On the Never Ending Story (20-30hrs.)

At first my goal was simply to discover the cause of twilight spread across the land. Next it was to remove said twilight. How? by gaining the power of the fused shadows of course. Only this divine power given to and hidden from us by the goddesses is powerful enough to stop the sudden and devastating spread of twilight.

What happen when I was finally in possession of this deep mystical power in form of carved stone? Midna threw it at the bad guy and missed. Then the bad guy poked me in the head with a piece of glass and here I am at the in the dessert at the top of a haunted prison looking for the broken pieces of the twilight mirror.

I'm sad. Not because the story of this game isn't coherent, but because now it's starting to drag. There is good drag and there is bad drag. LOZTP is now suffering from bad drag.

Good drag is the kind of suspense oriented movement of a story from its beginning to its end that does not lose its focus on (i) the overarching plot and (ii) the continuous development of the characters. Games that take 50+ hours to beat, in my experience, require a kind of continuity that is always geared at completing the main goal through a series of mini goals.

Why is LOZTP suffering from bad drag? because it is violating it's focus on (i) and (ii) doesn't exist. First it was "restore the spirits", then it was "remove the twilight", then it was "find the fused shadow". Now its "find the broken pieces of the twilight mirror". None of these objectives are inherently the cause of bad drag, but I am having a good deal of trouble seeing how these tasks actually help me to accomplish my overarching goal i.e. restoring the realms of light and twilight back to harmony. I understand that the designers of this game are creative enough to take an arbitrary series of events, sew them together with a plot and have the game end in a way that makes sense. But as the arbitrariness of the events approach infinity, my motivation to play the game approaches zero.

I think at the core what I want more from LOZ right now is communication. I would like to have been forewarned of (at least) most of the objectives that need to be completed in order have harmony back again. But as it is each new mini-main goal seems rather pointless and that maybe not very much thought went into it or that the kind of thought had more to do with really good mini-main goals that lack relation to one another. 

I can't be too hasty to judge however, the game is not over yet. perhaps my 50+ hour self will think my 30 hour self is being silly and that maybe, just maybe a twist will come that ties all of these loose ends together and makes LOZTP worthy of its hype.  Light a candle to St. Jude.