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Tears of the Kingdom: Off The Rails
I've been playing but not blogging, so a brief summary, mostly for my memories but also for you all:
Ok, I don't actually love her voice acting - it's a bit too... verbal, for the medium. But she seems nice. Anyways, I've got to find a sky fish and shoot a scale at a droplet. Would the sensible thing to be to look at the map for things that look like fish? Probably! I've already found all of the sky writings by looking for things that look like stars, and I've gotten pretty good at spotting shrine/dispenser combos by looking for things that look like Xs. Is that what I do? No! Of course not! That would be too straightforward. I figure, the higher I go the more likely I will be able to see a fish. So I'll just go up to that really tall island. There's even a balloon here and a lightweight plate for me to use! I can launch from Mipha Point too. Three rockets (two on the platform and one on my shield), a hot air balloon, one cooking fire, and a flame emitter later, I'm up on "Wellspring Island". Time to look for a fish, right? And look, a water droplet mechanic! Surely I'm on the right track, I'm so clever.
Except there is no fish up here, because this is the "dungeon" for the Water Temple, and you're not supposed to be able to get here without completing the rest of the story first! Which I only figure out after reaching the actual Water Temple without Sidon, putting a teleport mark there, and shooting two scales into the immobile droplets on either side of the temple.
I then open up my map and immediately spot the fish. Goddess damn it all. So it's back down to the fish, back down to Sidon, back down to the reservoir, and I have to go through all of that to activate the waterfall, and after that I still can't use my teleport amulet no, that would be too simple, I have to track Sidon down and hit all his goddamn conversation points....
And then I get into the temple.
Mark me down as marginally intrigued by the female Zora Sage of Water - the Zora don't have a ton of sexual dimorphism (which is honestly my preference, I don't think fish need tits) so I thought that she was a guy this whole time. Something about it added to the sense that this should have been, and was not, Mipha, and I feel like Sidon might have felt it too. His dialogue is also slightly different from the other sages, like he's paying more attention to the Demon King thing - to be fair, he is about a hundred years older than the rest of them! Having his own memories of the Calamity, however distant, must inform how he approaches this issue.
Anyways, Purah says she sees Zelda in the castle, so I've got to go back. Knowing what I know about Yiga Zelda, and Dragon Zelda, my hopes are, to put it mildly, low. But I've got to pick up my tunic too, so maybe I'll do that first. There'd be something poetic about showing up to the castle with my tunic and the Master Sword again. Just like how we started.
- Beating Yiga Zelda zaps me back to Goron City
- Bludo gives me a quest at Lizard Lakes
- Lizard Lakes uncovers a Vah Rudania hat???
- And then I spotted Dinraal, so back up to Death Mountain shrine and onto that guy! I was correct: Dinraal is very on fire. Glad I got that fireproof armor! Around the very north edge of the map, with a few quick dropdowns for lightroots followed by rockets to get back up, and I spot an ascension point at the Akkala Tech Lab, but MORE importantly: Dinraal carries me high enough to get Akkala Sky Labyrinth!
- Second piece of Fierce Deity Armor is obtained. It's the same wisdom test as Hebra though - the Courage/Wisdom/Power test must be associated with the map levels, not the individual labyrinth, with courage being the follow-the-nuts puzzle, wisdom being the paragliding, and power beating up the flux dude.
- In accordance with water in the overworld being walls in the underworld, there's actually no way back to the rest of the deeps, so I teleported back to Akkala, jumped in the hole, and went to scare the pants off of some Yiga. Got a shirt though, not pants. Wonder where the pants are.
- Running down the hill to deliver the claw, and now I've got 2/3, and I also have travel medallions thanks to Robbie.
- Catch a Farosh ride over near the broken-heart lake... and my first Satori sighting! I don't know how you get this guy to spawn outside a cutscene so I can actually photograph him, but "drop an apple in the offering dish under a cherry tree for blupee vision" is such a cool mechanic.
- And... hey, is there something in those clouds over there?
- One rocket-balloon ride later and can confirm:
- There is an island in those clouds
- There is a shrine on that island (the Sheikah Slate detects it)
- There is some manner of rail puzzle happening
- I cannot see SHIT because of the endless rain
- The rain does not seem to stop
- I'm sure there's something important here, but it'll have to wait until I can see six inches in front of me.
- Anyways, now all I have to do is head to Gerudo Desert Tower to grab the last claw! Farosh shows up around 5pm, and I can ride it (her?) for the next few hours until we're over at Popla Hills. Snipe the claw, do a neat mid-air catch and swan dive directly to the Shrine of Courage, where apparently all these shenanigans have healed the Mother Goddess! I wonder what she has for me!
- Oh. A white sword of the sky. Perhaps even... a Skyward Sword? It's not that good though.
- I am near Hebra though. I wonder if there's other Divine Hats. Tulin, help a dude out.
- Turns out it's at the intersection of some hot springs. I have the vaguest memory of where those are from BotW.... let's see. Aha! Right in the Biron Snowshelf. Vah Medoh mask!
- I'm not sure what these actually.... do.... but I do like having them around for posterity
Ok, I don't actually love her voice acting - it's a bit too... verbal, for the medium. But she seems nice. Anyways, I've got to find a sky fish and shoot a scale at a droplet. Would the sensible thing to be to look at the map for things that look like fish? Probably! I've already found all of the sky writings by looking for things that look like stars, and I've gotten pretty good at spotting shrine/dispenser combos by looking for things that look like Xs. Is that what I do? No! Of course not! That would be too straightforward. I figure, the higher I go the more likely I will be able to see a fish. So I'll just go up to that really tall island. There's even a balloon here and a lightweight plate for me to use! I can launch from Mipha Point too. Three rockets (two on the platform and one on my shield), a hot air balloon, one cooking fire, and a flame emitter later, I'm up on "Wellspring Island". Time to look for a fish, right? And look, a water droplet mechanic! Surely I'm on the right track, I'm so clever.
Except there is no fish up here, because this is the "dungeon" for the Water Temple, and you're not supposed to be able to get here without completing the rest of the story first! Which I only figure out after reaching the actual Water Temple without Sidon, putting a teleport mark there, and shooting two scales into the immobile droplets on either side of the temple.
I then open up my map and immediately spot the fish. Goddess damn it all. So it's back down to the fish, back down to Sidon, back down to the reservoir, and I have to go through all of that to activate the waterfall, and after that I still can't use my teleport amulet no, that would be too simple, I have to track Sidon down and hit all his goddamn conversation points....
And then I get into the temple.
Mark me down as marginally intrigued by the female Zora Sage of Water - the Zora don't have a ton of sexual dimorphism (which is honestly my preference, I don't think fish need tits) so I thought that she was a guy this whole time. Something about it added to the sense that this should have been, and was not, Mipha, and I feel like Sidon might have felt it too. His dialogue is also slightly different from the other sages, like he's paying more attention to the Demon King thing - to be fair, he is about a hundred years older than the rest of them! Having his own memories of the Calamity, however distant, must inform how he approaches this issue.
Anyways, Purah says she sees Zelda in the castle, so I've got to go back. Knowing what I know about Yiga Zelda, and Dragon Zelda, my hopes are, to put it mildly, low. But I've got to pick up my tunic too, so maybe I'll do that first. There'd be something poetic about showing up to the castle with my tunic and the Master Sword again. Just like how we started.