The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s creepiest boss has returned to haunt me
One of The Legend of Zelda series’ weirdest enemies is making a comeback in one corner of the internet, and I’m confronting some very unpleasant memories.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is nothing if not compartmentalized. Each of its puzzle-laden dungeons adhere to a strict motif, whether it be an element (fire, water, earth, etc.) or a very specific claustrophobic fear (getting swallowed by a giant fish, stuck in a massive tree, or lost in a mineshaft filled with dinosaurs). In any case, the theme of two of its dungeons — Bottom of the Well and the Shadow Temple — seemed to be “Let’s try to inflict lasting trauma on a bunch of children and teenagers.” And in my case, the designers succeeded, thanks in no small part to Dead Hand, a reoccurring boss who has made a very weird comeback on the Zelda subreddit over the last few months.
For those who haven’t played Ocarina of Time, protagonist Link’s journey into the Bottom of the Well comes about 4/5 of the way into his journey, and it is, in my opinion, the game’s masterstroke. Before this point, Ocarina’s time-travel system is framed as a one-time act of transformation: Link was a child in a Swiftian Hyrule, and suddenly, he was an adult, seven years later, in a darkening world. But after you’ve gotten through the infamous Water Temple and returned to a Kakariko Village in flames, Ocarina strongly suggests that you to return to the Temple of Time (the site of the temporal leap) to become a child again. By revisiting Kakariko Village as the younger Link and completing a brilliant effect-and-cause side quest, your child-sized protagonist can squeeze through a small hole at the bottom of the town’s well, where a malignant entity is poisoning the water supply.
It’s here
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