How Stopping Zelda’s Credits Creates a Broken World
What if you disrupted one of the most crucial moments in Zelda? Would you find yourself in a world full of strange doors? How about a moment frozen in time that feels like a weird liminal space? Well today, oh today, we’re going to have all of that! I’m going to completely mess up the credits sequence to Ocarina of Time, and I’m going to show you just how bizarre things can get. I hope you enjoy! A few weeks ago I embarked on an adventure to arrest Link at very weird moments in the game. And part of that unfinished adventure actually led me to focusing on the ending credits. So for a very quick recap: The Gerudo guards, when summoned anywhere in the game, can arrest Link and warp him back to the jail or other weird areas. And so, during the final fight with Ganondorf I wanted to summon these guards to see what would happen. So like when Ganon’s going down for the count, and Zelda’s blasting him with his energy, we can get arrested and get warped to the jail in Gerudo Valley. Or, if we wait just a moment
longer, Link starts tearing into Ganon’s face with the Master Sword. And of course a guard sees this and arrests Link for assault with a deadly weapon. I think that’s like seven years, buddy! Now if seven years went by in the blink of an eye but uhh… Link this time you’re actually going to have to wait it out! That’s uh what happens when you stab someone in the face! So it is this final conclusion that starts the credits sequence to the game. And so the credits advance for a bit, which I’ll go back to in a second, but we get to the scene where Ganondorf is thrown into the white void - the Sacred Realm where he’s trapped. And you may have seen this in a previous video, but summoning a guard here… umm well… the guard actually stands on top of Ganondorf’s chest! Ganondorf is apparently right below the floor of this white void, and so any object odr character can stand on top of him. And um the guard actually tried to arrest Ganondorf?
And the game just crashed. So it looks like the guards’ powers do indeed have a limit to them. But it was the start to this credits sequence that really got my mind going. I realized at that moment that I wanted to explore the credits sequence in a different way than just summoning guards, and I restarted the credits sequence. Now there was a shot that I skipped before that I didn’t talk about, which is actually the Chamber of Sages. Normally after Ganondorf gets
smashed in the face, Zelda uses her up smash and we are taken to this sacred realm. Now the Sages normally appear around this room on the different pedestals, and they create this giant vortex, which eventually pulls Ganondorf in and locks him into that white void. But the Chamber of Sages is a place that you can never actually explore in the game. Every time you’re there it’s a cutscene, and there’s no way to walk around or check it out. So this time I wanted to give myself access to the Chamber of Sages. And so I did! I broke away from the cutscene and Rauru was just sorta staring me down as I walked around this room. Now what is interesting is that there’s actually
invisible walls all around this center island - we cannot run off the edges of this platform! We will simply bonk our head and we will stay inside. And honestly what I thought was kinda interesting, is that the floor here actually is water? It plays the water sound effects as you walk around. So ah… maybe this will be another fishing spot I can check out in the future!? But as we advance the cutscene we can see that certain characters basically turn to these balls of energy early and other characters, like Saria, do not. And we can basically walk up to her and she’s frozen in place, and Link is questioning his existence at the moment - he’s in this weird watery liminal space and he doesn't know what to do? But it isn’t long until the vortex forms and starts overtaking the arena. And Link is sitting there, bored out of his mind, as this giant vortex consumes the map, and uh, yeah, Link could care less. And this flushes down Ganondorf, like a giant toilet, into the Sacred Realm. Now this takes us back to that white room we were in before with Ganondorf, but this time instead of spawning a guard, I want to load in Link. Link is normally not here,
but we can load Link in and we can walk all over Ganondorf. It’s like he’s trapped under a glass floor - he’s just floating in place and he can’t do anything! So of course I decide to talk to him, I just pull up my ocarina and blast the worst concert he has ever heard! And Ganondorf just sits there, in agony, suffering, and wishing it would all end… But uh casual torture aside, something really interesting about this room is that if we play the Sun Song, well it does initiate a warp, but it takes us to the cutscenes where the Goddesses are normally flying through the skies. So the map fades out and next thing we know we’re up in the sky, and it’s raining energy all around us. And at this point we can just wander around. But, we kinda come to a dead end here because there’s nothing we can do, but also if we were to die (say we fall through this invisible floor to our death) well it just loads up this room again! It is a never-ending cycle where Link is stuck up in the sky. But that’s the beauty of branching timelines man! We’re just gonna leave this Link here to suffer FOREVER, and uhhhhh we’re gonna move on! Now the next scene in the credits sequence (or the ending sequence) is Link and Zelda in the sky.
She’s basically demanding Link to give back the Ocarina of Time so she can play Zelda’s Lullaby, which I always thought the Song of TIme would have been more appropriate? But anyways she plays Zelda’s Lullaby to warp us back to being a kid. Now, you're going to see some footage right here where I tried arresting Link on this map, umm yes I was still doing that (I couldn’t resist), and you’ll see that the illegal transfer of Link giving the ocarina to Zelda… well that arrest crashes the game. This is a NO OCARINA Zone and they totally just broke the law! And if we try this at a different point in the cutscene, like when Link starts getting teleported away, well we can interrupt that with a guard… and that ALSO crashes the game. So getting arrested during a cutscene on this map always makes the game crash, but let’s rewind time a little bit! No more guards, no more breakin’ the law, let’s actually explore this map.
So Link’s standing there, and he just gets a voice in his head to just ignore Zelda and start wandering around. We start walking across the sky exploring the Beautiful Blue Beyond all around us, and honestly this room, this skybox, kinda goes on forever! But something I thought that was really cool, and probably unintentional, it’s just the way it lines up, is that if we die on this map umm it perfectly lines up! So if Link just casually decided “oh I want to skydive,” well we can arrange that! And as he’s falling, as he falls out of the sky, he actually unloads and loads into Hyrule Field! I dunno. Again, this is just coincidental, this is just the way the game’s programmed, but I think that it’s kinda neat that we fell out of the sky, and like this was the area that I visualized we were above this whole time. So it just seems really appropriate that we appear
here. Going back into the sky and back into the cutscene, we can’t escape our teleportation as well. So if Zelda starts to play the Ocarina fo Time, Link gets pulled into the air. But we can make Link break out of this and uhhh Zelda’s like forever stuck playing the ocarina? And there’s like the teleportation animation but neither of these things do anything? Trying to float Link up this magical tunnel of light reveals that there’s no warp up there, it is actually part of the cutscene that does the warping, but in this state we can actually do something kinda funny! We can go beside Zelda, who’s playing the Ocarina of Time, and pull out the Ocarina of Time ourself. There's no point in the game removing the ocarina because at this point the player
never regains control of their character, so uh we actually have it this entire time! So we can play a song next to Zelda as she's staying there frozen against her will, creepily staring into the sky. So we're actually going to stop right here because I see tons of questions in the audience. Let's see… uh you over there! Oh what's that? You wanna know what happens when you play the Sun Song out here in the sky? Well you're in luck because I did that, and it took us to Hyrule Field at night! Similar to falling into the great beyond, warping with the Sun's Song actually takes you to the same area on the same map. Okay next question! Aha yes the Sky Police… how can we not talk about that… again. Well, it turns out that the cutscene was actually the thing that stopped the guard from arresting us. When there’s no cutscene going on,
and we summon a guard, well getting arrested uh doesn't crash things - it takes us to jail like it normally should. Okay next question! Wait, what? Can we stand inside of Zelda, and make her face our face? (That's… that's a little creepy dude!) But I bet you're all curious! We can indeed fuse our faces together and stand inside of Zelda becoming one. We grab those earrings from Dragon Ball Z and we fuse together, creating this uh overlapping monstrosity! Doing this causes the gods to weep and the sky just uh kind of disappears? So we're out here, trapped with Zelda, in this black void full of clouds and uh yeah that's a thing. Okay
uh no more questions from the audience, we are moving on… uh forget this ever happened! Up next is actually where the real fun begins! We are only at the beginning of this journey, and I have so much more to show you! At this point the credits actually begin to roll, and each credit’s overlay takes place on a different map. And a good deal these maps actually have some pretty cool things to show off! So the very first thing we see is Gerudo Valley - there's this shot where the camera is moving slowly and you can't see this, but Link is actually hidden on this map. Link is at the beginning of the map, off camera and if we restore access to this map so that Link can walk around, there's some pretty interesting things to see! So what I find really cool about this version of the map is that the bridge is completely gone - it's like it never existed. It's not like they just unloaded the bridge - the actual cliff side that was carved out for the bridge is patched up. And as you can see if I take Link over here,
well the collision's a little bit weird. There's certain areas I can fall through and things like that, but you'll see that they still have the gate to the bridge, but it's hidden underneath rock, and it's out of view. So the camera for the shot can never actually see this bridge piece. And I thought this was really interesting because it's kind of an odd choice? It makes this map sort of an outlier compared to everything else we see. Because this is supposed to take place in the future… yet something happened here? The world terraformed? I have no idea! The next shot in the credit sequence is the Jail and the Valley, and Link isn't actually loaded on this map. Loading Link back into this map kind of shows that there's really nothing here,
it's empty, and it's really not worth exploring, so we're gonna move on. Now when the credits get to Kakariko Village, um Link is hidden off-camera near the entrance. So child Link is present and this town is full of so many different secrets! Now of course before knowing this I started walking to the center of the town to see if anything was different. I was looking for covered up things, or deleted things similar to the Gerudo Valley Bridge. And uh what I found was a floating door?! Now the Construction / the Shooting Gallery building was gone. There was nothing there and there was just this door,
standing up in the middle of nowhere, and uh leading to nowhere, and of course I wanted to go inside, so I grabbed the handle walk through the door, and… the game crashed! Note to self: if you stumble upon a supernatural door in the middle of nowhere, that leads nowhere, don't go through it! So putting this back up, going through the door at all from either side, crashed the game. And this is when I realized that somehow I had forgotten that the shooting gallery door is always here! Like I got extreme deja vu, because like moments after this happening I remember back in like 2015 or 2016 when I was making my first Zelda videos, I discovered it! I found it! And then I just forgot? Ha I guess my memory just kind of uh cleaned it up and got rid of it? But if we go to Kakariko Village as a child, the door is actually hidden behind this pile of bricks. If we were to clip into this pile of bricks, we can stand there and see the door in front of us, and we can actually go through the door and go into the Shooting Gallery! So yeah there's like a mysterious warp to the future right here. But this is really only the beginning of the weird
things that were within this village, because as I started to go around the town, I realized that all the doors were wrong. The first door I opened took me to a house interior in Hyrule Castle Town. And when I exited that door, it took me to the back alley except all the textures were cut-off. So normally there is a image projected over this back alley that makes it look like a back alley, but as you can see, the collision map can be seen through the top of the image. And this is normally not like that. Going back to the Twilight Zone which is Kakariko Village, some houses took me to the interior of other houses, and then the front door to that house would take me out of a different house. So I kind of felt like I was in an episode of Scooby-Doo
when they were in those hallway scenes and they're opening all the different doors and coming out the doors in the background and the monsters chasing them - that was basically happening in Kakariko Village, and um the monster included! I just casually strolled into this one house and the next thing I knew I came out of the Boss door in the Shadow Temple! Who knew there was a portal straight to the shadow temple in someone's house in Kakariko Village?! Why have they not condemned this house and sealed it up with bricks? There's another house that took me to the Windmill, and another one to the interior of the Deku Tree! And walking up to the Windmill and going through that door took me to the Potion Shop in Hyrule Castle Town. Now all the main exits and entrances to this area, in terms of the world map, do behave as usual. It's only the loading zones in the interior of the town that wrong warp us to different places. But, it's time to move on. Next up we have the Goron City, and honestly there wasn't really much here? The map was kind of empty, and I had a hard time exploring it. And a lot of these maps are actually like this, they don't have anything really unique about them, they're just sort of barren. So Death Mountain, the exterior, is basically the same thing, as is Lake Hylia. I swam across Lake Hylia just to check some stuff out, but ultimately there was
kind of nothing there. Inside Zora's Domain I sort of did the same thing - I try to make my way to at least a loading zone, so I made my way around and down to the shop, but it took me into the shop so nothing here was out of the ordinary. In Kokiri Forest we have this overhead shot that looks down upon the Deku Sprout, and if we interrupt this cutscene we can actually talk to the Deku Sprout, and he basically talks to us normally. So of course I tried to make my way back to the town
area of Kokiri Forest, and everything was sort of unloaded due to the camera. But entering a place showed that there were no wrong warps present (at least to my knowledge) so I moved on. And now we get to something that's kind of cool! So there is a shot in the credits where Epona runs across Hyrule Field by herself. And what's neat is if we take control of Epona at this moment, well we're just Epona! Link is nowhere to be found, and Epona can move around freely, and we can control her. Now there are some drawbacks - um there is no way to get OFF Epona because there is no rider,
and also because there's no rider, being Link we can't use any of the carrots to boost us and make us run faster. So I was just kind of running around the field and I wanted to see what happened if I tried to exit to a loading zone. Well um because there's no Link, that means we can't load into different areas. We merely reach the loading zone, like in Gerudo Valley, and it comes
to a point because we can't go any further because we never triggered the warp. So I spawned Link on the map, and he was like in the middle of Hyrule Field, and had to like… I guess make both of them meet up? (laughs) Which is a bit difficult because Epona’s controls are different than Link’s, so it took some testing, and what I realized was Link cannot get on top of Epona at all, um which makes sense because she's sort of in a state where she already has a rider except, the rider doesn't exist. So I decided to run alongside Link and follow him so I can make Link run to Gerudo Valley and see what happened when that warp was triggered. And nothing really out of the ordinary
happened, uh we just load into Gerudo Valley as normal. And really there's nothing else here. Rewinding time and going back to that credits shot where Epona is running across the field, if we actually were to just leave her run across the field and extend the camera, we'll see that she reaches the edge of the map… or at least where the culling takes place and it enters a black void. And Epona just runs across and then just freezes in place once she gets off-camera. As the credits progress the next place on our radar is Lon Lon Ranch, where that big party is going on! And before that party begins, we can see a shot where the camera is moving and we can see the Sage’s fire on a black background. Trying to spawn Link in at this moment (laughs) is interesting because we load in on a completely black map. But not in a way where we can actually see Link - the lighting effects for this map make it completely dark no matter what.
And the only light that we have is if we let Navi come out. I didn't realize I was actually in Lon Lon Ranch until I wandered around a bit, and I eventually came across a fence in front of me, and the way it was lit up by Navi, I could tell by the shape of it that it was the fence that goes around the actual center of the Ranch. So I basically wandered around in complete darkness! I eventually made my way to the far building which is a silo, and there's a wooden door there. I could see the wooden door (that's the only thing I could see) and upon opening this door it took me to the Deku Tree. And this is because the warp value for this door is just the default value, which is zero zero zero zero, which takes you to the Deku Tree, which has that value. But now it's time to turn on the lights and actually view the celebration! So it's interesting because every time the map reloads, it loads in a different set of actors who are celebrating in the camera shot.
So if we check out the very first group of people, we can see that no one here really has collision? None of these are NPCs that you can actually talk to, they're just instructed to dance uh basically forever! They all look pretty happy though dancing around this big fire! Um… And I went in front of them as Link and I accidentally tried to pull out my hook shot as a kid, and uh Link kinda just froze in place with his arm out? I couldn't do anything! It's kind of funny though because you can see Link's eyes looking around because he's like frozen in his body which won't move, but his facial expressions can still change. So upon reloading, I went to the fire just to see what it would look like, and as you can see Link is burning, but he feels no pain! And so the credits advance, and we have the next shot. And in this shot in particular, a lot of the NPCs can be talked to! They are basically plucked straight from their environments from before, and just added here. They all have their default dialogue as if you encounter them in town,
and it's done this way because it would be a wasted effort to NOT do this, because the player isn't supposed to be here - it's just supposed to be a camera shot that just moves on. So of course I get scammed into buying some bomb chus, I then go over to the milk crates and start moving them around, because normally these milk crates are here to hide the fact that these NPCs don't have legs?! So as we pull the crates away we can see that they have no legs and they're just floating there! So something that's weird, and I guess focusing on it makes it even more weird, the Music Man or the Windmill Guy who you learn the song of storms from, I don't understand how he's spinning like that? It truly sort of defies logic, and I have so many questions! Just to cover my bases, I went and checked out a different door here and it took me to the Deku Tree, so there's a good chance that every exit here (at least doorwise) will take us to the Deku Tree. But our adventure carries on, and we move on to the next shot. So the next shot, like all these, doesn't have Link loaded in… but it does have Epona loaded in as Link? So just like in Hyrule Field, if I restore movement to the scene, I can play as Epona and run around. So I knew that Link
could not climb on top of Epona, however there's another horse here! So I was thinking “well what if we spawn Link and try to move him over to this horse, and climb on top of this horse?” Of course lining this up was a pain in the butt, but I got Link over to the horse, and he was able to climb on top of it. It was kind of strange running around as two horses though? Um I don't know how to describe it? But uh because Link's on a horse that is not Epona, that means we cannot actually jump over the fence to exit Lon Lon Ranch that way. So Link kind of proved to be useless! However, him climbing on top of the horse meant the horse was now active, so um I kinda deleted Link from existence? And now we have two horses who can run and frolic together all around Lon Lon Ranch forever! I thought that was kind of neat! At least? A little bit? Maybe? Sorta? (Sorry Link) But as always, time marches on. In the next credits shot is this shot where we have
all the… like… legless NPCs? Waving? And normally the camera prevents you from seeing their legs (because they don't have any!) but if we add Link back to the scene and start walking around, we can see all these guys waving, and all of them are just floating in the air! But this map has a lot of different things on it! So there's a lady who juggles the Cuckoos, and I was kind of curious if the Cuckoos could be hit. Like could I create a Cuckoo swarm? Um unfortunately nothing affects this lady, or her birds, so that is a bust. The dancing Gerudos cannot be interacted with, although they're having a jolly good time! But the dancing couple - this couple we find in Hyrule Castle Town and I think behind the windmill? - um they can be talked to. And they have their dialogue from Hyrule Castle Town, but I just realized how weird this is? Like the woman here says that the dude is “more beautiful than the King of Hyrule” right? And then if you talk to them again, uh the dude says that she is “more beautiful than uh Princess Zelda?” But this takes place in a CHILD timeline and Zelda's like 10 years old or something like that?! Um it's a bit strange. I don't think I ever thought about that when I talked to these people in Hyrule Castle Town… uh but yeah anyways! Moving on the dancing Gorons are having a jolly time as the big boy is absolutely throwing down! He certainly has the moves… but he also may be causing earthquakes. Just like the other Gorons there is the big Goron who lays down, and we cannot talk to them, but we can run through their body, which is amusing for like five seconds. And as we phase through his body, it is now time to move on to the next shot!
Night time is here in the next shot, and people draw closer to the fire. And this is where we get to encounter those creepy townspeople who are all like swarming the stand that you can never see? And err… their faces look really weird! They are like super super low detail, and the shopkeeper himself is like basically not a person. He's like a rectangle that's floating? All these people do have quote unquote “faces” though, even though you can never see them in Hyrule Castle Town, but they do have their same dialogue. They're” itching for a sail”… even though they're just looking at a fire in front of them. Way off in the distance we find Mito and the Big Fish Boy, and neither of these people can be interacted with. And so the cutscene plays out,
and the Sages shoot across the sky. Now normally what happens next is we go to Death Mountain and all the Sages appear on top of it, but we're gonna spawn in before the Sages do, and I'm going to explore the mountain a bit. It's basically empty - there's like nothing here. And so I'm wandering around this empty mountain, and I'm trying to fumble my way to a loading zone, just so I can see if there's a wrong warp, and I make my way down to the cavern and enter it, and it takes me to the normal dungeon, but upon exiting uh the rock is there because I'm on a glitch save file. So upon spawning I'm instantly pushed out of the rock. But let's rewind time again - let's go back up top, let
these Sages load in, and THEN spawn Link onto the map. So all the Sages spawn on top of the ledge and we can go over there and just chill with them, you know hang out with the homies, but um… none of them acknowledge our existence? We're like the loser who showed up too late to the party. None of them can be talked to, and so I just uh jump off the cliff in front of them. (laughs) I don't know, I had no idea what to do so Link took a tumble! So on the credits after the Sages all exchanged their very smug looks to each other, we then find ourselves in the Temple of Time releasing our grasp sort of on the Master Sword. And the light that transported us from Zelda is here, and it's basically warping us back into time, and we're in front of the sword. But I immediately grabbed the
sword (laughs) while the cutscene’s happening, and uhhh… I reverse the flow of reverse time… and we go back to the future! Not exactly how the credits are supposed to work, but we'll take it! And again because I'm on a glitch save file, uh Ganondorf appears in front of us as if we just opened the Sacred Realm for the first time, and once again Ocarina of Time's future is flung into absolute chaos! Equally as terrifying is trying to restore movement to Link on this map with Ganondorf, because it just puts us in a completely white void - there is nothing around us. The floor goes on forever, and we are left here for all of eternity… which by this point is a VERY common outcome I must say! So we leave Link in the hyperbolic time chamber to think about his life, and we move on to a different timeline where Link does NOT grab the sword after he becomes a child again. What's interesting though is if we leave the room where this animation is taking place, this “holy light” that's shining down upon us, well anytime you go to the front of the Temple, there's actually a loading zone that loads the front of the Temple or the back of the Temple, and it's right after the Door of Time. So every time we trigger this change of scenery, the light animation starts all over again. So if it was about to end and we do this, we go back in and the light starts shining brand new, like fully restored, and we can keep doing this by walking over this loading zone, I did try to go to the front of the Temple, and I clipped through the ground, and accidentally got smashed by the door? And upon loading back in, we were in the normal Temple of Time. This finally brings us to the last shot in the credits, where Link confronts Zelda to warn her of everything that takes place in the future. Now, I tried interrupting the scene at different moments
during its… I guess story progression? For what happens in this area? So starting off trying to leave this area, and go back into the Courtyard sneaking area actually spawns me at the start of the Courtyard. This is because it's actually night time because the previous shots took place at night, and the game is still set to night time, despite it looking like daytime in the scene. And the nighttime warp does not exist because half the map doesn't exist. I go into that a bit deeper in
a different video (which I highly recommend checking out if you haven't!) But uh going back into the scene where Zelda's at, we can only Z-target her and pester her over and over again, but nothing happens. She tries her best to avoid looking at me as I backflip to impress her, but she ain't having it. Link then goes in for the hand on the shoulder, like the Triforce-bearing creep that he is, and uh I… I get frozen in place? I did that stupid hook shot thing again! But um it is kind of neat and I didn't realize this until Link was in creeper mode, that he always has the triforce on his hand in this cut scene - even when the player is controlling him! Now the very last thing that happens in the scene is that the scene turns to the sideways shot, and basically the game goes grayscale: everything turns to black and white and we're frozen as an image as the ending screen finally comes up, and the game is officially over. Now this is a image that I show onscreen, but um actually it isn't as well? I was actually able to change the camera, and the game is completely frozen, nothing can happen, we're just like frozen and statues like the Hyrule Castle in Wind Waker, and I wanted to do one last test. So of course I choose a Gerudo guard to spawn on top of me for old times sakes, and not even a Gerudo guard can save us from this frozen state in the game! They spawn in, but it is a single frame that cannot advance, and they are stuck standing inside of us, unable to arrest us, because time cannot progress from this instance. And with that final closure, the credits sequence are officially over, and I hope you learned some things! This was a long video, so if you're still here watching consider subscribing if you enjoyed this, and I will see you in the next one (which will hopefully be a bit shorter!) Thanks for watching, and cheers!
2022-09-05 17:38
