Phantom Hourglass’ amazing mistake

Below are spoilers for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for the Nintendo DS. Though nothing from the story is spoiled, be warned that a whole temple is.

In my opinion, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass is an amazing game. I’ve been a Zelda fan for a long time, however I had never played a handheld Zelda before. I expected to be overwhelmed by a full scale Zelda experience and in turn was pleasantly surprised with a much more streamlined, to-the-point adventure. This is not, however, the point of this post. For in this great game there was one thing, one amazing thing, that I just could not take: the Temple of the Ocean King.
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Realism at the core of fun

I grew up playing Civilization, all the way from Civ I with my dad to Civ IV, now. It was the first game where I ever got to wonder about converting reality into games, about taking elements from the real world and turning them into game mechanics. Of course I did not think of it in those terms back then, but I was always extremely aware of that strong bond between Civ and reality. When things that I did not know were real that I knew from Civ started appearing in the real world, that bond strengthened immensely, to the point that I learned I could trust Civ and assume that whatever it taught me was right.

So the other day I watched a Sid Meier’s video about his Dinosaur project and the reasons why it failed, which excited me very much, and I clung to every word of his as if it was imparted by God Himself. But one of the things he said caught my attention the most. It wasn’t even one of the most important things of the talk, as he just said it in passing, but coming from the designer of Civilization I just knew it to be true – very much like I knew everything Civ taught me to be true back then.

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