Backroom with a view.
My dead horse just vanished, deleted from the simulation.
I felt like I’d crossed a boundary of some kind.
I set off in the other direction for another five minutes, and came to an edge.
But it feels different.
It’s a gap in Zelda’s understanding of itself.
There’s a major quest to undertake here, one that sends you out all across Hyrule.
But the space itself rebuffs the very curiosity it kindles.
Your eyes unfocus and the time drips away.
The Forgotten Temple does things to my mind.
Its negative space is an assault of some kind.
There’s something more labyrinthine about it than any labyrinth.
It also spells out that Zelda at large is one grand cycle of forgetfulness.
Each game introduces these narrative fixtures as if for the first time.
The Fused weapons still shatter, however artfully “earned” by the imaginative player.
Even the sturdiest Ultrahand builds evaporate when they pass beyond sight.
Visiting the Forgotten Temple clarified all this for me.
It is forgotten, remembered and misremembered, all at once.
I kind of love it here, pseudo-intellectual miseryguts that I am.
Though I do rather miss my horse.
