GAMINGUNLIMITED

Tomb RaideR SpecialThis issue contains the best of Lara Croft throughout the years.

Top Ten 2012The very best of the best in gaming that we saw last year, a must-have list.

The legend beginSLet’s talk about The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

CONTENTSbeST upcoming gameS of 2013In this page we’ll take you through a brief summary of the best and most anticipated games that will be released this year.

a SuRvivioR iS boRnLara Croft comes back in this new Tomb Raider Reboot, with a brand new story that tells us the origins of the great explorer we all know and love.

17 yeaRS of laRa cRofTShe started out in the Play Station many years ago when graphics where quite as good. We’ll take you down to memory lane in this short flashback.

Top 10 gameS of 2012Let’s go back and take a look at the best games of last year, there pretty good ones, but that’s just our humble opinion.

The legend beginSThe Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Let’s talk about the masterpiece that is this game and enojoy a bit of nostalgia.

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BEST UPCOMING GAMES OF 2013

beyond: Two SoulS is a psychological thriller from the makers of the award-winning game Heavy Rain. Players will live the life of Jodie Holmes, a young woman who possesses supernatural powers through her psychic link to an invisible entity. Experience the most striking moments of Jodie’s life as your actions and decisions determine her fate.

Beyond: Two Souls launches October 8 exclusively on PlayStation 3. GameS-pot will have more coverage of the event, including an interview with Quantic Dream co-CEO Guillaume de Fondaumière.

Cage also said tonight that 75 percent of players finished his last game, Heavy Rain. This figure is up from the 74 percent reported in 2011.

He said typically, just 20 percent of players see a game through to its comple-tion. However, this figure was higher for Heavy Rain.

The laST of uS is a post-apocalyptic action shooter game developed by Naughty Dog. Joel, a brutal survivor, and Ellie, a brave younger teenage girl who is wise beyond her years, must work together if they hope to survive their journey across the US.

Just this week, Naughty Dog confirmed that The Last of Us would feature multiplayer, but not all were thrilled by this decision. Responding to comments on the PlayStation Blog, Naughty Dog community strategist Arne Meyer defended the PlayStation 3 game’s multiplayer component. He said resources were never taken away from single-player to work on multiplayer.

It was not much of a surprise for The Last of Us to feature multiplayer. The company’s most recent games, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, both featured multiplayer components after the original Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune did not.

The Last of Us is Naughty Dog’s first game outside of the Uncharted universe since 2005. It is a postapocalyptic survival game set in the United States that follows the efforts of main characters Joel and Ellie as they fight to survive.

The laST guaRdian is the newest project from Fumito Ueda, the creator of ICO and Shadow of the Colossus. Creative director Fumito Ueda tells fans to “keep an eye out” for an official announcement from Sony on long-awaited action adventure game.

Formally announced at the 2009 Electronic Entertainment Expo, The Last Guardian tells a boy-and-his-dog tale, where the dog is a giant and feathered, yet seemingly amiable, beast.

Developer Team Ico has not been forthcoming with specific plot details, but gameplay will involve the boy working with his companion to navigate a va-riety of environmental puzzles.

The Last Guardian has made “slow progress” for years. He also said Sony has no deadline whatsoever for the game.

TOP TEN BEST OF

2012

In Okami, the player takes the role of the mythi-cal sun goddess Amaterasu, in the form of a wolf. Her task is to restore color (or ‘life’) to the world by destroying the monsters who have stolen it. Since Amaterasu is a diety, there are naturally people who worship her and people who don’t.

Mark of the Ninja is a side-scrolling stealth action game from Klei Entertainment that combines fluid 2D animation with intense stealth gameplay. Ob-serve your enemies from afar, manipulate them with your tools, execute your plan with precision. But careful, you’re as fragile as you are powerful.

With Far Cry 3, players step into the shoes of Jason Brody, a man alone at the edge of the world, strand-ed on a mysterious tropical island. Players dictate how the story unfolds, from the battles they choose to fight to the allies or enemies they make along the way.

in Dishonored, approach each assassination with your own unique style. Use shadow and sound to your advantage to traverse silently through lev-els unseen by enemies, or attack foes head-on as they react to your aggression. Negotiate your way through the levels and dispatch your targets.

In Borderlands 2 Play as one of four new vault hunt-ers facing off against a massive new world of crea-tures, psychos and the evil mastermind, Handsome Jack. Make new friends, arm them with a bazillion weapons and fight alongside them on a relentless quest for revenge and redemption.

Xenoblade Chronicles throws you into a universe bursting with imagination. Take hold of an ancient sword that offers glimpses of the future, customise your characters extensively and discover a world where your relationships with others matter. This RPG is sure one for the books.

Enter the world of Journey, the third game from indie developers that game company (creators of “flOw” and “Flower”). Journey is an interactive parable, an anonymous online adventure to experience a person’s life passage and their in-tersections with other’s. You wake alone and surrounded by miy miles of burn-ing, sprawling desert, and soon discover the looming mountaintop which is your goal. Faced with rolling sand dunes, age-old ruins, caves and howling winds, your passage will not be an easy one. The goal is to get to the mountaintop, but the ex-perience is discovering who you are, what this place is, and what is your purpose. Travel and explore this ancient, mysterious world alone, or with a stranger you meet along the way. Soar above ruins and glide across sands as you discover the secrets of a forgotten civilization..

ourney isn’t so much a game, as an experience. The fact that it explains NOTH-ING to you, and gives you no background, is part of the charm. You get into this world, and you don’t know why, but you HAVE to get to that mountain. Graphically it blows everything out of the water. Not to mention the multiplayer element is pure genius.

You can run into anyone in this world and you don’t know who they are, but you have to work together. For all you know, you could be playing with a Nazi, but you feel an emotional connection to them that I haven’t felt in a game since Morrowind. Then at the ending (not gonna spoil it) I actually cried. Journey deserves what it gets, and what it gets is a solid 10!

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Persona 4: The Golden is a remastered version of PS2 classic Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4. It takes place in the fictional, rural Japanese town of Inaba, which lies among floodplains and has its own high school and shopping districts.

Unexplained murders have taken place in the small town, where bodies are found dangling from television antennas and their cause of death unknown. At the same time, rumor has begun to spread that watching a switched-off television set on rainy midnights will reveal a person’s soulmate.

The game also follows the main characters into the TV World, a fog-shrouded realm filled with monsters called Shadows, which can only be accessed through TV sets.

Persona 4 Golden is so much more than just a mere game, it’s a wonderful experi-ence that grabs you by the beard hairs and drags you in, dominating your spare time and idle thoughts until you have reached that ending.

Based on Robert Kirkman’s award-winning comic book series, The Walking Dead is about a world devastated by an undead apocalypse and the horrifying choices you’re forced to make to survive. Assume the role of Lee Everett, a convicted criminal, who has been given a second chance at life in a world devastated by the undead. With corpses returning to life and survivors stopping at nothing to maintain their own safety, protecting an orphaned girl named Clementine may offer you redemption in a world gone to hell.

The Walking Dead deals in a spectrum of emotion that few other games dare to take on, and it does so with aplomb. It’s utterly triumphant, crafting a narrative that proves the power of the medium by embracing what makes it unique, leading to one of the most memorable gameplay experiences ever created.

BioWare completes the Mass Effect Trilogy with Mass Effect 3. Earth is burning. Striking from beyond known space, a race of terrifying machines have begun their destruction of the human race. As Commander Shepard, an Alliance Marine, the only hope for saving mankind is to rally the civilizations of the galaxy and launch one final mission to take back the Earth.

It’s the end of Shepard’s story. What does that mean to you? For me, it means the end of one of the best video game and science fiction franchises ever. The final scenes take a decidedly classic sci-fi turn that surely won’t make everyone happy, but that was never a real option. Instead it maintains BioWare’s unique vision and approach toward game development. Regardless of the rest of it, that makes Mass Effect 3 a rousing success.

It’s also the perfect capstone to a true AAA franchise, offering a poignant conclu-sion that’ll stick long after the credits have rolled.

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A SURVIVOR IS BORN

SHE’S BACKlaRa cRofT ReTuRnSWhen adventurer extraordinaire Lara Croft raided her first tomb back in 1996, she brought with her an exhilarating feeling of isolation and discovery. Over the years, Lara has continued to venture into parts unknown, taking dark turns and frequent-ly tangling with the supernatural as the series evolved alongside the burgeoning third-person action adventure genre. The gameplay of this series reboot takes a few cues from a current titan of the genre--Nathan Drake and the Uncharted se-ries--but don’t let that familiarity put you off.

This origin story is a terrific adventure that balances moments of quiet ex-ploration with plenty of rip-roaring action to keep you enthralled from start to fin-ish. There will be a lot fewer buildings left standing on the island by the time Lara is done with the place.

As Tomb Raider begins, Lara is more an academic than an adventurer. But when she’s shipwrecked on an island full of ancient secrets and deadly cultists, she has little choice but to learn how to survive. Lara endures a great deal of punish-ment early in the game, and though no small amount of that anguish is physical, it’s an unpleasant moment in which a man tries to force himself on her that’s most harrowing.

But as unpleasant as it is, it marks an important turning point in Lara’s un-derstanding of just how hard she has to fight to survive. Rather than crumbling under the weight of her physical and emotional struggles, she emerges from them a stronger person.

It’s empowering to witness Lara’s journey from the understandably fearful individual she is when she first arrives on the island to the justifiably confident sur-vivor she becomes. Later in the game, when she has proven to the resident cultists that she’s not the easily cowed person they mistook her for, she turns the psycho-logical tables on them, letting loose battle cries to strike fear into their hearts.

Aspects of the story that fall outside of Lara’s character arc aren’t as strong; there’s a twist of sorts that occurs late in the game that you see coming hours ahead of time, for instance, and the central villain offers little in the way of nuance. But as an introduction to the legendary Lara Croft, Tomb Raider’s tale is a success; she emerges as a strong, charismatic and human figure, and you’re left eager to see what the future holds for her.

Lara’s origin story deserves an extraordinary setting, and the island where Tomb Raider takes place does not disappoint. Centuries ago, it was home to a king-dom called Yamatai. Many shrines, temples, statues and other remnants of that history remain, and often, you just want to take in these places, slowly advancing through the darkness, eager to discover what’s just outside the light of your torch. The island is a beautiful place, but not every discovery is a pleasant one; Yamatai’s dark history is vividly communicated in piles of bones and far more grisly things.

The ancient structures of Yamatai now coexist alongside bunkers built dur-ing World War II, the wreckage of planes brought down by the storms that sur-round the island, and the shantytowns and makeshift machinery of the island’s current inhabitants. It’s a fascinating hodgepodge of the beautiful and the utilitar-ian; the buildings are believably nestled in their rough natural surroundings, and appear appropriately weathered, damaged, and rusty.

The island really feels like a place where people have lived and where great and terrible things have happened. It’s a place with many facets; it has claustro-phobic caverns and breathtaking vistas, and phenomena like gentle snowfalls, torrential downpours, and fierce, howling winds make it alternately seem like a tranquil place, and a brutal one.

It’s immediately clear that one thing the island is not is safe, so it’s a good thing that Lara soon gets her hands on a bow. You acquaint yourself with using it by hunting animals; Lara doesn’t have hunger levels you need to manage or any such thing, but the deer, rabbits, crabs and other creatures that call the island home make it feel much more alive. For reasons of their own, the cult that cur-rently occupies the island doesn’t exactly welcome you with open arms, so it’s not long before you need to turn that bow (and, soon, a pistol, rifle, and shotgun) on humans.

Combat is varied and suspenseful; some situations give you the opportuni-ty to take a stealthy approach, sneaking up behind enemies to perform silent kills, or firing arrows into walls to distract them and picking them off from a distance with well-aimed arrows while their comrades aren’t looking. During one particu-larly tense battle in a fog-shrouded forest, patrolling foes hunt you with flashlights; if you can manage to stay unseen, you can shift from prey to predator, using their cones of light to pinpoint their positions and eliminating them one by one.

Then, there are the all-out firefights. When your presence is known, enemies are smart and aggressive about flushing you out from cover with grenades and Molotovs, which forces you to keep moving and act boldly. Many enemies attack from a distance while others get in close, so you need to be constantly on your toes, switching between your weapons on the fly and evading foes who attack with melee weapons. Dodging and countering melee attacks is easy, but the sav-age animations of Lara’s counters make eliminating those foes who make the mis-take of getting too close to you consistently satisfying.

Lara eventually finds powerful new tools like a grenade launcher and fire arrows, and uses the salvage she constantly collects to improve her weapons, so combat offers more flexibility and becomes more intense as you progress through the game. Throughout it all, great sound design drives home the impact of your actions; delivering a shotgun blast into the face of a nearby enemy is made all the more powerful by the resounding report the gun lets loose, and the conversations you overhear between cultists create a feeling that they’re not just enemies who spawn into the environment to hinder you.

Lara’s been making desperate leaps and grabbing on to faraway ledges since her earliest game, but it’s never felt quite as good as it does here. And just as Lara acquires new weapons over the course of the game, she also gets her hands on gear that makes her more a more versatile adventurer.

Particularly nifty are the rope arrows and rope ascender, the former of which enables you to create rope bridges to certain areas (among other things), and the latter of which lets you rapidly zip up ropes from a lower position. This gear gives you more freedom, and makes Lara seem like a progressively more capable and confident explorer.

17 YEARS OFLARA CROFT

Following British archeologist Lara Croft, the Tomb Raider series of games, com-ics, movies, theme park rides and novels are a pop-culture phenomonon the world over.

beginningThe development of Tomb Raider began in 1993 taking 3 years to complete. On November 15th, 1996, Tomb Raider was finally made available for public consump-tion. The developers were Core Design, who spent 18 months working on the game. One of the reasons for this extensive development period is that the Core Design team consisted of only 6 people. It was Toby Gard who, out of the team of 6, undertook the task of developing Lara.

Originally, the lead character was set to be male, essentially no more than an Indiana Jones clone. It wasn’t until Toby noticed many of his co-workers play-ing as female fighters from the game Virtual Fighter that he decided to alter the hero’s sex and turn her into a heroine. At around this time, the entire team decided that puzzles and stealth would be a more appropriate approach to developing the game than the all too common action archetype.

Lara was born under the name Laura Cruz and was intended to be a cold blooded militaristic South African anti-hero. However, over time, Laura became a warmer character and Core Design decided to make Laura a British character, in order to make her feel more familiar to the intended American audiences. The name Lara Croft was supposedly taken by picking a name out from a phone book that was closest to Laura Cruz, whilst retaining a sense of Western impact.

Upon Tomb Raiders release, it was a critical and financial success, securing a place in video-game history and ensuring a lengthy franchise for Lara Croft and her adventures, which would far surpass Core Designs original goals.

laRa’S evoluTionIt was from then on that Core Design had a real challenge on its hands. The trick was of course not to keep Lara popular, but to keep her relevant.

Development on Tomb Raider II took a great deal less time than it’s prede-cessor took. Approximately one year later, in November of 1997, Tomb Raider II was released. The game became an instant success, immediately overtaking the original Tomb Raider in terms of sales and achieved equal, if not greater critical acclaim. However, in hindsight many fans feel that this was in fact the pinnacle of Lara’s success.

This is evident in her branching into other mediums, appearing prominently in SEAT and Lucozade commercials and practically becoming an unofficial mascot for the commercial pop-rock band, U2.

Another year passed and Tomb Raider III entered the scene in November of 1998. It was widely cited as the best game of the original trilogy, with many of the mechanics having been refined, although many critics showed dissapointment at the fact that not much had really changed at all since the original game.

On 22nd November, 1999, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation surfaced. Criti-cal reactions were mixed with some noting that the mechanics of the series had

gone untouched and others citing the game as the best sequel in the series. If nothing else, most agreed that the story was far more dynamic than any other Tomb Raider game to date. However, by now many critics were feeling that Tomb Raider was a tired concept, at least in the sense that Core Design were barely alter-ing gameplay. Lara, it seemed, was beginning to show her age.

Core Design pushed ahead with their next project, Tomb Raider Chronicles which was released on the 19 November, 2000. Although the graphics were widely touted as being some of the best in the industry, many reviewers had simply lost interest in the dwindling franchise, with many going so far as to blatantly point out that the franchise was now fresh out of originality.

As well as that, the game had a great deal of bugs which led many to believe that Core Design had given up on trying to make the franchise as innovative as Lara’s original adventure was. The series was running on steam, and many looked forwards to a new generation of consoles to bring back their beloved Lara Croft.

It wasn’t until 3 years later, on the 20th June, 2003 that Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was released. Many flocked, hoping to find an adventure to carry them into a utopia of new and exciting gaming, only to find a game much like Tomb Raiders I-V, with only touched up graphics to separate the games from each other. It was made clear that the franchise was beyond some slight touch up and required a full make-over, something that it was evident Core Design had been struggling with. With Core Design struggling to keep up with Lara’s present, let alone her future it wasn’t long before development of a new Tomb Raider game was taken off of their hands and given to someone else.

It was Crystal Dynamics that Eidos saw fit to give power of Lara Croft to. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend was released on April 7th, 2006. Immediately top-ping the UK video game charts, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Legend held it’s number 1 spot for 3 weeks after. By June 30th, 2006 the game had already sold approxi-mately 2.9 million copies and was recieving good-excellent reviews across the board. With their success secured, Crystal Dynamics began working on a sequel...except, it wasn’t quite a sequel...

On June 1st, 2007, Eidos and Crystal Dynamics rolled out their newest Tomb Raider game. Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary was not exactly a remake of Tomb Raider, nor was it a sequel to Legend.

As a game, it established a seperate canon to the first 5 Tomb Raider games, by retelling the original story, but adding its own tweaks in order to make it fill into the Legend universe more appropriately. Despite a largely positive reception, many made observations that there was cause for concern regarding the games frustration level and the fact that the game’s engine and mechanics were both identical to Legend.

On November 18th, 2008, the first game in the series to be truly created for a seventh generation console was released. Tomb Raider: Underworld was released with the main intention of continuing the story begun by Legend and achieved just that. However, some critics were left somewhat underwhelmed. Many felt as if the mechanics of the past two games were growing old, and that Crystal Dynamics

archeologist, Gard and the Core team eventually settled on braided, pistol-packing Laura Cruz as their game’s heroine — but only after she received a change in name to reflect the company’s British ownership and became Lara Croft.

While the Tomb Raider series was a mainstay of the Sony PlayStation in the ’90s, the first installment of the franchise debuted on the Sega Saturn in 1996. Quick to see the series’ potential, Sony settled on an exclusivity deal for the game’s next two installments that many credit as one of the primary reasons the console was able to establish a foothold in the industry despite the recent debut of the Nintendo 64.

The first Tomb Raider went on to sell more than 7 million units worldwide, and served as both the herald and template for many of the 3D, third-person games that followed.

were just throwing Lara new moves, instead of refining some of the older ones and some went on to criticise the story and dialogue altogether. That said, the game still recieved mostly positive reviews with many critics noting the exemplary vi-sual standard and the thrill of exploring the well rendered environments.

On March 4th 2010, Square Enix announced the newest entry in the fran-chise, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light. Developed by Crystal Dynamics, it will be the first Tomb Raider title distributed digitally over PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Marketplace. The game features an isometric viewpoint and co-oper-ative play, both new features for the franchise. This newest entry is also the first in the series not to include “Tomb Raider” in its title. The game was well-received by most critics and praised for introducing a new style of gameplay to the series.

Going back to the use of the Tomb Raider name, the franchise is current-ly being rebooted with Tomb Raider, a game about a young, inexperienced Lara Croft who gets shipwrecked. Rather than try and find an unknown treasure, in this reboot Lara is trying to find a way to survive.

Tomb Raider has achieved the highest week one sales in the franchise’s his-tory, according to Crystal Dynamics studio head Darrell Gallagher. Speaking at a GDC panel alongside creative director Noah Hughes, Gallagher also revealed that Tomb Raider had the most successful launch of any game this year.

“It’s been the biggest week one sales in franchise history, and we’re only a few weeks into that launch right now, and it’s been the biggest opening so far in 2013,” said Gallagher. “So, we’re happy with the outcome. It’s certainly in a place where we feel like we’re on the road to achieving everything we wanted to.”

The claim seems to be at odds with the feelings of Tomb Raider’s publisher, Square Enix, which recently cited “weak sales” of its major titles, including Tomb Raider, as a reason for the company undergoing restructure. When asked about the apparent disconnect between Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics regarding Tomb Raider’s performance, Hughes told us, “Certainly we’re proud of what we achieved, and I think for the most part, the whole organization is happy with what we did.” And for Gallagher, “Actuals and expectations, I guess, are two slightly dif-ferent things. What I’m telling you is the actuals, and they’re communicating ex-pectations.”

That raises the question of just what Square Enix was expecting. To put things in perspective, Tomb Raider had higher initial sales than the 1996 original, a game that went on to sell over 6 million units in its lifetime. And yet, despite re-ceiving critical acclaim and breaking franchise records, it would appear that Tomb Raider just isn’t number one enough.

The hero of Tomb Raider wasn’t always the buxom brunette we’re familiar with now, and if any number of decisions had gone a different way during the early ’90s, we might be looking at a very different Lara Croft.

Former Core Design artist Toby Gard had initially conceived of an Indiana Jones clone for the protagonist of his groundbreaking, third-person adventure in a 3D world filled with puzzles, traps, and treasure. Looking to put some distance be-tween his game environment and the world inhabited by that famous big-screen

THE LEGEND BEGINSSKYWARD SWORD

pRologueLong ago, on a dark day, the earth cracked and evil forces rushed out of the fissure. These forces mercilessly attacked the people of the earth, slaughtering them and destroying their land. They did this in search of the ultimate power, a power capa-ble of granting any wishes of its holder. This power, passed down from the gods of old, was guarded by Her Grace, the goddess of the land. The goddess gathered the surviving humans on a piece of earth and sent it skyward, beyond the clouds. With the humans safe, the goddess joined the land dwellers and fought the evil forces in a war of unmatched scale and ferocity. They eventually sealed the evil forces away, restoring peace to the surface. However, the humans remained in Skyloft, as Hylia knew that the seal on the evil would not hold forever.

The wing ceRemonyOn the day that the story opens, the annual Wing Ceremony is about to take place. Link, a young boy who was raised in Skyloft, had a strange dream the night before, depicting a gigantic dark beast and a mysterious spirit. He is awoken by a Loftwing owned by Zelda, a childhood friend with whom he shares a close relationship. The bird gives Link a letter asking him to rendezvous with Zelda at the Statue of the Goddess, where he discovers that his Loftwing has gone missing and begins to search for it. After overhearing Groose and his two cronies, Cawlin and Strich, Link discovers that Groose was responsible for his Loftwing’s disappearance. Just as Link finds his Loftwing, Zelda hears someone calling out to her. Although she con-fides in Link after he frees his companion bird, she quickly brushes it off, and the two fly to the ceremony together.

With all of the participants ready, the Wing Ceremony begins. Despite Groose and his lackeys’ efforts to prevent him from winning, Link succeeds in plucking the Bird Statuette from the talons of another Loftwing. Link and Zelda proceed up to the Goddess Statue to complete the ceremony, where Zelda bestows the blessings of the goddess upon Link and gives him the Sailcloth. After Link uses his Sailcloth to complete the ceremony by jumping off of the Goddess Statue, Zelda proposes the two go flying together. However, as they are flying, a mysterious black tornado suddenly appears and plucks Zelda off of her Loftwing, causing her to fall below the Cloud Barrier. Link receives another vision from the mysterious spirit in his dreams. He comes to and tries to rescue Zelda, but is knocked out by the tornado himself in the process.

Link’s Crimson Loftwing takes him back to Skyloft. When he wakes up in his bed that night, he explains what had happened to Zelda’s father, Headmaster Gaepora. Although Gaepora tells Link to rest, Link soon hears the voice of the mys-terious spirit once more, and leaves his room, following the spirit to the Goddess

Statue. The spirit appears from the sword within the statue and introduces herself as Fi. She tells Link that he must take the blade he sees in front of him and embark on his destined journey as the chosen hero of the goddess. Although he is at first apprehensive, Fi tells him that Zelda is still alive, and Link draws the blade. The two are joined moments afterward by Gaepora, who explains his hidden knowledge of a prophecy that foretold what was taking place before him before telling Link that no one has pierced the cloud barrier. Fi remedies the situation by bestowing Link with the Emerald Tablet, which opens a portal through the clouds to the world below.

SeaRching foR ZeldaThe next day, after receiving his green knight’s uniform as the only graduating member of his class, Link makes a few preparations and heads to the surface to find Zelda. As he descends, he arrives at the Sealed Temple, where he uses a Sky-ward Strike on a mysterious spike in the center of the Sealed Grounds and opens a door into the temple itself. Inside, a mysterious old woman gives him a hint about Zelda’s whereabouts, in the nearby Faron Woods. Link proceeds to the woods and continues his journey until he enters the Skyview Temple. There, a strange man appears at the door to the Skyview Spring. He introduces himself as Ghirahim and

explains to Link that he was the one who took Zelda with the tornado, only for her to be rescued at the last second by a “Servant of the Goddess.” He prepares to fight Link, threatening to “beat him within an inch of his life.” When Link “defeats” him, he realizes that Zelda’s presence is no longer in the area, and leaves, threatening to outright kill Link the next time they meet. The young hero enters the Skyview Spring, and Fi translates words that the Goddess left for him, indicating that Zelda must purify her body at two different springs.

Link receives the Ruby Tablet and returns to Skyloft to place it alongside the Emerald Tablet inside the Goddess Statue. With a new portal opened to the sur-face, the young hero travels to Eldin Volcano, where continues his journey to find Zelda. After making his way through the Earth Temple, Ghirahim appears to him and tells Link that, once again, someone else took Zelda from him. He sics Scaldera on Link and leaves to let the two fight while he tries to reclaim Zelda. Link triumphs against the monster and proceeds to the second spring. There, Zelda is seen with someone else, a young woman. After the woman chastises Link for his failure to arrive in a timely fashion, the two disappear in a flash of light and leave Link with a lot of doubts.

Without knowledge of Zelda’s whereabouts, he receives another tablet known as the Amber Tablet and places it inside the Goddess Statue. Link and Fi travel to Lanayru Desert, where they find the Temple of Time. However, the en-trance has been destroyed, forcing Link to enter via a secret pathway found in the Lanayru Mining Facility. When he gets inside, Zelda and the strange woman, whose name is soon revealed as Impa, are standing at the Gate of Time. Just before Link can rejoin Zelda, however, Ghirahim attacks, cutting Link off from the two, and lunges forward, only to be blocked by Impa. In the frenetic action going on, Zel-da gives Link the Goddess’s Harp. As Ghirahim’s magic wall preventing Link from reaching them dissipates, the young hero intervenes in the battle, allowing Impa and Zelda to escape Ghirahim by entering the Gate of Time. On their way through, Impa destroys the gate to make sure Ghirahim can’t follow them. After expressing his extreme displeasure to Link, Ghirahim leaves the scene. Link decides to return to the Sealed Grounds to learn how to use the Goddess’s Harp.

As Link descends to the Sealed Grounds, however, Groose intercepts him in midair and both fall, with Link barely being able to slow their fall with his Sailcloth. As Groose comes to terms with what he sees around him, Link explains the situa-tion, calming the former. Groose’s old attitude quickly returns and he tells Link to head back to Skyloft, hoping to find and rescue Zelda himself. However, the old woman at the Sealed Temple tells him that he will not be the one to save Zelda. In his anger, Groose leaves the Sealed Temple, allowing link to learn the Ballad of the

Goddess from the old woman. As he plays it on the sacred harp, a large structure appears behind him and is revealed to be a second Gate of Time. However, outside the Sealed Temple, a beast known as The Imprisoned is released from a seal after responding to the appearance of the Gate. Although it is too powerful for him to outright defeat and destroy, Link succeeds in sealing it once again. Groose is left with a feeling of uselessness and laments that he could not be the hero, while the old woman tells Link that he cannot activate the second Gate of Time until his sword is much more powerful. She tells him to seek out the three Sacred Flames of the Golden Goddesses.

PREORDER YOURS AT YOUR LOCAL GAME SHOP.