Zelda Valley

At last, the trilogy of the three videos featuring a more serious storyline and more action with gags placed around it ends here with Episode Five! We wanted this one to finish the storyline, so everything had to come into place here. Well, not only did everything come into place, but we unintentionaly made Episode Five practically its own video, and that’s a good thing.

Like Episode Four, it begins with an opening crawl. We were not trying to copy Star Wars, it was simply a title option we used. It reveals that Hyrule is now destroyed because of Ganon. At this point, I had been watching old movies/ documentaries about nuclear war from the 1960’s and 1980’s. Such films I watched were: Miracle Mile - a film about a guy who receives a chance phone call from someone working inside a missile silo who says, “We are set to launch our missiles towards Russia in 40 minutes, we’ll get them back in seventy!” ; The Day After - an old controversial TV movie that aired in 1980 on national TV with hot lines ready for those panicking after watching the attack scenes; and Threads, a film similar to The Day After, but has more of a docudrama feel, and is more graphic in detail towards the suffering of the survivors after the attacks. Plus there is a place in the game Chrono Trigger that has a location in a post apocalyptic world that is freezing and has ice and snow but is crawling with monsters. All of this gave me the idea for a destroyed looking Hyrule, a place I dubbed, “Nuclear Winter Hyrule.”

The first minute and forty seconds of this video is by far one of my best photoshop sequences that ever I made. I tried giving it a Metal Gear Solid 3 feel because he is in the forest and there are red knights all over the place. That little wanted sign {plus the big surprise at the end} was a hint of things to come in terms of doing people animation. And I thought the forest having dead trees with ice and snow coating the tops was a cool thing.

But the major attraction in this video is the long pivot part. While Episode Four was mostly my photoshop stuff with a little pivot, this video is mostly JMAP’s pivot with a little photoshop. All the backgrounds were designed by me, and the fact that pivot kind of distorts the detailed backgrounds into kind of a cut out image made it necessary for the Dark World to be the setting for this video.

That’s actually why we wanted it to be pivot here, because in the Dark World, everything looks strange. The pre-fight exchange between Link and Dark Link where the screen resolutions and speech bubbles keep changing was actually an accident, but JMAP somehow worked it in as a very funny joke. Because of that, I used every shape possible for the speech bubbles in the Dark World. The over world shot of the Dark World itself was inspired by Chrono Trigger, where in the middle of the game we see a Utopia Society that sits on giant land masses floating above the clouds {because of magic, of course}, where underneath the clouds is a frozen ice age world inhabited by those banished from the Utopia civilization. Only this time it’s hell above the clouds, and death below it.

Oh yeah, the pivot fight between Link and Dark Link was outstanding; and it stands out as one of JMAP’s better pivot animations. The next fight between Link and Ganon is also great and epic. If you notice a big continuity error, it’s that at the beginning of it, Ganon looks bald and Link’s hat isn’t filled in, but then Ganon’s hair shows up and Link’s hat fills in. We even tried addressing this in the video with a joke. This is because I figured out how to get Ganon some hair and get Link’s hat to look better. Putting that aside, it looks awesome.

The song that is playing throughout the Dark World sequence and through most of the Ganon fight is “Phantom of the Opera” by Iron Maiden. Iron Maiden has some songs that are very epic and filled with long bridges and guitar solos that sound very Zelda-ish. Plus, this song has great progression, and works great with Link’s progress in the Dark World. We used every part of this song that didn’t have a singing verse. The other song is a live version of “Phantom Lord” by none other than Metallica. The end credits song is also a song done by Metallica, this time a cover jam of Ennio Moricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold”

I thought I had convinced JMAP that we would do people animation next, so I decided to plug in the surprise that Link turns into normal form, complete with JMAP’s voice. The reason why there are only credits here is because the five episode series genuinely ends here. Back then, I wasn’t sure we were going to make another stick one, but it’s going to happen, and as of 11/11/07, it’s actually being worked on.

In all, I actually feel this video can be released on its own without any prior episodes needed. It has a back story, a lot of rising action, a climax, and an ending. None of the other four videos have this attribute; they either start it, continue it, or end it. If this one is on its own, it can do all three.

My Overall Score: 9.5