warning! spoilers!

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

http://blog.wired.com/games/2006/11/zelda_the_spoil_1.html

Embargo The Second has been lifted, and we've been given clearance to
post the next round of impressions from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight
Princess. This piece, much like the last, will contain spoilers.

When last we saw Link, he had cleared the game's first dungeon and
picked up the traditional Heart Container for his troubles. What comes
next in his adventure? And why are the fangirls going to be squealing
with delight? Read on to find out.

I'm actually going entirely off of memory on this one, and it's been
quite a while now since the demo. So I may omit things, or get the
order of events wrong. Rest assured this all happened, though.

So, now that dungeon one was finished, Midna decided to let me go to
Hyrule Field. The exit out of the game's initial area was up past the
dude who sold me the lantern, so out we went. Hyrule Field -- part of
it, anyway -- spread out before myself and Epona, and we rode around
like crazy for a while, gleefully taking in the sights. It's mighty
impressive. And beats the sh.t outta sailing.

Eventually I realized that while there might be a few secrets to find,
I would be best served just heading for the next section of Twilight.
This time, I was in control -- rather than be sucked into the dark
world against my will, I walked up to the bright black-and-orange
barrier and was yanked in by Midna (after she confirmed that I really,
really wanted to go in, I mean).

Back in wolf form, I discovered another of the wolf's powers. At
certain points in the story, you'll find items that were dropped by
missing persons. You can then pick up their scent and follow it by
switching on your wolf-sense mode. The scent appears like a sort of
orangey mist on the ground. Of course, you have to keep switching back
and forth between wolf sense and normal vision, because you can't
really see where you're going when wolf sense is turned on.

Unfortunately, not long after I start following the trail, it goes
dead: a bridge is out (destroyed by some freakin' bad guys, those
jerks) and I have to go find another. To help me, Midna pointed out
something interesting. I'm not sure if I mentioned this the first time,
but at certain points in the game, a Twilight portal will open up in
the sky and drop inky black enemies. A pink glowy wall surrounds you
and them, and you've got to kill them all. But you can't just kill them
-- if you leave a single one of them alive, he'll revive the others.

So you use a special move that Midna gives you. If you hold down the B
button, a glowing shadow will spread out from underneath Link in a
circle. You have to walk around and entrap all three (or more) enemies
in the circle, then let go of B to kill them all. This gets harder and
harder as the game goes on and more enemies join the fray. You don't
have to kill ALL of them at once -- just never leave a solitary enemy
alive.

Anyway, once you kill them, the portal stays in the sky, and you can
use it to warp between points.

Hmm, where do I get a bridge? This felt so much like Okami that for a
second I thought about trying to hold down the R trigger and draw one.
No such luck. Midna said he'd seen one before, but I had no idea where.
For most players, this would be a choke point, and I'd probably ride
all around town looking for where there might have been a bridge. But I
was being timed and didn't want to waste a second, so I just had
Nintendo tell me where to find it. I won't spoil the solution, but I
hadn't even noticed it the last time I'd been through that area.

Anyway, once we found it, Midna transported the bridge back to its
rightful place. I guess this will be a gameplay mechanic we can expect
to see more of. Crossing the bridge and picking up the scent again, I
soon found myself in good ol' Kakariko Village. Well, good old totally
bombed out Twilight-covered Kakariko Village. Stepping up to a spring
in the middle of town, another Light spirit told me to get rid of the
Twilight by collecting up tears. Collectathon ho!

This turned out to be way more difficult than before.

In the Forest, all of the tears were pretty much out in the open. But
now, they were all hidden away inside the houses and shops of Kakariko.
When you go in the first house, you're treated to what is for a Zelda
game an especially impressively lengthy cut scene. Two of the village
elders have found the kids, and they're hiding with them inside the
house. The young girl from the game's prologue is convinced, though,
that Link will come to save them. She's right, except Link's a wolf and
they can't see him because they're spirits. It's all very sad.

So now you get to poke around all the houses and such. You can't use
the door, of course, because you don't have opposable thumbs to speak
of. So you have to really search for open windows, holes in the ground,
etc. And then once you get in there, there's usually some kind of
puzzle to solve before you find the bug. Might be as easy as smashing a
pot, but in one instance you have to light a stick on fire, then use it
to light the fireplace and smoke 'em out.

The hardest bugs to find are way upstairs; you have to exit a house a
different way than you went in, then climb up to a bluff overlooking
the town. This took a while for me to figure out. Once you've cleared
out the town, there are even more bugs... on DEATH MOUNTAIN.

dun dun dun

Yes, you're back to scenic Death Mountain, already. There's another
fight with black Twilight monsters, this time harder because there are
four of them. You do some more Midna-jumping to get up top. At the very
top, when you find the last bug, there's actually a structure that
looks like a grave. It's got holes in it, and as the wind passes
through, it plays a melody on the air. You press a button to Howl
along. You'll see a pseudo-musical staff type thing on the bottom of
the screen, and lift the remote up and down to change the pitch.

Succeed at mimicking the melody (it's easy) and you're spirited off to
some random-a.s cliff where a glowing wolf spirit tells you to come and
find him to get a special something-or-another. It's probably a new
wolf attack. I didn't go get it, because I finished the bug hunt and
became Normal Link again. I went down to the village to tell everybody
how awesome I was. Except two major bad guys rode in on boars and
kidnapped that awesome little girl who believed in me :(

You might remember this scene from the 2005 E3 demo. I hopped on Epona
and rode out to the field, where the kidnappers had tied the poor child
to a stake on the back of the head a.shole's boar and took off running
around the field. I didn't know what their aim was, here. What their
nefarious plan could have been. They were playing Keep-Away with a
small girl. Anyway, I rode up to the guy with Epona, driving my metal
spurs into her tender horsey stomach until she galloped faster, then
slashed the hell out of the guy.

This only pissed him off, and he rode up to the bridge in front of
Hyrule Castle, off in the distance. We then jousted, galloping towards
each other. The trick here is to fake him out, run off to one side,
then dart back towards the other. You'll pass by him unharmed, and
swipe at his side. Do this three times (also easy) and you're rewarded
with a superfuckincool cutscene of him falling off the bridge.

Okay, so the kid's back. Now we can go to the dungeon, right? Not so
much. I climb up Death Mountain, and a freakin' Goron is up there. He
rolls at me, hard. Much like the stop-the-goats segment earlier in the
game -- did I mention that? In the first town, sometimes a goat will
run down from the top of the hill, and you can stop him by getting in
front of him and pressing A to plant your feet.

Okay, so the same thing happens, right? Only it's a Goron, not a goat,
and he kicks my a.s. Luckily, the village elder tells me there's
something I can do -- Bo, the mayor of the first town, all the way back
at the beginning of the game, knows secret power that can stop them.

So I go all the way back there, and Bo just so happens to have a sumo
ring in the center of his house. Next thing I know, he's in a diaper
and Link is shirtless. (Pause so that the world's fangirls can wipe the
drool off their keyboards.) We enter a sumo contest, where I can
sidestep, slap, and push. It's really fun! I win, but Bo tells me that
sumo per se is not actually the secret.

The secret is a pair of cast iron boots. Which he gives me. Armed with
these, I go back to Death Mountain and am stopping Gorons left and
right, grabbing them and tossing them off the cliff. Good times. Good
times. I head up Death Mountain, kind of cheesed off that the Gorons
hate me. But I find out a way they can help me -- if I kick the sh.t
out of them, they tuck into a little ball. If I climb on top of them,
they launch me very high when they unfurl. High enough to climb Death
Mountain.

So I do.

Before I make it into their secret lair, I stop by the Goron Hot
Springs, filled with Gorons taking a relaxing hot bath. These dudes are
mellow enough to just talk to a brother instead of trying to squash him
like a pancake, you know? One of them, who runs a shop right there in
the bathtub, offers to sell me a wooden shield. I'm like, I already
gots one of those! Little do I know.

Climbing even higher up the mountain -- using the Boots to pass by jets
of hot sulfur that would ordinarily knock me off the cliff face -- I
make it into the Goron's den. Their chieftain -- acting chieftain, I'm
told -- challenges me to a sumo match that's much harder than the
preliminary round. When I win, I become an honorary Goron and am
granted passage into their fiery volcano dungeon.

Dungeon two! Rather than go over every puzzle, here are some of the
more interesting things:

   * Magnetized walls. There are walls. They are magnetic. If you put
the boots on, you stick to them. What a feelin', when you're dancin' on
the ceilin'. Actually, there's one really brilliant part, where you
have to jump off a really high ledge, then, in midair, put your boots
on and stick to one of the side walls. It's a breathtaking little bit
of business.
   * Enemies with flaming arrows. Those sons of bitches. Next thing I
know, my freakin' shield burns up. NOA's guys tell me to use that crazy
chickenfetus thing, Ococco, and warp out of the dungeon. I *could* go
buy another wooden one, but my wallet's been full for ages and I have
300 rupees ready to go. So I head to Kakariko and buy a burnproof
Hylian Shield for 200. I buy it from Malo, one of the coolest
characters in a game filled with cool characters. He's the littlest of
the kids, but he's a supergenius and an entrepreneur. He tells me to
keep stopping back in his shop for more goodies.
   * The ultimate Goron-stopping match. I end up on a platform not
unlike the Bowser fights in Super Mario 64. There's a Goron, a real big
one, rolling into me. I have to stop him and toss him off, but I have
to do it when he's close to the edge so he goes into the lava. I die.
It takes a while. But I'm rewarded with...
   * The bow and arrows. I was really excited when I got these. A
slingshot is one thing, but...

All these many, varied things come together for the boss fight. I skip
over a lot here -- this dungeon was really, really complex and had a
lot of stuff happening. But let's pretend we're at the boss fight. As
it turns out, it's the real Goron chieftain, only he's been possessed.
The other Gorons locked him up in here for his own good, but he breaks
his chains off and comes after you.

In a nutshell -- shoot him in the glowy eye with the arrow, then run
around to his backside and grab the ends of the chains he's dragging
around. Put your boots back on and drag him to trip him up. Then get in
front of his face and waggle those controllers for all they're worth!

That takes us to the end of Dungeon 2. Much like last time, if you want
any clarifications or if you think I've missed anything, comment away!

________________________________________

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3155134

by Jeremy Parish  11/09/2006
Last week we explored the first six hours of Twilight Princess in
frightful detail, which took Link through the game's first dungeon. But
as we noted, it's impossible to realize the true scope and enormity of
this adventure until you free the Forest Temple from its bizarre
parasitic infestation. Only then can you see for yourself how immense
this adventure of Link is.

The opening hours of Twilight Princess, as it turns out, are contained
within a tiny portion of the game world. In fact, most of the Ordon
Wood events transpire outside the boundaries of the game map. Zooming
out on the map screen to get a sense of perspective is rather shocking
-- a little bit like leaving Midgar in Final Fantasy VII and realizing
that the last half-dozen hours have been contained in a tiny corner of
the full game world.

New for Dungeon Two
Very few new gameplay elements are added to Link's repertoire beyond
the first dungeon; since the opening areas serve as a sort of tutorial,
the bulk of what we know about the game's mechanics are covered in last
week's preview. There are, however, a few new features:

Horseback Battling

By far, the most jaw-dropping moment in the build-up to the second
dungeon comes in the form of a cavalry battle. Although certainly
nothing on the Lord of the Rings scale, it's a totally new form of
gameplay for the Zelda series that nevertheless fits perfectly with the
controls and overall feel of Twilight Princess. This sequence is
similar to the usual Epona portions of the game, except that an endless
procession of warthog-riding goblins is nipping at Link's heels.

Unfortunately, at this point the only damaging ranged weapons Link has
in his inventory are the slingshot and boomerang -- neither of which
are worth a plugged nickel here. While plinking the lesser goblin
forces with Deku Nuts will stun them briefly, the goal of the horseback
battle is to take down their armored leader, who cruelly mocks you for
trying to off him with such a pitiful excuse for a weapon.

Ranged weapons aren't much good in this encounter, but Link still has
his sword skills. And they work exactly the same as when he's on foot.

The chase sequence has a fairly simple structure: The goblin commander
leads the chase, taunting Link and forcing Epona to dash ahead to catch
up. The goal is to slash the leader three times and knock away his
armor, but this is no simple matter since he has a tendency to veer
sharply away right as Link catches up. To further complicate matters,
three or four of his subordinates are constantly harassing Link.

Shaking the Wii Remote will cause Link to perform a slashing attack,
which can help drive off the minions. The urgency of the chase made
makes it hard to look back and say for certain whether shaking the
Remote either left or right caused Link to slash in the appropriate
direction, but that's certainly how our adrenaline-saturated memories
have framed it. Link can also perform a spin attack with the Nunchuck,
although there's a certain element of risk to this due to the recovery
time from the move. You'll want to be positive that your spin attack
will connect or else you'll leave yourself vulnerable to reprisal.

It's also important not to get carried away spurring Epona forward. An
on-screen meter allows Link to make Epona dash ahead up to six times,
and the meter slowly recharges as you run. However, should you empty
the dash meter entirely, Epona will slow briefly to a trot, giving the
enemy leader a bit of a lead and practically guaranteeing that his
henchmen get some free hits in.

The battle rages across a broad grassy plain in Hyrule Field, running
at times right up against a sheer cliff face. As the encounter
progresses, the field of battle becomes trickier: Eventually, obstacles
begin to appear, forcing a perfectly-timed dash. (Running around them
also works and can be a handy way to throw off the pursuit -- the
lesser goblins will sometimes run right into the spiked wooden
obstacles, which brings their careers to a very grisly end.)

Once you land your third successful blow against the goblin leader, the
fight changes to a new venue.

Jousting

Wounded, the goblin leader breaks off the chase and heads toward a long
bridge spanning a seemingly bottomless ravine. Link gives chase only to
find his escape route closed by fire -- and the only way forward is to
face down the boss goblin in a head-to-head joust.

With little room to maneuver on the narrow bridge, jousting is
basically a matter of knowing how Epona moves. The goblin will try
block you if you veer to the side, but his mount's lateral motion is a
bit slower than Epona, so the best thing to do is to hug one side of
the bridge until the last possible moment, then break hard to the
opposite side. This will allow you to pass safely. (A head-on collision
is very bad news for Link, because the goblin's armored warthog has
quite a bit more mass than Epona.)

There's more to victory than simply passing the beast, though. You also
have to attack him -- which means a perfectly-timed sword strike as you
streak past. A successful hit will send the monster screaming into the
ravine, netting players a well-earned victory pose.

Boots and Bows

Half the fun of Zelda is finding new bits of gear for Link's arsenal,
and if the game maintains the level of item introduction seen so far,
he's going to be a tiny armory by the time the game's over. Before
reaching the second dungeon, Link will have acquired a pair of iron
boots, and within the dungeon itself he'll nab himself a helpful
bow-and-arrow set.

The iron boots are similar to the ones from Ocarina -- putting them on
adds considerable mass to Link's wiry frame, perfect for throwing
dead-weight switches or exploring the bottom of nearby bodies of water.
And the metallic nature of the boots comes in handy when magnets are
nearby; elevated magnets will draw Link upward and let him walk
upside-down (which, in gameplay terms, completely flips the world
rather than Link). Oh, and it's good to have iron boots when you need
to keep your footing.

The bow and arrow works exactly the same as in the most recent Zelda
titles. Auto-target with the Z trigger, or use the Wii Remote to aim
(or the analog stick, if you must be so gauche). No, you don't have to
pull the Remote toward your body, and you don't have to use the D-pad;
put aside those chilling fears prompted by your unsatisfying E3 demo
play! Arrows are fired with the B button, the way the good lord
intended.

Shield Bash

Link can also (optionally) learn a new sword technique: the shield
bash. As usual, holding the Z trigger causes Link to raise his shield
and block some attacks. But now Link can slam his shield into a foe to
knock them off guard, which comes in handy for certain extra-tough
enemies. As with the killing strike move, this ability is learned from
the spirit of a long-dead warrior.

That's about all we saw in the way of new game mechanics through, say,
hour 10 or so. Beyond here is pure story spoilage, so read on only if
you can't wait another week to know more of Link's tale...

The Story Continues
Having worked his way through the Forest Temple, Link is quickly
prompted to move toward the next Fused Shadow by Midna. At long last,
this means leaving the relatively peaceful environs of the Ordon Forest
and venturing into the vastness of Hyrule.

And it truly is vast. Nintendo tells us that Hyrule Field is roughly
five times the size of its Ocarina of Time incarnation, and they really
aren't kidding. The vast plain stretches into the distant horizon --
and Twilight Princess has some amazing draw distances -- its verdant
expanse sullied only by the looming Twilight, which bisects the horizon
like a curtain. A curtain the color of a bruise. The silhouette of
Hyrule Castle is dimly visible in the distance, mired deep within the
Twilight.

At this point, it's possible to branch out a bit. Although your goal is
to head northwest from the Ordon's southward location, the enormity of
Hyrule Field begs for exploration. The landscape rises and falls and
rolls, with groves of trees and large rock outcroppings adding variety
to the scenery. You can fish in the pond toward the center, and if you
need bait for your fishing rod certain enemies will yield larva when
defeated. The only disappointment here is that Hyrule Field stands as a
casualty of the switch from GameCube to Wii: because the game
environments were mirrored to make the control scheme more comfortable,
the general layout of the field -- patterned largely after Ocarina's
version -- doesn't register with the same nostalgic impact as it
probably should.

Unfortunately, entire portions of it remain inaccessible at this point
in the game; guarded gates close off certain areas, and while you can
wipe out the guards you still can't pass the barbed-wire fences without
a key. Unless, of course, you're a wolf -- and so it's off to the
Twilight Realm for Link.

In his wolf form, Link is able to dig beneath certain barriers -- like
guarded fences. He's also able to put his keen sense of smell to use,
which comes in handy upon realizing that the children of Ordon Village
have been abducted again. Fortunately, Link's able to pick up their
scent and follow its blazing orange trail...

...that is, he can follow it until the path disappears. The dastardly
bad guys torch a bridge in their wake, leaving an impassable barrier
that not even Link's lupine legs can leap. Handily, Midna takes this
moment to demonstrate a heretofore unmentioned feature of the Twilight
Realm: Warping. As it turns out, the bizarre sky-holes that the
nearly-indestructible twilight monsters emerge from stick around once
the creatures have been defeated, creating a network of handy
instant-transit portals. A bit of warping is all it takes to come
across a suitable piece of debris to replace the bridge -- and despite
its massive size, Midna seems to have no trouble at all lifting it into
place. Are there no limits to her curious abilities?

The freshly-restored trail leads Link to Kakariko Village. The town is
nestled into a deep and dusty valley at the foot of Death Mountain, and
the Twilight has taken over. The children are actually inside a
building where the village shaman, his daughter and a rather nervous
man have barricaded themselves for protection against the marauding
twilight creatures outside. Like Ordon Forest, Kakariko has come under
the influence of Twilight in the wake of an attack on its protective
spirit, and Link is given a Vessel of Light so he can kill the twilight
bugs, who have stolen the spirit's power, and purify the area.

This bug hunt is considerably more complex than the last, though. Very
few of the bugs dwell outside, preferring the sanctity of indoors. Link
must find his way into each abandoned house in the village, be it
entering by chimney, window or beneath the walls. Once inside, many of
the twilight insects require special effort to defeat: One has hidden
inside a fireplace, out of reach, and can only be destroyed by picking
up a twig, lighting it on a nearby torch and using it to ignite the
fireplace. Others are scurrying about a bomb storage building too
quickly to attack and have to be taken out in a rather indelicate
fashion that results in a flattened building. And still others have
ventured to the foot of Death Mountain, where fallout from constant
eruptions poses a deadly hazard.

With the Twilight pushed back, Link can take courage in knowing he's
protected the children -- until a squad of boar-riding goblins bursts
into town and takes Colin captive. Link gives chase on Epona, leading
to the horseback battle described before.

With the children finally safe, the journey shifts back to Death
Mountain, which is guarded ferociously by the Goron tribe. Curiously,
the traditionally friendly Gorons have become incredibly territorial
and refuse to grant Link passage. The Shaman, however, recommends he
speak to the mayor of Ordon, who knows some sort of secret technique
that allows one to stand his ground against any force -- a helpful
trick, since Link keeps getting swatted away by rolling Gorons.

Turns out the "secret" is a pair of iron boots, which the major gives
to Link under the condition that he never let the truth about his
supposed strength slip. To claim the boots, though, Link has to best
the mayor in a sumo wrestling match. Fortunately, that doesn't mean
Link in a big ol' diaper -- but the ladies will be happy to know that
he does go shirtless for a moment.

Sumo wrestling has its own specific controls. Link can slap by shaking
the controller, or dodge and grasp his opponent with A, then push the
other grappler out of the ring. A quick trip back to Kakariko allows
Link to put his new ability to the test: the Goron guard quickly rolls
to knock him away as he approaches Death Mountain, but by equipping the
iron boots it's possible to stop the roller just as you'd stop a
charging goat in Ordon. Then it's simply a matter of letting the
Goron's momentum carry him past, and repeating that iron boot judo on a
number of other guards along the way to the Goron village.

Beyond the Goron Village is the game's second dungeon, the Fire Temple.
Unfortunately, we didn't have the time to play all the way through this
section, but it should feel familiar to Zelda veterans: lots of open
lava pits, that sort of thing. The important parts are the dungeon's
weapon -- the bow and arrow -- and the boss encounters.

The first boss is an armored Goron who squares off against Link in a
much higher-stakes version of the earlier sumo match. The higher stakes
come into play based on the setting: Link and the Goron compete on a
large circular grating suspended over lava. Victory here is a matter of
planting yourself with the iron boots, grasping the Goron while dodging
his attacks and tossing him into the fire a few times. It's remarkably
similar to the Bowser battle at the end of Super Mario 64, minus the
perimeter's explosive lining.

Eventually, the lava helps the Goron come to his senses (i.e., don't
mess with Link) and our hero is free to advance to the dungeon's
master, the flaming giant Pyrus. Of course, Pyrus should be familiar to
anyone who played the game's E3 demo; deadly to the touch, he must be
blinded and knocked down before he can be wounded. To accomplish this,
Link has to fire an arrow into the giant's face, shattering its eye
crystal. Once blinded, the beast will flail about, leaving Link free to
grasp the loose chains that once bound Pyrus, don the iron boots, then
pull to topple him. As always, some quick sword work will finish the
task.

And all told, this represents only the first 10 hours of Twilight
Princess -- a tiny percentage of the game, by Nintendo's frank
admission. We've only seen a glimpse of what lies beyond the second
dungeon, but it's clear that by the end of Death Mountain, the
adventure has only just begun. In little more than a week, the full
scope of Twilight Princess will be revealed to all... and until then,
check out our upcoming Twilight Princess cover story to fully whet your
appetite for what is almost certain to be an amazing game.