(Tl;dr video companion for this article):

They say the best things in life are free.


You know what else is free? Being buried alive or having the ever loving shit beaten out of you in a back alley with a fucking hammer, so maybe don’t believe everything you hear

Yesterday, we had finally arrived at one of my favorite moments in Ocarina of Time, and that was the Bottom of the Well/Shadow Temple portion of the game, where shit gets nuts. I was originally going to cram both parts into one article, but it simply felt too overstuffed for its own good, in order to get everything into a 1000 word piece, so splitting them into two seemed to be the way to be. With that said, let us forge on from where we last left our brave little Young Link, and see what kind of mess he had gotten himself into.


Oh shit, fuck this….RUN LINK, RUN FOR YOUR LIFE

It goes without saying that the fights at the bottom of the well carry a special tension to them, but the “boss” of the Well, the Dead Hand, is an especially fucked individual. This was definitely one of the elements I was most worried that Nintendo was going to back down on in the remake, and try to spoopify this guy a bit too much, so he wasn’t such an off putting, grotesquely hideous visage, hulking around with his several arms just lying in wait underground for unsuspecting children to walk by to get his chance of pouncing on them like some kind of trap door spider and eating them alive. It doesn’t get much more fucked than that, folks. Luckily, Young Link ain’t no shoot mark, and is able to quell the beast through some struggled effort. This grants the player the necessary tech required to get through the Shadow Temple, which in the original, is called the “Lens of Truth”, which resembles a purple magnifying glass. They gave it a bit of a glow-up in the remake.


Wearable tech…so hot right now

Now armed with Hyrule’s equivalent of Meta Glasses, Young Link thrusts himself forward in time seven years once again, to tackle the Shadow Temple in his quest to stop Ganon. When he arrives at Kakariko Village, it would seem the village has been completely engulfed in flames. It is at this point, we see Sheik standing in front of the dried well, surrounded by flames leaping through the air, when a monstrous shadow leaps out, and with chaotic combat that quickly ensues betwixt the two. This cinematic is pure gold, and not just because Link gets humbled by a shadow demon, but because the whole exchange seems decidedly out of character (in a good way) for a Zelda game, as the series doesn’t usually venture very far into the too cool for school/combat with flair territory, but here we are. The remake cinematic gets a glorious restructuring of the entire scene, with Sheik pulling off some sick ninja moves, and way more action in general going on in downtown Kakariko, compliment with awesome weather effects, over the top choreography…they went all out.


That well straight up sucks, my dude

On top of that, and before you head into the temple, they actually include some further backstory via a flashback with Impa and Sheik, (having a super secret ninja meeting, no less) conversing of the shadowy dangers to come, which was totally absent from the original game. The extra character moments are great, and grants us with just a little more time with Impa, who was an understated character in the original, so it’s great to see her get some more spotlight. After Sheik teaches Link the Nocturne of Shadow song to help him warp to the entrance, we finally have access to the Shadow temple. Fun Fact: You can do the Shadow Temple without getting the “Lens of Truth” (believe me), but you better have that shit memorized, as not being able to see all of the invisible puzzles, platforms above bottomless pits, and generally invisibly imposing weapons of war found throughout the area, being able to see what is hovering or flying directly at your face is going to be quite essential to both progress and your survival.


Besides, with the new updated technology we see compliment the new Lenses of Truth, who would want to miss out on the chance of adventuring as Dork Link?

Much like the Well, the Shadow Temple is just custom built from the ground up to creep you the fuck out, and between the ghoulish imagery, the instruments of death that are moving to and fro, the endless number of skeletal remains strewn about, and the ominously lurching score echoing throughout all of the shadow drenched corridors above the howling abyss spread throughout the underground labyrinth…someone definitely understood the assignment. I think the added benefit of the player having (presumably) gone through the Well at this point, relate to the notion of being fully grown into adulthood, and already having conquered the primer that is the Well in the weakened state of a child, so that one doesn’t feel so relentlessly vulnerable, as we are now more capable in steeling ourselves both physically and psychologically against all that lurks in the creeping dark.


*Barely maintaining both physically and psychologically against all that lurks in the creeping dark

As I briefly made mention of when working my way through the Well in yesterday’s article, I was recalling that in all my years of random irl babble and online forum perusal, I’ve never seen anyone demonize either of these currently discussed levels for their difficulties, unlike the Water Temple, which gets dragged through the mud every chance someone gets, which to me says people didn’t mind the maliciousness involved with the obvious cruelties lying in wait in either the Well/Shadow Temple combo. I once again think this boils down to an inherent intentionality involved. If one goes to a haunted house as a fun outing during Halloween, getting the shit scared out of you is exactly what you signed up for. Whereas, if you wake up in your own place at 3 AM in December and the place shocked you out of a dead sleep, with you now pale white due to being unnerved as a result of unexplainable events and spine tingling intuitions of bizarre happenings and weird shadows moving around you, then.fuck.that.bullshit.hard. Psychologically speaking, it looks to relate to a certain level of “control” or “agency” one has in either scenario, as you chose one but can’t do anything to “opt out” of the other.


Best not to think about how they sourced the materials for the interior design of this place…

You obtain the Hover Boots fairly early on in the dungeon, which helps to make the rest of it a little more fucking demented, as some dungeons in Zelda wait way too long to give you the key item, and then you use it like once and on the boss and you just toss it in the bin never to use it again. The Hover Boots heighten just one more phobia to be thrown into the mix, in case the game hadn’t checked all of those boxes for you already, as now you have to make “leaps of faith” ala Indiana Jones in the Last Crusade, by walking out onto long, bottomless drops into nothingness to prove your beliefs in a higher power…or in this case, a lower power, cause it’s in reality just a sick ass pair of boots saving your elfish ass from plummeting into complete darkness: the Goddesses have nothing to do with this air of providence.


The Hover Boots are extraordinarily good at causing as many problems as they solve, as they make the user nearly frictionless, which means it feels like you’re running on ice the entire time…which is exactly what one wants to hear when about to cross something as foreboding as an infinite death chasm

The Shadow Temple never lets up, as it represents this complete gauntlet of death traps and horror shows, as you navigate through the blackened pitch, in an attempt to see the light once again. Resisting relentless assaults from the undead, sword fighting with skeletons, dodging gigantic scythes, avoiding massive guillotine blades, running over screaming while floating in midair…the Shadow Temple really wants you dead, and depending on how many fairies you have with you, it may actually succeed at least once before the end: though a little thing like death has never stopped LINK MAI BOI in the past, so why should it stop him now, in the far flung future near the edge of mortal possibility itself?


May I offer you a free boat ride in this tying time?

The final stretch of the level sees you riding a Ferry down the River Styx…essentially, even if it isn’t the Greek underworld in actuality, it’s Hyrule’s equivalent, and it comes bearing gifts in the form of pissed off skeletons and their unseemly bloodlust for vengeance against the living world. The vessel eventually crashes, so even if you weren’t able to take out the Stalfos in time in what can become an epic duel to the death, the sinking ship will do the rest of the work for you. After another small flurry of devilish saving throws the Temple has in the form of lethal tricks, demonic traps, and gigantic, floating severed hands trying to squeeze the life out of you in an effort to finally end you, you will eventually arrive at the final boss: Bongo Bongo.


I hope he doesn’t want to settle this with a thumb war

I think it speaks to the strength of just how imposing the Shadow Temple is, and how effectively harrowing the journey is to get through it, does Bongo Bongo just barely luck out at being a demented enough individual, does one overlook the ridiculously goofy fact that the mack daddy of shadows and archfiend of this entire decrepit affair is in fact, a cycloptic, invisible, overly excited, bongo playing fuck head. Impressive, to say the least, and the fight that ensues totally works to great effect in continuing to unseat the player, as all of the motion from BB’s hands crashing down on the gigantic bongo face makes it extremely difficult to find footing to slay the acoustic menace. If you run out of magic here, and are unable to use the Lenses of Truth to expose the usually invisible Bongo Bongo…well, then you just lucked into hard mode, so good luck, babe. If one comes more prepared, then they will have to do their damnedest to equip their bow, aim it right and true at BB’s hands, paralyzing him in the process, and leaving his gigantic eye exposed for some seriously improvisational, ocular deconstruction surgery to occur. Through many rounds of heart pounding drum solo and an insufferable streak of missing shot after shot due to staging combat in what feels like the gothic equivalent of a bouncy castle, the brutality finally ceases, as the beast is felled, and the Shadow Temple summarily quelled from within.



Man I hate graveyards. Note to self: remind Zelda to cremate me when I die

Link is transported to the Sacred Realm, where Impa and him kind of trauma bond for a moment, as Link is finding no easy end to this nightmarish quest, especially doing it by en large himself while fighting through the depths of Hell, and Impa beating herself up she was unable to do more in protecting Zelda when Ganondorf seized power. After their mutual trauma dumping sesh, Impa grants the Shadow Medallion to Link, thus putting a close to this raucous, bloody affair. I have little doubt that the double feature involving the Well/Shadow Temple combo, helped to contribute to the eventual darker tone that Majora’s Mask more fully embodies, as the dev team experimented with these type of vibes quite thoroughly in this part of the game, and they ended up knocking it out of the park, so why not take this excellent case example of a successful experiment and just blow it up to scale across an entire game? Of course, that is mere speculation on my part, but based on the timing of Majora’s Mask and its immediate and hastily cobbled together development cycle, following up on the coat tails of Ocarina, I’d be amazed if this portion of the game didn’t plant a seed of inspiration or had absolutely no influence on their decisions to go more macabre with their story elements in that game at all.


Zelda Devs: What if we did the Shadow Temple in full game form…but like with an apocalypse timer? You know, like a game so agro, even the moon wants to kill you.

…it was probably something close to that, I’m sure.

Either way, so ends another incident in our day….

~Pashford