Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for my first blog post devoted specifically to the Zelda series.
*Cue maniacal laughter*
Those of you like me who are diehard Zelda fans will be glad to know there's a lot more Zelda coverage coming in the printed version of Virtuous Worlds once it's released to the public.
Heckler: "What does it take to be a diehard Zelda fan?"
Well, first you have to practically consider yourself a citizen of Hyrule (that's the name of the kingdom featured in most Zelda games). You also have to be plagued by shrill voices in your head shouting "hey, listen" at odd times throughout the day.
Heckler: "Huh?"
If you didn't get the joke, well, that probably means you've never played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, because if you had, you would probably be smiling right now.
So. Ocarina of Time is the Zelda game we're going to zero in on here. As with pretty much every Zelda game, Ocarina of Time features a series of dungeons that our hero Link must conquer in order to save the Princess Zelda and restore peace to Hyrule. This involves not just fighting enemies; it also requires players to think their way through a series of puzzles.
One of these "dungeons" in Ocarina of Time is called the Water Temple. The Water Temple comes late in the game, and it is considered by some players to be the most difficult (or at least the most frustrating) dungeon in the entire Zelda series! I don't know that I'd go that far, but it certainly is one of the odd ducks when it comes to dungeon layout and the nature of some of the puzzles.
I think my favorite moment in the Water Temple is one that comes when you've made it about halfway through the dungeon. You open a door, and suddenly you're in the middle of a room of bright white lights and an inch or so of water covering the floor. Go forward, and you'll run into (of all things) a tiny tropical island complete with sand and a palm tree.
Go a little bit farther, and you'll encounter a locked door. There's no way to open this door, so you're forced to turn around and go back the other way.
Not so fast.
Before you can even pass the tropical island again, you'll be faced by...yourself. Sort of. The figure standing in front of you is shaped like Link and even carries a sword and shield that look like his, but his/its clothing is stained entirely black. A pair of red eyes stares out at you from a face shrouded in darkness.
This is Dark Link.
Dark Link is not like your typical enemy in a Zelda game. If you take a swing at him, he'll swing too...at the exact same moment you do and with the exact same movement. Basically, he does whatever you do. If you didn't know better, you might say he knows what you're going to do before you do it.
Like the Water Temple itself, Dark Link is one of the more challenging obstacles you'll face in Ocarina of Time. In other words, one of Link's own worst enemies is...himself. Dark Link is little more than a twisted parody of the "real" Link.
Or is he?
What does water do? It reflects reality. Yeah, sometimes the reflection is a little distorted, but not quite that distorted. Personally, if I were Link, I'd be doing some serious self-examining after an encounter with Dark Link. I'd probably be asking myself, "Is this really what I am?"
Actually, that's a question we probably all need to ask ourselves. It's tough to admit, but we've all got a Dark Link inside us. He may come out in the form of a curse word shouted at someone who cuts us off on the freeway. He may come out when we walk by the dirty magazines at the supermarket. Better yet, he may come out when we're singing hymns at church and we spy someone we don't like sitting in the pew in front of us.
Most religious traditions agree that there is some sort of "Dark Link" inside us. Where the disagreement comes in is usually in how we're supposed to deal with that Dark Link.
"Sin" is Christianity's name for Dark Link, and there's only one way to deal with this jerk, according to tradition. And that is to call on a force more powerful than ourselves. That force is...
Heckler: "Jesus?"
Fifty rupees to our friend the Heckler! If you keep trying to attack your own twisted self portrait, it's just going to swing back at you. It knows you better than you know yourself. Good luck trying to come up with a trick it doesn't know.
You've gotta get outside help, hero!
