Ocarina Of Time’s Weirdest Room Holds My Favorite Moment In The Game

Despite its ubiquity, I tend to consider The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time‘s story the series’ most profound. Link’s triumphant journey to defeat Ganondorf is underpinned by a pervasive sense of melancholy, even in the game’s jovial ending: the celebrations highlighted in the credits are followed by two possible outcomes in the Zelda series’ convoluted timeline. Link’s adult era continues without him, and Hyrule is doomed to be flooded prior to The Wind Waker; when he’s sent back in time, he’s now an orphan in the wrong era, stripped of his destiny.

This doesn’t even take into account the timeline branch where Ganon is victorious against the Hero of Time, but the events of Ocarina itself aren’t any less tragic. Just when Link seems to be well on his way to rebuffing Ganondorf’s coup by gathering the three Spiritual Stones, the kingdom falls anyway. Link has his formative years ripped away from him while he’s effectively comatose in the Sacred Realm for seven years. He emerges to a nightmare manifest: Castle Town Market is derelict and filled with ReDead; the home he doesn’t belong to, Kokiri Forest, is overrun with monsters; Gerudo City is empty, its residents waiting to be consumed by an ancient, resurrected dragon; and Zora’s Domain is frozen in eternal ice.

Seeing Zora’s Domain as an adult Link has always pained me. Going to meet the Zora and Lord Jabu Jabu was the final adventure before entering the Temple of Time, and seeing it now frozen shows that not only has Ganondorf won, there’s nowhere left untouched. Before the more physical horrors of the Shadow Temple and the desert odyssey to the Spirit Temple, Ocarina of Time reaches what I think is its most emotional moment in a rather innocuous place: the Ice Cavern.

Ice Cavern Has Ocarina Of Time’s Strangest Room

Getting The Iron Boots & Learning The Serenade Of Water

The Ice Cavern is just a mini-dungeon, a prelude to Ocarina of Time‘s wrongfully maligned Water Temple, but it contains possibly the single most interesting room in the game. When you reach the end of the Ice Cavern, you fight a White Wolfos, get the Iron Boots, and learn the Serenade of Water in a space that truly looks like nothing else in Hyrule. The walls are covered in a blue, star-like pattern that appears to be reflected behind itself multiple times into a deep black field.

It’s wondrous but also confusing – what are the walls supposed to be made out of? Technical limitations don’t seem to be the cause of such an odd design choice. The bizarre walls are clearly intentional; the cutscene of Link and Sheik playing “Serenade of Water” strings together sweeping shots of the walls in extreme close-up. While I truly enjoy the design direction in this one room, it’s not necessarily the interesting walls that make me so fond of it. This is where Sheik gives my favorite monologue in all of Ocarina.

Sheik’s Best Monologue Comes Before Teaching Link “Serenade Of Water”

“Time Passes, People Move… Like A River’s Flow, It Never Ends…”

After defeating the White Wolfos and acquiring the Iron Boots, Sheik tells Link, among other things, the following:

“Time passes, people move…. Like a river’s flow, it never ends… A childish mind will turn to noble ambition… Young love will become deep affection… The clear water’s surface reflects growth…”

It’s poetic and moving, but the low, canted angle that focuses on Sheik as he delivers the lines may be a clue to a deeper reading: though directed at Link, the monologue isn’t necessarily about him, highlighting through omission the unique plight of the protagonist. It’s the final line, “The clear water’s surface reflects growth,” that I think is the key to understanding the subtle tragedy of Link’s experience in Ocarina of Time. A reflection isn’t a true image, only a mirror, and Link hasn’t truly grown, even if he’s physically older.

Some maturity was certainly required for a young Hylian to collect the Spiritual Stones and later brave the dangers of the Forest and Fire Temples, but Link has been denied the opportunity to grow – he’s a child in a teenager’s body. Each phrase in Sheik’s Ice Cavern monologue only relates to Link tangentially. Time passed for Link in the Sacred Realm, but he did not move. “Noble ambition” is a generous re-framing of providence thrusting an orphaned child toward his dangerous destiny. “Young love will become deep affection” is, at face value, a simple foreshadowing of Princess Ruto’s feelings towards Link evolving as she transitions into her role as the Sage of Water.

Invoking water’s reflection later feels like, in hindsight, the start of a pointed through line that culminates in the Water Temple mini-boss fight against Dark Link, which, despite having less narrative significance than Morpha’s, is much more poignant regarding Link. Dark Link’s room appears as a shallow pool with an inexact horizon, surrounding a tiny island with a dead tree. Link’s reflection in the clear water disappears after he passes the tree, seemingly manifesting into Dark Link himself. The illusory walls before Dark Link is defeated evoke a similar kind of infinity that the starry walls in the Ice Cavern do.

“Time passes, people move,” and Link must now reckon with himself, a person plucked out of time and not allowed to move from the course assigned to him. His childhood friends will never grow old with him, and the kingdom he had just started getting to know was destroyed. Seven years were taken by the Sacred Realm, and when they’re given back at the end of Ocarina of Time, they’re exchanged for Link’s purpose in life.

Ocarina Of Time’s Reflection On Growing Up Makes It Timeless

A Story About The Unceasing March Of Time

Link isn’t typically thought of as a tragic figure, but he certainly is in Ocarina of Time, and his status as such is reinforced by Twilight Princess, where the Hero of Time reappears as the Hero’s Spirit, a specter that laments his stolen legacy in the timeline’s child era. Ocarina of Time, however, isn’t singularly about Link, and it has a profound fascination with its eponymous phenomenon. The seven years that elapse in-game provide its deep melancholy, even if most character arcs are ultimately hopeful.

Saria doesn’t age, but Kokiri Forest enters a new era when the Deku Tree Sprout replaces its decaying predecessor. A young Goron named Link shows that cultural touchstones are being actively created, with hope passed between generations despite near-constant turmoil. The sun quite literally rises on a new day as Lake Hylia refills with water when Link defeats Morpha in the Water Temple. Link methodically undoes the damage wrought by Ganon across Hyrule while he inevitably works toward his triumphant but tragic end.

Outside the game, though, Sheik’s words in the Ice Cavern only grow more poignant as I regularly replay Ocarina of Time while I too age. Time does pass and people do move. My own childish mind turned from thinking how cool it was that Link was now old enough to wield the Master Sword, to the noble ambition of holding onto some semblance of youth, hindsight affording me the perspective to recognize the tragedy of lost time. Young love has become deep affection. Like the surface of clear water, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has long served as an important reflector on my life, a constant but evolving text that seems to find new meaning every time I decide to revisit it.