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DUNGEONS IN REVERSE

 

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D: Master Quest - https://youtu.be/SKWnUCkEpkA

 

We're starting to get into the real challenge of Master Quest: puzzles. Lots of puzzles.

 

In case it wasn't obvious with the first dungeon, the remixing of these dungeons is not limited to changing the locations and numbers of foes. I think it's safe to say there weren't any cows embedded in walls in the original game. (You can bet that confused me on my first playthrough, but eventually I tried shooting one with my slingshot―instead of playing Epona's Song or somesuch―and, well, you see the result.) One critical item to the remixing is that stationary objects are entirely independent of movable objects. They essentially have no collision until Link walks on them. As such, you'll find a whole lot of objects hidden inside other objects in Master Quest that simply wouldn't appear in the original game.

 

Another puzzle element that was a critical part of the dungeons today was timing. The bomb on the center platform could be used to blow up every single entryway except the one that would actually give me progress to the end of the first section. If I could just explode that one, I could skip about half of the dungeon! But no, it's just barely impossible to run that far that quickly. While we now have our own bombs and can't have that element exactly repeated in the future, you can bet we'll see more things that are slightly not possible―and only slightly possible, like with the torches! Master Quest is exactly as it says: it's only for people who have mastered the original game. Or who are willing to spend a while puzzling things out, anyway. Yes, the combat will ramp up a bit in the future, but enemy behavior is unchanged in MQ. They just might be in crueler positions. I'll point out one in the future that really sticks out in my memory, though we're a few dungeons away from it still.

 

Now, I wasn't doing this blog when I streamed Ocarina of Time, so I think I'll still comment at least a little bit on the story. Most Zelda games are pretty different from each other in terms of the setting, though Wind Waker especially. Ocarina of Time was the first 3D Zelda title, and actually directly leads into the next three (though with a lot heavier references in the first two, Majora's Mask and Wind Waker). Wind Waker actually spoiled a bit for us here: we know we're supposed to travel through time to save the world. But how do we do that? Well, we're now supposed to go open the Door of Time in the Temple of Time, so that probably has something to do with time travel.