Hi, I've been playing Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Nintendo Gamecube this week. I'm at about 7ish hours into the game and am close to entering the third dungeon. Here are some quick thoughts.

The first thing about Twilight Princess that really caught my fascination was this beautiful dog that lives in the village with Link.

After fawning over this precious sweetie for a moment, feelings of shame started to wash over me. I am probably the first person to get snarky about ‘Petting the Dogs’ in video games. I think the ideas of representation have so much effort invested in them from people all over, and I think that media representation is not going to be the solution that people want it to be; so it is even more frustrating to see people take stock of art through the means of puppy-dog implementation. As if, 1) that could ever be considered of representative of any sort of political/moral/artistic standpoint, and also 2) that it could be a means of making progress toward that standpoint through internet posting and consumer decision making. Puppy dogs can't save us so I'm a little irked when the people in my computer move and talk like they can.

Ordon Village is justifiably cozy, and filled with all kinds of heccin’ puppos and pettable goats. So, despite my obnoxious cynicism, I was suprised to find myself really charmed by the little village, like more than usual. To me it wasn’t much about the waterwheel or the pumpkin patches—I think it was primarily the very obvious, but subtly communicated, community dynamics on display. Everyone has a clear place in this community and they all have unique relationships to Link which helps sell the cozy farm wholesome experience, at least to me. I think this was done well and probably something I’ll remember for a while.

I don’t think I’m very deep into this game. I’m at a little under 1/3rd of the way through at the very most, and so far this game is very much on rails, more so than some of the other Zelda games I have played before. Not only is the game very linear, so much is happening at all times. I am being whisked from set piece to set piece at an alarming rate. The wolf segments so far have been very strange (I don’t know if I like getting to preview the newest map chunk through wolf eyes), There’s a horse combat boss fight that you’re thrust into after learning how to sumo wrestle and getting the iron boots, which have more uses than you maybe had prior considered because they upcoming dungeon has magnet mechanics (this goes for the boomerang that you got last dungeon as well, I’m guessing it will be a trend). I’m almost overwhelmed with how much is happening and how detail rich this game is. I’m feeling just a bit unsure if that’s what I’m going to walk away thinking about when it’s all over. There’s a Zelda formula, and by the point of Twilight Princess’ development I’m confident the dev team was aware and that might have motivated all of the detours and new mechanics and twists on that formula. But is that going to amount to something more than just subversion for me? I can’t say yet but I’m cautiously optimistic; I’m having a lot of fun so far.