Sunday, March 30, 2008

Pointless Question #19

So, your team of adventurers have gone through a fire cave, an ice cave, an ancient techno-labyrinth, the innards of some weird dungeon-shaped monster, a giant tree with tunnels carved into it, and a crypt filled with undead.

Why couldn't the ancients hide the MacGuffins in some obscure, normal caves?

9 comments:

Joshua said...

Simple. They wouldn't remember where they put the damned things otherwise.

Cody Cobb said...

Here's a possibility: they did.

And here's two reasons why our contemporary adventurers no longer find MacGuffins in normal caves:

A.) The original hiders of the MacGuffin are, as you say, ancient, so there has been plenty of time between then and now for other explorers to find those obscure, normal caves.

B.) All the caves with remaining MacGuffins are dangerous.

Taking those two facts together, it's easy to see why we only find MacGuffins *today* in extremely hostile caves.

Tom Foss said...

All the Ancients were their world's versions of the pre-Socratics, each claiming a different element was the foundation of all reality. One thought it was fire, one ice, one confusing technology, one zombies, and so forth. These aren't caves they hid their things in, they're temples.

Infophile said...

Those caves have all been taken over by deranged hermits, and due to conservation of plot devices, only one plot-relevant person or MacGuffin may be found in any dungeon.

Wikinite said...

Because you are obviously playing Final Fantasy

Rev. BigDumbChimp said...

They hid the McMuffins and you were looking for the wrong thing.

Bachalon said...

Hey, I went through all the trouble to hide that stupid Macguffin, and I'll be damned if you're not going go through the exact same thing trying to retrieve it.

Flavin said...

Because the true reward is not the MacGuffin but the journey.

Plus being pseudo-all-powerful gets boring. What else would they do for fun?

Anonymous said...

Well I like the "weeded out" explanation and the "it's the journy" one.

Another is the Zelda explanation, the "this has all been planned eons ago" one.

Remember in those games, your crystals/pendants/triforce shards/orb/statues were all PLACED in those ancient temples as a TEST of your courage power and wisdom to attain them. Sure all the temples have a "theme" but just because they are crazy people setting up dangerous dungeons only the "true hero" should be able to pass doesn't mean they lack aesthetic tastes.

Incidentally, did they ever consider the possibility that the smartest and strongest one of that future era, the one that can get through all those dungeons, might just be the great evil instead of the hero? I've considered a Zelda scenario where all the dungeons, or most of them at least, have already been looted by the ruling government of the time using an elite team of special forces trained for that sort of thing.

But anyway, yeah even the first game sets it up by explaning that Zelda, just before she was kidnapped, broke up the triforce of wisdom and hid each part in a different temple. I'm not sure how she did it, but my guess was she used the triforce of wisdom's power to do it. I mean if anything can hide itself in just the right order that requires just the right pieces and puzzles solved to find, it would be a godlike source of wisdom itself. Too bad she couldn't use a little of that power to hide HERSELF in some temple away from Ganon.

Ya know Wind Waker kinda did something different with the formula. Apparently there Ganon took out the "middle man" and completely destroyed one of the 3 temples you were originally supposed to solve, so instead you get it from a sea god type fish who managed to smuggle it out just in time. Though really, while in story terms I found it original, I really would have rather gone through a 3rd dungeon. I think that the lack of that dungeon was a result of the rushed release of that game. A lot of it seems a little incomplete. Not "Star Fox Adventures" incomplete, but still not as polished as other games.