‘Twas Brillig*

I’ve collected all the tears for the Wood’s Light Spirit and now need to enter the Forest Temple.

I woke up in a cell transformed into a wolf with an annoying flying creature to help me. In a way this is another training level - teaching the use of Link’s wolf powers. It was a fairly straightforward dungeon crawl - fighting strange black creatures, using wolf senses to see the spirits of guards and collecting rupees (how exactly does a wolf carry cash?). Eventually after going along a castle roof (which was obviously that of Hyrule castle) I entered a room to find someone else waiting there.

The person in the room was Princess Zelda (the twilight princess), the annoying flying creature is Midna and then we had a fair bit of exposition. Hyrule has been attacked by creatures from the twilight realm and its inhabitants have been turned into spirits. Not surprisingly I am the only one who can save them. Eventually Midna sent me back from Hyrule to the village and sent me off in search of a sword and shield.

As a wolf I can talk to animals, which I did. After a bit of creeping around the village (listening in on people, surprising others and sneaking into houses), I found out where the sword and shield were and fetched them for Midna. I was just setting off for the twilight version of the forest when I was called into the forest spring, a very minor battle with a twilight creature and I was then informed that I need to battle creatures in other springs to banish the twilight. Something about the springs being sources of light and the twilight realm has captured them.

Take two. I went back to the beginning of day 2 and repeated all the tasks - using the sword really is obvious so I don’t know what I was doing wrong. Anyhow I entered the woods and rescued the kid from in front of the Forest Temple. I went back to the village, did some more goat herding (time trial: 2′34) and was just about to set off to Hyrule when I was accused of hurting Epona. I went fetching Epona from the forest spring when something happened and I woke up in another place transformed into a wolf.

First stab at playing the new Zelda. Days 1+2:

The usual beginning of game fair, get set some simple tasks in order to learn the controls:

• jumping with Epona is annoying (I don’t appear to be able to time my dashes quite right)
• herding goats with Epona was fun
• in order to get the fishing rod I had to learn to jump and use grass to make music - which summoned a hawk which I could send for things.
• fishing with the wiimote (necessary to unlock the shop and purchase a slingshot) and nunchuk was fun
• once I received the sword I was trained by way of teaching some children how to use the sword (easy but perhaps I shouldn’t have been drinking - more later).

Just as I finished learning how to use the sword and slingshot one of the children was kidnapped and I set off to rescue him. I got a lamp and entered some caves and promptly forgot how to fight - Bah!