Tag: Arbiter’s Grounds

One of my favorite aspects of Twilight Princess is its appreciation for context. Just about every locale has a unique story to tell; the dungeons, especially, stand apart from those of most other Zelda games. Rather than serve as generic holy sites, each dungeon goes a long way toward giving Hyrule a lived-in feel. City in the Sky highlights an ancient civilization, while Snowpeak Ruins makes the player feel like a guest in someone’s home. That said, not having all…

My apologies for the delay in writing this review, but now I can finally cover Arbiter’s Grounds. Scary dungeons are common in the Zelda series, starting with Ocarina of Time’s Shadow Temple. The Zelda games have often had a single dungeon ripe with scary elements, and Arbiter’s Grounds continues this trend but combines it with multiple other elements, particularly those of a desert dungeon. But how does it stack up to other dungeons in general, scary or otherwise? Arbiter’s Grounds…

Happy Halloween! It’s that time of year again; children dress as goblins, ghouls or zombies, and go door to door requesting tricks or treats (but only ever get treats); and adults throw on the nearest article of rarely-worn clothing and make up some kind of costume for the party they’ll be attending. It’s also that time of year when we all consider things that we fear. In the spirit of the season, today we’ll be talking about fear in the…

Arbiter’s Grounds from Twilight Princess was an interesting dungeon… a Hyrulian prison set deep in the desert and, seemingly, run by the Sages. Being the game’s scary dungeon, it had plenty of undead and a creepy song. What a lot of people don’t realize, though, is the opening jingle of the song — that demonic breath, or growl — foreshadows something later in the dungeon, something that also happens to be one of my favorite moments in Zelda and one…