. During the festival, the champion of a sword-fighting tournament would earn the right to touch the Pickery Blade. Just to touch it. Just to touch it.
On the 100th anniversary of the Pickery Festival, a corrupted, power-seeking minish named Vati wins the sword-fighting tournament. Uh-oh. Vati's got plans, don't they? During the award ceremony, Vati breaks the Pickery Sword and opens the bound chest, hoping to find the Light Force, which isn't in there.
Right. This unleashes evil onto Hyrule. So was he out of the impression, rightfully, that the Light Force was supposed to be in there, and instead it's just a Pandora's box of hope? I can't recall off the top of my head, actually.
He does turn Zelda into stone. Yeah, unfortunately, when you're a divinely powerful being, you're a target. Yeah. So.
Link, a blacksmith's apprentice and Zelda's friend, so she's a princess of the people, is enlisted by King Beltis to seek out the Pickery and have them help him get a Pickery Blade reforged so it can break the curse on Zelda. Okay. He teams up with Ezlo, a minish sage, and Vati's former mentor. Before Vati went bad.
Vati had gained his power when he stole the mage's cap from Ezlo. Ezlo's also in the form of, like, a hat. What? Link literally puts him on his head.
Like, he is, yeah. This feels, this feels like, this feels wrong, that's all. Here's the thing that makes this so wonky sometimes. Gameplay dictates story sometimes.
He is able to shrink down to a minish fuel size, the size of the minish. Okay. They are very small. Are they so weak?
They are very weak. He seeks out from the minish and eventually he reforges the Pickery Blade by infusing it with the four elements, which creates the four sword, a legendary sword that splits a wielder into four, quadrupling everything. Basically, all four of you can attack and all that stuff. Right.
So this is now referencing the game that was on the Game Boy Advance, was it? Yes. This is one in that series. This is the minish cap we're in right now.
Okay. Within hand, Link vanquishes Vati, breaking the curse on Princess Zelda. Zelda then uses the mage's cap to wish Hyrule back to normal. Only possible with a cap and her imbued light force.
Vati was presumed dead, but soon reappeared. Like a bad rash. But had no memory of his previous life as a minish. Oh.
He declared himself the windmaid and claimed the Palace of the Winds. He brought terror to the land by kidnapping young maidens. A hero appeared carrying the four sword. He sealed the demon inside the sword, which was then enshrined in the four sword sanctuary.
Interesting. Generations later, see, we're just skipping time. Skipping so much time. Yeah.
Because, of course, Vati was presumed dead, but soon reappeared. What is soon? Yeah. I mean, soon is very much a relative to her.
Not soon enough that Link from the previous paragraph is available to stop him. You know? Yeah. And for those of you who will be reasoning, well, soon probably means this because of that.
Just keep in mind that soon for a five-year-old is very different than soon for a 45-year-old. It's just a different measurement of time on a very individual level. Right. So, generations later, Vati, the windmaid, breaks where he kidnaps Princess Zelda, taking her to the Palace of Winds.
Link, who witnessed the kidnapping, draws the four sword and is split into four links. Da-da-da-da. We have four links again. This is four links.
This is four sword adventures. This is power to reference. The links gather three keys to Vati's palace from the Great Fairies in the Sea of Trees, the tallest cave, and death mountain. The links defeat Vati in his palace and rescue Princess Zelda.
The windmaid is once again sealed in the four sword, which is returned to its pedestal, allowing Link to regain his original form. And we're actually pretty far along now. We're in our last era. Oh.
Four sword adventures is more of a party game. Okay, that makes sense. Minish Cap is a smaller world. Okay.
No pun intended. So, their entries are kind of brief. And we've been doing a lot of backstory here. After this next game is when things will get crazy, but those are going to be different episodes.
Oh, no. Because we are up to the era of the Hero of Time and the Hyrulean Civil War. Oh, dear. Hyrule enters a long period of Civil War as word of the Sacred Realm and the Triforce and its abilities have finally spread.
We're talking almost everyone. So, it's now its common novel. We're talking like everybody's fighting everybody. Like the Gerudo are fighting, the Goron are fighting, the Zorah are fighting, everybody's fighting.
During the war, a dying Hylian woman flees to the Kokiri Forest and entrusts her baby boy to the Great Deku Tree. Oh, wow. The boy is raised as a Kokiri. Eventually, the King of Hyrule ends the war and unifies the kingdom.
The Kokiri, by the way, are Hylians who basically decide they didn't want to be part of society and basically they're forest children now. Okay. A decade later, Ganondorf, leader of the Gerudo, has come to swear fealty to the king, but plots to open the Door of Time and obtain the Triforce for himself. This feels like a plot when we went to medieval times.
I feel like I remember hearing about this emerald somewhere. With his dying breath, this is after going through a dungeon, we're brushing over a lot of stuff. With his dying breath, the Great Deku Tree sets Link and the fairy Navi on a quest to stop Ganondorf. Link meets Princess Zelda who, like Link, had premonitions of Ganondorf's treachery.
The two plot to open the Door of Time and get to the Triforce before Ganondorf. When Link opens the Door of Time and draws the Master Sword from the Pedestal of Time, he is sealed within the Chamber of Sages for seven years. Whoa. He reawakens as the Hero of Time in the future.
In this time, Ganondorf has entered the Sacred Realm, seized the Triforce, and transformed Hyrule into a world of monsters. Yikes. However, the Triforce had split in three, and Ganondorf retained only the Triforce of Power. Link gained the Triforce of Courage, and Princess Zelda the Triforce of Wisdom.
Ganondorf had used his power to take control of Hyrule Castle, and the Sacred Realm was transformed into the Evil Realm due to his evil heart. Evil. Evil as I wanted a worldly name. Using the quiet power of the Master Sword and the Seven Sages, Link and Princess Zelda seal Ganondorf in the Evil Realm.
Ganondorf vows to destroy Link and Zelda's descendants. Shocking. When the seal is one day broken. Think we've heard that before already.
Who didn't see that coming? Zelda uses the Ocarina of Time to return Link to his own time as a child. Link places the Master Sword back in the Pestle and closes the Door of Time. Nabi, her mission complete, disappears.
Fade away. And this is where we're going to end this episode, actually. Okay. Because at this point, the timeline splits into three branches.
Oh. We have the Fallen Hero Timeline, which is where Ganon defeats the Hero of Time. There are games after that. Wow.
The branch where Link defeats Ganon is itself split in two when Zelda sends Link back in time to childhood. Okay. The child timeline is the branch that follows Link back to his own time, and there are events after that. Mm-hmm.
The adult timeline is the branch where the Hero of Time has disappeared from the world. Completely, yeah. Basically, it's what happened after Zelda sent him back. Right.
He no longer exists. Exactly, because technically, the problem with time travel is it's not truly time travel, it's universe travel. Right. So that universe where everything was terrible and monsters and everything, and they save the day, that storyline...
continues to exactly okay we'll cover each of us in future time and of course many of the games like i said could fill half or even full episodes on their own right we've just done a surface look at events here for the unified timeline we didn't get into the spirits the stages the dragons the tribes any of that stuff i will say one of our friends via the social medias who does a great podcast there is a podcast called franchise festival and they did their first season on all of this all the series oh so if you just want to see three or i should say here it's a podcast but if you want to hear three people talk about their love of the series and what's great about it like i definitely listen to majora's masters because again that's one that's like close to my heart and it's interesting to to realize the themes that are going on they're so detailed and serious almost like it's a piece of literature so can i tell you something here yeah i can tell you exactly like i always i always wrote world building yeah and i always wrote my fantasy stuff and the few sci-fi things i do in a way where there was grandiose themes or whatever right but i never thought about the long history of a universe and i can tell you when this changed angry video game nerd yeah did a video that was chronologically confused about the zelda timeline oh wow it was either him or someone else around that time had laid out their timeline which at that time i think was the most recent game yeah and watching that made me realize how deep the zelda timeline was that i had never given it credit for well yeah you're not and then i started writing more of backstories and stuff into my worlds and thinking more about how things could tie together and everything i think the thing is for a lot of people appreciate video games you can tell when it's there but you're not asked to participate in that world building which is part of the reason we like doing the show because we're the deep diving nerds that love to get into the crunchiness of what it is to build this interactive universe but you don't have to care to know the game and there is a lot i've played ocarina of time i started it probably close to 20 times now you can do that i've never finished it each time i started i do get a little further time willing and i just keep losing save files and all that stuff yeah but just the opening area and the thought of this is a group of kids right who live in the forest like just that in my brain is just like there's a lot here there's always a lot going on it's it's really interesting and then the idea that you have to put a lot of even though they're children who kind of know what their responsibilities are but these are still children responsible right for these big things happening like link is almost always at least a young man if not a young a boy right who is being asked to help protect a deity who is usually also a child of some sort and then you see him competing against ganon right who is a demon a demon who looks like oh man of age of of essentially and yeah and i will say we talked about mario timeline recently yeah and or the paper mario game recently and saying that peach could take care of like could try to take care of herself she couldn't get out but she could help in ways she wasn't just a damsel in distress she was in fact she did almost get out if it weren't for the fact that there was one smart koopa because the rest of them were inviting her to trivia special umbrellas and stuff like that like i mean she was taking advantage of their idiocy that's for sure but zelda is definitely someone who can take care of themselves based on she can she absolutely can and you know it's interesting that a goddess still feels like i still am going to need a mortal to help me tag team how to figure right but it's kind of like in elder scrolls the septums are descended from gods essentially uh-huh they still have the blades to back them up right you know yeah exactly zelda needs imba right and link is the one who goes around and affects change on an individual level right zelda does that as she mild spoilers they're crockering of time i guess for some people but i hope people expected that we've had some spoilers going on in here in general and i also think at least talking about the timeline in this way as much as you might have spoiled the story doesn't really spoil the gameplay doesn't really spoil the detail of it right i mean i can talk i mean literally the deku tree which is a dungeon right like the intro it's the intro dungeon essentially and it's more than one line here it's one line like knowingly one line and we can get into that because the deku is a spirit it is a protector spirit right so we could have gotten into that that'll be in another episode sometime i mean i love i love universes that have been going on for decades that have all this rich development over time and it's it's interesting to see how it grows as more and more people end up building on it because because not only is it a bunch of people who just love writing and making video games but then you after a point i mean 1986 this game's as old as i am there are people who grew up playing this game and now get to work on it right and get to go to miyamoto and say did you ever think about this miyamoto who's a very like who's very open-minded to a certain extent it's like yeah sure we can think about this concept let's think about it in this terms you know i think a lot of that might come from aj aonuma uh he is kind of the quote new blood that came in with i think he came in for majora's mask he was a dungeon designer on ocarina of time but he was the director of majora's mask interesting okay and that's kind of something that does pretty well is they have people mentoring people under them who then go on to work in the same franchise or better or different franchises not better but just to get off topic a bit i've always wondered what it comes to because we just recently in our q a episode talking about canon continuity we're talking about how it affects triple a game development and the thing that i find interesting when it comes to nintendo is that nintendo seems to have this culture of responsibility right like it's not just about profit margins that definitely has to be a part of them as a company but they feel like they have a responsibility towards producing a certain type of product a responsibility towards the team making that product as well i will yeah i will say nintendo love it or hate it right seems to have this thing of we can't do the same game over and over and over right and and that's not for everybody but i do find it interesting that they're kind of able to continue to keep a consistent fan base even when they fumble yeah let's be honest because nintendo's not perfect i love them as a company but they're not perfect but even when they fumble they keep this fan base partly because of a certain different culture of i you know i'm about for responsibility i'm responsible for the growth of this franchise it's not not just pushing out another it's not like call of duty we're gonna push out another one and another one and another one with fancier guns and fancier graphics i think the thing is nintendo is not afraid to experiment and nothing is the brand is sacred yes also not at the same time like you're not going to see mario with guns you'll never see mario at least not like a realistic gun but we have seen mario in space we have seen mario be eco-friendly we've seen mario be you know even grow to incorporate some more like hashtags semi-feminist i mean like i'm not going to really say that because it's still very much a traditional like man saves woman story but they've done their own interpretations and riffs on it to the point where now it's a joke that it's like man saves woman again come on yeah you know and yeah and you look at a franchise like mario is always going to be part of their main bread butter i think absolutely zilla is probably their second one right and then you start getting the stuff that they're more they're not as afraid of taking risks with like star fox star fox or metroid which we get back to or even like the kirby kirby one of my favorites and the gameplay experimentation they do with kirby is always fun so just make just occur to me that earthbound is a game that we'll have to cover at some point and they've never actually released the third one in america i'm ready to have my brain melt just i think i think i think they released earthbound zero which was the original nes game right at some point even virtual console or something but earthbound 3 called mother free has never released outside of japan officially and it's just like why i think that they're afraid that they're not going to do the translation right or something i can't quite tell also it's been long past i think it came out on the game boy advance well if you want to hear our thoughts about like canon continuity and how it's affecting like game development that's one of our patreon that's our patreon exclusive q a i think that actually became a lot more thoughtful we were just like yeah let's do that we've got a q let's do the a and the answer ended up being so in depth so and we've ventured all over the place but yeah we kind of touch upon how the rest of the industry is dealing with those questions whereas like now that i'm thinking about it because we haven't heard that long ago nintendo's really they're going in a somewhat different direction they're branching off they're not entirely different but they're branching off for sure again nintendo's the one that gameplay yes trump story yeah story's important but if the gameplay is going to affect the story that's fine yeah they're more than fine and dare i say it leads to some very interesting art when you think about it in that way that they produce some very great immersive worlds because they're thinking about it on a very different level of consumption than a lot of other great game publishers and developers do yeah but i guess it's a good place to stop yeah we're just we're just going out because now it's becoming a nintendo episode we're just here to talk about like history so so we're gonna get there yeah and we'll be back and next time i'm gonna toss the uh toss the baton to you for next time oh no no we can do that the lore of the sims do you want that there is more i don't know do i have to play the sims then yeah which version of the sims would i have you play one that we have we have at least two i could get all of them really i don't know how much lore can there be the sims there is you know what challenge accepted there is lore to the sims oh no and uh we're gonna we're gonna talk about a lot of how does it carry through you know what yeah it won't be a long episode guys but we'll do some some similar because i i'm here to a two for them what do you mean a two for it's like a 20 minute episode toss something else in there too we'll figure it out i think i'll be able to do do a lot okay i'm curious that you see what you come up with yeah we will see okay yeah similar i hope you're here for it you're gonna you know do sim city as well so if it's relevant if it's relevant i'll stop i'll stop being yeah i'll stop being a jerk and i'll say thank you for listening yeah thanks for listening thanks for hearing our thread of sims lawyers now it's gonna happen shots fired i was afraid to do i was afraid we'd do that no let's do sims the next time we can do dragon age again how about that because dragon age is going to be another two-hour essay i'll be honest so thank you for listening everybody thank you we we're so happy you're listening there's a little part of my heart that loves you all so very much so thank you for listening bye everybody bye you