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mianite-3-unofficial · 4 years

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Merry and Bright

Authors note: I’m not usually fond of holidays. They’re always stressful and make me anxious. But I wanted to extend a happy holidays to everyone who follows this blog, and has been around for the journey thus far. Thank you so much, every single one of you. This blog and all your support has been the best gift I could ever ask for. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Special thanks for @syndianites for editing and @lady-krystine for giving me character details. Enjoy!

Winter had shrouded the world. Tall, leaning acacia trees carried frost on their branches while the mountaintops and forests were swamped in heavy, wet snow. The whole world carried a chill. Even the sun seemed colder, doing nothing but reflecting off the snow, glimmering, blinding. Animals donned thicker pelts and traveled silently, any sound they made caught in the thick drifts of snow. In and out they went, staying out of sight. Even the people in the city were staying out of sight, each hidden in their house, little plumes of smoke rising into the sky, instead of beholding the bright, gleaming sunrise.

Only one person was outdoors, leaning against a building in full armor, a winter coat thrown haphazardly over his shoulders. If Jeriah felt the cold, he simply didn’t care. His eyes were blind to the sunrise, too lost in thought. Jeriah scratched his beard.

So much had changed. How long had it been. Ten years? Ten years since they went tumbling down the void and found themselves here, a world of strangeness. No technology. Materials were easier to come by, some found in the earth or pulled from the land, but most came from ruins. A huge tree shadowed the land and there were statues, faces built into mountain sides and by these strange ruins. Someone once lived here, they all knew it. Sure, Mot had claimed a castle, but the empty houses sent chills up Jeriah’s spine. Along the coast on the other side of the island, there was a humble city of tents and makeshift wooden buildings. Pirates or travelers, most of them, drawn to the island by the stories of some heroes. The four of them didn’t find the city on the first day, however.

Their first day on the island was spent grieving. Mot and Alyssa wept for Dianite, the rest of them for the world they had just left behind. They found the tents the third day, the gods the fourth. Somehow, this universe had mangled the gods beyond recognition. Jeriah shuddered just thinking about it.

Ianite took the form of a human woman, sure, with long purple hair, and a long, purple gown, but that’s where the similarities ended. She smelled like flowers and something unnamable. None of them could be around her for long, else their bodies would start to ache with the power barely contained in her false flesh. The Ianite Spark had known was so sweet, gentle, a good wife and a benevolent goddess. Sure, Jeriah only knew the benevolent goddess, but he understood why Spark was so shaken when she first showed herself to him. It was the same reason why Mot was scared when he met this universe’s Dianite. There was no suave businessman, only a shadow, a wraith, an invisible hand that rubbed salt into the wound of his grief. He showed himself in weak heat and raspy words, no true power, as if it had been siphoned from him. And Mianite…

Jeriah exhaled slowly, seeing his breath cloud before him. Ten years. Now the tents had turned into a proper city, bustling and prosperous. Ten years. Alyssa was a young woman, the strongest person he knew. A warrior, a diplomat, a daughter that Mot would be proud of. Mot, speaking of, was nowhere to be seen. And yet Ianite said that he was okay. That was all she said. That he was okay. The portal had broken after he left and, while Spark worked on it day in and day out, no good results ever came.

Ten years. Jeriah looked down at himself. He was older, certainly, his beard and hair greying, more from stress than age, but it made him look old. So did the feeling of another Winter Festival coming and going. The townspeople celebrated in the comforts of their homes, but Jeriah had better things to do than that. More important things. He pushed himself off the side of the building and pulled his coat tighter around himself.

It was a short walk from the town to Mianite’s temple, only half a mile along the coast. The grey sea lapped at his feet, chilling them even through his armored boots. The sun slowly rose, the grey ocean turning warm pink from its ascent. Snow and sand swished under his feet as he came to the coast, the temple across the cold, choppy sea. Jeriah dragged his boat from where it was kept-- hidden in a shallow cave on shore-- and hopped into it, sending himself out to the temple. The marble shone as white and pure as snow, yet it only filled him with dread as he came upon it. He tied the boat to one of the columns, letting it bob in the ocean. The stench of plants filled his senses, mingled with ozone and some strange, warm smell. Yes, Mianite certainly was here.

Jeriah stepped into the temple, his footsteps echoing loudly. The once gorgeous gardens were overgrown and mangled, filled with hardy weeds and all sorts of plants, like asphodel and marigold, blooming in spite of the cold. The torches were burnt out, the only light in the temple from the glowstone, which gave light but no heat. The floor was absolutely filthy, white marble marred with the footsteps of hundreds of people, thousands of footsteps all going there to kneel before him.

And there Mianite was. Strong and tall upon his throne, staring blankly as Jeriah walked in. This Mianite was the most different. A god of order and the overworld, yes, but he carried no poise or care. His hair, curly and long— down to his ankles— was braided with flowers that were kept alive by godly will alone, a crown of mallow and primrose upon his head. He wore a black toga that flowed over his tan, muscular body like ocean waves and sand. In his hands a sprig of wormwood, which he plucked at, fiddled with. The god didn’t seem to care for his duties to order anymore, only nature. Jeriah reached into his pocket, pulling out a small box.

“If this is your idea of an assassination attempt,” Mianite rumbled, “I ask you to get it over with.”

Jeriah blinked, staring up at Mianite. He did not kneel.

“It is no assassination attempt. It’s a gift, for winter festival.”

Mianite looked up from his wormwood, a long lock of hair falling in his face. His beard was filled with flowers, too. Mianite made a small gesture and the box floated out of Jeriah’s hands. He watched as Mianite caught the gift, then set it on the armrest of his throne.

“There,” He slowly drawled, “Now go. I have matters to attend to.”

Jeriah blinked.

“I stil need to talk to you—“

“I said go.” Mianite looked back to the wormwood, frowning.

“No!” Jeriah snapped, surprising himself and Mianite. But for the past ten years, there had been nothing but frustration and tiredness and, now, what could he do besides this?

“No,” Jeriah repeated, “No, I’m not leaving. You’ve been ignoring me, ignoring all of your other followers, letting nature and the universe fall into chaos. Lady Ianite has been keeping order. Not you. That is your domain.”

“And here I thought you had faith in me.”

Jeriah sputtered indignantly, glaring at Mianite. His whole body felt like it was on fire, an exhausted rage making him too bold for his own good.

“My lord, you might not be my god, but you are still a version of him, and I have some faith in you. Yet all you do is sit here, day in, day out, grieving--”

Mianite stood, glaring down at him.

“I am not grieving. You… You cannot grieve for someone who is alive,” He decreed, voice thick.

“Then what is with this, my lord? Wearing black, the flowers… It’s like you have made yourself nothing more than a living funeral service for whoever these people were. And even if they’re alive, they’re not here. I’m here! So is everyone else, the people whose footsteps stain the halls. It’s been ten years. It’s time to let go, my lord. I have, I’ve let go long ago. Because I know I’m never going back home, and... “ Jeriah took in a shaking breath, feeling tears well in his eyes. Fuck this, fuck this “...And I’ve accepted it. This is my home now, whether or not I like it. This is my world. It is yours, too, your people, who are all looking up to you. There has to be something I can do to help, to get you to stop being so… despondent. Hence the gift, my lord.”

Mianite stared blankly. He picked up the box.

“Now then. What is this?”

“A gift. To try to help cheer you up. Tis the season, my lord.”

Mianite nodded, brows furrowed, and opened the box. With shaking hands, he pulled out the contents. A candle, crudely made of white wax, the wick straight, like a soldier standing at attention. Mianite looked blankly at the candle. His brows furrowed, and the candle remained unlit, as if Mianite was fond of the cold darkness of the temple.

Jeriah turned on his heel to leave, wiping his face with his cold hands as he did so. His footsteps echoed loudly.

“Tucker. That was his name,” Mianite whispered.

Jeriah stopped dead in his tracks, looking over his shoulder at Mianite.

“There was also Sonja, Jordan, and Tom. Tucker, Sonja, Jordan, Tom. Now they’re gone. They have fallen out of my sight, and I could do nothing to save them. All I could do was watch.”

Jeriah looked down at the floor.

“I’m sorry,” He whispered, voice echoing in the vast walls of the temple. But when he looked back to Mianite, the god was curled up in his throne, his face tucked between his knees. In one hand, the wormwood, in the other, the unlit candle.

Jeriah’s head spun as he left the temple, not looking back until he was safely ashore, choking back tears as salty as the freezing ocean before him.

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The forests were deep and filled with snow, the perfect place to spend a day like this. Winter festival. Ha. Alyssa felt like she had nothing to celebrate-- not since Mot left, at least. Sure, the growth of the city was beautiful, almost humbling how many people called it home, but the forest beckoned her. Maybe she could shoot something for dinner, make a stew or roast, something hot and filling for a day like this.

Alyssa held her bow steady, an arrow notched and ready for whatever might cross her path. It was a beautiful bow, carved of sturdy birch and reinforced with dark obsidian. The arrows all had a drop of dragons breath and spiders eye on the tip, a slowness potion that immobilized her prey-- long enough for a second arrow, at least.

Despite all of this, the iridescent purple string was the most interesting part of the longbow. It was made of a single strand of Ianite’s long hair, twisted and curled in on itself. Even with only two fingers touching the string, Alyssa could feel some sort of cosmic magic thrumming through her bones. The sensation felt as familiar as a hug, the feeling of the void, of Ianite. Alyssa pulled her white scarf over her mouth and nose, and crouched by a tree, waiting patiently. Ah, the winter wind over the frozen ground was such a calming noise, a haunting howl that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention.

It made her feel like death was approaching. Such macabre thoughts didn’t belong in her head on what was supposed to be a festival day, a day of hope and festivity and love, and yet she couldn't shake the feeling. Death scarred her soul. Ever since she was a child. But she did have to admit, she was fond of this new world, its people-- people that didn’t seem to age, bodies weathering slowly. The cold took some, injury others, but never age, it seemed.

She did enjoy the company, though. From the people in the city Spark made, to the hunters that linger in the woods, to the hunters that secluded themselves from all people besides the ones in their stories, she enjoyed talking to them, even if they squabbled. Mot taught her how to do it properly. He was never one to deal with petty arguments. Now Mot was gone. The only answer Ianite ever gave when asked about him was ‘he’s safe’. Any more questions were met with a strange look, and Ianite saying ‘it is not my story to tell’. As if that made any sense.

Alyssa shuddered against the cold. Here again came the feeling of death approaching.

Ianite always comforted her, told her that he was okay, in a different place with Uncle Dia, who somehow wasn’t dead. Death. What a thing to think about. And even though he was alive, a part of her felt crushed with a cold weight, as if she had been buried in snow, or that there was an iron spike driven between her ribs, pinning her to the ground. He wasn’t dead. Mot lived, off in some far other-universe, but that did nothing to stop the weight from crushing her. Anything that he had left behind felt like another slap in the face. Screziato Enterprises, a castle that Mot had claimed as his own, made her feel heavy and sick, and, on some days, even the mention of the name sent her into a cold tizzy. She took a deep breath through the scarf, trying to ground herself.

Grief, that’s what it was. Grieving the fact that Mot might not ever return, and that he would never see her again. Grieving her father, her family, the life they could have had together as a big, happy family. All the things he had left behind were nothing but spectres, haunting her relentlessly. Alyssa didn’t move her hand from the bowstring.

She thought of Ianite, the day the goddess had taught her how to shoot a bow. Lady Ianite had held that bow so steady, a simple practice bow that strained and almost broke because of her inhuman strength. They shot arrows by a lake, warmed by the summer sun, all the living creatures hiding from Ianite’s strange aura. Alyssa didn’t mind it, though, the aura of Ianite felt like nothing but a gentle humming, as if someone was singing far, far away. Mot watched her shoot and said he was proud, so did Lady Ianite, and she felt as warm as the summer sun beaming down on them.

Now it was cold. Alyssa squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. There, in a clearing surrounded by trees, a deer stumbled forward. The cold air hit her neck again. She drew her bow with the quiet hiss of an arrow on obsidian, breaths muffled by her scarf. For only a second, she thought of shooting her arrow into a tree. But instead, she stared into the deer’s glassy, black eyes, and loosed the arrow. It flew perfectly through the air, before impaling itself into the deer’s skull. The deer fell silently to the ground and laid there, still. Alyssa stared at it blankly, not knowing how to feel.

Alyssa pulled her scarf down. She walked through the clearing, to the deer laying on its side. Dead. Fully dead. Alyssa slowly crouched down into the snow, then laid down, her cheek in the snow. The deer died with its eyes wide open, an arrow now pinned between the two onyx pearls. Alyssa got up from the snow, grabbed it by the leg, and started pulling it through the snow, towards the city.

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Spark watched the snow fall from inside his home. It bathed the other houses in the city in sparkling white, now reflecting the yellow streetlights— an invention of his creation, with redstone packed into little glass bulbs and hooked up to wiring and sensors, only turning on when it was dark. The light they let off was pleasant and yellow. Or at least yellow-ish. It gave the whole city a homey feeling, which made sense. It was his home, after all, the city he built with his own two hands and years of work. Ten years, to be exact.

Now another winter festival had come. Not like the fall festival, where the people donned masks and ran all around the town, or in spring where they planted crops and sang songs that washed down the hill.

No, Winter Festival was a family affair. Everyone stayed in their houses, with the people they loved most. The sound was the only thing that slipped outside, laughter and happy voices that Spark heard when he walked down the streets with Jeriah earlier in the day. They talked about Ruxomar, their memories, and their plans to rebuild once they got home. Spark wanted to make Dagrun bigger than ever, and build more statues to Ianite. Jeriah, meanwhile, blabbered about alters and blood stuff fast enough to make his head spin, the bad mood he was in forgotten.

Now Jeriah was silently chopping veggies in the kitchen, not saying a word as Spark stared. The only noise in the house was Alyssa, humming to herself as she chopped chunks of deer meat for stew.

Winter festival was supposed to be a family affair. Spark shut his eyes, letting himself be carried off by memories. Helgrind and Martha bickering as always, Andor and Alva chasing one another around a tree lit up with magical lights, courtesy of Ianite. His Ianite. His goddess, his wife, the love of his life and the sun in the storm. A halo of lit candles would rest like a crown on her head, not a drop of wax scalding her porcelain features. Her dress was blue as the sky, but she wore a shawl of ice, geometric and fine, that somehow felt warm to the touch. And all of them— his whole family, children, grandchildren, sat around the fire and swapped little gifts, enjoyed the snow that fell on vast fields.

Spark sighed, the sound of Alyssa cursing behind him snapping him out of the memory. Never did he get any answer out of this Ianite- not his wife, but this universe’s goddess— about his family. All she said was that Mot was safe. Martha? Not her story to tell. Helgrind? Not her story to tell. His wife? Not her story to tell. Andor? Definitely not her story to tell.

Now all he had was Alyssa and Jeriah. His beacons. The only thing separating his dreams of home from the reality— that once there was Ruxomar and Dagrun. That once upon a time, he had a family. Now they were oh so far away…

Well. For now, at least. All he needed to do was get that portal to work, then he’d be home.

“Spark, you old coot,” Jeriah called, “come help Alyssa before she cuts herself again.”

“Now you know full damn well I don’t need any help!” Alyssa cried, pouting. Jeriah smirked.

“If I had known you were so good at cutting yourself, I’d have asked you to join the blood knights.”

“If I had known how big of an ass you were—“

Spark couldn’t help but laugh. God, they sounded just like Martha and Helgrind. Or Andor and Alva, bickering like siblings. But nonetheless, he walked over to Jeriah and wrapped an arm around him, squeezing him in a tight hug. Jeriah froze for a few seconds, then squeezed back. Alyssa soon joined, wrapping her muscular arms around the both of them. Sure, she was still holding a knife and had a bit of deer blood on her, but none of them cared.

It felt like they were home again.

But they weren’t.

They would be. And someday they would find their shoes on solid ground, home. Whatever that meant, they would find it again.

Snow fell peacefully outside for the rest of the night, and Spark’s heart overflowed with hope.

#jeriah #mianite season 3 #the realm of mianite #mianite #ianite #countrybat #country bat #spark plug #spark conway #takes place in s1 universe #mot screziato #miacho #mianite season 2

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mathgirl · 4 years

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Nether Portals and Linear Maps

If you’re an avid minecraft player, you probably know about how useful the nether dimension can be. If you have somewhere far across the overworld you need to get to, you can considerably shorten the distance by taking a trip through the nether. Some players will even have a network of portals corresponding to every important place in their world!

How does one go about planning the locations of all these portals? Let’s take a closer look at how they work, and how we can visualize them as a mathematical function relating overworld coordinates to nether coordinates, and vice-versa.

The basics

The reason nether travel is so efficient is because, in effect, distances traveled in the nether are shorter than distances in the overworld. The exact scale is a factor of 8: in other words, for every block you travel in the nether, you travel 8 blocks in the overworld.

This simple principle is what lets you jump between nearby portals in the nether to quickly cross vast distances in the overworld.

With that information, we can figure out exactly where to place our portals so that they link up nicely. If you know the coordinates of a portal in the overworld, you should be able to figure out where that portal ought to come out in the nether. This is where the mathematical concept of a linear map helps us visualize the situation.

What in the world is a linear map?

A map, or mapping, in mathematics is simply another word for a function. You’ve probably seen functions in school: they look something like f(x), and when you plug in a number x, you get a new value out. If your function is a parabola, then f(x) might give you the square of x, for example.

The truth is, a function doesn’t just need to use numbers. You can put anything you want into a function and get something out, as long as it makes sense. For example, you could have a function that takes a point in the overworld and converts it to a point in the nether. Isn’t that exactly what a nether portal does? You build it somewhere in the overworld, and then it automatically builds a new one at the corresponding point in the nether.

Let’s imagine our hypothetical mapping that takes a point in the overworld and converts it into a point in the nether. You can take any coordinate in the overworld, and it will correspond to some unique point in the nether, and vice versa. The “linear” part describes what kind of mapping we have. The important thing is that it’s a pretty simple conversion: you can imagine the nether like a scaled down version of the overworld.

The black square in the nether portion of this image corresponds to the layout of the overworld that has essentially been scaled down in the nether-- notice that the portals are in the same relative positions, just closer together.

If you follow the Hermitcraft series, you may have seen their clever design for a nether hub that illustrates this idea pretty well. They created a giant scale map on the floor, showing how the overworld might look at each point. I assume the scale is 1/8, and the portals on the map correspond to the locations of the portals in the overworld. This way, it’s easy to imagine striding over a world that’s 1/8 its size when you take a shortcut through the nether!

[video source]

This is confusing, what does our “linear mapping” actually look like?

The way to convert between overworld and nether coordinates is actually pretty simple. Here are some functions you can use to find nether coordinates using overworld coordinates:

(The subscripts N and O show which X and Z coordinates correspond to the nether and overworld, respectively.)

This means that when you place a portal at a point X, Z in the overworld, a new portal will attempt to generate near the points X/8, Z/8 in the nether. Furthermore, a little algebra can show us how to find overworld coordinates from nether coordinates:

(As a bonus, this could be called the inverse mapping of the first one.)

I read this simple relationship on the Minecraft wiki, but I was actually a little skeptical. My portals don’t always show up at exactly the position I expect: if I place a portal at the overworld’s origin, (0,0), then my portal might actually show up some ways away from (0,0) in the nether. Is the real mapping more complicated? Should I add some kind of offset to those equations?

I decided to jump into a new world and take some empirical data. I went into the nether and started building nether portals, recording their coordinates, and seeing where they come out in the overworld. Here are some charts showing how the nether coordinates of my portals compare to their generated overworld coordinates:

These points follow a line very nicely! Notice the different scales of the axes. It turns out that each of these lines has a slope of just about 8, which is confirmed by the best fit lines (their equations are shown under the title of each chart). That’s what we expect, regardless of any potential offset-- every coordinate unit in the nether is worth 8 coordinate units in the overworld.

Notice the intercept of each line. That’s the part of the equation that’s added or subtracted from our x term. They’re very small-- remember we’re working in units of single blocks. An intercept of 1 or 2 blocks is pretty negligible, and the pictures confirm that each best fit line seems to intersect the origin pretty closely.

This means I was wrong about the possibility of an offset when converting between overworld and nether coordinates. Those equations posted above are exactly correct. If you build your overworld portal at a location of exactly (X,Z) then it will try to come out near (X/8, Z/8) in the nether, every time. Convenient, and quite easy to calculate!

The dirty and imprecise truth of how nether portals work

When I was collecting my empirical data for the charts, I also considered trying another experiment where I do the opposite of what I did above: build portals in the overworld, and see where they come out in the nether. Trying this method really highlighted some of the quirks of nether portals, and how they don’t cleanly follow all the rules I just laid out.

For one thing, the world of Minecraft is laid out in discrete blocks. After doing the calculations to find where a nether portal should come out, you will likely end up with decimal answers, not whole numbers. But you can’t have half of a block. In practice, our mapping can’t be one-to-one-- that is, every block in the overworld can’t correspond to a unique block in the nether, because if you think about it, a few nearby blocks in the overworld might all come out into one nether block. When deciding where a portal should come out, all that Minecraft can do is choose something close.

Another wrinkle is that when the player constructs a portal and goes through it, a new one won’t be immediately generated; first, the game checks to see if there is another valid portal near where it should come out. If so, the player will come out there instead. This is how the game makes it so portals don’t have to be exactly on the corresponding coordinates in each dimension. They just have to be close enough to be linked up.

Every time the player goes through a portal, the game will find the corresponding location in the other dimension, then search around 128 blocks in both coordinates for the closest nearby portal the player can come out. A new portal will only be generated if this check fails to find a valid portal.

Remember that distances in the nether are “compressed” compared to distances in the overworld. A distance of 128 blocks in the nether corresponds to 1024 blocks in the overworld. This means if you have two portals less than 1024 blocks apart in the overworld, they can come out of the same portal in the nether. You can easily make a lot of overworld portals take you to the same nether portal. If you think of portals as the “function” that takes the player from an overworld coordinate to a nether coordinate, then this function is definitely not one-to-one!

[photo source]

I got to experience this phenomenon firsthand when I was collecting empirical data. I tried constructing a few overworld portals so I could record where they generate in the nether. Embarrassingly, I took data for a couple portals before I realized they were all sending me to the same place in the nether. I wasn’t moving far enough for my portals to have to generate new ones in the nether.

There was another occasion where I built an overworld portal and something interesting happened. I moved far enough that this one would have to generate a new one in the nether, but it didn’t come out quite where I expected. My overworld coordinates were clearly not exactly 8 times the nether coordinates. Then I realized I was surrounded by a lava ocean. Rather than spit me out over lava, my portal looked for a safer location to generate, on a small island of netherrack.

It actually ended up a fair bit farther away than expected. When I tried going back through my portal to the overworld, I was greeted with unfamiliar terrain. My portal in the nether was so far away from where it was “supposed” to be, it couldn’t even link up with my original overworld portal, so it had to generate a new one!

This was kind of a complicated anecdote, so here’s an illustration that may help:

This is all to say, the behavior of nether portals in practice doesn’t exactly match up with our mathematical model. The game has some clever mechanics to make sure they generate in practical locations, but these can lead to some funny situations.

The only way to avoid these problems is to do the work yourself: make some calculations and build your portals exactly where you think they should go. Remember that your nether and overworld portals will always link up to the closest ones in their corresponding dimensions, so if you do it yourself, you can make them work exactly how you want! If you want my advice, try scrawling out a table to keep track of all your important world locations.

#math #minecraft #functions #nether #algebra

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attackingstarfish · 6 years

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Just finished LoZ: Wind Waker...

I normally never post, but I recently wrapped up Wind Waker HD (Yes, I’m late to the party), and it is so far removed from the usual Zelda fare that I just had to compile my thoughts. And if I’m compiling my thoughts, I might as well yell them into the void.

You will have to show me physical proof that Wind Waker is not Ocarina of Time from the Opposite Dimension, where windows are the primary means of entering your house and people worship at the altar of Hello Games, because despite me being almost exactly as satisfied with Wind Waker HD as I was with Ocarina of Time 3D, the greatest sources of joy are flipped with the biggest annoyances between the two games.

Yay!

Breath of the Wild had won me over in part because the entire world felt cohesive; you could go anywhere on the map without having to encounter a single loading screen, and I had no idea Wind Waker did the same thing. The Great Sea is a vast trove of trees, pirates, and treasure, with the occasional giant squid attack or salutation from the Flying Dutchman. Each of the 49 segments contains an island that is often unique in purpose, and you’re very rarely sent to a specific island for a specific item by a specific character. Instead, the entire overworld becomes open to you as soon as you grab your sail on Windfall Island, and you have a literal sea of knowledge before you as the 49 fish that serve as your guidebook to the game take their places.

A couple of islands start off closed, unable to be reached until you get the Iron Boots or the Bow or the Hulk Hogan suplex manual, but that’s it as far as what you can’t reach, and the squares of ocean containing even these islands can be reached as early as any other zone, fish and all. The fish are easy to spot, splashing around near their respective region’s landmass, and to reward taking to initiative to explore, a surprising amount of what they tell you can be put to use immediately, like the location of the all-new extra-fast wind-changing sail the remake’s added to speed up travel. Good thing, too, because there’s a point where travel time stops being buildup and becomes padding, especially when you have to dance a round of Hands Up every time you want to change direction. Later in the game, when you’re better equipped, you could stop by one of those islands you couldn’t figure out earlier on, and figure out what to do with just one more trip around the border. Nothing pops up on your map to indicate that suddenly you’re able to access anything new, and your boat doesn’t wonder whether the eastmost pillar on island A7 has met any nice hookshot targets lately. The game trusts that you can navigate the uses for your gear yourself, which I value. Fewer tutorials, more expectations.

Even the story serves the game’s hands-off attitude. Ocarina starts with Link going into the Deku Tree to purge it of some unspecified evil (What exactly does Gohma do in there, anyway?) before coming out to be told of his fate to kill a man he has never met before and become Hyrule’s savior. Link takes up the mantle in that game only because the gods who have not and will never make a proper appearance want him to do it. Meanwhile, Wind Waker opens with Link putting on the green tunic to make his grandmother happy for a day, right before his sister, who clearly adores him, gets kidnapped by a giant bird, and he teams up with pirates to sneak into a fortress and rescue her but instead gets bitch-slapped by Ganondorf, who turns out to own the place and the bird. In addition to being awesome because pirates kick ass, Link’s introduction to the man who wants him dead feels a lot more natural here, and Ganondorf doesn’t even come into the plot for real until the second half of the game. Link’s got a sister to save, and everything he’ll do to accomplish that goal will demonstrate him to be worthy of the Master Sword, which itself seems to prefer this organic sort of journey, seeing as the Link who set out to get the Master Sword from the beginning ended up locked in solitary confinement by the thing while it allowed the man it was created to kill to instead take over the world. Evidently the Master Sword is a strong, independent blade beholden to no one who can’t think for themselves, and anyone who disagrees can spend some quality time with the nice old man who loves to talk and talk and talk and talk.

The characters in Wind Waker feel more on the dynamic side than Ocarina’s. At first I was a bit surprised that i felt that way considering Ocarina had you view two very different versions of Hyrule, but Ocarina’s characters either don’t change in personality much between time periods or don’t make an appearance in one of the two at all. Talon’s still lazy in the future, the carpenters are still idiots, the Lake Hylia scientist is still mad, the Kokiri of course don’t change at all, you see none of the Zoras after their caves are frozen over, etc. Not to mention Ganondorf, who doesn’t get much beyond “evil Gerudo thief king who wants to take over the world because of reasons,” even if he gets a bit further than many movie/game villains and is able to demonstrate exactly what he’d do while in charge and why he’s so dangerous. Wind Waker, meanwhile, has even a fair few one-off characters with their own tiny arcs. Mila goes from stuck-up rich kid to poor as dirt and struggling to adapt, so out of her element that she resorts to stealing money from her new boss until Link catches her and helps her stay true to herself in the future. Maggie’s father starts out so desperate for Link to save his daughter that he will annoyingly stop you in your tracks every time he so much as glimpses you and repeat his pleas for help, but after Maggie is returned home and he strikes it rich through no deed of his own, he decides everyone else is beneath him and starts bitching at Link, the Rito postman, and anyone who thinks repeatedly boasting about your own fabulous wealth makes for poor dinner conversation. Even Ganondorf himself is given more than a simple desire to take over Hyrule this time around, as his belief that the rest of the kingdom deserves to suffer the way the Gerudo suffered in the desert is brought to light.

Boo!

Part of the reason I liked the dungeons in Ocarina of Time so much is that they had a way of coming full circle at the end, or even a smaller full circle in the middle. You’d come across something at the beginning, go “Huh, that looks cool,” then move on. An hour later, BOOM, payoff, and likely in a way you didn’t even expect. The web serving as the floor in the Deku Tree and the blue stone head at the back of Dodongo’s Cavern come to mind. Plus, there were often open rooms that allowed you to get a handle on where everything else was relative to you, and gaze upon areas you’ll visit once you find the Hookshot or Hover Boots. Wind Waker’s dungeons are the antithesis of the rest of the game, they’re cramped and, for the first half of the game, overly linear. Dragon Roost never musters up much more challenge than “kill enemy in front of you, go through door in front of you, repeat,” a far cry from the wall-climbing around the first half of the Deku Tree. Re-hydrating the bombs to get into the place is arguably as clever as you get with it, which for me is the perfect representation of the amount of thought that went into everything surrounding the dungeons vs. the amount of thought that went into the dungeons. And aside from those spinning leaf wheels in Forbidden Woods that wouldn’t know what a wind was if they were fired for incompetence and forced to spend the rest of their lives at its mercy, this is best illustrated during the teamwork-based dungeons with Medli and Makar toward the end of the game .

Considering how often you have to switch between characters to set up a Mirror Shield reflect or to hit a switch or to plant a seed or because you got hit fucking once, it would’ve been nice not to have to do half the Macarena every time you want to switch to your companion’s viewpoint. It also would’ve been nice if the controls of your partners didn’t make me want to offer them to the Floormasters. That said, Medli wasn’t awful. Yes, her flight was a bit hard to direct, there was no way to halt her Link-bearing glide without throwing her, and the number of times you had to hop on the Wind Waker was a pain, but the irritation was diminished when lot of her roles involved standing still and shining light while you played as the character the game actually put work into handling. Plus, my wave of enthusiasm from the first moment I walked under a spotlight while carrying her and saw the light reflect lasted me quite a ways into the dungeon, so my memories of the Earth Temple are okay enough.

On the other hand, Makar. (I still call him Oaki, which should indicate how memorable Makar’s character is) When flying with Medli, all that was required was good aim when leaping off any ledge you were leaving, whether she was on her own or supporting Link. Makar has to fly in patterns more complex than straight lines, so naturally his controls are twice as stupid. You have to repeatedly press A to fly, speeding up or slowing down your button presses to increase or decrease the amount of lift as you go. Button mashing as a recurring mechanic, yay. Its imprecise nature becomes worse when the vertical nature of the dungeon’s biggest room has Makar rack up a ton of momentum from the amount of rising and falling he’ll be doing, leaving you struggling to adjust your frequency to keep up, with aerial endurance that makes you wonder how the Korok seed-spreading ritual has not led them to extinction by mass drowning. Fortunately, there’s a giant fan you can activate at the bottom of the room to blow yourself upward and kill any chance you have at forward progress. You’d think that being able to coast to the top of everything would be a good thing, but being in the fan’s range of “anywhere” causes Makar to eschew any direction that isn’t straight up (as his flight meter drains!), when running out of flight power has the same effect but downwards. If that wind catches you while you’re trying to cross the room, you’re left to watch as Makar is frozen in place while his energy drains to zero, wait for the fan to stop, fall several stories to the bottom of the room, and walk about two feet toward where you want to go before the fan activates again and restarts the cycle. And that’s assuming one of the many flying enemies doesn’t brush Makar and throw the camera back behind a Link who’s attempting to keep calm by doing the wave.

The combat took some getting used to. Ocarina’s combat was fine; it was easy to tell what you were in range to hit, and timing your swings properly could get shield-wielding enemies like Stalfos in a loop where continually accurate shots would finish them in seconds. In Wind Waker, Link’s attacks don’t reach quite as far as his sword would indicate; you’d think the gods would make sure their magical evil-smiting blade is most capable at the end that goes in the King of Evil, but I guess not. “Just The Tip” is a no-no with these monsters, so it’s either impale them in full or let them dominate you.

Meanwhile, you have two options for your targeting system, and they both suck. You either hold down L as long as you want to keep an enemy targeted, which before long will cause your left index finger to rebel against its draconian master, or press the button once to start targeting and press it again to target a different enemy, leaving you with no way to stop targeting the enemies and put an arrow in the switch. This wasn’t that big a deal in Ocarina, since Link had a wider vertical range with the bow and there were never many enemies hounding you when there was another immediate objective to complete, but in Wind Waker, you can expect a rainbow of respawning Chu’s to ambush you around the clock. It sours a lot of dungeons and dungeon-themed areas for me. That’s why the Wind Waker experience was so surprising; the dungeons were a slog to get through and felt less like a collection of clever puzzle ideas suiting each region’s theme and more like an obligation to throw in because it’s Zelda, yet everything surrounding them felt engaging and intriguing enough to make me want to keep playing and find out what happened to everyone.

(Tower of the Gods was pretty cool, too.)

#legend of zelda #wind waker #zelda wind waker #link #zelda

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