#all of the sky islands. rauru and sonia. everything

[bluebelledmoon]

reblogs for greater sample size are greatly appreciated!!

i'll put my opinion in the tags so i don't sway the results but im interested to hear what you guys think of the game as well

** i'm only talking about PURCHASING the game.

[1tsjusty0u]

man. totk couldve been so good

[clowns0up-felix]

Why do you dislike ToTK if I may ask? :0

Lights a cigarette and stares off into the distance .. well well well

I think Tears of the Kingdom is a lazy story, especially in comparison to any other main franchise Zelda game, and the story is a poor mess that tries to do what Breath of the Wild did and fails at that miserably. You would think copying one of the best games I've ever played (botw) would give them the opportunity to do at least just as good again but all they did was improve the gameplay and add some neat small stuff that you can enjoy while writing a joke of a story. The moment I finished the second temple and found out the ancient sages (or whatever they're called | can't recall) cutscenes were verbatim the same l realized what kind of game this was. Totk had lost its potential right after the first ever teaser trailer, removing that damn rat dying meant they had to kill the games story instead apparently. I loved playing totk and I loved drawing fanart and I loved landing on the light dragon and leaving a silent princess for her, but 2 years later I can't even think about the game without getting annoyed. I get annoyed by people that say it's their favorite zelda game and that feels way too pessimistic but I can't help it the game is that upsetting to me. I don’t dislike people for liking it and I try not to judge I promise, I don't want people to stop leaving excited tags under my totk posts but I simply can’t share that love for a game that I’ve waited for for years only to leave me utterly frustrated. It's an amazing game but that's where it stops because it can't do anything right but the game aspect I feel. I feel like this would've been a genuinely good DLC to botw because it wouldn't have needed a completely new story for that, they obviously just wanted to make all their good ideas come together and had to glue them together with a shit story that does not stick with you except for the light dragon aspect. Rauru from Oot had a bigger impact on me than totk Rauru damn it.

The story doesn't achieve the same emotional impact on me the way botw did at all. I do not think fondly of the Zonai I do not care at all for the ancient sages I did not get emotional watching Sonia die because the Tears were handled extremely poorly from a gameplay mechanic viewpoint, leaving the one of her death to be my third, barely knowing her at that point. She wasn't someone I felt sorrow towards after seeing her die, I at most felt sad that Zelda was sad because she was already an established character I deeply cared for from botw. The Temples, imo, had really cool concepts but every boss except colgera was mediocre at best. The depths had a genuinely great introduction, the way you fly down and that music hits, and the yiga down there are a cool idea, but you get bored down there so fast it's impressive. It can't really offer much I feel. It might've been better to put the split effort from the depths and the sky islands and maybe combine them to create a more creative version of either?

To me the best parts of the game are everything right up to link waking up and everything after Ganondorf transforming into a dragon with some fun stuff sprinkled inbetween. A good game and that's it because there is no story to think about to me...!

There’s a lot more stuff I could get into but I think this paints a decent picture of my opinion

There is a lot of stuff I like ofc don’t get me wrong, I think there's genuine great gameplay improvement from botw (which is just extra annoying bc I hate playing botw and thinking totk did it better LOL), I think the character design is great, I think a lot of the sets are stunning and zelda looks so cute with the short hair they did they great justice looks wise in this game, the dragons are SO COOL! It's a genuine joy to play. But that’s not enough to save it for me.

Whatever . Walks away into the fog

[the-gateway-to-madness]

It's been really interesting to see all the takes on the end of TOTK.

Some people seem perfectly happy with the ending as is. I'm one of them! I'm so happy that Link and Zelda finally get to look forward to a future where Ganondorf is gone and they can choose how they want to live. It makes me cry with the best of 'em.

A lot of people seem to be pretty happy with it but think Zelda should have kept some draconic traits. And I get that too, for a number of reasons! Everything from "trauma doesn't just vanish and there should have been something remaining" to "it would invalidate her sacrifice for them to just disappear" to "it would just look cool".

My personal take on it is, yeah, it'd be cool and it would add gravitas to her sacrifice- but look at the fanart! The Dragon Zelda plotline already has unbelievable gravitas as is. She spent millennia enduring mindless suffering she probably couldn't remember the source of or fully comprehend.

Zelda remembers sensations from her time as a dragon- the fact she was asleep, how it felt right before she woke up (like a warm, loving embrace ;-;). Some part of her memory is probably deeply rooted with that pain still.

So why, why, WHY would Sonia, Rauru, and Link- arguably the three people who love Zelda more closely and personally than anyone else across time and space, in this canon -leave her with dragon traits, if they have the power not to? Why would they make her remember millennia of pain every time she looks at her hands, or looks in the mirror? Are the marks on her soul not enough? Must she live in a body that would mar her happy ending and remind her of her eternal suffering for the rest of her life- for all of time? Would she have even remained mortal if some of the dragon had been left in her? Could she have had the life among her loved ones, the life helping Hyrule alongside Link, that she wanted?

And besides, if we (and by we I mean my undiagnosed-but-autistic-trait-littered brain) look at the game mechanic that turned her into a dragon- secret stone inside body = dragon. Secret stone not inside body = no dragon. If the recall rune removed the secret stone from inside her (she has it back at the end of the game and we ALL know Link took that thing up to the highest Sky Island he could reach so no mortal is ever freaking getting to it), there shouldn't be any dragon left. It wouldn't make sense to put Zelda through a bittersweet or half-victory in the end. It wouldn't have felt as clean and joyful, and wouldn't have been the payoff Link and Zelda have earned after all their work and fighting and sacrifice. Zelda has been given another chance to be what she always wanted to be: free.

I don't see a reason to pour more trauma on these kids- the ending wraps up the story very solidly as it stands, and so I don't personally subscribe to the "zelda should have had dragon traits" concept.

It does look cool tho.

[hs-loner2006]

When it comes to critique of Tears of the kingdom’s gameplay and especially it’s story, I think a lot of people focus too much on what could’ve been, and don’t take the time to fairly judge what the game does have and whether or not it executes it’s ideas, mechanics, setting or themes well.

The gameplay and themes that the game and it’s story portray is consistent throughout and don’t go against what it established. The prologue sets everything up perfectly, we’re introduced to the Zonai, and the Imprisoning War and as we progress, we’ll gradually learn more and more of what we need to in order to keep both the story and gameplay engaging throughout, whether it’s through item descriptions, in game books you can read, stone slabs/tablets, the whole 9 yards.

Darker and edgier isn’t always better for a story, you have to work with the themes, characters and concepts that the story established and keep it consistent throughout. Core themes of Tears of the Kingdom is unity, love and second chances, Link losing his arm, The regional phenomena plaguing the world, the Master Sword’s corruption, and Zelda’s draconification is meant to seem irreversible, cause that’s how both we the players and Link initially see it as first. What the game teaches both the age demographic for the game and older players who don’t have it so easy in life, is that there will be always second chances, one mistake doesn’t mean the end of the world, and that it will always be possible to get through hardship with the help of individuals you trust, no matter how impossible the odds may seem, there will always be a possibility that you’ll get through it all, thanks to the help of another individual or even a whole group of individuals you trust.

As for Love, Zelda bonds strongly with her ancestors, Rauru and Sonia, they’re practically the parental figures needed, but never had during the forthcoming of the Calamity from Breath of the Wild, they supported Zelda’s strengths and didn’t chastise her for her weaknesses and didn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to do. With Mineru, though we don’t see her and Zelda bonding in cutscenes like with Rauru and Sonia, we know from the star-shaped sky islands that Zelda bonded with Mineru over scientific stuff and even helped Mineru build a construct once, and when Zelda tells Mineru about the decision she’s about to make for the greater good, Mineru panics and she fears so much for Zelda in that moment, as she knows just how badly a critical decision such as draconification could affect Zelda, another example of an ancestor of Zelda’s not forcing anything onto her, and this moment would play a key part in Mineru’s role in the epilogue.

With Zelda, even after she sacrificed her own memories, her unwavering love for Link in the form of her last will right before and right after swallowing her sacred tear, is why she lets him claim the Master Sword once more and why she saves him from Ganondorf.

As for Link, Sonia and Rauru coming together to reverse Zelda���s draconification, it isn’t a case of bad writing, cause it’s thematically consistent with the rest of the game about second chances and love, Rauru and Sonia made a promise to Zelda to get her back to her home to put Link’s mind at ease, by choosing the individual closest to Zelda and who knows her more than anyone else to channel their powers through, which is Link, they help him bring Zelda back and they fulfill the promise they made in the end, their own deaths not stopping them from that, something that is thematically consistent with the rest of the game. The prologue showed Link not being to catch Zelda with his mangled arm after the first Ganondorf, this is important as it sets up a parallel in the ending where Link is able to catch Zelda with his restored arm after Ganondorf has finally died, again, something that is thematically consistent with the rest of the game about 2nd chances and love. Mineru also had no way of knowing that Zelda would keep her last will as a dragon or that draconification can be reversed contrary to what she said, cause while she’s extremely smart, she isn’t all knowing, this is a similar plot point to how King Rhoam thought Zelda could awaken her light power just from praying at the sacred springs, but she couldn’t, instead, what was actually needed was a strong motive, and that strong motive was in the form of her love for Link, Link from Tears of the Kingdom also had a strong motive in the form of his love for Zelda at the end of game, and that’s what saves her from a self inflicted curse as dire as draconification. You may make the argument that there was no lasting consequences, but to me, the very likely mental trauma that the whole thing took on both Link and Zelda are the consequences, they both went through utter hell and were just barely able to save each other in the end.

Furthermore, Zelda’s restoration in the ending and what she does in the epilogue is consistent to her character growth from the end of Breath of the Wild, where she learns to live with the loss and trauma of her past and decides to grow into the individual she wants to be. Her recalling the memory of the ancient sages, her and Mineru all making their vows to Rauru exemplifies the realization of how she wants to rule for the rest of her lifetime. Mineru’s departure also hits hard for Zelda, as it’s for the first time (aside from maybe her biological mother) that she gets to give a proper goodbye to one of her parental figures, knowing this is the last time she’ll ever see one of them again. Zelda’s line “My friends, with all your strength, stand with me.” conveys that she’s ready to take on a role as big as leadership alongside Link and the sages, effectively completing her story and character arc for good.

It’s fine to have headcanons or generally be unsatisfied with the game’s story and it’s ending, I just tried creating a post that judges the story for what it is and don’t try to take into account my own preferences when discussing what it does have, there are some valid objective criticisms for the story, but as a whole, it did it’s job for what it was going for.

[toushindai]

speaking as someone who's repeatedly described herself as "just a girl trying to be an encyclopedia," I really wish we got more of Mineru

(headcanon/character analysis below)

My headcanon for the Zonai is that they just kind of. declined. Something about life in the sky made there be less and less of them until they dwindled to an unsustainable population level. This may be related to how much zonaite they can access--the idea of zonaite being scarce in the sky is introduced really early on[1]. And in terms of "the Zonai and scarcity" I also want to point at the description for the hydrant device, which says that the Zonai were experiencing water shortages until they invented the hydrant, which is an absolutely batshit thing to say, by the way. But anyway: scarcity. Something unsustainable about the way they lived. That's the general vibe for me.

So we have just Mineru and Rauru, now, and I think that that solitude sat differently on each of them. I think it drove Rauru to the surface, out of curiosity but also out of this horror of loneliness. We feel that loneliness when we explore the sky islands: that beautiful, lowing horn music--the cries of the birds--the gold during sunset that eats into your eyes and makes it hard to believe that you exist. A beauty that doesn't need you there. I think Rauru needed to escape that.

Mineru, I think, didn't feel that loneliness in the same way because upon realizing how little was left she buried herself in learning everything she could about the Zonai. This is after all (most likely) the first thing we learn about her: that she knows the most about the Zonai out of anyone. We know also from the tablets in the sky that she would often bury herself in her studies to the extent that she would forget to eat or sleep. And, we know the nature of her research: building a construct that would house her spirit after her body passed. There is not a doubt in my mind that she intended to make herself into the last of the Zonai, everlasting. A preserving tomb for her heritage. When she saw that she and Rauru were the last ones left--all that there would ever be--she put aside any desire to be her own person and instead intended to contain all her people's knowledge and legacy in her spirit and in the construct she crafted for it.

(But to some extent, this necessitated holding on to her sense of self. I already had this impression from thinking about the English, but the no-subject-needed nature of Japanese sentences made it even more certain in my mind: Mineru considered draconification for herself but decided that the ego death it entailed did not serve her purposes. This is why she knows of it; this is why her more heartfelt argument against it is not merely its forbidden nature but the loss of self that comes with it. What was it like, then, to see Zelda elect this course of action that Mineru had set aside for quite literally selfish reasons?)

I've seen meta before that suspects Mineru was subject to parentification, to the need to be both sister and parent to Rauru--I think that is very likely--my opinion differs from the analysis I've seen in that I do not think that was a role she fulfilled with much warmth or attention. She does not strike me as someone with much capacity for that to begin with, and once she set herself on the frankly dehumanizing path of carrying on her people's legacy I think warmth becomes a distantly tertiary concern. She has already ceased to wholly think of herself as a person, in service to the preservation of her people; she forgets or foregoes her own physical needs; it takes a mental shift, then, to ground herself enough to be present for Rauru. I would be surprised if it occurred to her to do this anywhere near as often as Rauru needed it.

I think Rauru and Sonia coaxing her down to the surface probably helped with all of this detachment a little, but not much. She really does not seem to me like a very present person. I think that if she saw Rauru's own attempts to preserve Zonai culture (teaching the Hylians to use Zonai technology, creating the shrines to encourage Zonai-style thought), it did not supersede or lessen the urgency of her own mission.

I think about the construct and her spirit--and Rauru's shrines for that matter--being converted from their original purpose of maintaining Zonai presence and legacy in Hyrule to being locked away for millennia in order to empower the hero of the future; I think about Mineru's spirit finally passing at the end of the game, Link's arm returned to his natural one instead of Rauru's, the Zonai finally and truly laid to rest. This letting go of trying to preserve one's culture forever, is it a relief or a tragedy or both?

Also I think she suffers from chronic pain and limited mobility, that's just the vibe I get from her, and that makes another reason for her to be interested in housing her spirit in a construct beyond the limits of her body, yes I know the one tablet says she dances, how nice it is that she has some low-pain days but some days I think moving is very hard and tiring for her. My mind will not be changed.

---

[1] though we should note, we are told this in a zonaite-mining cave on the Great Sky Island, which was not only not originally in the sky, it was not originally in the depths, now was it? introducing at least one location where zonaite could once be found on the surface

[rawliverandgoronspice]

I wish mineru got to me an actual character because every single theme we get that has to do with her (thunder islands, spirit temple, construct factory) are so gorgeous and made me fall in love with her, the soundtrack does so much heavy lifting in this game

You're so correct about the soundtrack, it tells such a compelling tale and it really builds off itself constantly, it's genuinely one of my favorite parts of the game!!

Honestly Mineru had tons of potential. I really liked the entire quest to find her and her body, it was the part of the game that kind of sold me the most the mystery and wonder of having such a big world spanning the sky all the way to the Depths. The atmospheric mood of the Thunderhead Isles was wonderful, loved following the light all the way to the Depths (I had already stumbled upon the actual Construct Factory in them before). It was the part of the game that "felt the most zonai" to me, this sort of puzzle-like intricacy of how their influence permeate the world that their name alone was meant to invoke. I regret the lack of worldbuilding here, even a very light one (what was were the Thunderhead Isles? What significance did they have in zonai culture? What about the structures on the ground in the jungle? I would have *loved* more... anything in the Construct Factories), but it was still a treat as a gameplay experience.

(I mean I hated having to pilot the Construct Body itself, but that's more a me problem than a game problem, thankfully the boxing match was a ton of funs regardless)

The character herself though.... Like I feel like there's a lot of potential inherent to her status as one of the last zonais AND her status as the king's sister (not to mention her engineering proclivities). She feels like she should have a very unique perspective on the entire situation, insight about what caused the fall of the zonais (or their departure/refusal to engage with Hyrule), have both tenderness but also criticism towards her brother his wife might not have (as his lover and as an inherently lesser being bound to his good will, she's a priestess so she probably prays to the gods and zonais are said to descend from gods can we talk about that also), share a unique relationship with Zelda through their common love for knowledge (I think Zelda having a strong relationship with Mineru sounds more meaningful than her having one with Sonia as of now tbh, and it would have helped their scenes to be more interesting than an excuse to infodump, I almost said that it's a ship before remembering they're technically related SOMEHOW?? so mayyybe not).

But in practice, she has no desires of her own. She's but an extension of her brother's will, except softer, muted, heartbroken not for her loss (and the fact that her entire race is about to die out once she does), but for Hyrule's perdition. I am still not over the fact that when she swears her oath of fielty to Link, she *touches her brother's hand*, aka the only meaningful relationship in her life that we got to see, zonai skin touching zonai skin for... probably the last time ever? And the camera couldn't care less. No lingering, no body tension, not even one of the little sounds that BotW/TotK characters love to make in cutscenes everytime anything happens, not even any callback to the explicit motif of people touching each other's hand as a sign of support and unity (so you know what symbolism/allegory means game!!! you know this!!!!), the game doesn't seem to be aware that she should be a person with feelings that extend beyond her performative guilt about a situation that has basically nothing to do with her/she couldn't have done anything about/she did everything she could about, actually! She's just here to be a vessel for the restoration project of her brother's kingdom (Rauru being the only one allowed any emotion of genuine grief and upset, and it only lasts like half a second --which sucks!! I wish that, if Sonia was to be fridged anyway, it at least motivated him to become vengeful and furious and make a mistake that costed him his victory, which would have made him sliiightly more compelling instead of reverting back to a fancy cardbox of unquestionned perfection).

Also she's technically the last one you're supposed to get (but you can get her first??? this is such a weird choice sometimes linearity is good nintendo!!!), and after such a long quest, there should have been a narrative reward to finding her that goes harder than "and then Rauru decided to hype you up like crazy to Ganondorf, also Zelda is probably a dragon but you probably already know that" in my opinion. Some modicum of depth; a different emotional texture to the conflict. After that much build up, the payoff didn't land for me.

Yeah. Mineru. She really could have been the aqua-glue holding that ultrahand-ass of a plot together, but Alas.....

[phoenixcatch7]

A comprehensive and detailed timeline about the ancient past of totk

Okay I was going to append this to someone else's theory post but it got out of hand size wise and that's a tad rude so I'm making my own.

(Part 1) (long post)

Totk ancient history, let's go!

So! What do we know about the botw timeline, first?

Ancient sheikah! They've existed since the beginning of hyrule, but these lot were scifi. They supposedly took inspiration partly from the zonai before they (the zonai) died out. They built all the tech to fight calamity ganon. (and presumably improve their quality of life, but we don't see much of that)

Calamity ganon. First appearance 10k years ago. Second appearance in botw (technically 100 years ago? Not important, he didn't leave and come back). Zelda (or rhoam or impa) say it gave up its mortal from to be a giant goo pig. Both attacks were foreseen by sheikah seers.

Rito and zora existing together! This is very important! Rito originally evolved from zora in wind waker, so they've never existed together.

Them existing together, along with basically everything else about botw lol, proves we're working with a merged timeline. Gang's all here!

A divine beast (probably) took that chunk out of hebra peak. Lol. Lmao, even. Most likely to be ruta or medoh.

The duelling peaks are split in their artwork (the observatory and sword trial chamber). Rumour (npc gossip) has it a dragon flew through and split them in two.

The sheikah knew about the master sword. Somehow installed... Whatever the sword trials are. Also the master cycle, which, heck yeah, wish totk had that, hand built stuff isn't a fraction as good or cheap.

The sheikah built the shrine of resurrection. Even in botw, it's said it was built over a spring of healing water.

Now, let's briefly cover what we learned in totk.

The zonai! Of course! We learn a lot from the tear flashbacks. They descended from the sky to earth to 'found hyrule' (lmao) with their secret stones that boost powers. Already a dying race at that point. Rauru and mineru are the only ones we ever see. They're guarded and served solely by hylians.

Sonia, a priestess (of at least the triforce if not hylia), blood of hylia. She was one of the people first greeting the zonai, which tells us they descended in that generation.

The rito and zora are already there! The timelines are already merged! We see the ghost of what the sheikah took inspo from with the zonai animal masks.

A gerudo sage! Despite the gerudo still being led by ganondorf... That must have been fun. Likely the ruler of the gerudo after ganon is defeated, which must have been a Trial and a Half in THAT political landscape.

The duelling peaks are... intact. This lends a lot of credence to the dragon theory!

There are no floating islands in zeldas time. This implies either the cloud barrier is intact and zonai still lived up there for a while, or the whole zonai race went to earth and brought their islands with them.

The great plateau walls are already there. Hylian design.

The hero's aspect. A half hylian, half zonai hero. This confirms that the hero can be reborn into bodies that aren't purely hylian (or, well.... We'll get back to that). It also could not be more clear that it's the hero from the calamity tapestry! Even has a pointy face where zelda has flat. Booty shorts/skirt. The red hair is important.

Ganon has been reborn, zelda arrived via time travel, but there's no hero? Rather, the only one to defeat him named link is our totk boy 10k years later.

The zonai temple of time is on the plateau. Where the landmass under it comes from I DO not know.

The zonai temple of time is currently not really very close to the plateau. This implies islands can drift. This isn't relevant but is cool.

We get no explanation for the zonai ruins in the jungle. Which is a crying shame. Rauru never ever goes to the jungle. The best we get is the dragons head quest. Or the labyrinths! Well... I'll get back to that as well.

The depths, the zonai mines, zonaite. Despite being from the clouds, the zonai get their powerful metal, the one named after them, the stuff they make everything out of, from the deepest, darkest depths of hyrule (literally lol). The only other place zonaite can be found is some caves in the sky.

The distinctive swirl of zonai magic above shrines perfectly matches rauru's final spell. The shrines were constructed by/for rauru and Sonia, said to help 'seal the darkness and prevent it encroaching on hyrule'. Underneath each one is an inactive light root, which, when activated, becomes surrounded by the only hylian flora in the depths. Hilariously, you can pick up the actual shrines in pebble form and cart them around.

Unfortunately, one can only install a single read more, so I'm going to make it a new post.

Topics I intend to cover:

How the timelines fused and the state of it currently

Possible origins of the zonai and how long they stuck around

The ancient hero and what it means for the timeline

The relation between the sheikah, the zonai, and the hylian king

The state of hyrule 10k years ago, politically

The original sages being the blood ancestors of every new sage, but using the champion voice actors. Also population statistics

Ganondorf v calamity ganon v phantom ganon v the blights v the depths (there's a lot of ganon)!

What this means for age of calamity...

My best attempt at covering everything from the fusion of the timelines to the events that start breath of the wild, sticking as close to canon and as far from headcanon as possible.

[totkdaily]

Day 83: Gerudo Desert, and Riju

From here, the desert looks foggy. Perhaps a sand storm? I hope it clears before I need to head to Gerudo Town. I spot two other things of note: the tower in the Highlands, and a geoglyph. It looks like a figure of some kind. Could I glide all the way there? It looks far… 

No. But I at least get on the right level of the Highlands. It's even colder up here. I find the geoglyph. 

A vision. I see...

Ganondorf swears loyalty to the King of Hyrule. The conversation is tense.

This vision is different - as they talk, I feel I'm following Ganondorf's eyes specifically. Examining each secret stone on display, ignoring their bearers. Resting again on Sonia's. I have already seen the Queen's fate. 

Zelda is concerned. Even his name… I understand her hesitancy, and I share it. Rauru is foolish to reassure her. Everything could have been prevented if Ganondorf had been stopped here. Rauru was right. He was an arrogant king. So sure none could unseat him. 

It's so cold. I have to keep moving. I consider leaving the tower for another day, but I'm halfway there now. 

I glide over what must be the old Yiga Clan hideout - I wonder if they still use it? That map in Robbie's lab suggested yes. 

I reach the tower. There's a little tent - the journal belongs to Billson. The tower is snowed in… fortunately, it sounds like there's a cave somewhere below. 

Meadella's Mantle Cave. I wonder if this is it? Billson's records suggest the cave does go under the tower - but also that it's massive. There's a river flowing through it - I chuck a wooden board into it and climb on. 

Bubbulfrog! By complete chance, I manage to land its gem on my rudimentary raft as it lands at the bottom of the waterfall. 

The raft takes me perfectly under the tower. And launch!

I try to glide to a southerly sky island to hop over to Gerudo Town - but it turns out to be inhabited by a three-headed dragon, so we won't go there. I redirect to the plateaus around the old Sheikah Tower site, which is now a chasm to the Depths. The desert is engulfed by a sand storm. Can I make it to Gerudo Town from here? I feel like I should try. 

I barely get as far as the ruins before I completely lose visibility. I can hear these huge impacts, like explosions. There's a trio of… guards? No, training dummies. And the impacts flash like lightning. I know who's here - I rush to find her.

Riju. 

She recognises me still - it's good to find a friend. She says this sand shroud appeared when Hyrule Castle rose - that tracks. And there are new monsters - gibdos. We work out a technique which might be useful against them - I aim, and Riju shoots lightning. 

And then golden light fills the air… the Gerudo sage is watching us. 

Another Gerudo, Faundi, arrives. She says gibdos are attacking Kara Kara Bazaar. We have to go there. But… how can I find my way in this?? 

I climb a piece of ruin, intending to guess and glide - but it's high enough that I can see across the sand shroud, thank goodness. Aiming for the bazaar is still a guess, but it's slightly more informed. 

I almost lose my way once I glide back below the horizon, but I make it to Kara Kara Bazaar and help Riju fight off the gibdos. Awful creatures, long-limbed and half-rotten, with insectoid faces and gill-like necks.

I think I saw some through the sand storm on my way here. I'm glad I didn't have to fight them without Riju. There's some kind of weird mushroom that glows, seemingly the source of the gibdos or their power. 

Suddenly, through the sand - Zelda!

No, it can't be. It must be the imposter. Coincidentally, right at that moment, tornadoes head for Gerudo Town.

Riju heads back that way. I want to see if anyone I know is in the Bazaar before I join her. 

Also, I need to stop at the shrine here.

[mrslittletall]

I finished The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom today. That final boss was cool! Really enjoyed it. Now what are my thoughts? Especially compared to Breath of the Wild? I first want to say what I liked more in TotK.

The main dungeons and the boss battles. Those were such a glow up compared to Breath of the Wild! The dungeons actually looked unique from each other, had fun mechanics and the boss battles, holy shit, the stupid Deathblights are getting soooo boring easily but ToTK has four very distinct bosses which you actually beat with the help of your companions and wow! I loved them so much I was fighting the underground variants all the time! Caves! Oh god that was the BEST idea! Zelda always did have caves and they were sorely missing in BotW. I loved going delving in this game! The caves were amazing! That is one of the things I might come back for to find all the caves I missed. I also enjoyed the wells for the same reason. The sky! That was FUN! Everything being so disconnected meant you had to get creative to get from island to island. And they had a lot of clever puzzles up there, especially to make shrines appear. And the things I liked less? Shrines. Yeah, sorry, TotK. BotW actually gave me really thought out shrines designed around the four main abilites, cryo, stasis, bombs and magnesis. ToTK had one shrine. BUILD! And yeah there were different mechanics in it but it got old quick. You just always were building. The naked survivals were pretty nice but only after you got a couple hearts or they were brutally difficult. I also don't like how many shrines just had to be found. No clever overworld puzzles, just find the cave and the shrine. Done. The ones in the sky sometimes had overworld puzzles so they were more fun ^^ Stuff I am pretty neutral about: The story. It was perfectly serviceable and the Zelda stuff made me weep but I get the criticism of the ancestors being completely bland characters and Ganondorf being a one not villain without depth. Because that is 100 % the case. But some of the new characters are really good, like Rauru, Sonia and Mineru, really fun characters and I liked that we got more an emphasis on the champions of the present, BotW seemed to have a lot more emphasis on the champions from the past who were long dead. And also completely gone from this game. I guess they moved on after Calamity Ganon died? I don't really remember BotW's ending in full detail. In conclusion, this game is BotW 1.5 with some great ideas and some things that feel a little meh. I had my fun with it though.

[ivaalo]

I have mixed feelings about TotK.

As a game itself, it was so great, it was an experience, it's one of my favorite video game ever.

But as a sequel, I think they could have done so much more.

The reason why I love this game is mostly because it takes the best of BotW and has one of the best story a Zelda game has written.

But when I started to play the game, I noticed a lot of stuff that made me worried. The fast weapon-select-screen is very slow to load, same for the hand powers.

You still have the shrines. Okay I prefer this aesthetic, but it's still a redesign from the previous game. Same for Koroks. There's gotta be a way to upgrade your inventory / hearts / stamina without coping-pasting BotW. The problem with shrines is that you know the result of your efforts before finishing it. And when you know you can cheat the puzzles, it makes it not rewarding at all, no matter if you do it the "intended way" or not.

The dungeons are lazy (level design speaking). It's always like "you have to activate 4 or 5 mechanisms and that's it". In other Zelda games, this would have been the final room, not the whole dungeon. Most of puzzles are skippable, so low satisfaction.

Narration is lazy too. You collect memories. Every cutscene after a boss is the same.

The depths. Why??? Why making a whole new map... with nothing in it??? At first I thought this was gonna be a scary underworld. Like you have all this gloom stuff, and you actually make the scariest shit ever, and you don't. It's just boreland. The only good things to do there is farming, collecting roots of shrines to see their emplacement and that's it. No, I'm not considering the fanservice tunics as a good thing. It's breaking the 4th wall as hell. Nothing rewarding here. Like yeah, I just beat that gloom Gleeok! What do I get? Something an Amiibo could have given me.

The sky is empty too. Maybe there should have been only the land and the sky, without the depths, and this would have been better, since more effort would have been put in the sky islands.

The lore is weird. As much as I love exploring the lore of Zelda games, in this one, I feel like the creators didn't have any idea of how to implement the Zonai here. Like if the Ancien Hero is a Zonai, why are Rauru and Mineru considered the last Zonai? Where is the Sheikah tech? Like even the walls of the Shrine of Resurrection disappears?? We can only theorize that everything Sheikah rose from the earth when needed and went back to the ground once BotW is over, but a simple random line of explanation would be great. Also time span between events??? 100 years from the Calamity is something, 10,000 from the Sheikah gold-age is insanely huge, and it wasn't the first time Ganon woke up. So Zelda travelled like what? 300,000 years ago?? You wouldn't understand the language of someone 300 years ago in your own country, this is just absurd. The ancient Hyrulean text cannot be read, but Zelda can understand Sonia perfectly.

Balancing. The upgrading stuff for your cloths are a copy-paste from the previous game, without balancing in consequence. Lizalfos's tails are rare as hell, and I need 36 of them. In BotW, this wasn't an issue, due to the abundance of Lizalfos and drop rate. This is an issue, in TotK.

Ambiance. This is supposed to be the Cataclysm. Except Yiga or Stal monsters (like BotW), no monster attack you if you don't approach them first. No attack in villages or forts. (Lurelin was already destroyed, and the Bazar was only a mission) Except Gloom hands, no enemy feels threatening. In BotW, the world was dominated by monsters and nothing changed until Link woke up. In this game, monsters are supposed to attack places and make their return, not just lay in Hyrule field waiting to get destroyed.

Other stuff, like if you gotta spend a lot of time in the air, why not having a boost module in your paraglider that you can upgrade, instead of Tulin's power?

Despite all of this rant, I loved this game. I just think they could have done so much more for a sequel, instead of copy-pasting stuffs from BotW. Reminder that this game took 6 years to develop. 7 years for BotW. Except BotW was all original. So yeah, kinda disappointed.

However, I want to say that I love this game with all my heart. The music, the cutscenes, the story, the bosses. It's pure blessing!

It's also bold of Nintendo to not care about the timeline anymore and make the BotW-TotK games separated from the established timeline.

It's hard to rank this game. I enjoyed it more than BotW, but deceptions (and the depth, which was a huge time-consuming chore) makes it so I don't want to replay it soon.

Wind Waker remains unbeatable.

[busket]

things I like

the sky islands, as a concept

the depths, as a concept

zeldas journey into the past, and how her powers are recontextualized to be passed down from rauru and sonia and how it somewhat moves away from "zelda is the human form of a goddess" which i never particularly liked. even framing the zonai as "god-like" in their advanced civilization suggests that perhaps the myth that zeldas powers are from a goddess isn't exactly true

the sages, and the themes of comradery, teamwork, and friendship. while botw was a very solitary experience, I love all the parts of this game where you fight as a team with the sages or the few monster control team quests.

the attempt of establishing hyrule as a growing, healing nation instead of the post apocalypse we have in botw. I like that the people know and respect link and zelda for what they did in botw. I actually don't mind that some npcs you meet in botw don't automatically know link because you gotta give people the same experience, even if they haven't played botw.

zeldas draconification....as a concept.

I can appreciate that they did bring Ganondorf back as a character after over a decade of not being in the franchise, even if they fucked it

the shrines and dungeons are all fun and well designed

the secret stones are cool but I think i only believe that because I've created an elaborate delusion that theyre vessels for the triforce and if all of them were to be destroyed the triforce would reform

things I don't like

the sky islands and the depths are boring and empty and it all looks the same

zelda and rauru's choices fully go against the themes of the rest of the game; their decision to sacrifice themselves should have been framed as the wrong choice in a world that's so willing to help them, and in a game who's main theme seems to be "you arent alone anymore". raurus sacrifice only delays the inevitable and shirks his responsibility on to link; Ganondorf only rose to power because of rauru's hubris anyway. and zelda spent 100 years battling ganon alone, its not fair that she should spend eons alone in a mindless state just to fix a sword that we saw get fixed within just a century in the last game. she had an entire life of peace ahead of her in the ancient past, she could have spent as much time as she needed perfecting her time powers. these choices are framed in a way that says "a leader must sacrifice for their people" but that's totally against the themes of the rest of the game, which says "no one needs to sacrifice anymore, we can do this together". and i don't mind that these choices were made, they kinda had to be for the plot to work. but they could have been framed as the WRONG things to do, not noble and wise choices.

zonai devices aren't fun, they're frustrating and annoying to build. so everything with zonite, crystallized charges, practically the whole depths, is useless if you don't enjoy building zonai machines.

they completely removed all the sheikah stuff which I've already talked about how that's a huge dump on all of botws themes of how progress (especially when creating war machines) is dangerous because once that technology exists you can't take it back and you can't control it. that was the whole purpose of botw and totk said "actually we can take it back. we will un-invent the atom bomb, don't worry!"

Ganondorf is so horribly done because he has ABSOLUTELY NO CONNECTION TO LINK OR ZELDA....he knows zelda only as some little girl that fought beside rauru and link as just some twerp that rauru said was cool. he should have had all the memories of calamity ganon, the countless years of torment of being sealed away just to be defeated again by the master sword. he should have been intimately familiar and hateful of the sting of that blade. but he's just a fucking stranger. why even make it Ganondorf when he could have been anyone?? we know it's canon that calamity ganon came from Ganondorf, urbosa says as much, but they never address it. why is Ganondorf a separate character?? confronting him feels less like fate or prophecy, not a final epic confrontation, but just link having to clean up someone else's (rauru) fucking mess. and it's clear that Ganondorf would much rather be fighting rauru again, that's his nemesis. not link, not zelda, just a new character they made up for this game and named him after an extremely minor OOT character.

mineru shouldn't have been the 5th sage it should have been purah or paya. and the spirit temple is fucking miserable, the other dungeons are good but that one fucking sucks. mineru being the 5th sage goes against the other themes of inheritance and taking on the responsibilities of your ancestors. why is mineru here, just cos she's a ghost?? I don't think a ghost should be allowed to use a secret stone idk.

edit: NO KASS!!! WHY DID THEY DELETE HIM??? WITH NO EXPLAINATION??

I don't hate totk tbh I don't think it's a bad game. but it's such a disappointment and they really fumbled with a lot of stuff. the bones are there and it could have been made really well with just a few relatively small changes and I think that's way more frustrating than if it were just a total shithole of a game. if it was absolutely awful I could ignore it but the fact that it's just mediocre, and I could pinpoint the things about it that would make it better means it's destined to fucking haunt me

[skyloftsword]

Tears of the Kingdom Story Summarized (Part 2)

Alright, have to make this multiple parts because character limit, here we go with the second part which should be MUCH shorter.

After Link goes to Tobio's Hollow, he then goes down into the Depths and is told to construct a new body for Mineru. Once the body was finished, they went to the Spirit Temple only to be greeted by a corrupted Construct. They defeat it and Mineru tells Link the complete story. After this, Link then sets off to the Great Hyrule Forest and Korok Forest to meet with the Deku Tree, but cannot with the normal way. So he then goes in there from the Depths. The Great Deku Tree was heavily harmed by a Phantom Ganon. Link saves him and is told where the Master Sword is. The Light Dragon lowers herself to make things easier for Link. Once Link finds the Light Dragon and retrieves the Master Sword, he finally makes his descent into the Depths below Hyrule Castle. Once he makes his way through where he and Zelda were in the intro of the game he makes two more dives (finding Zelda's torch at the bottom of the abyss even) and then ends up needing to fight the Demon King's Army. With the assistance of the Sages, it goes down easily. The scourages of each Temple then attack, the Sages tell Link to go face Ganondorf as they'll hold the bosses back. The final battle between Ganondorf and Link finally starts. They fight and fight, the Sages eventually help for a short bit but get knocked away by a powerful blast, but in the end Link slays Ganondorf... But Ganondorf then eats the Secret Stone he stole from Sonia and becomes a dragon intending on sending the entire world into darkness. He brings Link into the sky in his mouth, but Zelda saves him by having the Demon Dragon roar and catching him. The true final battle happens, Link falls down popping all of the Demon Dragon's pimple things and finally destroys the Demon Dragon with one of the most insane final blows in any game I've ever seen. Link then is sent into some weird realm with Zelda, Rauru and Sonia. He holds out his hand, with Rauru and Sonia holding out theirs as well to amplify Link's recall. This allows Link to revert Zelda back to being a human, Link's arm back to pre-Ganondorf burn and Rauru is given his arm back. Rauru and Sonia give their final farewells to Link and head off to the afterlife. Link then wakes up to both him and Zelda falling down to Hyrule. He catches her and hugs her tight. Once they land in the water he carries her to shore. She wakes up and talks about everything she experienced and is genuinely really happy to be back to be with him and her Hyrule. Some time later, Mineru takes the new Sages, Link, Zelda and Purah up to the Great Sky Island at the pedestal where Zelda became a dragon. The new Sages give a goofy Vow promising to help keep Hyrule at peace, similar to how the Sages back then did to Rauru. Mineru then gives her final goodbyes to Link and Zelda and heads off to the afterlife to be with Rauru and Sonia. With that, Zelda asks everyone to help keep Hyrule safe.

With that, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is finished. This is genuinely one of my favorite stories in any game ever even if its very controversial. This is one of the three games to even get me to shed a tear I love it so much. Thank you all for reading this.

[freya-howlett]

So, now that I finished totk, I'd like to share my insight of the game overall with y'all. Fight me or agree with me, I'd like to know other people's opinions

PROS

The soundtrack is amazing. Zelda has always been about awesome music and this is not the exception. The soundtrack plays exactly what the environment was to convey. You're exploring the sky islands? The music is then calm. You're in the depths? the music will help you shit yourself. Going even more down, looking for Ganondorf? coolest music ever, full of mystery.

World exploring. I feel like this time totk forces you to explore the world, in botw you could directly go to Ganon and beat the shit out of him with a stick, but definitely not here at all. You find yourself needing bombs so you'll have to look for caves, then you need Sundelion, so you have to go to the sky. In a certain way, I hated that for the first days because I was trying to finish the game as soon as I could, but now I appreciate it.

We have our first disabled Link! At least until the end. It was nice to see him different for once. It'd be cool if he had stayed that way.

World development. In botw, you have this whole piece of land that's mostly monsters and ruins, but in totk things have changed after the calamity disappeared. We have more people around who're in contact with each other. The places don't seem as lonely as before and even people help Link. And, did you notice there's less trees? It's a nice detail, since there's new buildings made of wood everywhere.

Fusing mechanic. Tbh, I didn't love Fuse at first, but then realized how useful it can be.

Link's clothing. There's more clothes available bc they used the botw DLC clothing, which is cool! And the new designs are... slutty.

Zelink. No one can tell me otherwise. All the signs are there, bitches!!!!

CONS

Overall, it doesn't feel like a sequel. And I hated that. Nintendo keeps giving preference towards new players and in this case, it's not worth it. I dare to declare that at least 80% of people who purchased totk played botw and knew exactly what they were getting. This especially has to do with the point below.

There's no mention of the Champions at all, the Sheikah technology is missing, and where tf are the Divine Beasts?? I get that, yeah, maybe the Champions shouldn't be thaaaaaat important anymore, yet what about everything else? Where's my Sheika Slate????????

We were promised a dark game and this isn't it, not at all. Maybe I'm tripping? But I remember clearly on the first years of development people mentioning this game would be dark like Majora's, and going back to the first two trailers I could actually see it was kinda the case. However, with the last trailer, I made a bet that they probs rejected the idea and I was right. I'd like to have something like Majora someday again.

The introduction of a new race out of nowhere. The zonai.... they weren't my piece of cake at first. It seems cheap for me, I'm not sure. I don't know if they intended to introduce something, anything, from them since botw but ended up scraping the idea, but overall the whole experience I have of them from both games is that they took the zonai out of their asses and were like "yup, we got this!"

The end was TOO happy. Like I mentioned before, I'd rather Link have his arm cut. Purah can make another one if Rauru really wanted his arm so bad. Zelda transforming back was okay, but what I didn't really get was why did Sonia and Rauru didn't turn her back before????? They instead waited until Link fought his ass hard, lol.

I hated that Zelda was thanking ME at the end instead of Link. Don't look at me, bitch, look at your boyfriend! This has to do with this other post of mine about how Nintendo can't let go of Link being an avatar despite they themselves providing depth to his character.

I may edit this longer but rn I'm out of ideas and I'm at work, lol.

[getvalentined]

The fact that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are confirmed by in-universe events to occur on an entirely different timeline from any other games in the series makes everything make so much more sense, and I'm much more comfortable with that.

Long-winded rambling about timeline divergence points and other implications under the cut. Spoilers abound, so be warned.

The timeline appears to have diverged all the way back with the first hero; Skyloft doesn't exist, meaning Hylia never threw proto-Link into the fray. This also explains why Fi is still clearly awake, since the Master Sword is so "talkative."

My sister's theory about the other main divergence is that the Zonai would have become the Twili if things had been different. Comparing everything that makes up Zonai culture (architecture, clothing, magic) this appears to not only be entirely possible, but almost absolutely certain. All these things can be seen in Twili culture, changed but intact after eras apart.

In the original timeline, the people that would eventually be referred to as Hylians also had the power to send land into the sky, so they'd have no reason to see the Zonai with their power as something like gods. In fact, accounting for what we know of Hylian imperialism, they'd likely see them as competition, which tracks perfectly with what happened to the Twili. But in a timeline where the first hero and Skyloft never existed, that wouldn't be the case at all.

And then, after the majority of the Zonai left for reasons currently unexplained, Rauru and Mineru stayed—because Rauru had fallen in love with Sonia. This led to a union of their people instead of a war, and that terminated any possibility of timeline where the Twili would come into being.

The Imprisoning War is literally the storyline of Ocarina of Time, but on this different timeline. Link isn't here. He doesn't exist, because Hylia never chose him. We know Hylia still exists, since Sonia was a priestess of Hylia prior to being the first queen of Hyrule, but a number of quests throughout ToTK show very clearly that the goddess statues apparently don't actually represent or interface with Hylia. The Bargainer in the Great Central Mine is able to interface through it, and they're very clearly not related to any divine light.

Likewise, the Triforce was never claimed by anyone, the Sacred Realm doesn't appear to exist—so Demise was sealed some other way, possibly through a sacrifice on Hylia's part directly, and was then eventually manifested within or was bound to Ganondorf in some other way.

According to Wortsworth, there has never been another Zelda in the entire Hyrule royal line. He says it outright. In the other timeline(s), Zelda is a family name that's been in use since the days of Skyloft. This indicates that in the Calamity timeline, pieces of Hylia aren't locked into a reincarnation cycle in order to keep meeting Link over and over.

The princess and the hero that defeated the first Calamity were not Zelda and Link, because there's never been a Zelda or a Link before. This makes the huge lapse in time between the first Calamity and the events of BoTW/AoC actually work! It also explains why the sword in the tapestry looks like Ghirahim's, not like the Master Sword. It explains why the hero has red hair.

It's not Link and it's not Zelda. It never was. They're both new.

It also explains why the Sheikah are so different; in this timeline, they were never subject to a near-genocide at the hands of Hyrule. The tear on the eye in the Sheikah symbol doesn't represent tears shed over the loss of their people and culture. It represents tears shed over the loss of Rauru, Sonia, Mineru and Zelda. Tears shed over sacrifice after sacrifice in the hopes that someday—someday—it could come to an end.

The chamberlain who wrote all the tablets up on those little lotus islands, the historical accounts that Wortsworth translates, is very clearly the woman who would become the first Sheikah.

The chamberlain was left behind after everyone else left, and was probably responsible for the upbringing of Rauru and Sonia's daughter the same way Impa raised Zelda in Ocarina of Time—because they must have had one, even if we don't hear about her, because Zelda exists, her mother existed, the magic that they all inherited from Rauru and Sonia combined into one bloodline existed.

Comparing ancient Sheikah technology with that of the Zonai, it's clear that it was repurposed, replicated to the best of their ability after the ones who could actually utilize it to is fullest capacity were all gone. The Sheikah in the Calamity timeline even wear the eye in the same place as in old Zonai imagery. The last vestige of a memorial to a whole race that was lost when Rauru sealed himself and Ganondorf away, when Mineru's body finally gave out to the gloom.

Lore gremlin that I am, I've always had so much trouble reconciling the Calamity timeline with the rest of the series in any way—and that's because it's an entirely different timeline altogether, and that's fantastic.

[science-lings]

feel free to talk about your totk role reversal if you want to 👍 I wanna hear it!! :)

okay so, first change that spirals everything out of control is when Link and Zelda get attacked by ganoncorpse. At that point, Zelda had casually handed off Rauru's secret stone to Link to hold, so it is now in his possession. He still tries to protect her and gets his sword broken and his arm fucked up. but when the castle rises from the ground, he's the one that falls. Zelda tries to jump in after him and uses her time power to send him back without realizing it. she gets caught by Rauru's arm and gets sent to the great sky island to start her quest.

Link wakes up in the past, his arm had to be amputated there's no magical replacement. Rauru and Sonia had found him passed out and dying from the gloom attack and knew it to be Ganondorf's doing so they took him in no questions asked. But they also noticed the secret stone (an item that only they possessed at the time) in his possession (I'm thinking it attached itself to one of his hair tails through some kind of cuff or other type of decoration, it also turned that champion/ luminous stone blue when he touched it)

So he's clearly very confused and just wants to go back to Zelda to make sure that she's okay (she's also doing the whole song and dance of trying to find Link, this time ganoncorpse is using him as the puppet to string her along).

before i get to the stuff im not sure about I'm going to explain what Link's secret stone amplifies, I mean he doesn't have any magic power like the sages or Zelda, right? WRONG! THIS IS WHERE I GET TO FUCK AROUND! NECROMANCER LINK IS BACK BABY! I'M GIVING HIM A GHOST ARM AND THE CHAMPIONS CONNECTED DIRECTLY TO HIS SPIRIT THROUGH TIME! either that or he gets some facet of time power from his flurry rush ability and he could still be the sage of time but idk how that would work amplified, would he just be able to slow time whenever he wanted? idk the ghosts sound cooler and I want to give him a ghost arm that he has to learn how to manifest and use while he's in the past because I think it would be cool and not just some magic fix to losing his arm.

Now because Link doesn't have the light power in order to restore the master sword, I realized that the sword would still exist in the past, since no matter when you think the founding of Hyrule happened, the master sword existed before that. So he goes on a quest to find it, but he has to build his strength first (idk if the shrines exist at this point or if he just has to endure light magic treatment from Rauru lol), I do think Zelda would have fun with them though so he'll probably get to hang out with his in-laws for a while.

(this could also be fixed by Rauru becoming the light dragon to heal the old master sword, but he would have to do that before the final battle and idk how that would work, Sonia is the one with the goddess blood so maybe she would be able to do it, so maybe when Ganondorf tries to assassinate her, Link is able to save her with some funky death shit and she could become the light dragon after Rauru seals himself and ganondorf away. I also want Link to be a dragon to get back to the present and it would look real cool but again, idk how it would all work or if the reasoning makes any sense at all)

that last part was me just brainstorming lol but if any of those ideas interests anyone I can turn it into the canon of this au that I won't be able to do much with lol