The Benefits of Nighttime in Zelda

October 16th, 2012 by Axle the Beast

Skyward Sword had one of the most beautiful nightscapes I’ve ever seen in a video game. For me, following Fi through the nighttime Skyloft near the beginning is one of the most breathtaking moments of the game. Hearing that amazing song, with the night sky and full moon, the occasional monster attacking, while looking off toward the town lights below, was visually impressive and highly enjoyable for me.

It’s a shame that Skyward Sword, more so than most modern Zelda games, shoved night off to the side.

Night’s never exactly been a game changer in the Zelda series, but the first game to make use of a day and night cycle — Ocarina of Time — did make sure that it mattered, by having NPCs do different things or move to different places, by having Stalchildren attack you in Hyrule Field at night, and most importantly by making it so Gold Skulltulas would come out when it was dark. Later 3D games in the series have placed equal or less attention on the night, but it was always present. With Skyward Sword, they seemed to force nighttime in there as though it were some kind of requirement and not because they wanted it to be in the game. You can only change the time by sleeping in Skyloft — time doesn’t even progress on its own — and it only ever affects that area and the sidequests found within.

I think it’s safe to say that, ultimately, Nintendo should not have bothered putting the mechanic in the game unless they were going to make it involving. But I also think that nighttime had a lot of potential in that game, and it’s made me think about it in the series overall.

Like I said nighttime was beautiful in Skyloft. It reminded me of how great certain islands could look at night in The Wind Waker, particularly Windfall Island, which again had the lights in the windows and just a great feel in general. Skyward Sword also had the stealth portion in Eldin Volcano late in the game, in which the volcano erupted and covered the sky in ash. This wasn’t night but it looked nearly exactly the same, and the end result was, again, gorgeous.

I think night has its own style and aesthetic, and the Zelda series should make some effort to really make the night cool in the games it appears in. Obviously the more stylized games can naturally make it more striking, but I think emphasizing the aesthetics of night is a good idea for a Zelda game with any artstyle. Skyward Sword, for all its minimal use of it, had very striking night, and Twilight Princess did a little with this as well, especially with its unique and beautiful night song. There’s also the gameplay side, which Hanyou discussed somewhat in his article about time in Zelda, and there’s definitely a lot of possibilities for making day and night affect the gameplay.

I’m stuck more on the artistic side personally, but this is likely due to my general fascination with the night, and regardless, all dimensions of nighttime in Zelda are equally as important. How do you feel about night in Zelda? Do you want to see nighttime take on a more visually dynamic or otherwise artistic role? How about gameplay? How much should it really affect the world and characters? Tell me in the comments!

Categorized under: Discussion Questions, Editorials
Tagged: Axle the Beast, Benefits, Editorial, In, night, Nighttime, of, the, Zelda

EponasRider

unusual article but what really made you write about nighttime like are you so obsessed that you consider yourself a stalchild
- H37I
  
  strangely, if you play ocarina of time on an emulator and use a cheat to keep it at night… well, keep fighting off the stalchildren for a while and you’ll notice a change in their appearance. i’m just gonna leave it as that.
  - john
    
    i think that happens on anything if you kill enough so scary
    - H37I
      
      it doesn’t happen with any other enemy, to my knowledge.
      - john
        
        i meant, i believe you dont need to use an emulator and cheat you just have kill fast. ill be more clear from now on
      - H37I
        
        no, the cheat is to keep it at night. what i mean is that stalchildren can only stay around for so long and respawn. on a regular night, you only fight two waves of ten with a bigger one each wave. do this for at least four waves with the cheat and you’ll see what i mean.
      - john
        
        hmmmm im very bad at communicating
      - john
        
        i dont have Oot right now cause my friend is borrowing it but if i go to my neighbors house soon hell pry let me play and ill see how far i can get with biggorens sword
      - Demise
        
        what do you mean? I don’t have an emulator
Dude

I really loved the nighttime shifts in Xenoblade. The musical change and other effects really changed each area uniquely, and often for the better. I’d love to see even something as simple as this in Zelda.
- skybird11
  
  The xenoblade day/night cycle really is amazing. I love looking at the expansive night sky dotted with countless stars.
  - KidNintendus
    
    Xenoblade itself is just simply…. amazing.
machetelink

First thing I think is night time in OOT, and being six and hating it. Just skeletons and spiders and falling into holes and things I couldn’t see. Wish I were still that easily scared haha
- Demise
  
  Yeah, when I saw that SS woudn’t have the automatic night cycle I was overjoyed. In OoT it annoyed me so much, especially when I was lazy to learn the Sun’s Song and had to wait ages in front of the closed dawbridge…
  
  That said, maybe the article’s right. However since you can’t fly, having time go on would’ve sucked more than oot, but if you could fly and stuuf, only with more monsters and beautifull scenery.
H37I

imagine the fire sanctuary at night. tell me that’s not a beautiful thought.
- http://twitter.com/mikejcsauer Mike Sauer
  
  They all would have been beautiful. Any of the water areas? With the water glowing.
  - H37I
    
    yeah, but i meant a dungeon with the sky being visible. the places with water would also be very nice to see, though. and also another one, i think would be interesting to see would have to be the sand sea, especially while traveling across it.
ElizabethBathog

I was a bit disappointed that i dint get to fly when it was night. I to liked how it looked and it would have been awesome to see everything from a birds eye!
- Linkfan99
  
  It would have also been cool to fly in the starry sky, and look up at the full moon while you are soaring miles above the ground.
  - Psykikduk
    
    I remember flying through the sky, and running around Skyloft and thinking “This is beautiful, I wish I could live here” I’ve always felt that connection to someplace in a Zelda game. It was breathtaking.
- Guest
  
  I remember when I first fell off Skyloft (deliberately) at night, one of the knights caught me and her Loftwing had goggles and a helment with a headlight on it, so it could see in the dark. I kept thinking there would be a sidequest later in the game that would let me earn similar headgear for my Loftwing, but it never happened. I really wanted to fly at night and dive down to the surface.
  - Omega
    
    so did I but, I guess that aspect would make the game waaaay too large data wise
- Sir Quaffler
  
  It would have been cool, yes, but it might have been too hard to see the floating islands at night. A pitiful excuse, I know, but I’m trying to think of gameplay reasons why you couldn’t fly at night.
- Flaming Lemons
  
  What was the reason Nintendo didn’t let us go anywhere at night anyways!
  I too was disappointed, I wanted to explore the surface at night to see what it’s like but it never happened.
  - ZeldaFan4569
    
    Maybe it’s because the Wii couldn’t support all the memory it took to have a whole other world at night. Or they decided to release it before developing nighttime on the surface and in the sky
    - Flaming Lemons
      
      But Twilight Princess was For Wii and Gamecube and it still supported night time. I just don’t understand why Nintendo would do away with the full night time mechanic. Skyloft was nice but I wanted to explore more places at night.
      - ZeldaFan4569
        
        Yes, but Skyward Sword took much more memory to produce than Twilight Princess. And remember, the night time in Skyward Sword is not the same as Twilight Princess. The world stayed basically the same, but in Skyward Sword they would have to make another world while still being able to save progress that happened during the day, which would technically be a whole other place. To individually put it all in nighttime, they would have to recreate all the locations with stronger enemies and a different setting
      - Omega
        
        true story
      - Rinku
        
        skyward sword had more things packed in it then TP did
- ZeldaFAN
  
  I was dissapointed at first too but come to think of it… it would be totally useless.
  
  Fans already complained about the emptyness/nothing to explore in the overworld, so would it be any better or more fun too fly around at night? the market, Beelde’s shop and the minigames would all be closed and everything else would be the same thing just dark and perhaps with some other background music or no music at all.
  Anyway it does’nt matter much SS was still a beast of a game and perhaps Nintendo will include the “flying at night” in Zelda Wii U. I always wanted to ride Epona as Child Link in OoT but that was not allowed, and then my wish became reality in Majora’s Mask.
  - ET34
    
    Yes, but in MM, you have the bunny hood and the goron mask to get around. Epona is pointless. Well, besides for the part where you have to jump the fence to the Great Bay. Epona as Child Link in OoT would have been way more useful.
BlackRaven6695

I do agree on the subject of the artistic appeal but from a gameplay perspective it’s absence from SS didn’t bother me. In previous Zeldas, nighttime usually just meant that the awesome overworld music was going to be replaced with a slightly less awesome theme (Twilight Princess) or no music at all (Wind Waker). There weren’t enough substantial changes to make the cycle worthwhile.
Draven

Every time I read an article, I read who wrote it after I’m done. Every time I read one that I enjoy and agree with, it’s always written by you, Axle
Midna’s Sister

Nighttime is beautiful! I think Zelda should really capture the beauty of the nighttime shy, as well as the moon’s phases and clouds.
DreamCat

I would like more to take place during the night… I like the night.
LinkonthRink

I’m surprised there was no mention of MM in this, since days and nights play a huge part. Little events like the bomb theft or the Kamaro Mask etc…
- ET34
  
  I never used bombs after I got the Blast Mask…
Zoë

I never really liked Skyward Sword, mostly because it didn’t feel like a Zelda game to me. One of the reasons was because the time didn’t pass on its own. I enjoyed watching the sky slowly change into night, and then back to day. Because time didn’t flow on its own, Skyward Sword didn’t seem like a real world like the other games. Skyward Sword was a disappointment to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the game, there were just a lot of things that it could have done better.
Waker of Winds

i think that the characters should change with the day/night cycle i remember playing a game with characters that would become darker and more powerful it was amazing also i would like to see certain ways open and close with night and day, im not just talking doors and gates. im talking things that would be a brick wall during the day but a passage in the night and vice versa
darkgreyfire

That is one thing I really missed playing skyward sword. Skywards night basically contained a single side quest. They could have done so much more with it. And how mad were you the first time you tried to jump off of skyloft at night. Adding night to the mix almost doubles the size of the in game world. Each town or area containing totally new atmospheres, enemies, and quests. Adding a more realistic feel to the overall experience. Day and night passing is one tradition I want them to bring back, and stay with.
- Guest
  
  True that. I’ve said the same thing on here in the past and was slammed for it. SS only had three main areas–adding a natural night mechanic and time progression would have done wonders to increase variety and questing in the world.
  - Darkgreyfire
    
    Or an idea for a future zelda title. Have the seasons pass along with night and day. then you could get away with a small selection of places like SS, and have four different interactive worlds for each season.
- Demise
  
  How mad I was anytime I fell from Skyloft. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
http://twitter.com/mikejcsauer Mike Sauer

I liked what they had going for twilight princess in it’s early stages. Where it was so dark, you actually NEEDED the lantern. The only thing the lantern seems to be good for is lighting torches for a puzzle here and there, and for the one part of the game that I remember that really needed it…which was in the Forest when that haze settles. And the one time that you absolutely “need” to go through that, the monkey takes your lantern and does it itself. …

Point is, The night in this trailer looked so interesting.

At :34 in this video is what I’m referring to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC5dkk6sAfw

I wish the game turned out this way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRDOVNuZMBk
- http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Best/100003863840372 James Best
  
  Ah, yes. Twilight Princess’s early builds were really promising, but, unfortunately, scarcely used in the final product. If you ask me, Nintendo should look to TP’s early stages when crafting Zelda on Wii U.
Rob

I wanted the surface at night in skyward sword. If i could play the sun’s song on the Goddess
Harp…
The Hylian Monolith

Despite all the amazing tracks in SS, Fi’s theme is, without a shadow of a doubt, my favorite-in all three incarnations… that is, Follow Fi, Fi’s Goodbye, and Fi’s Graditude.
Ah…that’s mostly irrelevant. But I do like seeing what other’s favorite songs in the series is. I mean, Midna’s Goodbye, Byrne’s Theme, Dragon Roost Island, the Gerudo Valley Theme (OoT) the Hurule Field Theme(TP) the Song of Time, the Song of Healing, Twinrova’s Theme, Scrapper’s Theme, Zelda’s Lullaby, countless temple songs, my goddess. Zelda is just full of amazing songs, amazing plots, and the fun messing around of with time. Isn’t that what Zelda’s all about?
(depart’s humming Fi’s Goodbye)
- Demise
  
  Who the heck like’s Scrapper’s theme ???
http://nerdreviewstechnology.blogspot.com/ Nicholas Alexander Jabbour

I hated the way night-time confined you in Skyward Sword. In OoT, you couldn’t enter and leave castle town at night, and certain shops would close at night, but others would open. Either way, you were completely free to roam the world aside from that, and could play the Sun’s Song anytime you wanted if you needed to change. But nighttime in Skyward Sword on the other hand felt very tacked on and choked the hell out of you. You couldn’t fly anywhere, and anytime you wanted to be somewhere at nighttime, you HAD to find a bed, which wasn’t always available. And what few missions required nighttime felt tacked on. If nighttime itself was so limiting, then what was the point of making those missions night-based in the first place? Why did you have to sing with Kino at NIGHTTIME specifically? There was nothing special about night that should have required you to do that.

In short, Nintendo needs to drop the concept of night shown in Skyward Sword COMPLETELY and make it more like nighttime in previous Zelda games.
Sir Quaffler

I think they should have had the mechanic of changing day into night in all the realms, not just the sky. It would have been really cool to explore the other regions at night (and possibly even the Sandship and Fire Sanctuary at night as well, since they’re the only open-air dungeons). I’m not sure I would have liked having an automatic day-to-night progression in SS, but at least give me that option of changing it manually.

Although I’ll admit that might have lessened the impact of the Eldin eruption as well..
baileygirl99

I wasn’t ever a really big fan of night in TP, it was a bit scary and I didn’t enjoy being in the dark. Also, it was annoying to have to wait until daytime to do certain quests and whatnot. Ima hater. You may commence voting me down.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Best/100003863840372 James Best
  
  Twilight Princess’s night wasn’t that dark at all. You could see easily without the aid of another light source (e.g. your lantern). This is something I’m inclined to fault Twilight Princess with as it’s nighttime could have been used to great effect, obscuring the player’s vision and giving the lantern some use aside from lighting up the occasional hidden tunnel.
- ET34
  
  Nah, I voted you UP!!!
  - EponasRider
    
    i did too
Green_Hat_Hero

I missed the natural day to night change is Skyward Sword and thought it made the world feel a little less organic. I love the nighttime and naturally love it in Zelda as well. I really want a natural day/night cycle to make a return in the next 3D Zelda game, and hope that it effects gameplay as much as it does in games like Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker while also being beautiful.

I thought not being able to fly at night in SS was a big missed opportunity too, especially because nighttime is so gorgeous in the game.
Zachary Morris

I always wanted to see the surface at night in SS. I never got to. Lazy Nintendo.
http://www.youtube.com/user/bs88145 bs8814

I’d love to see more night in Zelda, especially nights that are peaceful in the towns with special characters that are only featured at night and in the open uncivilized areas would be filled with exclusive enemies. Whenever it is night in a village it adds a cool, calm feeling to the atmosphere. I would love to see more night in Zelda for sure.
http://www.facebook.com/people/James-Best/100003863840372 James Best

I felt nighttime was severely underused in Skyward Sword. There was no reason to keep players cooped up in Skyloft at nighttime. I wanted to explored the world below and see how it changed under the light of the moon. I wanted to fly about at nighttime.
Roth

The best thing about night in the N64 titles is the atmosphere: the chorusing sounds of nocturnal wildlife made the land feel incredibly alive, and it constantly reminded you that you were but part of nature, relative to the world and not the other way around. Nighttime has never had this depth of realism since.
wafflegoat

SS should have shown us more at night. Being stuck at Skyloft ruined it completely. I wish I could have seen the surface, or other floating islands at night. I really wanted to fly around at night.
- ET34
  
  Technically, you can go to sleep at the Pumpkin Landing, but I know what you mean.
Ninty

I’m all for a day/night element, but I’d like to have control over it as an option if it’s there (ocarina or otherwise). I hate having to wait for night to start in Twilight Princess when I decide to deviate from the main quest and find Poes that come at night.
- Darkgreyfire
  
  Agreed, it was nice to play the suns song in ocarina, or even find a bed in skyward sword to speed things up. Also, an ability to stop time would be nice too. That way if you are doing something like hunting poes, you wouldn’t have to keep stopping to move time along.
  - Ninty
    
    Yeah, the bed is a nice alternative. And you don’t really need a plot explanation for it unlike the ocarina. hehe
    
    I actually never thought of stopping time, but wouldn’t that mean Poes would just stand there? I think a better alternative could be using the item to change day or night at the push of a button with the Wii U gamepad or 3DS touch screen.
- ET34
  
  Sometimes, when I am very lazy, I just use the Sky Cannon to turn it into daytime…
  - Ninty
    
    It’s my first playthrough, and I just got to the Sky Temple yesterday. I think that’s lame though. I’d prefer to be provided an item or mechanic (beds again) early on next title.
Darkgreyfire

I’m surprised nintendo never made a zelda where instead of night and day, you had seasons passing. How great would that be to have four different atmospheres in the same place. The closest thing to that was the fishing hole from twilight princess. That would be so complex, especially if they stick with the upgrading system in skyward sword in the future. You could only find certain objects, during certain times of the year. That would be great replay ability in temples that contained outdoor areas too. Maybe you had to beat it in the summer, but if you go back to the temple in the winter, there could be places and secrets you couldn’t get to before. It would make the world four times the size in each location.
- WolfLink11
  
  I love that Idea! That sounds so cool! I vote for it!
Neutopia

Night time in Zelda definitely allows for a lot more stuff to happen, I love it when they put night sections in the game, great article!
IMFWeirdo

This is actually one of my biggest complaints of SS, that there is virtually no time change besides day/night in Skyloft. I remember when we first saw the flying demo, I was so excited to fly while the sun was setting and tinting the clouds pink. I’m still a little butthurt that I never got to experience that.
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Omega

It would have been really nice if they made a wii store with the games cheaper not unlike apps on a smartphone. in the end that would make them a lot more money
HerosShade

I have an idea about how nighttime can be expanded upon in Zelda game-play. I am not sure if this would be too complex or too much of a change in the series or not, but I am just throwing it out there.

I think it would be cool to have a dungeon that requires different times of day, primarily day and night, to complete it (kind of like how the Spirit Temple from OoT works with being both a child and adult). Perhaps a particular entrance that leads you to the boss key only opens at night but you needed to solve the first part of the temple during the day to retrieve the temple item; therefore you had to alternate between day and night. Maybe NPCs inside the temple do different things at night just like in the over-world. Or maybe the nature of the temple changes at night like how the Stone Tower temple from MM flips and is a completely new temple. Or friendly NPCs become monsters at night. Maybe Nintendo can bring back the four poe sisters… again… but require you to hunt them at night like in TP. What it time can change while you are inside a temple, not just in the over-world? And what if you have an NPC who is a friendly temple guide by day and turns on you at night. These are my thoughts, what do you guys think.