The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is the most recent Zelda game to be released to the public. Originally intended for release only on the Gamecube, development shifted towards Nintendo's newer console, the Wii, and the adventure title was eventually released for both systems. It was first released on November 19, 2006 as the premier launch title for the Wii. It is considered among many to be the most comprehensive and immersing game in the Zelda series, and shares many similarities with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

History
Twilight Princess was first revealed E3 2004 when Nintendo showed a "Trailer" of their new Zelda Game to a small group. When the Zelda Community found out, they almost exploded with excitement. Threads popping up on Zelda Forums everywhere discussing what the new game looks like, sounds like, even smells like. After ten months of complete silence from Nintendo, a new trailer was finally revealed at the Game Developers Conference on March tenth, 2005 to an eager audience.

It was learned at the Nintendo E3 conference on May 9th that Twilight Princess will be released in Quarter 4, 2006 and will simultaneously be released on Gamecube and Wii.

On Wednesday September 13, 2006 it was revealed that Twilight Princess was to be a launch title for the Wii which will be available on November 19, 2006, while fanatics had to wait another month for the GameCube version to be released.

Game Information
The game is meant to have a more mature atmosphere than the rest of the Zelda games, as well as significantly darker. It is also supposed the longest Zelda game to date, accumulating at least sixty hours of play, twice as long as Ocarina of Time, confirmed by Iwata, although many who completed the game believed this to be very innacurate. Zelda and Ganon also appear in Twilight Princess.

The game's story takes place after Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. As featured in The Wind Waker, Link uses special facial expressions to inform the player and give subtle clues on how to solve certain puzzles. For some gamers, the game still proves to be more challenging than other Zelda games preceding it, Although all the bosses have been noted as remarkably easy, taking most gamers only one try to defeat. Another returning feature is the day and night system of Hyrule, consisting of not only the cycle of days but weather and atmosphere effects as well.

Motion capture is used to bring the characters alive in a realistic manner. This is most evident during cinema sequences.

Story
Link, a youth at the beginning of the game, is a ranch worker (but has also been called a cowboy of sorts) in his home town of Ordon Village in the Ordona Province of Hyrule. Strange beasts begin to appear in the forest outside of the village just before Link is supposed to make a trip to Hyrule Castle to present a gift to the royal family, a sword and wooden shield crafted by the townsfolk of Ordon. Three young children of the village, who serve in the beginning as one of Link's main motivations for fighting, are captured by Bokoblins while playing with a forest monkey, and taken to the entrance of the Forest Temple. With wooden sword in hand, Link goes to save them. He is able to free the monkey and his friend Talo who was caged by the Bokoblins, but this is only the beginning of his trouble.

The next day Link gets attacked by Bulblins and their leader King Bulblin and falls unconscious in the spirit spring near Ordon Village. When he awakens, he follows the pathway into the forest, whereupon he sees a large black wall draped over the ground. Approaching the wall, symbols begin to appear upon it, and as he nears closer a large and menacing black hand reached out and pulls him through the wall.

Link, now in an entirely different looking world, notices a sharp pain run through him and doubles over. The Triforce symbol on his hand glows, and his entire body transforms into a wolf. As Wolf Link, he is captured and held prisoner within the boundaries of Hyrule Castle, which has been covered by the twilight realm that and spread over Hyrule. In his prison cell he encounters Midna, a rogue shadow Imp with mysterious powers, who aids his escape and helps him explore in his wolf form.

In the tallest tower, he and Midna find a cloaked young woman. Immediately she explains to Link how Hyrule came to be shrouded in twilight, and reveals her true identity: Princess Zelda. Although in another world, Zelda is still the princess.

It is now Link's quest to save Hyrule from the Twilight as the hero chosen by the gods. He must restore the light to all the lands in Hyrule and collect mysterious dark artifacts known as fused shadows in order to gain enough strength to defeat the one who rules the Twilight.

Gameplay
Twilight Princess features a stylized, naturalistic art style (similar to, but more advanced than, that found in Ocarina of Time), rather than the cel-shaded look that The Wind Waker exhibited — although it still makes use of cel-shading effects, using a very heavily modified version of The Wind Waker’s engine. In a further departure from The Wind Waker, Link is once again a young man, as opposed to a child, as in the former part of Ocarina of Time and in The Adventure of Link. The game also takes on a darker tone, rivaling that of Majora's Mask.

Link transforms into a wolf when entering the Twilight Realm, a void that has ensnared Hyrule. This is not a wholly separate place like the Dark World in A Link to the Past, but a festering malignancy across Hyrule.

The Wii version uses the "point-and-click" feature of the Wii Remote as a "fairy" cursor (an on screen pointer modeled to look like a fairy), for accessing menus, and for using various tools such as the Hero's Bow, Clawshot, and Fishing Rod, (see Weapons, items and abilities); it uses the Nunchuk attachment analog stick for movement. In order to swing the sword which Link uses as a weapon, the player makes a slashing motion with the Wii Remote. A jab with the tilt-sensitive Nunchuk will cause Link to perform one of his secret moves, the shield attack. To use Link’s “spin attack” (a powerful attack where Link swings his sword circularly around himself), the player swings the Nunchuk horizontally.

In order to use items, the game allows the player to equip the items to the left, right, and down positions of the D-pad and the B button of the Wii Remote using the item screen. When an item's respective direction button is pressed, the item is switched into the B button for easier use. The built-in speaker on the remote is used for sounds like the bowstring of the Hero's Bow being drawn and released, Midna's laugh, and the ever present “Zelda chime” when discovering secrets.

By comparison, the GameCube version uses a control scheme similar to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, with the B button used for sword attacks, other items mapped to the X, and Y (but not Z like in The Wind Waker, which is now always assigned to interaction with the character Midna), the L button for lock-on to enemies and NPCs, and the C-stick used for manual camera control.

In Twilight Princess, Link learns more moves than in any other Legend of Zelda game to date. Link also shares similar moves between human and wolf, for example when an enemy is on the ground, Link has the option to finish them off by plunging his sword into their chest or in wolf form (on poes, to rip out their souls). Link can communicate with animals in wolf form as if they were people. When transformed into a wolf, Link’s sense of smell is greatly improved allowing him to follow trails left by certain characters in the game. With these abilities come some disadvantages. While he is a wolf, Link cannot utilize any of his items, or open any doors with handles until he transforms back into a human.

There is no extensive voice acting in the game. The characters laugh, scream, and make other such noises, as they have in previous installments on the Nintendo 64 and Nintendo GameCube. In conversations, Link remains silent, and his responses are implied by nods and facial expressions, much like other The Legend of Zelda games. The only character who is completely "voiced" is Midna. However, she says no clear words, instead speaking in an unintelligible language (similarly to E. Gadd in Luigi's Mansion).

Returning from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, a horse can again be ridden in Twilight Princess. The default name for the horse is Epona (the set name of the horse from the two aforementioned games) and is used as the main form of transport whilst Link is in human form and until various warp points are opened around Hyrule.

The enemy's AI of Twilight Princess is more advanced than in The Wind Waker.

Sound
This game, like most other Zelda titles, features very little to no voice acting. There is only one example of vocal acting, Midna, with grunts and yells from all other characters. Midna is the first character in a Zelda game to be fully voiced, even though she only speaks Gibberish, misunderstandable language.

Along with the standard features of sound in a Zelda game, the Wii console offers something more to the customers buying the Wii version of Twilight Princess. Using the Wii Remote it is possible for "depth of sound" take place - that is, sound comes from both the television and the Wii Remote's internal speaker, providing a much more immersing experience.

Music
Music once again plays a role in Twilight Princess, as in previous Legend of Zelda games. While Link does not carry a musical instrument of any type until well into the game, he can pick grass from certain patches and whistle with it to call an animal, either a Hawk or Epona, Link's horse (later on, an instrument shaped similarly to the grass used to summon Epona is given to Link and has the same effect as the aforementioned grass). Also, while as a wolf Link can howl near the same patches, to the same effect. When Link is in his wolf form, there are seven "howling stones" (including one with a Triforce symbol at the entrance to the Sacred Grove) located around the world where, after Link howls a certain melody shown on screen a few times, a golden wolf appears and jumps somewhere else in the world. Link must then change back to his human form and find the wolf to learn a hidden sword technique. The songs howled by Wolf Link are taken from Majora's Mask, Ocarina of Time, and The Wind Waker, with the exception of the final howling stone, which is the "bass" of the game's Hyrule Field main theme.

In a first for the Zelda series, part of the soundtrack has been orchestrated as opposed to using MIDI. The fact that Nintendo has decided to use mostly MIDI for the sound-track, however, has been a point of criticism. MIDI allows the background music to be more dynamic, but the sound quality suffers. Koji Kondo, the lead composer for the game's sound-track, originally stated that he "would really like to push for" the music to be orchestrated. Part of the full sound-track (featuring the songs "The Legend of Zelda: Orchestra Piece #2", "Hyrule Field Main Theme", "Ordon Village", "Kakariko Village", "Death Mountain", "Midna's Theme", and "Illia's Theme") is received when a Nintendo Power subscription is purchased (the subscription also comes with a game guide for Twilight Princess). A sound-track also is packaged with the Twilight Princess Collector Box, an exclusive item sold at Target stores. The soundtrack also features two bonus tracks. The first bonus track, known as "D.S. Trailer Pack", was the theme that was to be used instead of the present Hyrule Field Main Theme.

Graphics


Twilight Princess uses a heavily modified version of the The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker engine. This modified version of The Wind Waker engine makes the graphics in Twilight Princess very realistic, as opposed to the cartoonish, cel shaded design of The Wind Waker. These graphics are the greatest we have seen and most likely will ever see for the Nintendo Gamecube. However, being a port of the Gamecube version, the graphics fall short of the Wii's capabilities.

Dungeon Information
This section lists the nine dungeons of Twilight Princess in order of exploration, followed by obtained item information and the boss that awaits within:


 * Forest Temple - Gale Boomerang - Diababa: Twilit Parasite
 * Goron Mines - Hero's Bow - Fyrus: Twilit Igniter
 * Lakebed Temple - Clawshot - Morpheel: Twilit Aquatic
 * Arbiter's Grounds - Spinner - Stallord: Twilit Fossil
 * Snowpeak Ruins - Ball and Chain - Blizzeta: Twilit Ice Mass
 * Temple of Time - Dominion Rod - Armogohma: Twilit Arachnid
 * City In The Sky - Double Clawshot - Argorok: Twilit Dragon
 * Palace of Twilight - Light Sword - Zant: Usurper King
 * Hyrule Castle - Zelda: Ganon's Puppet, Ganon: Dark Beast, Ganondorf: Dark Lord

Chronology
Twilight Princess originally appeared as if it would cause a large amount of grief to those North American fans who studied the Timeline. Debating on the false pretense that Nintendo had intended the game as something of an OOT-TWW connection, theorists found that a large number of seemingly irreconcilable inconsistencies. Thankfully, the majority of these problems were solved when perusal of more respectable Japanese material showed that Nintendo actually had a very different intention for the game.

Note: The following is a theory and is NOT confirmed as fact.

Twilight Princess occurs due to a number of events which occurred in the days of The Hero Of Time (OOT/MM Link) during what we identify as the "Child Timeline" (approximately a century after Majora's Mask). After defeating Ganon in OOT, Link was sent back through time by Zelda to relive his sacrificed childhood and divert the past Hyrule away from its terrible future. In the past, Link's knowledge of Ganon's plans allowed he and Zelda to halt Ganon's invasion of Hyrule and prevent his invasion. Ganon was taken by the Sages to the Arbiter's Grounds and Link ventured off to Termina. The rest, as they say, is Hylian History.

(Note that this requires TWW to run parallel to TP, in the alternate future which stems from OOT "adult ending". The two games are worlds apart, yet have origins in the same occurrences)