Field Note #3: Temple Diving with Wild Bokoblins

Base Stats:

Game: Skyward Sword

Version: Original Wii Version, Physical Copy

System: Nintendo Wii U

Session Play Time: 1 hr 15 min

Total Play Time: 4 hrs 51 mins

Content Covered: Skyview Temple

Goosebumps covered my arms as I descended the steps into my first Skyward Sword dungeon. The haunting atmosphere in the claustrophobic entrance hallway hit me with a mixture of nostalgia and excitement. Skyview Temple is the first traditional Zelda Dungeon I’ve played since Breath of the Wild (BotW) came out in 2017. During these three years, I’ve become accustomed to the puzzle-box Divine Beasts and enemy-gauntlet Skyrim dungeons. Stepping back into the traditional Zelda dungeon formula felt like slipping on an old t-shirt that still fits just right.

Before I get into the article, let’s look at the Weekly Fi Report. During this play session there were only three forced Fi interruptions. There were a number of suggestive “please talk to Fi” flashes, but they weren’t persistent and I was able to ignore them with minimal annoyance. There was one rock in a puzzle room that literally just said “talk to Fi” (actually, it said “listen to the wisdom of the spirit who came with you” or something to that effect, but that’s basically the same thing). All in all, this positive change in her behavior gives me a ray of hope for the remainder of our working relationship.

Skyview Temple is as traditional as a Zelda dungeon can be. Containing a pleasant balance between puzzles and enemies, there were few surprises for a seasoned Zelda veteran. Sure, Skyward Sword uses a motion-control based method for solving the eye switches where you swirl your sword in a circle, but it’s still an eye switch that opens a gate of some kind. There are also traditional “hit it with your projectile weapon” switches and “kill the enemies and climb this to reach the chest” walls. The dungeon map even made a return (minus the compass), as did small keys and boss keys.

Whereas some of these elements, like the eye switches and the aggressive linearity of the place, felt stale in a post-BotW world, others still felt fresh. The beetle item is still a sheer joy to use, and both tightrope balancing and rope swinging were fun returns from previous Zelda games given a slightly different spin. That said, using motion controls to insert a puzzle key into the boss door felt as weird today as it did back then. I will say these keys do have a leg up on BotW’s gyro puzzles: the ability to grab the object to turn it. This allowed you to release it when your hand was in an awkward position without resetting the puzzle or going out of the puzzle window. This grab function should certainly return for Breath of the Wild 2 if they’re going to insist on keeping gyro puzzles a thing.

The two brightest highlights of my dungeon-diving experience are easy to name: opening treasure chests and fighting baddies.

By the time I reached the central chamber of the dungeon, it hit me that opening treasure chests was exciting again. The dungeons in Breath of the Wild don’t scale, so most of the time the loot in the chests is low-level stuff like guardian bolts or weaker weapon types. It’s fine for your first dungeon when that loot is still exciting, but it wears off quickly. Since these dungeons rarely use keys, boss keys don’t exist, and heart pieces aren’t a thing you can get in chests, opening a chest in BotW’s Divine Beasts is not really exciting at all. But in Skyward Sword, the excitement of opening a chest returns. There is always something good in that chest, something actually helpful on your quest, and I’m always stoked to reach a new one and see what’s inside.

The baddies are where it’s really at, though. The hardest puzzles I have encountered in Skyward Sword so far are the enemies themselves. When I encountered my first real enemies—the gang of red bokoblins attacking Gorko the Goron just outside the Sealed Temple—my wife made an interesting comment. “You’re more intense when you fight in this game! Your whole body gets into it.” I was so intent on figuring out how to move my sword fast enough to kill the bokoblins that I didn’t realize I was sitting up, my whole body tensed with my tongue sticking out like I do when I’m really focused.

Fighting baddies in Skyward Sword is a whole mind-and-body engagement. There is no easy button mashing or lazy wrist flicking here. They’re going to make you work for your victory. It’s actually a challenging experience for once! Sure, every now and then your sword gets out of alignment, but all you do is give it a vertical slice and it re-centers itself automatically. I actually died when I fought that first group of bokoblins, and it wasn’t because of poor motion controls. No, the controls were in perfect alignment. It was because my reflexes were rusty. I actually needed think and slice quickly, and I wasn’t good enough. I had to try again.

That’s what’s incredible about Skyward Sword’s enemy AI. Take the Stalfos mini-boss in the Skyview Temple, who is also not a push over. The enemies are able to read your movements and adjust to block almost as fast as you perform the movement. There is a split second when you can fake them out if you’re quick and get a hit in on their unblocked side, or if you’re patient you can wait for them to give you an obvious opening. I tend to be an attack-first, plan-later kind of player, so after that first death I had to rethink my strategy. I had to actually use my shield in a timed, intelligent manner to give myself and opening and spare my tired arms the frantic swinging.

There is one fight that we need to talk about in particular, though, and I don’t think we have the time today because it’s a big topic: Ghirahim. A repeated and difficult boss, the self-proclaimed Demon Lord Ghirahim is one of the best bosses in the series. He is challenging and interesting. He is also a problematic and harmful gay stereotype. Just look up memes about him (only if you’re over 18!) and you will see a plethora of images with jokes about his sexuality and nonconsensual sexual advances on the hero. We will analyze this in more depth in a later article, but I felt it was important to touch on it during his first actual appearance in the game. As much as I enjoy the fight, the opening cinematic is uncomfortable for the wrong reasons.

Overall, my first foray into a traditional Zelda dungeon was refreshing. The enemies were varied, plentiful, and difficult, and the puzzles—although often simple—were enjoyable. Getting loot from chests was fun, and I was glad to be in a unique dungeon setting again. Although the Divine Beasts were interesting in their own way, and we’ll talk about them in more depth when we get to that game, I hope that the Zelda team brings back some elements of traditional dungeon design for BotW2. I am very much looking forward to the next dungeon on this playthrough!

One last observation for you before I go:

After the Ghirahim fight, I collected my Heart Container and exited through the newly-opened golden door. The screen went black as the game loaded the next area, and when the picture faded back into view I found myself standing in a familiar place: the Spring of Power from Breath of the Wild, here called the “Skyview Spring”. It was strange how hard the nostalgia for a three-year-old game hit me. As I slowly ascended the staircase, I looked around and imagined how this place looks in the new game—crumbling, overgrown, ruined. As Link listened to the Goddess’s words, I imagined Zelda waist-deep in that same water, railing against the same goddess for her silence. I stopped on the platform where Wild Link would later stand his silent vigil in the night. It was one of those truly beautiful moments that I will take with me and cherish long after this playthrough is over.

How do you feel about the dungeons and battle system in Skyward Sword? Did you enjoy them as much as I did? Please leave your answers in the comments and subscribe to HFN for updates. Thanks for reading!