Twilight Princess Chapter 20: Damn You, Wind!!! (Also Laziness)

It's me! I'm back from the dead! Or...something. I'm not really sure what happened. I'm going to say "dungeon fatigue" because that's what it feels like to me. Well, let's not waste any more time.

I struggled my way through the water I landed in getting here, and made my way past some baddies (and the wind) to the door of the city. Time for more sweeping views!















It's like they're trying to get me to buy the place as a vacation home or something...














Yeah. See, I could put a Jacuzzi on that open spot with the pillars on the right. I can see it now.















What an impressive front door. I wonder what this place would sell for. Doesn't matter what the price is...I'm the Hero. I'm good for it.















I walked in the front door of my new home to find an Ooccaa staring at me. Ooccaa. Ooccoo. Whatever they're called. I can tell you one thing: they need a more imaginative name. Sky Person? I don't know.















Now it just looks creepy. Weird people faces on chicken bodies. I mean, they're supposed to have built this city on rock and roll with those little chicken wings? No way, man.

Actually, you know what? I'm just going to call them chickens, because that's what they look like, and "chicken" is a lot faster to type than "Ooccaa."

So, I made my way through various rooms in the dungeon, using my Clawshot on various pieces of mesh to get to different places, and found two Spinner gears in the floor (yay!) that I could activate to make bridges extend to some of the different areas in the city. When I was done...
















...a blurry dragon flew through the air!

Here's a slightly better picture.















That jerk destroyed one of my bridges! Ugh. He's totally going down.

There's no real rhyme or reason to these pictures. I just took pictures as I was going along (as usual).

Here's a room where I had to use the Iron Boots! Okay, I had to use them to get into the dungeon, too, but still. Iron Boots!















I had to use the Iron Boots to get past the column of air you can kind of see blowing across the path in front of me.

Here's a room where I had to fight two Lizalfos!
















Yay! This was so much fun.

When I was done, I had to make my way up to an alcove in the room containing a few chickens and a thingy I had to use the Clawshot to hang from to pull it down, which made a vertical column of air come up from the fan in the middle of the room.















I suffered from some kind of mental deficiency in this room. For some reason I kept forgetting the chickens can be used to fly to areas I need to get to, despite the fact that I've used an actual chicken (golden, no less!) for the aforementioned purpose. So it took me a few minutes and a check of my game guide to figure out what I was supposed to do.














I needed to get to that room across the way. But eventually I grabbed a chicken and we flapped our way over there.















Eventually I made my way to this room, which had a giant fan in the floor. I had to figure out how to shut the fan off! If only I could remember how I shut it off. Well, anyway...















The fan stopped working, and I was able to jump down into the room below it, where I found...















This thing!
















He looks scary! Oh, wait, it looks like he's got a Clawshot target on his shield. I'm sure that'll come in handy-















Cool, he's dead!

And my reward?















This is so exciting! I'm so excited! The person who wrote this description was so excited! It's all so exciting!
















Well, that was...unexpected. It would be so cool if I could punch that thing to death with my Clawshots. But don't worry, I killed it the old-fashioned way. By beating it to death with my sword. After I vanquished the enemy, I had to make my way up the wall behind it and eventually made my way outside...where I found some of those goofy plants that just hang there in the air, providing a handy anchor for my Clawshot.
















Not sure how those things stay in the air, but I guess there are things that make less sense in these games.














Hey, I get to turn into a wolf and do my 'tiptoe through the tulips' routine! Yay!

Eventually, of course, I found myself...here.















I had to hang from another switch in the ceiling and then put on the Iron Boots for some added weight to pull the switch down. This activated a fan that allowed me to get to the next area, which led to the very top of the City in the Sky...where something sinister was waiting for me!
















DRAGON!
















That thing does not look friendly.














He definitely does not look friendly. Go away, meanie dragon.















So for this boss I had to use my Clawshots to grapple to the top of those pillars. From there I had to grapple onto the floating plants, then move from plant to plant to avoid the fire the dragon was breathing at me, and eventually use the Clawshot to hit the crystal on the dragon's back and get myself ONTO the dragon's back and (here's the part where it gets awesome) stab the crystal with my sword while riding the dragon to the ground. Hell yeah!














As cool as this fight is, though, it does have one downside. Nintendo didn't seem to take into account the whole "Wii remote speaker makes noises" and "Using the Clawshots makes noise from the Wii remote" and "The player has to use the Clawshots over and over and over and over to beat this boss" leading to "The Clawshot noise plays from the Wii remote approximately 700 times during the course of this boss fight, which can lead to mild cases of insanity." So, uh...yeah. Eventually, the foul beast was vanquished.















Yeah, that's right. Die, dragon! And take your annoying Clawshot sounds with you!

And with that...I got the last Mirror Shard!















Before we left, Midna had some more advice, or cryptic words, or something.
















Uh...thanks?















Cryptic, indeed. I'm sure we'll find out what that means at whatever time is most convenient for...someone.

Well, that brings me to the end of today's adventures! Until next time, heroes!

I'm Not Dead

Like the title says, I'm not dead. I just haven't really felt like playing yet this week (except for like half an hour yesterday before I got bored). Possibly because I don't like the City in the Sky dungeon. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to make myself play more.

In the meantime, here are some links to new Skyward Sword stuff that came out a few days ago. Spoilers, obviously.

First, here's some dungeon videos.

Article from Zelda Informer.

Another article from Zelda Informer. Or maybe it's a blog post? I didn't read it, you see.

Short video from Game Informer.

11 minutes of game footage (not sure where from).

And in closing, here's a humorous and/or annoying video. Sorry, Gaga haters.

Please don't kill me!

Twilight Princess Chapter 19: Shootout at the Hylian Corral!

Yay, another post! It's been a while since I've had three posts in one week. Well, we all surprise ourselves sometimes.

In the previous post, I had just rolled up to the entrance to the Hidden Village, where Darbus was punching away at the rock blocking the way. I watched him punch for a while, intrigued, but finally decided to let him give his fists a rest.















Cool. Well, it's good to get that out of the way. You know, because I thought you were just here punching that rock for fun.

According to Darbus, there were 20 baddies lurking in the village.














I'd need to take them all out before I could proceed with my quest to find...whoever it was I was looking for. Well, cool. On with the Western music! It's time to have us a good-old-fashioned shootout!















I vaguely remember doing this the first time I played the game. Okay, yeah, it is pretty awesome. The whole shooting-out-windows thing, and diving for cover behind anything I could find, and nailing baddies right between the eyes with a well-placed arrow. Oh, and running around in circles collecting arrows the baddies shot at me (you can pick up arrows that hit the ground) after I ran out of ammo a few times.















I can't really think of any way this could have been better. Okay, maybe if I had a gun, but there aren't any guns in Zelda.

Well, okay. There was one way it could have been better. When I was down to one baddie left to kill, I broke out a window in one of the buildings and found an area in the back that had a howling stone in it. Naturally, I turned into a wolf and did the howly thing. When I woke up, I was immediately barraged by arrows. All of the enemies had come back, because the game couldn't be bothered to remember that I'd already killed all but one of them. Sigh. So I basically had to do the whole shootout twice.

Other than that, it was pretty awesome. And the music is fun.

So, at last, the final enemy died to my sword. Or bow, I don't remember which now.















It's the Sheikah lady! She addressed me as the "savior" and then introduced herself as Impaz. Really creative with the name there, guys.















Uh, okay. So you're basically just stuck here, alone, a prisoner in an abandoned village? Sounds like a fun life you must lead.














Blathering is right. Okay, what precious item are you going to give me?















Alien Link is...ambivalent, I guess. Cool.















Yeah, yeah, touching, sweet, etc. I'm on a tight schedule here, lady.

After the old woman was done talking, I warped back to Kakariko Village and showed the charm to Ilia. It jogged her memory for the last time!















She remembers everything now! Yay!















Wait. She remembers everything now. Dammit! How do I break the news about Zelda to her gently? Wait, Zelda disappeared. I might have to settle for this girl after all. Decisions, decisions...















The kids are spying on our happy moment. I'll have to let her down easy.















This had better not be a ring. Okay, hand it over...















Really? She just gave me the charm back. Okay, whatever. Now I have a whistle I can use to call Epona. This would have been a lot more useful if I'd gotten it back before I could WARP ANYWHERE I WANT.

After she gave me her useless gift, Ilia had some advice for me.















Wait, so now I have to go back to the hidden village? But I was just there. Why didn't she give the "something" to me then? Sigh. I warped back to the hidden village...

...to discover that Impaz is a crazy cat lady. I was swarmed by cats as soon as I got there. For funsies, I turned into a wolf and talked to one of them, who told me to "do something with us!" and talk to the Boss Chicken or whatever his name is. Turns out there's a game to find 20 cats in and around the village, kinda like the shootout from before with the same music. I gave it a shot and found 15 of them, but then there were some I couldn't get to, so I gave up and found Impaz.















Cool. Let's skip to the good part.















Missing letters, eh? I suppose I get to be the one who figures out the mystery. Why am I always the one who has to do everything around here? Well...I am the Hero...after all...but still.

Someone, I forget who, told me to talk to Shad, one of the guys from the resistance. He was inspecting a statue in Renado's basement, so I warped back to Kakariko Village again, had a chat with him, and showed him the book.















He was amazed by the book, and found a phrase he thought might be useful. But when he read it out loud to the statue right in front of us, nothing happened...right then.















So he wandered off to another room to pout after marking the locations of a bunch of other statues on my map. But as soon as he left...















Yay, the Dominion Rod isn't useless anymore!
















Well, wasn't that convenient. Okay, well, the Dominion Rod still doesn't work on this particular owl statue, so we'll have to go look at the other owl statues and see what they do.

So I warped to the closest owl statue, which happened to be on the Bridge of Eldin. Basically I just had to use the Dominion Rod to move the statue out of the way, and then look at the emblem on the ground where the statue had been standing.















In case you can't read that, it says, "You found one Sky character! A missing part of the word in the ancient Sky Book has been restored." Sometimes I can't keep the photos from looking overexposed, so...yeah. Anyway, I had to rinse and repeat to get all of the book's missing characters (from the two statues in Hyrule Field, one near Lake Hylia, and one in Faron Woods) before I could complete the missing word.















This was a fun one. I had to move the statue off the pedestal it was sitting on and then move it so I could jump on it to get to said pedestal. There was another pedestal nearby with a chest on it (you can kind of see it in the picture) that turned out to have an orange rupee in it (100 rupees!) but it wouldn't fit in my wallet, so I had to put it back. Lame.

After I was done collecting the missing letters, I went to talk to Shad again, and he used the special word on the statue. His incantations sounded like he was having a seizure or something. But I digress. This time...the word did something!















Shad, of course, was still clueless as to what to do with the statue, so after he wandered off to pout again, I used the Dominion Rod to move it out of the way. In the room behind the statue, we found...this!















Shad, of course, was dumbfounded.















Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a cannon. Now get out of here so I can use Midna's super-strength to warp it to Lake Hylia. I mean, that's the only place I can think of to send it. There's a guy there with a cannon who might be able to fix this one. Go on, scram!















Hey, we're here. Well, let's go talk to Fyer.















Look, dude, I gotta tell you, that shirt really isn't doing anything for you. And you're giving me crap for apparently building my own cannon? Go look in a mirror sometime, you chump.

Well, he agreed to fix the cannon, but...















I don't know, guy. Maybe if you promise to buy a new shirt with your ill-gotten proceeds.

I wish I could have gotten a video of this, but after Fyer assured me he would "only take a second" the game went into a sped-up cutscene showing him working on the cannon for, like, two days. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. But once he was done...it was flying time! I used the Clawshot to get into the back of the cannon, and away we went!















WHEEEE!!!!

After a dizzying fall, I landed in water. Hey, look, Ooccaa stowed away with us.














She offered to give me a tour, but before I could take her up on it, a huge dragon flew by overhead. Uh, I'm pretty sure that's not part of the tour!














Let me guess. Something went horribly wrong here and I have to fix it.

I was right. Something went horribly wrong here and now I have to fix it. I'm so thrilled at being the kingdom's gofer!

Well, this is where I end things for today. Next time: City in the Sky!