Temple of Time, Linear Done Right - Dungeon Design in Zelda (Twilight Princess HD) 

Several things I would like to add: -Rusl tells us that the "Ancestors of the Hylians" built the Temple of Time. We learn from Shad that the Oocca were the ancestors of the Hylians, and there is Oocca symbology and technology within the Temple of Time. We also know that Rauru built the Temple of Time since he told us himself. It was a collaborative construction between the Sky People and the Sages. The symbology is seen with the Trident-like symbol often found on the frames of Owl Statues (Oocca constructs which are also found in the Temple of Time), and their technology is seen with the Armos, Beamos, the spinner rails (the Oocca have these same mechanisms in their Sky City to activate bridges and the like, so it must be made by them), and clawshot targets (the clawshots were also made by the Oocca, necessary to activate the Sky Cannon to reach they City in the Sky, where the second Clawshot is found), and of course, the Dominion Rod, an artifact also of their making. -The window that leads to the dungeon is the exact same one that Navi flies to at the end of OOT (being the only window present in that game's chamber of the Master Sword). What this may entail is unclear (I hope Nintendo gives us an answer one day) -the design of the dungeon is reminiscent to the Tower of the Gods, both being a sacred place where you scale upwards, both having a Darknut Miniboss, and the gimmick of said dungeon is controlling statues, which glow green under your control. Great video man! Can't wait to see you cover the City in the Sky!

Great video as usual! I love how Buddy just trashes the whole place he was meant to guard.

Yessss I've been waiting for this one. I love this dungeon, but I swear I say that about every TP dungeon. They all go so hard. Keep up the great content, I hope you end up covering literally every Zelda game's dungeon designs. You always have great info and the hard work shows.

Not only is the Darknut the first midboss to be found elsewhere in the game, but it's also the only midboss to not originate in Twilight Princess, but to be found all the way back in The Legend of Zelda. I like how the midboss version kind of trains you for the "common enemy" encounters in Twilight Princess in a way: while all Darknuts throw away their heavier weapons between phases, this time only, he throws it in a cutscene, and Link dodges on his own. In all future encounters with Darknuts, it falls to the player to either dodge or not. "Mostly steered clear of it", he says, as three of the five onscreen examples have eye-based weak points. (Yes, I am counting Fyrus, as you literally see an eye in his forehead crystal.) But yeah, at least Stallord has you hitting its spine in the first phase and the sword Zant plunged into it in the second phase, and for Blizzeta, instead of eyes, you hit ice. (That statement is better spoken than read, I'll grant.) Actually, let me think about this. Diababa: First Phase: Use the dungeon item to... attack. Second Phase: Use the dungeon item to stun, making it vulnerable to the sword. Fyrus: Use the dungeon item to make him run around, then use the pre-dungeon item to stun, making him vulnerable to the sword. Morpheel: First Phase: Use the dungeon item to pull in, making it vulnerable to the sword. Second Phase: Use the dungeon item to latch on, making it vulnerable to the sword. Stallord: First Phase: Use the dungeon item to get to and attack. Second Phase: Use the dungeon item to get to and stun, making it vulnerable to the sword. Blizzeta: Both Phases: Use the dungeon item to attack. Nothing else is even useful here. Armogohma: First Phase: Use a DIFFERENT dungeon's item to stun, then the CURRENT dungeon's item to attack. Second Phase: Use whatever you want that does damage and which you can manage to get working. It can be amusing to use a giant statue on that (relatively) little spider, but it's hard to catch it near one of them long enough to set it up and deliver the blow.

You’re always so thorough in your analysis, interesting connection to sky keep which I’d never considered before. Makes quite a bit of sense to me. Always thought it was Temple of Light, but never considered the SS connection. No clue about the reasoning behind the shard being there. Could attribute the enemies to its presence, but still wouldn’t explain why it’s there. Seems like the armor that the small spiders inhabit to become the boss must’ve been made for that purpose specifically. Could be another test for the hero? To see if he matches up to hero of time who fought a similar spider? I always found TP to be one of the more mysterious games, Lore-wise. Great video! Thanks for your hard work

I agree with it being the temple of light, also this is vividly one of my favorite dungeons

I loved the presentation of this temple. It makes you look at the Temple of Time in Ocarina differently.. There is more than meets the eye. You can't help but imagine how this dungeon looked in Ocarina of Time's n64 artstyle.

To add to your Temple of Time theory: Rauru is already awoken as a Sage in OoT. This is probably a similar paradox to the Song of Storms since you in TP complete the Temple of Light, thus freeing Rauru, who then has Link sleep there for 7 years in OoT, which eventually leads to TP

That Temple of Time theory was insane. I never heard someone say "linear done right". Nice game design talk.

The name confusion is pretty simple to explain, imo. Much like the Arbiter's Grounds, the people of Twilight Princess aren't using the original name of the space; LINK calls it the Temple of Time because he found it in the Temple of Time. There's no reason for him to realize that this is in fact a different place altogether.

The first time you go through the door to the past, and you get the Ocarina temple theme, pure fanservice. Looks really nice too, there's like a slight sepia filter over everything and it looks frozen in time. It's basically the cut Light Temple from OoT done years later. It has a lot of Roman architecture in it including using the Pantheon as the inspiration for the mini boss room.

Excellent analysis as usual and I totally agree about the boss key because I literally had that problem of backtracking on my first attempt at this dungeon and it was painful! Getting to this dungeon was somewhat of a surprise as I expected The Skull Kid to perhaps lead the hero to a different path through The Lost Woods to a completely unexplored place to find the dungeon - this was not the case. Finding an entrance to The Temple of Time was confusing in itself as the player wouldn't expect to put The Master Sword back in its pedestal - I did it to see what would happen and I didn't expect it to reveal The Temple Entrance... It was extremely nostalgic to hear 'The Song of Time' walking through those doors to the past - which sounds like Gregorian Chant. The question that comes to my mind when walking through those doors is: How far back into the Past did The Hero of Twilight go? It seems to take place after the events of Ocarina of Time and the grey scaling effect mentioned in your video definitely suggests a step back in time. Does this involve yet another timeline split haha? After passing through 'The Door of Time' and colour returns in the resting place where The Master Sword resides - a contrast to the previous room where it is black and white. The use of colour in this room is very noticeable as you can see an array of different colours on the stain glass windows with light shining through. The location seems strange as 'The Temple of Time' was in Hyrule Castle Town and not in The Lost Woods (however in A Link to The Past and A Link Between Worlds this was where The Master Sword resided) - it all seems very mysterious and confusing quite honestly but there may be a very clever reason behind this... I honestly don't think this dungeon is 'The Temple of Light' spoken of in Ocarina of Time but I do think it is a hidden area inside of The Temple of Time that was purposely designed to test the hero in order to overcome this trial (access is gained by a set of light stairs appearing after The Master Sword is put back into its pedestal and you magically go through a stain glass window, perhaps the same stain glass window Navi went through?). The similarities between The Tower of Gods from Wind Waker as you correctly pointed out I think confirm that this place was used to 'test' the hero and also to obtain 'The Dominion Rod' as it is an essential item in order to progress to the next dungeon in the game. As far as we know as fans, The Temple of Light was used to house The Hero's spirit for seven years in 'The Chamber of Sages' as well as The Triforce. It may have been Rauru himself that designed this place as a preventative measure to stop Ganondorf accessing The Sacred Realm again - which would explain why 'The Temple of Time' is in a completely different location. The reason, I think there is now a dungeon included for 'The Temple of Time' was because there was no dungeon present in Ocarina of Time and most likely fans felt short-changed for a dungeon as The Medalion of Light was just given to The Hero of Time by Rauru; only The Temple itself was used for the purpose of storing The Master Sword, journey back and forth through time, acting as a place to meet Princess Zelda as well as the place where Navi mysteriously disappeared up to a stain glass window... The use of various traps inside this dungeon and puzzles seems an obvious indication that this place was specifically used to test the hero. The monsters present inside the dungeon may be a result of the dark corrupting power of The Twilight Mirror Shard? How a Twilight Mirror Shard got here as well as for all the other dungeons in the game that have a Twilight Mirror Shard is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps the sages deliberately placed them there as they are the only ones who seem to know exactly where they are hidden after completing The Arbiter's Grounds and they were aware of its dark power so perhaps they hid them as yet another preventative measure of it falling into the wrong hands. If Navi did go through this stain glass window where did she go as she is nowhere to be seen when traversing through the dungeon? I love the design of this dungeon, it is as pristine as you would expect, it bears a lot of similarities between The Tower of The Gods with the 'fetch-quest' and controlling statues albeit in a less painstaking way. There are numerous traps, the difficulty of this dungeon is really noticeable. As well as numerous traps you have numerous floors, but the linear design makes this dungeon fairly straight-forward. Aesthetically, this dungeon is gorgeous but the dragging of statues around in order to solve puzzles and progress felt really tedious and chore-like and this was exactly the same problem with The Tower of Gods (so The Nintendo Development Team did not learn from this!) This is where I feel this dungeon suffers and its boss was very uninspiring - I honestly hate seeing yet another Gohma Boss at this point, another automaton boss would have worked well or perhaps even facing The Hero's Shade in a serious fight would have made this dungeon an absolute winner but unfortunately, they didn't go down this route. The mini-boss was however an excellent choice and very well suited within the context of the area - you expect monsters like that in these types of places. The Dominon Rod is an excellent item, but its use was underutilised - it could have acted as a power source for more sophisticated ancient technology but nope, not here... Finally making your way to The Boss Door, you might make the mistake of realising you don't have 'The Boss Key' so unfortunately terrible backtracking to the 7th floor... Ouch. The Boss Key was not well guarded either, so it didn't feel like a challenge to get 'The Boss Key.' I will be blunt, the boss is a disappointment and too easy to defeat but I think the music worked well with 'The Spider Boss.' The boss music is unnerving which makes sense, but it is by no means epic so feels a bit bland. Overall, the dungeon had beautiful architecture and was nostalgic with the journey of getting there and the symbols of The Light Medalion, however it felt a lot less fun than many of the other dungeons in this game and to be completely honest, it seemed a bit boring...

I never got this far when playing Twilight Princess so this was awesome to see! The level of detail in the Temple of Time is really incredible

I always like the videos before it’s even out!

This is my favorite dungeon of all time

Brilliant theory about the staircase through window going to the sacred realm/ temple of light.

wtf I feel like you surgically transplanted my thoughts and opinions about this dungeon and put them in a perfectly elaborated video. I feel represented! This was initially my favorite TP dungeon. That glow dissipated after replaying the game and realizing it's flaws, but it still holds second or third place... and Dominion Rod is still my favorite item.

I always called the statue Minion. The small ones were Mini-ons

Brilliant video! I absolutely love this dungeon. I do agree that the music is good, but imagine if it sounded like the temple of light theme from URA Zelda!

I will never forget the F YEAH feeling when you enter the Temple of Time "in the past" and when you get when you realized "buddy" was a TANK! This dungeon has the weird company of the OoT Water Temple that the mini boss is better than the big boss. The Darknaut is such a cool enounter I would almost rather he be the boss of the place same with OoT Dark Link.

I think it would've been really neat if the Temple of Time/Light had a Great Fairy Fountain that would've had a blue Great Fairy that turned out to be Navi. Showing that, not only was she here the whole time, but also her deeds in aiding the Hero of Time awarded her the promotion in status to a Great Fairy. Do Great Fairies even appear in Twilight Princess?

Daaaaang I didn't realize how bad I missed twilight until the temple of time music I want to play it again so badly!!! Thank you for the nostalgia ❤

Nice musical transition at the beginning 👍🏼 Back into TP, I love this game so much!! Telma is such a great npc, definitely one of my favorites 🥰 GOLDEN CHICKEN 🐓 Lol such a weird add 😝 having skull kid in here was a pretty cool nod I thought! Time shift mechanics 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 haha I love the music here too!!! 😋 The association is super strong with the way they treated the music. Sounds and smells are such strong memory formers 😝 OOCCOO AGAIN! She's honestly such a random character add... I agree that this dungeon is a fetch quest/escort mission, but I also agree that the game does it well 👍🏼 the variety in dungeon designs is definitely something this game does well!! The parallels between this dungeon and the tower of the gods are something that I didn't pick up on before, so I appreciate you pointing that out! Even though they most likely aren't the same place lol the dominion rod is such a weird item... YEESSS THE TEMPLE OF LIGHT!!! I definitely agree with your theory about this being it!!! That makes so much sense lolol 😂 Navi 💚 7 figures... 🤔 Yeah, that checks out lol 😝

Great video man, i really enjoy these

the music in this dungeon actually kinda reminds me of hazy maze cave from mario 64

Sudden jump to either during the seven year time gap in Ocarina of Time or during the adult Link portion of Ocarina of Time due to the fact that the Master Sword isn’t in the pedestal in the past. Either way, Twilight Princess Link affects the events of the Adult Timeline.

I don't know, as someone who hates and fears spiders a lot, I found squashing Gohma with a giant fist really satisfying, but I get your point

Well now that we know of the Zonai, perhaps they built it?

Outstanding video, sir. 14:10: Rauru looks just like my dad!!! 🥲

😮I can’t believe I missed this live stream. My second favorite Zelda game❤️❤️❤️

YESSSS I love this dungeon!!! that's a really interesting idea that the temple of Time is actuality the temple of light!!

While this is the first 3D dungeon to have eight floors, A Link to the Past had two dungeons with eight floors (Ice Palace and Ganon’s Tower)

I bet the developers were thinking wait we made the game too sirires so let's add something funny

@captburgerson you finished my thought for me so perfectly--I had reached (partially) the same conclusion that you did: that the "foyer" of the dungeon was the actual Temple of Time from Ocarina of Time, somehow sealed away in the Sacred Realm since then, the door never having been opened, in this, the child timeline, and with this adult Link pulling the blade, access being granted through the never-happened Navi window. What I had not put together was that the rooms after that--the playable bit of the temple where the music changes--is the Temple of Light as mentioned/inhabited by Rauru. This makes complete sense, I totally agree with this, it explains so much. It made the wannabe-Hyrule-historian inside resonate like a tuning fork haha This temple would probably be my favourite (or at least in the running) if the boss were not such a letdown. After all this history and ethereal beauty, to have something that belongs in a forested environment, in a more "earthly" dimension makes no sense at all. I almost feel like it would have been more appropriate to have a Phantom Ganon battle here, something that goes with the transgressive nature of violation/bloodshed in the Sacred Realm, with perhaps a tie to the greater, era-spanning plotline. Great video, as usual

actually combining your idea with the games idea would of been really great imagine that the small red eye gohma functions just like the dominion rod and it could hop into and out of different statues and control them so the boss would just be gohma till it hops into an armored statue and then its armogohma a spider controlled armored statue

I really like the idea of going through the temple of time and I agree having dungeon variation is important (ocarina wouldn’t be as good if every dungeon was like the water temple). However, when I recently played the game for the first time, this was my least favorite dungeon, the linear structure was jarring coming off of snowpeak, and I didn’t find the puzzles in the dungeon to challenge the player enough. Most of the rooms are very straightforward and easy to figure out, and I was out of the dungeon in about 45 minutes. I also don’t appreciate how the dungeon is almost a carbon copy of how the tower of the gods in wind waker played out (command melody/dominion rod, linear tower-like structure, same color palette etc) I just didn’t really have much fun when I went through the dungeon. Still another banger of a video though, nice to see other views on these dungeons 🔥

Hmm, to be honest I've always belived that the dungeon always existed within the temple of time even in OoT- its just that the goddess or Rauru had no use for OoT Link to be present in it; but Twilight Princess Link is meant to be in it in a certain era of history (likely OoT's era); which is why he gets transported back in time to when it's perfectly upkept and pristine. OoT Link would either be out and about in his times Hyrule, with the master sword of that time with him- or still sleeping in the chamber of tge sages after drawing it as a child; leaving the pedestal empty even when Twilight Princess Link travels back to his era and possibly light sage Raru distracted watching over OoT Link and not intervening witg TP link while hes in the past. The time travel point itself is the doors of the Temple, which is the only entrance/exit in tte building, so that TP Link can't mess with anything in the past outside the confines of the temple (though it would have been realllly nice to be able to look out the windows and see if castle town is actually out there)- effectively sealing him in one place in time, sorta like Hyrule castle did in Wind Waker. The dungeon itsekf is full of OoT symbolism as well- the Ghomas, the symbol of the sage of light being omnipresent through the entire structure. Id even say that the darknjts are meant to parallel the tye ones in OoT as well- mainly like how they were used in the Spirit temple. I aslo really appreciate the decrepit broken nature of the hallway to the boss chamber- its a nice depiction that there's still a dark brokeness even in this pristine building- its dark and dismal like an actual dungeon only in this low floor of the building. And of course Armoghoma itself (while a fairly weak boss) always just seemed like yet anotger direct call to the OoT Ghoma of the Deku Tree- including the dark confined chamber and the whole, 'look up' thing; which just further screams to me that TP link is in the OoT era.

This is my second favorite dungeon in the game, first being Arbiter's Grounds. I am a sucker for gothic architecture. And while the cut Gohma fight would have been amazing, my arachnophobia still made the fight we had tense with the realistic way the thing moved. All my nope, but in this context that is a great thing, and the showing of the life cycle stages of the Gohma species was a wonderful, horrible touch. Arbiter's Grounds still scratches that itch I have for dark crypts and forgotten unholy grounds to explore and unravel more though.

temple of time is one of the good linear dungeons. also has the best use dungeon restructuring in the game. the only knock i have against it is that the dungeon is kind of slow in the first half and the micro challenges are usually average. how it handles the dungeon item is done really well though. so yeah overall a very solid dungeon.

I have pretty severe arachnophobia, but normally I'm okay with video games. But this games spiders always terrified me, and it all culminated in armaghoma giving me literal nightmares as a kid. While the boss fight itself is really underwhelming the design alone has been the main deterrent against me replaying this game. Even as an adult I can't stand looking at the thing.

Awesome vid, u desevre more views! Subscribed!

At the beginning of Twilight Princess: Zelda Dungeons are very deliberate in their naming, so I believe this must have been a temple of some kind even if it isn't the same forest temple. Halfway through: the place called the Temple of Time isn't actually the Temple of Time, fuck it!

Notification and premier gang

I just had a thought. This game takes place in the child time line, after link returns the master sword to the temple of time. If this temple is the temple of time and you are sent back in time… why is the master sword gone? Like yes you have it but there should be the same sword already in the pedestal

It reminds me of Anor Londo and vice-versa

Ouuuu whats that song at the beginning of the intro? sounds coool

The temple of light in the sacred realm was repurposed by the gods to serve as the tower of the gods in the adult timeline. It's not visible behind the castle (formerly the temple of time) in ww because when the tower was magically raised from the sea, it was actually pulled from the sacred realm into hyrule.

What is that intro theme?

Great video. Not a fan of this dungeon and even less of boss. Agree boss shoulda lost armor then had 2 better large 2nd phase. Like every hit with statue damages armor but breaks statue until all 4 used then you use rod to control spiders armor so it is like a giant spider vs mech spider battle. Or coulda just been controlling large statue 1st phase to break off armor then spider vs link 2nd phase

I love you. Notice me senpai sama

I love you

I hated the repeated Skull kid fights in this game tbh