THE BORE
General => Video Game Bored => Topic started by: Barry Egan on December 10, 2011, 06:46:00 PM
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There's no denying that Skyward Sword's ending fulfills Aonuma's promise of a grand prequel that sets the stage for Ocarina of Time, at least in a number of critical ways. That's not to say that there aren't mysteries left open to interpretation and new questions raised - they're definitely there, and they're definitely important - but that doesn't lessen the significance of the new story threads one bit. I'll be getting into a solid rundown of all the ways Skyward Sword sets up for recurring series features in our still in-progress Skyward Sword Storyline Guide, but for now I want to focus on one of the important question marks raised by the turbulent ending...
What exactly happened? Throughout the entire game, we get the impression that the events of Skyward Sword are predestined, set in motion long ago to help the hero battle the revived demon hundreds of years after his original defeat by the Goddess. But the ending winds up having us travel back to the past to defeat Demise there, which would seem to undo the need for anything else that happened during the main plot. After all, if Demise is obliterated in the past and the Master Sword left behind, then why would a Goddess Sword wielding hero need to appear to prevent him from escaping his seal?
Despite the apparent muting of the game's history, however, we still see suggestions that the rest of the game still really did happen. The Isle of the Goddess has been restored to its original place at the Sealed Grounds, where you brought it with your epic Triforce wish to defeat Demise. The Triforce itself is reunited and stands at the same place where you left it. Most telling of all, we see that Impa has held onto the bracelet given to her by Zelda in the past for all those years - the same bracelet we see her wearing during our very first visit to the surface.
What's going on here? Certainly we can't both be changing the past while simultaneously fulfilling it, right? Is there any way to logically break down what we're seeing here?
The Coming of the Chosen is Predestined
I have sat here for many years waiting for you to arrive. All so that I could fulfill my purpose as your guide. You stand under the roof of the Sealed Temple, a place built by the goddess an eternity ago.
Your arrival here was predestined many, many years ago. The spirit maiden you seek arrived here shortly before you, descending to this land in a shower of light. There's no doubting it. The gears of fate have begun to turn.
- Impa, Skyward Sword
For me, this quote from Impa, among the first words she ever says to Link, speaks volumes. She recognizes him by sight, which in hindsight would seem to suggest that she's actually seen him before. Sure, you could make the argument that this is an Ocarina of Time-like scenario and Link simply fits the established description of the coming hero, but given the context of this game - that he's speaking with a character who has met him before in the distant past - it seems the default assumption is that, regardless of what our first impressions might have been, Impa is supposed to know who Link is.
She describes his coming as "predestined," an interesting word choice. It's not just "destined" or "fated," and he's not just "chosen by the Goddess" - his coming is predestined. Within the world of Hyrule myth, there's always a sense that the hands of fate can be shifted, that Link exists for this very purpose. Here the path of fate is apparently inevitable. This is a cosmology we haven't seen before, which I think is meant to draw our attention. In light of the ending, Impa would of course have known that Link's coming was predestined because she had already lived out some of its effects - he had already walked through the Gate of Time and arrived in her original time to save the land.
Also intriguing is the metaphor she uses to describe the movements of fate - fate is a "gear." Of course, this evokes the Gate of Time, literally a set of gears that turn with the the hands of time. Coincidence? I doubt it. There are hosts of other images Impa could have used to represent destiny, yet she chose a gear specifically. Why else but to foreshadow the events involving the Gate of Time that will occur later in the game?
Of course, Link isn't the only chosen one in Skyward Sword - as the "spirit maiden," Zelda, too, is a chosen one of the Goddess. After purifying herself in the sacred springs, she passes through the Gate of Time in Lanayru Desert to help maintain the seal on Demise in the past. We pursue her through the other Gate of Time in the Sealed Temple and learn that she is in fact a reincarnation of the Goddess, chosen long ago to bear the memories of Hylia. But if you look at what she tells us about the Goddess's efforts to deal the evil alongside what happens to Zelda over the course of the game, you'll notice something quite interesting:
After a long and fierce battle, the goddess Hylia succeeded in sealing away Demise. However, soon after the demon king was imprisoned, it became clear that the seal would not hold long against his fearsome power. Hylia had suffered grave injuries in her battle with the demon king. She knew that if he broke free again, there would be no stopping him. And if the demon king were to free himself, it would mean the end of the world for all beings of this land.
In order to put an end to the demon king, Hylia devised two separate plans and set them both into motion. First, she created Fi. She made the spirit that resides in your sword to serve a single purpose: to assist her chosen hero on his mission. Her second plan...was to abandon her divine form and transfer her soul to the body of a mortal.
- Zelda, Skyward Sword
Did you notice that, even as Zelda visited the sacred springs to purify herself, she did not seen to exhibit any signs of her divine status? Yet it is only here, once she has completed her rituals and entered the distant past and assumed the role of Hylia that her identity finally takes shape. Note also that while the creation of Fi is spoken of in the past tense, the transfer of Hylia's soul to a mortal body is not. What this suggests to me is that Zelda's quest is itself the process by which Hylia transfers her soul to a mortal form. Zelda is not born a descendant of the Goddess, but through her actions on the surface fulfills Hylia's plan and becomes reborn.
Moreover, Zelda enters a deep sleep in order to maintain the seal cast by Hylia, a seal that it is believed will break soon. I do not think we can say that by inserting herself into the past to protect the seal Zelda changes the past so that the seal does not weaken. If that were the case, I would imagine Demise would have already broken free by the time the game begins. Instead it seems that Zelda's presence is responsible for the seal that's already in place when the game begins.
Don't believe me? Take a trip to the Sealed Grounds when you first start the game and gaze beyond the double-doors behind Impa. Tell me what you see. It's Zelda, already entombed in her sealing stasis. Her trip to the past has always already impacted the present. Her sacrifice, her seal, is one and the same as the sacrifice and seal of the Goddess.
This opens up a completely different reading for the mention of the seal weakening, for what is it that causes the seal to fracture in the past? Ghirahim's capture of Zelda and use of her soul to break the seal. Only Link's presence is able to prevent Demise from unleashing his wrath upon the earth. By sealing Demise within the Master Sword, Link forms a second seal, much stronger than the first.
And yes - he is sealed. While Link literally destroyed his bodily form, his spirit was actually sealed away by the Master Sword:
I have confirmed the eradication of thedemon king. His residual consciousness has been absorbed into the Master Sword... and is now sealed away.
-Fi, Skyward Sword
Immediately following Demise's sealing, Zelda gives Impa a parting gift - her goddess bracelet - and heads with Link back to the present. There they meet the elder Impa in the Sealed Temple - yes, it's the same person as the young Impa from the past! - and lo and behind she is still wearing the bracelet. What's more, just as Zelda's seal always existed in the present, if you've been watching closely you'll notice that Impa always had this bracelet! This for me was the final nail in the coffin for the idea that time travel in this game typically changes the past. If these final events wind up fulfilling the present rather than changing it, then it would seem that is the hard-set rule for time travel in this game.
Therefore, even though we witness the defeat of Demise at the hands of the Master Sword in the past, it seems that this battle could not have impacted the present. It's a bit of a wild proposal, but hear me out - what if Link's defeat of Demise actually resulted in the centuries-old seal we keep strengthening throughout the game? Certainly this would explain why the sword - its Skyward Strike in particular - are so instrumental to reinforcing the seal after each of Link's encounters with the Imprisoned. It also keeps Demise's defeat consistent with the rest of the story-related events involving time travel using the Gate of Time.
This makes the Goddess's plan to defeat Demise still play out as originally intended. Zelda can still play her role as the reincarnation of the Goddess, and while she takes the Goddess's place in order to maintain the seal she also means the catalyst for the events that draw Link to the past to confront Demise in order to make sure he stays down. Then, hundreds of years later, Link fulfills the Goddess's intent to use the Triforce to utterly obliterate the demon king once and for all.
The Predestination Paradox
This interpretation is not entirely unproblematic, however. A couple other details connected to the past muck up the clarity on this issue a bit: namely, the Master Sword pedestal and the Life Tree that Link plants in the Sealed Temple. I'll deal with the Master Sword problem first, since it's the more important issue.
Yes, it's true - we do see the Master Sword resting in the Sealed Temple when Link returns to the present after the final battle. And yes, the sword wasn't there throughout the rest of the game, meaning that for it to show up for the ending would seem to suggest that the past has changed, and now the Master Sword will guard the seal on Demise forever. This runs against the rest of the clear indications of a sort of predestined past and makes thinking about how time travel works in this game really terribly confusing.
However, there are two factors tied to this scene that make me think that perhaps it's not such an anomaly after all. First of all, the appearance of the pedestal in the Temple of Hylia in the first place is a bit strange. It definitely wasn't there during our first trip - it's almost as though it shows up out of nowhere for the ending. Whatever reasons that this pedestal is invisible could certainly apply to the Master Sword in the present, right?
The other variable is Impa. Given that we know many of the other time travel related events such as Zelda sealing herself away and passing one of her bracelets to Impa are definitely predestined, it's clear that by not revealing her identity to the other characters from the start, Impa is definitely hiding things from the protagonists throughout the game. I think it's definitely plausible that the true Master Sword could be among them. Even though just giving it to Link to open the Gate of Time would have been easier than making him gather the power of the sacred flames, if Impa's foreknowledge of the events of the past has shown her that everything is predestined - and I think it's clear that this is the case based on the already-discussed dialogue with her during the first meeting - she would have known that to create the Master Sword in the first place Link would need to purify the Goddess Sword. Thus, she hides it, only revealing it once everything is made right in the past.
Impa knowing more than she should thanks to the time travel undertaken throughout the game winds up explaining a lot in terms of the story's events. As we've already discussed, Impa can recognize Link by sight because she's already met him in the past. Young Impa shows up in the present because she knows Zelda will encounter danger that requires her intervention. Elder Impa is able to tell that the Master Sword has not achieved its true form because she has already witnessed the true sword's creation in the past.
But what about the Life Tree? It's definitely not there during our first visit to the Sealed Temple, and only by transplanting it in the past can we claim its fruit in the present. I think there's a pretty simple explanation for this one, however - Timeshift Stones. Because Timeshift Stones allow for the past to literally fuse with the present, bringing objects out of areas impacted by them seems to actually change the past... but only within that limited space. (How this works is beyond me - you'd think that if removing the effects of one of the stones would cause the tree to decay then taking its seedling out of the effect area on your person wouldn't make much of a difference. But hey, this is video game logic!)
The case of the Life Tree involves Link displacing the seedling from that Timeshifted space and then bringing it to the past directly - and in this case the Timeshifting logic takes precedence over the usual Gate of Time predestination logic. The seedling itself has been Timeshifted, so even though the past in which it's being planted is not, it still grows to maturity when planted inside the grove as though Link had gone in and Timeshifted that area in order to manipulate it. Sure, it's not the cleanest scenario, but given the overwhelming evidence towards time travel through the Gate of Time doing nothing to "change" the past so much as fulfill it, it's in my opinion the best explanation.
Skyward Sword Does Not Cause a Split Timeline
Many have looked at time travel in Skyward Sword and concluded that it might cause a new split in the timeline, much like what happened with the ending of Ocarina of Time. Given that we've been able to reason around the two biggest counterarguments against a predestined past in Skyward Sword, I think it's safe to say that there is no "changing the past" this time around, and therefore no real room for Skyward Sword to cause another split in the timeline.
The real question, I think, is whether we can fit the predestined time travel involving the Gate of Time with the time travel rules governed by the Door of Time in Ocarina of Time. But that's another subject for another day.
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This is important stuff guys, come on.
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you gotta write original content
channel your inner zelda fan
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There's no denying that Skyward Sword's ending fulfills Aonuma's promise of a grand prequel that sets the stage for Ocarina of Time, at least in a number of critical ways. That's not to say that there aren't mysteries left open to interpretation and new questions raised - they're definitely there, and they're definitely important - but that doesn't lessen the significance of the new story threads one bit. I'll be getting into a solid rundown of all the ways Skyward Sword sets up for recurring series features in our still in-progress Skyward Sword Storyline Guide, but for now I want to focus on one of the important question marks raised by the turbulent ending...
What exactly happened? Throughout the entire game, we get the impression that the events of Skyward Sword are predestined, set in motion long ago to help the hero battle the revived demon hundreds of years after his original defeat by the Goddess. But the ending winds up having us travel back to the past to defeat Demise there, which would seem to undo the need for anything else that happened during the main plot. After all, if Demise is obliterated in the past and the Master Sword left behind, then why would a Goddess Sword wielding hero need to appear to prevent him from escaping his seal?
Despite the apparent muting of the game's history, however, we still see suggestions that the rest of the game still really did happen. The Isle of the Goddess has been restored to its original place at the Sealed Grounds, where you brought it with your epic Triforce wish to defeat Demise. The Triforce itself is reunited and stands at the same place where you left it. Most telling of all, we see that Impa has held onto the bracelet given to her by Zelda in the past for all those years - the same bracelet we see her wearing during our very first visit to the surface.
What's going on here? Certainly we can't both be changing the past while simultaneously fulfilling it, right? Is there any way to logically break down what we're seeing here?
The Coming of the Chosen is Predestined
I have sat here for many years waiting for you to arrive. All so that I could fulfill my purpose as your guide. You stand under the roof of the Sealed Temple, a place built by the goddess an eternity ago.
Your arrival here was predestined many, many years ago. The spirit maiden you seek arrived here shortly before you, descending to this land in a shower of light. There's no doubting it. The gears of fate have begun to turn.
- Impa, Skyward Sword
For me, this quote from Impa, among the first words she ever says to Link, speaks volumes. She recognizes him by sight, which in hindsight would seem to suggest that she's actually seen him before. Sure, you could make the argument that this is an Ocarina of Time-like scenario and Link simply fits the established description of the coming hero, but given the context of this game - that he's speaking with a character who has met him before in the distant past - it seems the default assumption is that, regardless of what our first impressions might have been, Impa is supposed to know who Link is.
She describes his coming as "predestined," an interesting word choice. It's not just "destined" or "fated," and he's not just "chosen by the Goddess" - his coming is predestined. Within the world of Hyrule myth, there's always a sense that the hands of fate can be shifted, that Link exists for this very purpose. Here the path of fate is apparently inevitable. This is a cosmology we haven't seen before, which I think is meant to draw our attention. In light of the ending, Impa would of course have known that Link's coming was predestined because she had already lived out some of its effects - he had already walked through the Gate of Time and arrived in her original time to save the land.
Also intriguing is the metaphor she uses to describe the movements of fate - fate is a "gear." Of course, this evokes the Gate of Time, literally a set of gears that turn with the the hands of time. Coincidence? I doubt it. There are hosts of other images Impa could have used to represent destiny, yet she chose a gear specifically. Why else but to foreshadow the events involving the Gate of Time that will occur later in the game?
Of course, Link isn't the only chosen one in Skyward Sword - as the "spirit maiden," Zelda, too, is a chosen one of the Goddess. After purifying herself in the sacred springs, she passes through the Gate of Time in Lanayru Desert to help maintain the seal on Demise in the past. We pursue her through the other Gate of Time in the Sealed Temple and learn that she is in fact a reincarnation of the Goddess, chosen long ago to bear the memories of Hylia. But if you look at what she tells us about the Goddess's efforts to deal the evil alongside what happens to Zelda over the course of the game, you'll notice something quite interesting:
After a long and fierce battle, the goddess Hylia succeeded in sealing away Demise. However, soon after the demon king was imprisoned, it became clear that the seal would not hold long against his fearsome power. Hylia had suffered grave injuries in her battle with the demon king. She knew that if he broke free again, there would be no stopping him. And if the demon king were to free himself, it would mean the end of the world for all beings of this land.
In order to put an end to the demon king, Hylia devised two separate plans and set them both into motion. First, she created Fi. She made the spirit that resides in your sword to serve a single purpose: to assist her chosen hero on his mission. Her second plan...was to abandon her divine form and transfer her soul to the body of a mortal.
- Zelda, Skyward Sword
Did you notice that, even as Zelda visited the sacred springs to purify herself, she did not seen to exhibit any signs of her divine status? Yet it is only here, once she has completed her rituals and entered the distant past and assumed the role of Hylia that her identity finally takes shape. Note also that while the creation of Fi is spoken of in the past tense, the transfer of Hylia's soul to a mortal body is not. What this suggests to me is that Zelda's quest is itself the process by which Hylia transfers her soul to a mortal form. Zelda is not born a descendant of the Goddess, but through her actions on the surface fulfills Hylia's plan and becomes reborn.
Moreover, Zelda enters a deep sleep in order to maintain the seal cast by Hylia, a seal that it is believed will break soon. I do not think we can say that by inserting herself into the past to protect the seal Zelda changes the past so that the seal does not weaken. If that were the case, I would imagine Demise would have already broken free by the time the game begins. Instead it seems that Zelda's presence is responsible for the seal that's already in place when the game begins.
Don't believe me? Take a trip to the Sealed Grounds when you first start the game and gaze beyond the double-doors behind Impa. Tell me what you see. It's Zelda, already entombed in her sealing stasis. Her trip to the past has always already impacted the present. Her sacrifice, her seal, is one and the same as the sacrifice and seal of the Goddess.
This opens up a completely different reading for the mention of the seal weakening, for what is it that causes the seal to fracture in the past? Ghirahim's capture of Zelda and use of her soul to break the seal. Only Link's presence is able to prevent Demise from unleashing his wrath upon the earth. By sealing Demise within the Master Sword, Link forms a second seal, much stronger than the first.
And yes - he is sealed. While Link literally destroyed his bodily form, his spirit was actually sealed away by the Master Sword:
I have confirmed the eradication of thedemon king. His residual consciousness has been absorbed into the Master Sword... and is now sealed away.
-Fi, Skyward Sword
Immediately following Demise's sealing, Zelda gives Impa a parting gift - her goddess bracelet - and heads with Link back to the present. There they meet the elder Impa in the Sealed Temple - yes, it's the same person as the young Impa from the past! - and lo and behind she is still wearing the bracelet. What's more, just as Zelda's seal always existed in the present, if you've been watching closely you'll notice that Impa always had this bracelet! This for me was the final nail in the coffin for the idea that time travel in this game typically changes the past. If these final events wind up fulfilling the present rather than changing it, then it would seem that is the hard-set rule for time travel in this game.
Therefore, even though we witness the defeat of Demise at the hands of the Master Sword in the past, it seems that this battle could not have impacted the present. It's a bit of a wild proposal, but hear me out - what if Link's defeat of Demise actually resulted in the centuries-old seal we keep strengthening throughout the game? Certainly this would explain why the sword - its Skyward Strike in particular - are so instrumental to reinforcing the seal after each of Link's encounters with the Imprisoned. It also keeps Demise's defeat consistent with the rest of the story-related events involving time travel using the Gate of Time.
This makes the Goddess's plan to defeat Demise still play out as originally intended. Zelda can still play her role as the reincarnation of the Goddess, and while she takes the Goddess's place in order to maintain the seal she also means the catalyst for the events that draw Link to the past to confront Demise in order to make sure he stays down. Then, hundreds of years later, Link fulfills the Goddess's intent to use the Triforce to utterly obliterate the demon king once and for all.
The Predestination Paradox
This interpretation is not entirely unproblematic, however. A couple other details connected to the past muck up the clarity on this issue a bit: namely, the Master Sword pedestal and the Life Tree that Link plants in the Sealed Temple. I'll deal with the Master Sword problem first, since it's the more important issue.
Yes, it's true - we do see the Master Sword resting in the Sealed Temple when Link returns to the present after the final battle. And yes, the sword wasn't there throughout the rest of the game, meaning that for it to show up for the ending would seem to suggest that the past has changed, and now the Master Sword will guard the seal on Demise forever. This runs against the rest of the clear indications of a sort of predestined past and makes thinking about how time travel works in this game really terribly confusing.
However, there are two factors tied to this scene that make me think that perhaps it's not such an anomaly after all. First of all, the appearance of the pedestal in the Temple of Hylia in the first place is a bit strange. It definitely wasn't there during our first trip - it's almost as though it shows up out of nowhere for the ending. Whatever reasons that this pedestal is invisible could certainly apply to the Master Sword in the present, right?
The other variable is Impa. Given that we know many of the other time travel related events such as Zelda sealing herself away and passing one of her bracelets to Impa are definitely predestined, it's clear that by not revealing her identity to the other characters from the start, Impa is definitely hiding things from the protagonists throughout the game. I think it's definitely plausible that the true Master Sword could be among them. Even though just giving it to Link to open the Gate of Time would have been easier than making him gather the power of the sacred flames, if Impa's foreknowledge of the events of the past has shown her that everything is predestined - and I think it's clear that this is the case based on the already-discussed dialogue with her during the first meeting - she would have known that to create the Master Sword in the first place Link would need to purify the Goddess Sword. Thus, she hides it, only revealing it once everything is made right in the past.
Impa knowing more than she should thanks to the time travel undertaken throughout the game winds up explaining a lot in terms of the story's events. As we've already discussed, Impa can recognize Link by sight because she's already met him in the past. Young Impa shows up in the present because she knows Zelda will encounter danger that requires her intervention. Elder Impa is able to tell that the Master Sword has not achieved its true form because she has already witnessed the true sword's creation in the past.
But what about the Life Tree? It's definitely not there during our first visit to the Sealed Temple, and only by transplanting it in the past can we claim its fruit in the present. I think there's a pretty simple explanation for this one, however - Timeshift Stones. Because Timeshift Stones allow for the past to literally fuse with the present, bringing objects out of areas impacted by them seems to actually change the past... but only within that limited space. (How this works is beyond me - you'd think that if removing the effects of one of the stones would cause the tree to decay then taking its seedling out of the effect area on your person wouldn't make much of a difference. But hey, this is video game logic!)
The case of the Life Tree involves Link displacing the seedling from that Timeshifted space and then bringing it to the past directly - and in this case the Timeshifting logic takes precedence over the usual Gate of Time predestination logic. The seedling itself has been Timeshifted, so even though the past in which it's being planted is not, it still grows to maturity when planted inside the grove as though Link had gone in and Timeshifted that area in order to manipulate it. Sure, it's not the cleanest scenario, but given the overwhelming evidence towards time travel through the Gate of Time doing nothing to "change" the past so much as fulfill it, it's in my opinion the best explanation.
Skyward Sword Does Not Cause a Split Timeline
Many have looked at time travel in Skyward Sword and concluded that it might cause a new split in the timeline, much like what happened with the ending of Ocarina of Time. Given that we've been able to reason around the two biggest counterarguments against a predestined past in Skyward Sword, I think it's safe to say that there is no "changing the past" this time around, and therefore no real room for Skyward Sword to cause another split in the timeline.
The real question, I think, is whether we can fit the predestined time travel involving the Gate of Time with the time travel rules governed by the Door of Time in Ocarina of Time. But that's another subject for another day.
TLDR
a boy saves a princess right?
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wait wait, has Zelda been gradually becoming Kingdom Hearts while I wasn't paying attention?
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(http://i97.photobucket.com/albums/l207/fgsfdsfargeg/words.gif)
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Zelda series has become the refuge of Nintendo fans so starved for guud gaem stoyries that they're perfectly content with creating their own.
Nintendo: Link, you must find the Master Sword and rid the world of evil!
Fans: Wow! This totally supports my theory where *volumes of unreadable gibberish*
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Pff... doesn't stack up to the essay about phallus symbols in Majora's Mask.
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Plot? on zelda!? what the fuck are you talking about?