It’s time to show your strength, Brother! Test your mettle and temper your wit in the proving ground where little Brothers become Goron men! Welcome to Gor Coron’s proving ground – a sauna rung with steel, a hike so tough it has callouses, and a sizzling sumo ring: the Goron Mines! The Three Goron Blood Brothers wish that their precious Gut Check Rock could measure up to this cavern of manliness and fortitude! Deep inside an eternally erupting volcano, the Gorons toil away mining ore to trade with the innocuous foothill village of Kakariko. In the Era of Twilight, their leader has been torn away by the corrupting influence of an ancient evil, their strength spent on making the very same caverns that are their livelihood into a prison for the Twilit Igniter. Who should come but a small boy with irrational courage, a sharp eye, and a cheeky trick up his ankle…
Across all of Twilight Princess, the environments are unique and tell as much story as the people that inhabit them – even if the issues plaguing these places are not unfamiliar threats. Much like the calamities of Ocarina of Time, Zora’s Domain has frozen over; the Woods are infested with a poisonous blight; and Death Mountain is erupting uncontrollably – talk about Ganondorf being up to his old tricks. With frozen Zora and the lack of a Deku tree or the Kokiri, the Eldin Province is one of the most lively sites of calamity. Kakariko Village sits in its foothills, sheltering many of the children of the game and providing a place of rest and support for Link away from home. The proud Gorons sequester their shadow alone atop the peak, throwing their weight around to turn outsiders away.
Link needing to prove himself a friend of the Gorons is not new either. Be it sharing the music of the forest with Darunia or proving his mettle to the Goron Blood Brothers at Gut Check Rock, the Hylian has a way of subverting the expectations that come with his smaller frame. In the case of the Hero of Twilight, the Gorons pose a challenge of might that Link alone is not equipped to handle, but he certainly has the technique to win on equal footing. Early in the game, as a goatherd, he has to stop an escaping Ordon goat as it charges the fences – throwing itself at him with the animal might and recklessness only a Goron would think to use. With some teaching from Mayor Bo on the sport of sumo (and some boots of dubious legality in the sport), Link already has the basic technique to make a Goron think twice about bowling him over.
The story doesn’t end at climbing Death Mountain. In fact, aside from wrestling with Gor Coron, he hardly breaks a sweat. The sauna comes after the workout – the Goron Mines themselves. We know that the Gorons supply a significant portion of the raw iron used by the Kingdom of Hyrule, and the Mines show for it. The equipment and scaffolding are made of wrought iron, and the cranes use magnetic surfaces to transport immensely heavy loads. With the combined turmoil caused by the Twilit Igniter rampaging and the eruption of the mountain, the heat has been turned up to an eleven – eleven hundred degrees Celsius, in fact. While this heat bothers even some Gorons, Link perseveres – facing fire-breathing Dondongos and Fire Slugs, engaging in a pleasant swim through some of the mineral waters around the Caldera, and a firefight navigating the various platforms in the crater itself. It’s a marvel to not be lightheaded, especially when half of this time he’s dangling sideways or upside down by his ankles…
Above all else in this region, and all of the empirically cool things that Link does to traverse it, is the mini-boss fight. While the eyepiece of most Zelda dungeons is the Dungeon Boss, the Goron Mine doesn’t feel that way. Fyrus feels like a glorified Beamos, whereas Dangoro feels like the culmination of the climb up Death Mountain and traversing the Goron Mine. Not only does the fight take place in a massive, magnetic sumo ring where Link has to balance the mobility of lacking the Iron Boots and the traction of wearing them, but Dangoro is an adept when it comes to parrying Link’s traditional attacks. It combines Gor Coron’s sumo match, where Link’s proximity to the edge of the ring makes for a riskier fight and a greater chance of winning the bout; and the ascent from the foothills of Death Mountain, where Link had to toss aside bulky Gorons as they careened towards him. It is a careful dance of prediction, mobility, and timing for the perfect counter. It is the apex of Link’s story in the Eldin region, and Fyrus is the denouement.
I may have my favorite moments in Twilight Princess – things that stand alone as memorable – like the Hidden Village shootout, or the cutscene when the twilight is banished from Link. Of the story’s narrative arcs, conquering Death Mountain stands as a mastery of showing through story – giving the player a picture of what the Goron way of life truly is: grueling, tough, and built on respect for personal strength. It is a chapter of the game that I replay happily, even this year for the two-dozenth time or more, seeing it as the moment where the Hero of Twilight becomes more than the goatherd of Ordon – but a warrior with the power, courage, and wisdom to carry the mantle of Hero.
