As Link walks out into Hyrule Field, he’s greeted by… oh, crap, an owl. The owl explains how to use the map, and re-explains the quest the Deku Tree gave, before flying off and leaving Link. Okay, owl, but know I’m going to have a hard time trusting you after Link’s Awakening. The map hint seems to have checked out, at least.
There’s another new feature of Ocarina of Time I discovered along the way to Hyrule Castle: it has a day/night cycle! The sun set, and it basically turned into the fscking zombie apocalypse, with stalchildren popping out of the ground to annoy Link. They’re not hard – Navi’s hint even just says whack them with the sword till they’re dead [1]. No wonder Hyrule Castle keeps the drawbridge up at night. Link makes it to the castle just as the bridge lowers for the day and heads into the village near the castle.
For some reason, this switches from a behind-the-hero view to a fixed camera, so it takes some getting used to. There’s a guardhouse near the entrance where the guard is bored and wishes there were more trouble in the world so it would be interesting. He tells Link how to destroy pots, which only encourages him to smash up verything in the house. There’s a gold skulltula hiding in one of the crates.
In the market itself, there are a bunch of people to talk to. One hints that Link should visit a place called Lon Lon Ranch. A kid got caught trying to sneak into the castle to see Zelda so castle security has been tightened. A woman tells Link about the Sheikah, who guarded the royal family but have mostly disappeared except for one woman who lives in the castle. Link can visit the Temple of Time, but there’s nothing to do there. There are a handful of shops and games around the village, but nothing particularly interesting just yet. Navi gets impatient and bugs Link to go on to the castle, so off we go.
The owl comes back and explains the day/night cycle and how it freezes when Link’s in a town. After he’s gone, Link can knock a gold skulltula out of the tree it was in. There’s a girl here, Malon, who’s come from Lon Lon Ranch with her father. The gatekeeper refuses to let Link in, but he can sneak over the wall. However, the guards inside quickly catch him and throw him out. Talking to Malon again, she says she came with her father and gives Link an egg.
This time, Link finds a path through the guards, swimming in the castle moat around a corner from the last of them. There he finds Talon, Malon’s father, whom he wakes up with the cucco that hatched from the egg Malon gave him [2]. With Talon gone, Link can push his milk crates into a stack, jump over the moat, and sneak through the hole the kid tried to use to get into the gardens. There’s more guards to evade here, which is fine because they seem awfully easy to fool. Navi interrupts the process to wonder where we’ll find Zelda, but once past the guards, we’re in the courtyard with a girl at the other end and the theme associated with Zelda and the maidens from A Link to the Past playing, so I guess that answers the question.
Link approaches the girl, who is surprised at first that he was able to get past the guards, so obviously she hasn’t run a performance review on the guards recently. She notices Navi, and asks if Link’s brought the emerald from the forest. I was tempted to say no to see what she’d say, but decided to trust her, and she talked about a prophetic dream she had, about darkness overwhelming Hyrule and a ray of light emerging from the forest with the emerald and a fairy. She realizes she never properly introduced herself, so she says she’s Zelda, much to no one’s surprise. She asks Link his name and says it has a familiar ring to it.
With introductions out of the way, Zelda tells Link that the goddesses hid the Triforce, and the Temple of Time was built to protect it. To open the way, one would need three spiritual stones and the Ocarina of Time. She goes on to tell Link that she thinks the darkness in her dream is a man visiting the king: the leader of the Gerudo, the evil desert man who killed the Deku Tree, the man from Link’s nightmares, and his name is Ganondorf. She knows he’s evil, but her father doesn’t believe her, so she and Link conspire to save the world on their own. Link must get the other two Spiritual Stones so they can get the Triforce and stop Ganon.
She gives him a letter with her seal. As Link leaves the courtyard, he meets Zelda’s attendant, Impa. Impa teaches him a song for the ocarina, Zelda’s Lullaby, which is the first six notes of Zelda’s theme, and escorts him out of the castle.
Next: Exploring the world.
[1] The worst part about fighting them is the grunts Link makes as he swings his sword. Yeesh.
[2] Given their names and that fact that Talon looks a little like Mario, these two are reminiscent of Tarin and Marin, and I'm guessing that's not a coincidence.
