Field Note #2: Link’s Ball of Timey Wimey Stuff (Bonus Note!)

Base Stats:

Game: Skyward Sword

Version: Original Wii Version, Physical Disc

System: Nintendo Wii U

Session Play Time: 1 hr 41 min

Total Play Time: 3 hrs 36 mins

Content Covered: 1st dive to the surface through enter Skyview Temple

Author’s Note: In honor of Memorial Day, please enjoy this bonus field note. It’s a little longer than most, so grab your bottle of Lon Lon Milk and enjoy.

**SPOILER WARNING: This article discusses end-game and mid-game content that may be considered a spoiler for those who haven’t played Skyward Sword.**

After all the build up about the mystical “surface” in the game’s opening, touching down on the Sealed Grounds felt somewhat anticlimactic. There is all this grand orchestral music and dramatic cinematography used in the cutscene depicting the first dive to the land below the clouds. Then the camera pans way out and everything goes quiet. Link—an ant-like speck falling toward a large forest landscape—touches down with his sail cloth in silence and at a distance from the player.

The moment would almost be haunting if it wasn’t for Fi popping up immediately to tell me that I’m on the surface. “Really? I had no idea, Fi….” In fact, the number of times that Fi interrupted me during the first fifteen minutes of my play session bordered on ridiculous. She stopped me four times in between Skyloft’s plaza and jumping into the green light, and then three more times between touching down on the surface to approaching the sealed door. If she wasn’t actually forcing me to stop, her icon was beeping and flashing at me so insistently that I clicked on it just to shut it up. It didn’t get a lot better as the session went on, and all I can do is hope that it eventually improves. I don’t remember her being as annoying as she seems right now, but perhaps I should give her the beginning-of-the-game benefit of the doubt.

As in the last session, at some point all these complaints faded away and the Zelda Magic took hold again. A foul wind from deep in the spiraling pit pulled at Link’s subconscious, causing him to turn toward it. The present world faded to blackness. Link floated in the void and looked down below his feet to see a giant, scaled monster emerge from the pit. Link winced in pain and cradled his forehead as if hit with a sudden splitting headache as the monster reared up in a roar. Just as it’s fang-filled mouth closed in on the hero it disappeared. The whole vision faded away, leaving Link standing on the edge of the pit looking at a strange spike on the bottom with black smoke curling around it.

This is the second vision that Skyward Sword Link (or “Sky” as he is often called in the community) has in the first few hours of the game. Sky is the first Link (chronologically) to see visions, but he is not the only one. In A Link to the Past, the young hero (we’ll call him “Bunny”) receives a vision in his sleep where he sees Princess Zelda locked in a dungeon and calling out for help. Ocarina of Time Link (“Time”) sees a vision of his future self facing off against Ganondorf outside Castle Town. Time’s vision also happens while he is asleep.

What makes Sky’s second vision unique is that it’s the only prophetic vision any Link receives that happens while he is awake. This fact makes it stick out and made me wonder: why do some Links have prophetic visions and others do not? What causes these visions? At first I thought it has to do with the Triforce of Courage, but this is the first Link and he did not possess either the Triforce or the mark of the Triforce. Then I thought it had to do with being the reincarnating hero, but the curse didn’t exist yet either. This Link has no connection to the Triforce or the curse—so what is causing his visions?

My next idea was that it had to do with his connection to Zelda (and, by association, the Goddess Hylia). This is certainly possible. After all, Bunny’s vision was of Zelda’s current trouble. He heard her voice call out to him from the dungeon. Time’s vision showed Zelda running away, an event that would happen in the future. Sky’s vision did not show Zelda, but one could argue that his ties to the goddess reincarnate run the deepest.

Still, that seems too simple. How could merely associating with Zelda cause him to have visions? There is too little proof for this in the games, and so I kept digging. That’s when I started thinking about Hylia herself. I’ve written in the past about a common theory that Hylia is the Goddess of Time spoken of in Majora’s Mask. She even tells Link (through Fi) later in the game that “I am the Goddess who speaks to you from the edge of time.” You can read that article as a part of the Hyrulian Pantheon series over on ZeldaDungeon.net. What if Link’s visions have less to do with the person of the Goddess Hylia and more to do with time itself?

Throughout the opening hours of Skyward Sword, people in Skyloft continually talk about Hylia’s Chosen Hero. In Hyrule Historia a short manga was included which depicted this supposed “Chosen Hero”—the original Link before Sky was born. However, it is important to note that the Zelda mangas often embellish the games’ plots with extra details. Some of these embellishments are central to the mangas’ plot lines and change the original stories pretty dramatically. Nintendo has gone on record in the past saying that the mangas, although fun, are not cannon.

I have long believed that the “Chosen Hero” spoken of in the legends on Skyloft is Sky himself. The concrete evidence for this is in the Sealed Temple the first time you enter. After speaking with old Impa, walk behind her and look through the crack in the door. What do you see? Why, isn’t that the very same crystal that Zelda locks herself inside later in the game? Now, how could she be in there if this has never happened before? If this is the first time that Zelda and Link leave Skyloft on their adventures, how is Zelda in that room already? Unless…this isn’t actually the first time they’ve done this?

Hold on to your caps—this is where this time travel stuff gets messy. I will do my best to be clear.

There is a lot of talk in the first few hours of Skyward Sword about Link and Zelda being “pre-destined”. As Impa is telling Link about this pre-determined destiny, however, she adds something very unusual: “the spirit maiden was not meant to arrive in the manner that she did.” If this has happened before, which would mean that Impa has seen it all happen before, then why would it be happening differently this time? I think the answer lies in the fact that this is the second time Link goes to the land below the clouds. Allow me to explain, and we will come back around to Sky’s prophetic visions soon.

In the spirit of theory, let’s say that Link did do this once before. We know that Link and Zelda’s descent to the surface didn’t happen in a giant tornado, and I think it’s safe to say that it was under safer circumstances based upon Impa’s statements. We also know that Zelda still ended up sealed away in the past to maintain Demise’s seal. However, the fact that Demise is still in his Imprisoned form and not trapped in the Master Sword says that this Link succeeded at preventing the Imprisoned’s revival in the past, but he also failed to destroy the beast entirely. He merely sealed it away and returned to his original time.

Now because they went back to the past, the future was changed. Reference the timeline split after Ocarina of Time (which we will discuss more when we play that game). There is now the original timeline where Zelda is trapped in the crystal and the Imprisoned was merely sealed, but there’s a new timeline too. In this new timeline Link and Zelda grow up with these legends about the Goddess’s Chosen Hero (which wouldn’t have been there before) and a new ceremony to celebrate something the “goddess and her hero” did years ago—the Wing Ceremony. Link and Zelda are actually reenacting themselves. This puts Link and Zelda in the sky that day for Ghirahim to attack, and thus the whole thing plays out differently this time around.

(Bonus Theory: if Sky Link #2 kills Demise in the past, then there is theoretically a third timeline split where there is no Imprisoned and the destined get to grow up in complete peace.)

For all of you visual learners out there, here is a diagram I made to help visualize this time loop concept:

Let’s bring this train back around now—what about Link’s visions? How does this theoretical time loop affect Skyward Sword Link? I’ll answer this question with another question: what if these “prophetic visions” aren’t prophecy at all? What if they are memories from his alternate self in the original timeline? Link even holds his head in sudden pain when the vision happens, indicating that it is originating inside his own mind and not being gifted to him by a divine being. What if Sky is remembering a memory?

Of course, when this idea hit me I had to look at the other two Links who we know have had prophetic visions. Does this principle apply to them? Bunny Link’s vision can be ruled out because Zelda tells him it was a telepathic message from her. It also showed the present, not the future, and therefore can’t be considered prophecy. That leaves us with Time’s vision in Kokiri forest. I believe that it does apply to him, and as evidence I would like to submit Exhibit A: the Windmill Man.

Any hardcore Zelda Fan will tell you about the confusion of the Windmill Man. In Kakariko Village as an adult you come across an angry man inside the local windmill. He tells you about a boy with magical powers who came years ago and played a strange song on the ocarina that messed up the windmill. The boy sure sounds like you, but it’s odd because you’ve never done that. Now that you learn the song as an adult, however, you go back to the past and play it—thereby fulfilling the pre-destined order of events. Sound familiar? What if there was another version of Time Link who played the song for the Windmill Man to begin with?

This concept is not so out there. There are legends within the Sheikah Tribe about a “Hero of Time” and Sheik tells Link that he looks like the fabled Hero of Time. Many people say that they’re talking about Sky Link, but if the world has forgotten everything else that happened—the Gate of Time, the Goddess Hylia, Demise, Skyloft, Fi, etc.—then how can we just assume they remember that one detail?

And how could the Sheikah Tribe know that this Link would be involved with time travel at all (thereby earning the title Hero of Time)? Getting sealed away for seven years was a mistake. If they knew it was going to happen, they would have prevented it. So what if they knew about the Hero of Time because Time Link traveled through time once before (perhaps under different circumstances)? And if it already happened, like with Sky Link, then is it so strange to theorize that Time’s vision was also a memory from his first attempt?

(Bonus Theory: this theory could explain the Fallen Hero timeline. Without the advantages that he got from his previous self, Time might have been ill-prepared for the final showdown with Ganon and lost because of it.)

Still skeptical about the time travel concept? Let me throw out one last case study: Twilight Princess Link (“Twilight”) and the Temple of Time. When Twilight first shows up at the ruined Temple of Time, there is an enclosure around the side that used to be a hallway. When you go into it, you see an opened treasure chest. Twilight goes to the past and finds a way to reach that hallway. The chest is closed. He opens the treasure chest, therefore fulfilling his “pre-destiny” to open it.

But what if Twilight chooses NOT to open the chest? It remains open anyway in the present. This is because it’s not the current Twilight who opened it. The very act of time travel into the past creates a paradox wherein a multitude of selves make different decisions, thereby affecting the future and splitting the timeline into potentially infinite splits. There is always a timeline in which the decision was first made, and then another timeline in which the hero can see that the decision was previously made.

Okay, that’s enough “timey wimey stuff” for one holiday. What do you think about this alternate timeline theory? Do you think that it’s possible that the Link we play as in Skyward Sword is the second version of himself to attempt to eradicate Demise? Leave your questions and thoughts in the comment section and be sure to subscribe to HFN.

I will still upload Wednesday’s regular Field Note, which will see us leaving the realm of theory to dive into game mechanics and design, so watch this spot!