#but i talk a fair bit about botw

[keis-slut]

OHHH BAE I HAVE AN IDEA FOR THE TOTK/BOTW THING

How about the one we've talked about with link unconsciously making a love potion because he switched two ingredients and gave it to y/n ????

OHHHH BAEEE HI!!!

i love this idea, i actually thought of something like this before but never did it, i guess ur request was telling me he jus HAD to!

here’s my best take on that eeeee

-

potion|link

CW: RIDING, SLIGHT DIRTY TALK, DRUGGING (?)

‘this should do it!’ he said.

‘i’m sure this’ll work!’ he said.

right, well, it definitely worked enough to ruin my pants, that’s for sure.

he knew he fucked up as soon as i couldn’t help but rub my legs together as my face grew hot, completely avoiding his gaze.

“a-are you ok?”

he stuttered, putting his arms out and leaning closer towards me.

bad idea, my judgement was so clouded by lust, i struggled terribly not to just pounce onto him.

i had no idea what was happening or what he did exactly, other than obviously completely mess up my elixir.

i know he didn’t do it on purpose, i watched him make it, and it seemed alright.

maybe we really should have double checked the ingredients…

you live and you learn, and now we learned the hard way.

i was now learning the hard way, at least.

“n-no! i don’t think you should come near me, link…”

he seemed to be taken aback by that statement, and was visibly hurt.

i didn’t mean it like that, but he just didn’t understand.

“what!? why? are you mad? do you not want to be around me now?”

he anxiously asked, worried expression across his face.

i stared at his features, my body pulsing harshly as my temperature was only rising.

i felt between my legs throb warmly, and suddenly my chest became very sensitive.

i suddenly felt my nipples harden under my shirt, the friction of them rubbing against my clothing only making me squirm slightly.

his eyes stared into mine, beautiful blue matching the sky above us, showing a dictionary of words in one blink that more than likely went unspoken.

his head tilted to the side, lips falling into a flat line as he worriedly stared at me.

staring at his lips was a bad idea.

i had to leave, so i shoved myself off the floor and into his house.

“hey-!”

i quickly swung open the door, but he shot after me fast, close enough to catch it before slamming shut.

i ran to the other side of the room, pressing my overly sensitive body against the wall, staring at him as he stood carefully away from me.

“y/n, what’s wrong? what happened? what did that elixir do!? tell me!”

he was throwing a mountain of questions at me, but all i could think about was him.

i opened my mouth to speak, but felt so embarrassed, i hesitated.

“y/n-!”

“-this is your fault link!”

i yelled, cutting him off, and he stepped forward more as i squeezed my legs together, feeling myself throb with each step he took.

“i’m sorry!”

he yelled back, and i just felt myself drip.

“now you have to fix it!”

he scoffed.

“i don’t even know what i made, how do i do that?!”

my stomach did a flip just before my next words fell from my mouth.

“fuck me!”

he stared at me for a second, before his demeanor then softened, but his expression fell confused.

“fuck you? y/n…did i…-”

i backed more against the wall as he dared to come closer, now feeling just how much of a mess i’ve painted against my cunt.

i felt myself throbbing so badly as he got even closer, my legs starting to weaken.

“i think you…made some kind of…intense love potion, maybe…”

i whined.

his arms fell to his side as he walked closer, leaning down to my height.

he was about a foot away from me now, horribly close.

“oh, i see now…”

he spoke, the sound of his voice now completely changed, almost condescending.

that’s not fair, this was his fault anyway!

“don’t say it like that, this is your fault!”

i walk into his face and point a finger, speaking up as i felt so embarrassed.

he put his arms up in defeat, and backed up slightly with wide eyes.

it seemed like he had an idea as he backed up a bit more, pulling a chair from his table and sitting down.

i pulled back and watched him sit, then immediately crawling to his lap once he grabbed my arm, and i noticed how restrained he was in his pants.

i felt him rub against me, my cunt throbbing hungrily as i did my best to slide my pants off my leg.

he started breathing heavier, grabbing my hips while i pulled down his pants just enough to let him loose.

i lifted myself up, wasting no time before clenching around his cock.

he slipped in so perfectly, so easily as my body has been subconsciously preparing for this anyway.

the wet noises as my cunt sucked him in made my face flush, but he felt so good as i took him fully.

he moaned loudly, and i collapsed against his shoulder as i bounced on his lap.

“oh, link! fuck! fuck!-”

hylia, i needed this so badly, i could cum right now.

and maybe i did already, but i didn’t stop.

i leaned back, looking down as me and him both stared at just how deliciously i milked him.

he stared as a white ring formed around the base of his cock, and clear liquid decorated the rest.

“w-what did you put in that thing? you fucking pervert”

i asked between moans, feeling myself grow tighter around him, and i knew he felt this when he gripped my hips much harder, whimpering heavily.

his face was incredibly red, this color flushing as far as the tip of his pointy ears.

his lap was now a mess, covered in everything leaking from my cunt, some even getting on his champions tunic.

i’ve definitely cum already, maybe a couple times, but i still didn’t stop.

i couldn’t stop.

i sloppily picked myself up and down on him, cock curving just enough to easily find the spot that made my head loll.

as soon as i found it again though, i felt the hero get up, placing his hands under my ass as he quickly threw me onto the table next to us.

“link?!-shit!”

i finally caught his eyes again for the first time in a bit, and they had completely changed, his eyes pooled with lewd desire.

“so it just makes you wanna be fucked like a whore, yea?”

his words surprised me, i never thought he could speak as filthy as so, but the groan from his mouth had told me the way my cunt reacted to that was a good thing.

or maybe i was just forgetting that he had taste tested the elixir before giving it to me.

my legs wrapped around his waist, locking him against me as he thrusted his hips, making my body tremble.

i tugged at his hair band, needy hands grasping and pulling at his now loose golden locks.

“guess ill just have to fuck the potion out of you now, huh?”

[wayfayrr]

Mossss!!! I just got off of work and I haven’t been able to stop thinking of Sky being a human <333333 ! He’s just so babygirl, a scrunkly lil baby <33

Making me think of reader sticking close to Sky- honestly projecting rn, he just looks so warm and safe to be around, I’d be taking so many naps with him <3

But also making me think that Sky would probably do better in the modern world, considering it’s all humans and precious bean would never have to worry about monsters again. And Sky with cats!! Getting to hold cats!!! AND THE PUPPIES <33333

But also I’d love to hear any other headcanons you have about human Sky <3

~🍀 anon

I hope your shift went well clover!!!

Sky is simply the sckrunkliest link - he's so babygirl and lovable in everyway <333 no there's no bias in who I write for the most wym?

Sticking close to him would just be so lovely in hyrule, he's the one in the chain that understands the most about you - he's got the kindest/calmest demeanour of them all and he's tied for best cuddler with twi what else is there to really want? if you chose him out of all of the others he'd try his hardest to prove to you it was the right choice.

sky is 100% the fastest link to adapt to the modern world you're so right about that. he struggles with tech about as much as all the rest (cept wild and tears ofc) but the other things? he's not got the same issues with food because milk isn't alcoholic to him (milk powder can be found in bloody anything so the rest of the chain are struggling for a bit), he isn't as intertwined with magic so he doesn't have any withdrawal symptoms seeing as earth doesn't have any. the animals are just another cherry on the top for it!

as for other headcanons?

✦ I think I've touched on it, but sky growing up in skyloft is the reason for his poor stamina. Hylians tend to handle high altitude and lower oxygen environments a lot better than humans and hence his stamina is way lower than it should be. (he also gets very confused when he sees you struggling with the altitude until it's pointed out humans aren't built for it)

✦ The chain are very shocked when they see him bleeding for the first time! another hc I have about hylians is that they have orange blood (this is based on botw/totks shading) so when they see his red they think there's something wrong with him

✦ He can't use most potions and magic has a lot less of an affect on him, less because he grew up with it outside humans it has next to no affect, so he has to take specialised potions and has them prioritised seeing as worst case scenario anyone else can have rulie heal them. Wild is in charge of altering and making sky's supply! Luv handed over her recipes for a good lot of rupees when they made it back to skyloft again <3 wild's the most consistent at making them so sky just has to put his life in his hands.

✦ His resting body temp is also a little higher than the chains, they had to be reassured several times that he wasn't simply running a fever

✦ the both of you are immune to a fair few hylian diseases and the ones you do get have different symptoms, however the two of you can both get each other sick - so no cuddling while one or the other is by order of time :(( Rulie also gets very sad he can't heal the two of you

✦ The rest of the chain are almost jealous of how fast you and sky bonded, and it's over things that none of them share with you. The most is twi having experience with Ordonians who are human. But being able to talk to you about human issues and get close to you through things like that? yeah they're envious to say the least

[creativesplat]

💘, 🐳, ⛩️, 🙊?

💘, 🐳, ⛩️, 🙊

💘 MIPHLINK!!! Do I have to say it? Absolutely 110% Miphlink. Honestly they are a pairing that I love more than all the other ships I have ever shipped, and I come back to them whenever other hyper fixations fizzle out or I want something comforting. I love them both so much. AoC is one of my favourite zelda games for that reason. (BoTW too, but the tragic lovers vibe is so sad)

Skyward Sword Zelink, a little bit, I wasn’t head over heals for them, but SS Zelda reminded me a fair bit of Mipha (if Mipha had been brought up in a less dangerous time and with less royal duties they would have probably been more similar), so that was that! 

I really wish I shipped Revali with someone, because I love the birb because he is stupid and fun to draw, initially I was a pining Miphvali shipper, but like, I wasn’t a massive fan of that, so maybe ZelVali? Some people ship that, and I’ve got to say the Revali and Zelda talking scene is one of my favourite cutscenes in BoTW, not to mention Zelda’s dialogue to Revali; If not romantic, definitely platonic. 

Teba and Saki are the adorable birb parents so I quite like their couple dynamic? Im not really the biggest shipper outside of Miphlink tbh.  

🐳

I honestly have no idea? Probably a Hylian (boring answer sorry!), but maybe a Rito. I love the decoration styles, and bright colours, and also they live in a cool climate and I do not like hot weather. So maybe a rito. 

⛩️

I think my favourite dungeon would have to be the Ancient Cystern in SS, I just love how beautiful the whole thing is, with all the lotus-y patterns and the pinks and turquoises and the flowers and stuff. ITs just so dang beautiful!! I also really loved the Sandship Dungeon. I think in terms of play through that was my favourite from start to finish. Location is SO much harder. Aesthetically Satori Mountain, and Rito village, story-wise and where I spend my most time in BoTW Zora’s domain, I also Love the Zora’s domain and Rito Village music. Also sweet cozy little skyloft is so nice and permanent and homely. The great plateau is so nostalgic and I love that too… AAA I don’t think I can pick! In AoC it has to be Scero’s Supplies, I know you can’t really go there, but the merging of Zora and Hateno architecture is just so beautiful and I LOVE IT SO MUCH! 

🙊

Ohhh… Unpopular Zelda opinions… I have quite a few of those. Ok. Here we go. 

ToTK is AWUFUL. Hot dang it is the worst thing ever. It wasn’t even the story that made me stop playing. It was one line from an NPC in Rito Village. Molli wants to make elemental arrows, and has an idea for arrow inventions, that can freeze enemies! No way that’s so cool, except… that is literally one of the main things in the last game. You can buy elemental arrows from the shops. Like what the heck? At least explain to me why a very common commodity that EVERYONE but Particularly the people who’s job it is to look after Bows (Harth and Moli) know about and have access to is somethign they want to invent now. I hate is. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I ha- anyway. I despise whatever Lazy idiot decided that was the way to go. Who cares about lore? Not us apparently. I also have a massive problem with the imperialist mass-destruction weapon wearing zonai as well. And as a historian I just love BoTW so much better than ToTK. It treats its history with respect, and nuance, and good golly thats not how ruins from 10,000 years ago would work and o my word stop suspending my disbelief!?! 

Anyway. I could rant for far longer about far more things, but I’ll leave it at that. 

Way more unpopular, and Zelink shippers please ignore this: I think BoTW Zelink is creepy. The power dynamic is insanely bad (princess and her servant who literally cannot disobey her father), and the age gap is also awful (16 turned 17 for one day and “20 something” from the BoTW art book). 

Also, the women deserve better from that fandom. But that’s not news.

Thank you so much for the ask Stars!

[shinystealingbirb]

I wanted to figure out if Yona actually likes us.

Quick notice before we begin: It's extremely hard to figure out what Link's thinking, so I won't even try on that front. Sidon's perspective has been debated back and forth for the year or so that totk has been out, and for even longer during botw, so I'm only gonna skim over his. Yona is the one I'm most interested in.

Alright! everything else is below the cut!

Yona.

I care about two things with Yona, and they're the two things that motivate the Player's interactions with her. The first interaction (her style of speech) and the Zora armor.

So far, the basic things we know about Yona is that she's from a Domain outside of Hyrule. She looks like a moray, like Mizu, suggesting that Dorephan's wife might have also been from outside Hyrule, and Mizu just stuck around as an envoy. She wears gold instead of silver, as do her attendants. She speaks English- the only Zora we know of that speaks English.

What I find more interesting than this is the fact that we don't actually know when Link met her, or if he even knew of her existance before he arrived. I'm going to assume he's been to Zora's Domain plenty during the seven year gap between games, but when the Player first meets Yona, she doens't have a nametag. Link doesn't seem to recognize her.

She talks in a more formal way than most of the Zora, who talk to each other like they're extended family. She even talks to her attendants that way, so I'm assuming her Domain is a fair bit more political than ours, and she's used to double meanings and stuff. Which is interesting for worldbuilding, but just something to keep a note of for our interactions with Yona. Because cheerful does not mean interested in our interactions.

But despite Link not recognizing her at all, despite her being foreign to Hyrule, she has our damaged Zora armor. She knows where the rest of it is. She was trying to gift us the full set.

I'm gonna assume everyone knows the significance of Link's Zora armor, especially the chestpiece. Given that it seems Yona arrived just before the Upheaval, and that the Player had no idea who she was, I don't think Link gave it to her to repair. I think he gave it to Sidon, being the Zora Link has the best relationship with, to fix. And apparently, it found its way to Yona, probably because Sidon's been stuck at Mipha Court the entire time. Which means Link's probably immediately on guard, as I was, about the fact this random person has my really important armor.

Nevertheless, Yona treats it really well, and by extension, us. If she were being passive agressive, she could have replaced the damaged scales with another Zora's scales. Or, if she feared consequences from other Zora a bit more, replaced it with a lower-quality fish's scales. But she doesn't. She specifically asks for ancient arowana, which isn't easy to find. She acknowledges the armor as "treasured" and "precious" and says, "I'm honored to reunite you with this armor." Usually her language is pretty neutral, so her actual meaning can swing either way. This time, she's using only positive language, and it's clear that she respects the meaning of the armor, knows where it came from, and what it means to Link.

She had plenty of chances to be an ass when it came to the armor. She also didn't have to tell us where the Zora pants were, or instruct her attendants to get the Zora headpiece. But Yona did, so we can call the armor a decent show of goodwill.

Yona likes us. At the very least, she approves of us, because during the armor quests, she uses mostly positive language. Yippee. We got approval from the harder of the two Zora to read.

and now a quick note about sidon.

I'm not going to touch on the ambiguous will they/won't they relationship that nintendo may or may not be hanging over this. What I care about with Sidon is whether he cares about us as a friend or an idol.

I say idol as a person one might look up to, I should mention.

So in the first game, Link is recognized as Mipha's "friend", and thats enough for Sidon to trust us and hang around. I mean, if your big sister, who you absolutely adore, had a friend, what do you do? Steal said friend. By which I mean make friends with that friend. Link is kind of an object of mystery here, and when Sidon lets us ride on his back, it's more like riding a horse than anything. He's actively making himself a tool at our disposal- not an even partnership by any means, but it does require a significant degree of trust.

Tears of the Kingdom... well, it has the new statue, which shows this part of Botw. If Sidon still thinks of Link this way, by which I mean constantly looking up to Link and idolizing him, not as "miphas fiance" but "cool dude who did cool shit," it's a little more balanced, but still uneven.

However, he treats us more like a friend when we actually go talk to him. He lets us talk to him and break his concentration, which actually says a lot. The other Zora are posted far enough away that it sort of discourages conversation, because this guy is a hundred percent focused and definitely stressed and definitely tired, cause hes been up there since the Upheaval happened. But Sidon chats with us, he opens up the waterways, and he defends us. We're clearly included in people he cares about, but it's hard to say whether that category is friend, idol, or boyfriend.

i dunno, just thought itd be interesting to point some of these out idk.

[sleepy-the-loz-enthusiast]

So out of nothing but vague inspiration, I drew my personal headcanon designs for various Links. This is inspired by Linked Universe, but these are not the same characters and while I deeply admire Jojo's work, this is not the same thing. It's not even an au, just how I headcanon them-

So far it's only sksw and botw Link, but I might post more. Maybe?

Anyways, stuff under the cut (in case people aren't interested)

My personal design for Skyward Sword Link:

For the most obvious changes, I made him chubby and also dark skinned because my dude lives on an island in the sky. Above a cloud barrier. So he'd be getting a lot of unfiltered sunlight, and pale skin would likely result in cancer, so he's got dark skin. He's chubby because Skyloft is probably extremely cold and it'd be a biological advantage to have a thick layer of fat as insulation to protect from the cold. Plus, I like the idea of him getting some well deserved rest after thd stress of his adventure and gaining some fat.

In terms of personality, I imagine him as both an absolute sweetheart and a complete gremlin when he has energy. He's helpful and a kind soul, but it doesn't take away from the fact that he partakes in (mostly) harmless mischief. But, a lot of the time he's exhausted.

Constantly overexerting himself on his journey has permanently damaged his stamina levels. It's also given him joint pain, a fear of lightening, and nerve damage in his right arm and upper back. On bad days, he can barely get out of bed without nearly passing out and he can't move from the pain in his joints. But regardless, he is helpful when he can be, and is stubborn about sitting still and resting unless it's really bad.

For relationships, I'm definitely thinking he's in a relationship with his Zelda. But also, Groose? Idk, these are just random thoughts lmao

My design for botw/totk Link:

I made his scarring a lot worse and got rid of his arm because I think it'd make a lot more sense. I was talking about this with my sibling and they pointed out that they wished Link would keep Rauru's arm, so I'm gonna say that's what happened, but it was strong enough to carry Zelda out of the pond in totk's ending, but deteriorated over a period of time and eventually disappeared. He also lost half his face from guardians when the Calamity struck, and while the shrine of resurrection healed the flesh, it could not replace what was lost. For all of botw, he had one functional eye and ear, but post botw Zelda and Purah made a glass eye to fill the socket and something or other he can see out of it, though it's poor. He's still deaf on that side though. Also, for the most part his ribs are protected only by thick scar tissue and a bit of muscle, so he's haf a fair share of broken ribs and occasional breathing difficulties. He has very little sensation on his scarring, which has lead him to sustain a lot of injuries but be blissfully unaware until he's like "why am I dizzy...? Oh, I'm bleeding-"

On the braid going over his tunic, he has four beads to represent the four champions in their colours. I see him as a sentimental person and kind of a hoarder. Like, he gets all of the Champions' weapons and keeps them in his Hateno house, he stores an ungodly amount of food and materials in his slate, and he collects outfits.

He gives off the vibes of someone who doesn't really understand the concept of gender and love because through his journey, people only really wanted him to save Hyrule and he was useful to them. Even when his friends explained everything, he just can't be bothered, so he's aroace and his gender is *shrugs*. He's chill with being seen as a guy, even if he doesn't feel like anything in particular. Also, he's extremely good friends with all of the sages, Zelda, Purah, and Robbie. He's happy with his life, even if it hasn't been kind to him.

His hair is extremely long and he likes dressing up in his free time because it's his way of self expression and having control over his life. He can't control or change the fact that he has scars, or that he's the hero of Hyrule, or that he'll never be able to experience life like his friends. But he can control if he wants to cut his hair short or keep it long, how he styles it, and the way he dresses. Idk, just for funsies

[1tsjusty0u]

also tarrey town

actually i dont have too many facts about tarrey town! i mean akkala as a whole has little pits on the map that fill up with water while it rains (one becoming octorock lack in totk), and in the files the town is sometimes called Ichikara (which from the fandom wiki nomenaculture means “from scratch.”

the goddess statue is there before the town is ever created or youve talked to bolson, also not town specific but in the akkala wilds you can see dinraal and if youre at the top of the skull lake shrine eye you can even hear the music (maybe on ground level too!) however you cant reach it without moon jump or glitches because its as high as the peak of death mountain. thats not an exaggeration either. nice for viewing either way. based on a minish cap map overlay of botw i like to hc the veiled falls from that game are the akkala falls either in the future or in retellings + the veiled falls from zoras domain thats named after the mc is close by :]. also the little flower korok seems to lead link to the ancient ball near the rist peninsula! OH ALSO!!!! whenever you go into tarrey town it will Always be sunny!!! its also very rare in rito village After the singing rocks shrine quest/after vah medoh for some reason. theres also no night theme for it in totk. theres two dogs!!! bolson construction symbol is everywhere from the wood floors to the hylia statue backing, and its the same symbol on the hammer weapon you can use!! also the hylian script says “builders” . ALSO THERES A DOUBLE AXE THERE BY THE SIDE OF A BUILDING? also grante who is robbies son sells rare armour but you probably knew that. otherwise not much!

speaking of not much i think link wouldnt even finish building it after calamity ganon. he gets everyone there eventually but he takes his sweet Sweet time. and when its finished he wouldnt even visit a lot, unless Things Happen like maddison or helping grante move in. he can get arrows from the lizalfos guarding the road to zoras domains and until those guys move he’d have to start getting arrows at shops. despite the inn maybe being be free to use he doesnt ever use it. i Could see him clearing the guardians near the place each time they respawn though. he goes there soon after learning bolson is going there (he already has the shrine there and was confused about the land just. sitting there). but then he just never or rarely fills out the quest. he gives bolson wood once, doesnt speak to him for months or a year, brings another son, and the cycle repeats. he Would bring the wood all at once he’d just get sidetracked beyond belief. zelda discovers tarrey town while visiting robbie and sends Multiple Letters to link telling him to SPREAD THE WORD. FINISH THIS ALREADY. he might even just spread rumors so the sons do it on their own accord or just. ask the champions descendant to tip him off to any sons in the area (he wouldnt make them do the quest for him though.)

its kind of funny in that regard. like theres a whole lot of past motif kind of just by proxy considering how much i focus pre cal and how he’d look back on it, so lots of people seem to consider tarrey town an omen of the future, that things can and Will get better and they can shape it. if this wasnt an au canon link would probably like it and watch over it for that very reason. however here while it Is an omen of the future and a good sign my link just. doesnt interact/doesnt care. in a bit of a twisted way he might even be glad about a lot of civilization being destroyed (which makes him feel mixed things, with a tablespoon or two of guilt and fear and staying silent about that). he wouldnt want tarrey town Destroyed but he’d either see this as an omen and Panic at it, or would ignore it completely. its not his thing to deal with, after all. which is also kinda funny because i see lots of people view botw link view the world as His Failing, which to be fair i could see! but im honestly debating on if my link would see it that way. he’d feel wrong/guilt about the champions, sure, but if he doesnt see the ruins as a bad thing (besides the people being dead. he does feel Off when he thinks about how people used to be there. about how these werent ruins and someone was living peacefully here.) then would he feel like he failed. to him this world is full of opportunities Without . i dont think this is the right word , joker voice Society, to really fully stop him. there isnt widespread rules anymore that stops him from jobs or moving. he cant be hunted by the royal guard because there Isnt One anymore. he can do whatever he wants! and while i do want to emphasize that society does have its benefits (camping irl can really suck my mom got stung by bark scorpions 3 times at the colorado river while brushing it off and it hurt so bad that she wanted to go to the ER/helicopter outta there. she wasnt in life threatening danger and there was a pain medicine guy there but yeah. also have you heard about mormon crickets. they arent dangers except to crops but if you fear bugs i am so so so sorry. also also somethinf something hiking never gets easier, heat stroke can and will kill you and dont hike in the afternoon in the desert you will feel like absolute shit and always ALWAYS BRING WATER. also apparently my science teacher went to a different country with bugs that lay eggs inside your skin and hatch inside your skin. i dont think i’ll mention those things in universe or add them besides possibly the scorpions because i do actually have a fear of bugs and also i dont want this to mirror irl Exactly) the costs that come with society dont really apply anymore. as long as you know how to Not Die and dont have a debilitating fear of bugs nothing besides death can stop you. the question becomes was the means worth the end, do you want to go back to the past even though you hated it at the time, do you miss it, and is it worth it to stick around to a place that may revert in time and create the good and the bad of the past. you cant move to another country either- its all or nothing. you can either live here or. well. plus dealing with the fear of time just fucking go for it. also i think pre cal link would struggle a Lot with the all or nothing approach and the time going for it thing. uh. hm let me know if i should tag anything

[dany36]

full totk onion below for my own sanity. super long-ass rant ahead (11k words lmaoooo wow) and also contains spoilers.

so i beat the final boss of tears of the kingdom a while back. took me (according to my switch) “over 100 hours” to beat the game. i did about 110ish shrines, and got like 50 or so korok seeds. did quite a lot of sidequests as well. i was actually surprised how long i played it for considering how much fun i was not having playing it. but of course i wanted to uncover the whole overworld map (excluding the depths) and unlock as many shrines as possible to be able to say that hey, i explored quite a lot and gave this game a fair chance to impress me. which, unfortunately, it did not. if i had to rank all of the zelda games i’ve beaten (which i’ve done all except triforce heroes), i’d put botw in absolute last place, with totk slightly right above it.

before writing this, i re-read through this fantastic botw critical piece on destructoid by Cory Arnold ("Breaking down why Breath of the Wild is highly overrated") that literally hits on all the points on why i hate botw cus i wanted to see if maybe totk had improved on any of those criticisms. the criticisms that the author lists were similar (but much more eloquent) than the hasty list i had made when i first completed the game way back then. i was sad to re-read through it and realize that no, pretty much all of the major criticisms i had in botw were still present since totk is literally an exact copy of botw which some new stuff sprinkled on it, then they called it a brand new game. “but the depths!! the sky!! the new ultrahand mechanic!!” yeah that shit wasn’t fun for me at all (maybe the Ascend ability but more on that later). i literally couldn’t believe that this game cost 70 dollars when there were absolutely no enhancements in terms of the overworld and enemies and was seething through the first 4 hours of the game (or however long it took me to get through the tutorial portion of it). to quote that botw article i mentioned above:

If Breath of the Wild is your personal favorite game or favorite Zelda game, I’m not speaking to you. It’s the people foaming at the mouth at how it’s objectively better than other games, objectively better than other Zelda games, did open world better than other games, and want to enshrine it that I am addressing. This game is far too flawed to be getting this level of praise.

but i’m getting a bit ahead of myself. let’s start with the things i DID like and then i will write a lithany of all the things i hated about this game and why, despite having played it for 100+ hours, i had fun for maybe 10 hours of it.

the good

the ending.

one of the things i absolutely hated about botw was how short and unsatisfying the ending was. zelda wakes up and asks link if he remembers her and links says nothing, which then cuts to zelda and link talking together about…i think all they have to do to restore hyrule. i honestly forget because it sucked so bad that i had no interest in looking it up again. zelda turning human again with rauru’s and sonia’s help, and you having to catch her as she’s falling (a throwback to when you couldn’t catch her at the beginning of the game) were things that made it already looking better than botw’s stale-ass ending. zelda’s “link, i’m home!” was really sweet even if we once again get no emotion from link even though he knows the incredibly weighted decision zelda had made when she decided to turn into a dragon to restore the master sword. but whatever, more on that later.

i’m NOT saying totk’s ending is perfect, in fact i’ve seen some legit criticisms of it that i agree with, but in my opinion it wasn’t TERRIBLE like with how i felt with botw’s (and trust me i take every opportunity i get to bash on botw/totk). seeing link, zelda, and the four sages together at the end as they swear to protect hyrule and its princess was really cool and actually made it look like they were all in it together as friends/companions, in contrast to botw where we get no reference of the new champions in the ending at all. while this ending was better than totk, it’s still not like…at a level of it making my heart ache of joy/satisfcation/sadness (if you know me even the slightest i get very emotional with videogames and i will cry at literally anything lol) like in tww when hyrule floods, or SS with granny and fi leaving, or tp with midna and the mirror. which damn now that i think about it, it looks like zelda has a lot of bittersweet endings, so i will give totk +1 point in that there are no bittersweet moments at the end. i especially liked that they cleared up that no, zelda wasn’t aware or fully conscious about her hundreds of years roaming the skies as a dragon, because even the thought of her being aware of her time as a dragon was making me go insane. like, you mean that in botw she was trapped in the castle for 100 years keeping calamity ganon at bay and NOW she had to spend another 1000 years or whatever as a dragon? hell no. so thank you totk ending for making that clear that she doesn’t remember that at all and that it actually felt like she was asleep like with SS Zelda. :)

which brings me to the next thing that i liked, which is...

princess zelda overall.

i think it should come to no one’s surprise that her decision to turn into a dragon really elevated this zelda’s status to just completely fucking badass. like, damn, i say that’s my baby and i’m proud. the incredible amount of courage that zelda had to have to make that decision is just something that i don’t think we’ve seen other zeldas make. i guess there’s TP Zelda giving up her life to save Midna but, is that a worse fate than be unconsciously roaming the skies as a dragon for hundreds of years not knowing when you’ll come back? and SS Zelda knew that link would come back to wake her up from her slumber, so…. i mean, the scene of the last tears of the dragon memory was just so impactful, and it was probably the only scene in the game that really punched me in the emotional gut. the whole dragon transformation scene was just so heartbreaking to watch and when you see those tears come out of the dragon’s eyes and realize that’s where those memories come from that you’re watching….i’m telling you it made me almost catatonic. like. what the FUCK. probably one of the best cutscenes in zelda history, if I’m being honest. when the memory ends and it leaves you in that field of silent princesses i just needed a moment to breathe. i didn’t even wanna move (both in-game and irl lol). what a beautiful sequence. it’s something i don’t think any other zelda game has made me feel. sure i cried like a fucking baby when granny “dies” in SS or when Fi says goodbye (and i swear i always cry at the beginning of tww when link says goodbye to his grandma oh god), but with the dragon scene it just left me fucking speechless. A+++ work.

now, do i HATE that zelda is once fucking again stuck somewhere else in the middle of the story waiting for us to rescue her instead of being a more active, nuanced character like in ST, TWW, or OoT? absolutely yes. can nintendo fucking do something new and interesting with zelda like (dare i say!!) HW did and give her some personality instead of just being a damsel in distress yet fucking again?? but plenty of people have already ranted about that so i will just leave this to say botw/totk zelda has gone through enough shit and deserves to rest and be happy without going into other things about her character that other people have already talked about in greater detail than i ever could. :)

yunobo and riju.

yunobo was absolutely one of my favorite characters in botw, and so it’s no surprise that he’s a fave here too. his attack was super useful when exploring those boring-ass caves where i had to clear mountains and mountains of rocks without having to use my limited supply of bomb flowers or wacking away with a boulder sword. also one-shot killing those annoying-ass ice lizalfos with his attack will always be funny. the thought of a goron leader having such a child-like voice and huggable face just makes him such an interesting and fun character to me. as for riju, although i didn’t really care for her in botw, there was something about her in this game that just made her really grow on me. some of it definitely has to do with her new design which i thought was fantastic (minus the heels in the fucking desert), but also her attack is just so badass and useful. also helps that the portion where you have to defend gerudo town from the gibdos reminded me a lot of hyrule warriors, aka one of my favorite games ever (unironically!!). so yeah, yunobo and riju really were the oasis in the desert of uninteresting NPCs in this game!

dragon head island.

out of all the boring-ass sky islands in this game, dragon head island was such a welcomed surprise. from the mysterious thunder clouds surrounding it, to the eeringly relaxing music that plays, it was a breath of fresh air. all of the sky islands in this game look almost identical and yet it was really nice to get something different with music that made me go, hey, this is actually great to listen to and will have to add it to my list of zelda music!

the path to the wind temple.

the rito village was the first village i headed to and i was really hopeful for this game when i had to climb up to the wind temple alongside tulin. that portion where you have to jump from one trampoline to another was fun as hell. i was like wow, this definitely feels new and refreshing. i’m also pretty sure that the music was changing as you’d get higher? either way, this part really felt like something from a zelda game and was just overall a blast to get through.

the wind and lightning temple bosses.

again, because the wind temple was the first temple i did, was REALLY impressed with how fun the colgera boss was. sky diving and using tulin’s ability to dodge the boss’s attacks was just so intense and exciting! ALSO the music that played during it was a remix of the dragon roost island theme from tww, which was so fitting and badass. and speaking of badass, the lightning temple boss was, although super disgusting, so cool as well!! i already talked about how fun riju’s attack is, so the part where all the gibdo hives come alive and start surrounding you was just soooo intense. like damn, i can’t remember any of the botw bosses being so damn fun. if i could re-do those two portions of the game, i definitely would.

the final ganondorf fights.

and speaking of boss battles, these fights also had me all tensed-up and at the edge of my seat. well, except the dragon ganon part (he turned into a dragon and all he could do was spit fire balls at me?? he literally had link on his mouth ready to crunch him down!! oh my bad these are the positives ahem). for the second ganondorf fight i got seriously stumped because he just kept dodging my flurry attacks or whatever, and then he kept hitting me with the attack that would remove one of my heart containers (which was really cool and new to see a zelda boss do THAT!!!). like, it actually made me think i was gonna get my ass kicked and would have to restart the battle. idk if this is the strategy since i haven’t looked it up online but eventually i figured out that, after he dodges your attack, he attacks you and you have to dodge THAT in order for your flurry attack or actually work. anyway, i really liked the ganondorf fights even if i sucked at fighting him and went through all of my 6 shields but hey, at least i beat him first try lol.

the sages joining you in the phantom ganon fight and when the temple bosses show up in the depths.

again just a really cool detail that in totk we actually see the sages actually fight alongside you and aid you in your quest to defeat ganondorf instead of hey you’ve awoken me as a sage i’m just gonna stay here and do nothing as you go and fight the demon king. plus it’s a cool moment when you see all those terrifying AF bosses show up in the depths and the sages are all like nah don’t worry about us, we got this! like…hell yeah? love you guys stay awesome and thank you for taking care of those bosses cus i did nOT want to fight them again since this game loves to make you fight the same enemies hundreds of times :)

the gloom hands.

wow, what a terrifying and cool enemy…the first time. but just like everything else in the game (which i will talk about later), they beat this concept to death until you just go ‘oh the gloom hands again, whatever’ and keep moving. the first time i encountered the gloom hands i was like what in the FUCK is this and what is this TERRIFYING MUSIC that plays!!! very dead-hand-from-oot of them. i thought that the floormasters from tww were terrifying with those disturbing sounds they would make but they got nothing on the gloom hands. and then when you think you finally defeat them all and you’re free from their creepy clutches, phantom ganon shows up and one-hit kills you. amazing!!

the ascend ability.

i wouldn’t say i LOVED the ascend ability (tbh i wasn’t fond of this whole crap with rauru’s arm abilities like idk it just doesn’t feel very zelda-ish but more on that later) but of the four abilities we get, i’d say ascend was the one i liked the most. took me forever to figure out some ascend puzzles at the beginning because i wasn’t used to the fact that uh yeah you can literally go through ceilings if you want so i for the most part would enjoy whenever the ascend ability would be involved. so i mean idk what else to say except that it was neat and wouldn’t make me groan to use it unlike ultrahand.

voice acting (japanese).

i’m sorry but hearing the last trailer where we hear zelda’s and (what i’m assuming was) ganondorf’s voice just made me roll my eyes and groan out loud at just how terrible and cartoony they sound. as soon as the game started and we hear zelda talk in that fake-sounding british voice, i just had to go in and switch the audio to japanese so that they could sound like REAL people instead of idk forced acting. and my god i’m glad i did. wish i had done that for botw because wow, the voice acting in japanese was just top-notch and actually made me like the characters and not like cringe at how the VAs sounded. so A++ to the japanese VAs but i mean who are we kidding they always excel at that and it didn’t sound like over-the-top or anything. it sounded just right :)

well that was nice. very lovely. and now for the things that i absolutely hated about the game. from this point on i’m going to quote a lot of things from the destructoid article and try to expand on them to fit totk. here we go!

the bad and ugly

the overworld.

oh boy. this is the big one. this is the one that, for the first 4ish hours of the game (or however long it took me to reach lookout landing), was just making me rage on the inside, and for the rest of the game, just continuously shake my head and sigh with disappointment (and still rage from time to time) at just how fucking boring the overworld in totk is. this is one of the biggest complaints i had in botw and, given that nintendo just fucking reused the same world for totk with literally almost no interesting or noteworthy changes, it continues to be the thing that makes me angry the most about this game. like, i’m sorry, but developers need to stop fucking making huge overworlds if they are just going to make them boring as hell to traverse and not be able to make them interesting to explore at all:

The game is all about running around aimlessly with nothing unique to discover, no area-specific secret bosses, and overall very little progression. The only secrets or things to discover are shrines or Koroks, leaving the world with a profound lack of mystery. I don’t understand why people complain about sailing in Wind Waker but suddenly love running around grassy plains and climbing rocks that take five times as long as sailing between islands did. Yes a game this size and length would be amazing if and only if it was rich with content all the way through, but it’s not. Clocktown (from Majora’s Mask) alone has more depth than the entirety of Breath of the Wild.

There’s the mention of shrines or koroks, but totk introduces the new exciting concept of…caves and wells!!! and while at first it might seem cool and exciting to explore, you then realize that at the end of the day, just like everything in this game, each cave is exactly the fucking same and only serves to hide those blue glowing overgrown frogs so once you find one, it’s like wellp, there’s nothing else of importance that you’re going to find in this cave EXCEPT maybe your umpteenth shrine or a treasure chest containing an outfit (i think that’s how i found all of the fierce deity clothes—within caves). and it’s like “well see dany! you found something ELSE within caves other than those frogs!!” yeah no i explored maybe like 50 or so caves and the shrine/outfits were found in like 4 caves i explored or something like that so no i wouldn’t call that exciting or wortwhile considering i never used the fierce deity outfit and i could have found my umpteenth shrine somewhere else. and the wells? yeah turns out there’s like 40+ wells whose only purpose is to report to some lady of how many you’ve found so that i think she can give you rupees? and honestly who cares. i have no idea what the reward is once you find all of them but what could be worth visiting the same boring-ass caves with the same boring-ass design just so that you can say “yep i’ve visited every well in this game!” and mark off yet another boring sidequest in totk.

at least with TP or MM whenever i found a cave i knew i was going to get a unique and interesting experience (that one cave in TP where you have to drop down to the lowest levels with the iron boots is one of my faves). but unfortunately here, any cool puzzles that would otherwise be found randomly in caves are now stuck strictly to the freaking shrines, which takes away any sort of mystery you might get from finding a cave because now you KNOW it’s just gonna be yet another same-y cave with the same damn enemies and really nothing else going for it except a bubbulfrog and MAYBE the start of a new shrine quest. and likewise, when you see a shrine, you KNOW you’re going in for your umpteenth ultrahand/rewind/ascend puzzle to get yet another shrine orb. like…totk’s approach to caves and puzzles and shrines take away any surprise that you might have had exploring its vast yet uninteresting overworld (how many times am i gonna say this in this rant lol).

and like god i distinctively remember this one part in the death mountain area where i was trying to reach goron city and i saw a shrine not too far—as in, i didn’t have to use the purah pad to be able to see it. so there i go, walking/running towards the shrine because what else is there to do in-between the rito and goron villages except hunt for shrines along the way. and it was so fucking frustrating because i swear i was just walking straight towards the shrine with nothing else in between. no cool music like in other open world games that immerse you with its beautiful music (see minecraft, horizon, sonic frontiers, xenoblade x), aboslutely no enemies, no interesting or beautiful terrain, just me walking like an idiot bored out of my mind listening to link’s clunky armor just to get to the shrine, complete it, and have to run all the way back to where i was since the shrine was the OPPOSITE direction of goron village.

and like, this empty and uninspiring overworld is what nintendo took 6 years to develop? “oh look there’s naming references to past zelda games teehee!! ruto lake! forest of time! something referencing the lokomos!!” but it’s like. you pass those landmarks without even realizing it because there is, most of the time, nothing worthwhile to do there despite the cool throwback name. at least with MM, which reused a lot of the same assets as OoT, the world was different and unique and interesting with lots of more background to similar-looking characters we saw in OoT (the cucco lady vs anju, for example). i felt like such a fool the first night playing totk because i seriously thought that this might be the MM of Botw—i hated (still do) botw but thought hey, now that they have the engine and the assets down, maybe they can now focusing on making the world and its characters and story more interesting and fleshed out! instead we just get the same korok seed BS, the same shrine BS that, although mildly amusing at first, gets boring and uninteresting fast as you explore your 73rd shrine and see the 46th korok hiding place.

and you might think “well dany of COURSE things are going to get repetitive! it’s an open world game and they can’t fill it with new and exciting content all throughout!!” ok then don’t make your overworld so fucking huge?? like WHY are these developers so hellbent on gloating about having “one of the biggest open-worlds” ever if you’re just going to be copy-pasting the same shit over and over with nothing interesting in between? you really think that what makes an overworld interesting is to see the same caves, the same damn bokoblin enemy camps, the same “uwu i need to reach my friend!” korok quests, the same “waaah i need to keep this postsign of the construction boss up in place and i can’t leave until i do!” BS, the same taluses/hinoxes, the same BOSSES all over the map?? yeah it was cool seeing the first gleeock out in the wild, i was like wow!! that’s amazing, i wonder if there will be different bosses roaming around like that? and then i saw that, nope! wrong again, dany! yet another cool idea beaten to death by just copy pasting the same enemy (with different elemental powers of course so as to not make it TOO obvious!) all over the goddamn map.

SPEAKING of copy-pasting the same things instead of having a boss or enemy or cave be truly unique, another thing that drove me insane was the mazes that you find in the overworld. i think i only did the one in the upper right, but there’s at least one other in the upper left of the corner. i thought it was a cool idea so i traversed through the (truth be told) rather boring maze just activating switches, which wasn’t really that interesting or challenging, it was just mildly frustrating and confusing navigating through it. and i fought i think a construct III at the end? whatever, you see those all over the sky as well. and what i got as a reward for navigating through the two mazes (the one in hyrule, and the one in the sky) was…one part of oot ganondorf’s outfits. like, ok, great, whatever, but before heading off to the final boss towards the end of the game i was like “well let me go do that other maze and see what that’s all about” but then i stopped myself and said, you know what, it’s probably gonna be the same BS, going through yet another non-engaging maze doing an uninteresting and confusing puzzle just to get either a weapon that calls back to an older game or another piece of oot ganondorf’s outfit. and i was like HMMMM yeah that doesn’t sound appealing or fun at all. SKIP!!!

Breath of the Wild wants you to grind and do repetitive shit all day. Fighting the same things over and over in a massive world isn’t fun, it really isn’t.

like i’m sorry if i’m just predictable and want something more entertaining to keep me interested in the world as i explore along instead of the same repetitive nonsense and then praise nintendo for giving us such a huge overworld for it. people might have complained about tww’s vast ocean but at least it gave us one of the most beautiful overworld themes to date and it made sense STORY-wise (as in, there’s sea everywhere and little islands in between because of the flooding of hyrule). here, and sorry to beat this point to the death but i just cannot emphasize enough how terrible of an experience it was for me to explore the overworld, because it’s just huge, boring, and repetitive for no reason.

and the worst part is, i couldn’t even ride my horse if i wanted to (which would have made exploring this forsaken world less annoying) because for some unknown reason, nintendo has decided that in these past two games, you can’t call for your horse from wherever you are. sure, you can BOARD your horse from the kakariko stable even if you left it far off in the rito village, that’s no problem! but calling your horse from wherever you want? no no that’s too unrealistic!

so no, i don’t care that you can climb every mountain in this game (to find what, another korok seed? lol). that’s not what makes exploration fun for me in a videogame. if i climb a mountain and then find a UNIQUE boss or a UNIQUE cave or a UNIQUE sidequest? now that’s cool. here? just copy-pasting away!

Climbing and watching the stamina bar is not fun, and it’s downright annoying when it begins to rain. Call it a mechanic or whatever you want but it’s not fun. It feels like they added a ton of mountain ranges just to pad the game length and justify a stamina meter when flatter land would have been just as acceptable.

i’d rather sail tww’s ocean or ride around ST’s tracks any day of the week. fucking NEXT!

the shrines.

like i mentioned at the beginning, i did my fair share of looking for and completing shrines because i wanted to get a fair sense of just all that this “new” game had to offer. sure, the first 10 or so are fun and interesting because you are learning to use the new arm powers. oh you want me to combine these two things with ultrahand to complete the shrine? cool! let me do that! oh ok, now you want me to rewind time on this object? omg neat! oh wow, now i have to be aware of my surroundings and use ascend here! cool! and then you do that again, and again, and again, and again, and again again again again until you’re on your 100th shrine and it’s like oh god PLEASE give me something new:

Shrine puzzles are all about the same level of difficulty, as are all the Divine Beasts and their bosses. Again, since they want to let you go anywhere, there is no progression of difficulty in either the bosses or puzzles. You do not learn new things and compound them as the game goes on […] You just do the same things with the same runes over and over. […] All have the exact same aesthetic, same music, and same lack of connection to game’s world. But rather than 120, there are actually only 80. There are 20 “Blessing” shrines which nine out of ten times give you some generic weapon you probably already have, accessed by completing puzzles of sorts outside the shrine to unlock them. Those “puzzles” are often just putting balls in holes, shooting an arrow at something, or fetch quests, though.

putting aside the number of shrines mentioned above (since they vary in totk), it’s like, that’s literally it. unlike previous zelda games, where maybe you’d enter a cave and wouldn’t have the necessary item to complete its puzzle, here, there’s no sense of progression because the game already gives you everything you need to explore ITS ENTIRE OVERWORLD AND ALL ITS SHRINES right from the beginning. and some people might like that, but it’s definitely not for me. because like, after you get all your arm powers, everything just stays exactly the fucking same through the rest of the damn game:

There is never a moment of “I need to comeback here later” which sounds convenient but it takes away from the sense of progression and getting stronger that this game and its fans claim it has. There is no excitement of getting a new mask, new song, boomerang, bottle, or equipment item that lets me do more. No matter where you go, you know you will be sufficiently equipped, and that takes the thrill out of it.

and i feel like that’s exactly one of the issues that i have with the concept of shrines in this game. it’s just the same types of puzzles with the same 4 powers tens of times until you complete them all and you can maybe recall 2 or 3 that you really liked and were like “huh ok that was cool” and move on. truly revolutionary for a game. and i just HATE that all pieces of heart/stamina currency is restricted to ONLY shrines because, once again, that leaves no variety or surprises in the game! you know completing a sidequest won’t yield a piece of heart or a stamina vessel ‘cus that’s all shrines, same for minigames or caves, which was half the fun of doing those things in previous games!! but no, once you find a type of SOMETHING in this game (a cave, a well, a shrine), you bet your ass that THAT same design is all you’ll ever see for the rest of the game.

shrines in this game did introduce a new type which is when they strip you of all of your equipment and only give you basic weapons that you have to use to get through the bunch of constructs that you have to fight inside. and yes, that was cool for the first couple of times, but i swear after my third one i was once again with the feeling of “oh god not THIS again??”. god i just feel like i’m just repeating the same issues i had with this game over and over again: repetition repetition repetition. this game just loves damn repeating itself!!! anyway, moving on…

99% of the side quests and NPCs.

this was a problem i had with botw and i don’t know why i’m surprised that totk did absolutely nothing to fix the issue of uninteresting, unengaging sidequests. remember in SS with the whole Peatrice-falling-in-love-with-you thing? or those sidequests in TWW with the rich and poor girl who at the end switch lifestyles because of circumstances in their lives, and you can help the now-poor Mila come to terms with her new life? or hell, ANY of the MM sidequests and how they actually made you empathize with its characters and actually care a little bit for what would happen to them? here in totk (and in botw) i just don’t feel that connection or need to help NPCs with their mundane problems like i would in previous zelda games:

Breath of Wild has its NPCs, but they are bland and as memorable as my ex-girlfriends’ birthdays. They don’t have unique characteristics, designs, or problems. Looking like they were born out of some generator rather than a human, they send you on shallow fetch quests. Collect 55 rushrooms. Tame that horse. The rewards are almost always just rupees, ingredients, or more generic breakable weapons.

i said 99% of the side quests and NPCs because i think the only one i actually cared for (but was actually tedious towards the end…) was rebuilding that lurelin village because the thought of having your home destroyed by “pirates” (aka bokoblins because god forbid this game have to create more unique enemies) was a bit too much for my heart to take. but i mean, other than that? who cares. oh that guy in hateno village has a creepy crush on that girl sweeping the front of the store? whatever. that whole elections thing in hateno village? yawn. some rito girl wants to cook some new recipe? i don’t know her. there’s really nothing much else i can say about NPCs or sidequests in this game because i can’t think of anyone else other than that guy who helped rebuild the village that actually made me feel SOMETHING else other than boredom. and like mentioned above, most of the time doing the sidequests isn’t really worth it because there’s no cool rewards like bottles, quiver expansions, pieces of heart, or an upgrade to an item because well, that would be taking away from the shrines-and-some-depths-treasure-chests-can-only-give-you-worthwhile-rewards thing from this game, huh?

overall, the villages in this game just feel empty and void of any interesting and captivating NPCs/sidequests that make me want to learn more about their lives. despite hateno village being the biggest village (i think) we’ve seen in a zelda game yet, i just…don’t really care for it or its people. same with kakariko village and zora’s domain, the latter of which just feels so big but just so fucking hollow and honestly boring to explore. tww’s windfall island just had tons of life and compelling characters of which i may not remember their names, but sure as hell remember their small but memorable sidequests. playing cupid between that guy that would walk around windfall and the girl with the orange dress is infinitely much more interesting than any of the so-called sidequests i did in hateno village.

the lack of enemy variety.

it’s kind of insane to me how, given that nintendo had about 5+ years to develop this game, they had a pretty good chance to develop new and interesting enemies. this was a problem i had with botw: fighting the same damn enemies just got old very damn fast. let’s see how many enemies (NOT including varieties, i don’t care that a fire keese is different than an ice keese, and also not mini bosses like hinoxes) botw had according to the zelda wiki: bokoblins, chuchus, keese, lizalfos, lynels, moblins, wizzrobes, yigas, pebblits, guardian scouts, guardians, guardian skywatcher, and…guardian turret i guess. that’s 13 enemies for a game that boasts to have such a huge and unique overworld. THRITEEN types of enemies. just thirteen. compared to Xenoblade 1, which has 30+ types of enemies (i stopped counting really), and horizon zero dawn, which has 24 types of unique machines.

now let’s see how many enemies totk has! there’s bokoblins, boss bokoblins, chuchus, constructs, evermeans, horriblins, keese, like likes, lizalfos, lynels, moblins, wizzrobes, aerocuda, pebblits, gibdos, gloom spawns, little frox, moth gibdo, and…yigas. 19 enemies, 6 more than its predecessor. just, wow, even now just looking at the numbers, the variety in this game is ABYSMAL considering that most of the time in the overworld you run in bokoblins, moblins, and lizalfos like 80% of the time. in caves, most of the time it’s just horroblins but really, the strategy to fight them all is exactly the same except for lynels, like likes, and gibdos, which you have to be more careful with. but really, it’s like…that’s all you could come up with for this huge overworld? i don’t know about other folks but for me, i eventually stopped fighting enemies because it just wasn’t worth it with how this game handles weapons and their durability:

But you quickly stop raiding camps and just avoid enemies in general, just as you slowly lose interest in exploring every ruin, because there is no suitable reward. You expend your breakable weapons, arrows, and food fighting easy enemies to get more breakable weapons; likely weaker than the ones you broke to get to it.

i already had more-than-enough strong enemy spoils to fuse with my weapons, i don’t need to fight my umpteenth silver bokoblin just to get another one of its stupid-looking horns to attach to my weapon and somehow make it stronger (and stupider). and also like, fighting them just got so boring after a while. sure, it’s a bit scary and intimidating fighting moblins when you only have 5 hearts and weak weapons, but eventually you get a two-handed weapon and all you have to do is just constantly whack away at your moblin/horriblin/bokoblin/lizalfos so that you constantly knock them down and don’t allow them to get back up cus it’s not like they have much variety in their attacks either. such thrilling combat if you ask me!! and the way that this game handles difficulty is just so stupid: making enemies “damage sponges” so that instead of 5 hits, now it takes 15 hits to kill a moblin in the same repetitive way—whack them away so that they can’t get up. how is this fun and interesting?

i fought a black lynel once in the wild and that was cool, but then i just never fought another one again because in my opinion the rewards for killing a lynel just aren’t really worth it. you break a couple of your weapons just to get some of its spoils and it’s like, eh, i’ll pass. a silver bokoblin’s horn might not be as strong but it’s not like it makes a HUGE difference in this game whether i have a silver bokoblin horn or a lynel horn. who cares!

the game of course then wanted me to fight a silver lynel on the way to kill ganondorf and i was like hell no, i don’t want to dodge the same moves over and over again and do the same flurry attacks over and over and over just like i did with the black lynel, except now i get to do it MORE times because of damage sponges! how is that exciting or interesting? at least give stronger enemies more variety in their attacks instead of making my hand hurt from just doing the same repetitive (there’s that word again) moves until it dies.

Speaking of Hinoxes and Stone Taluses, during my first encounter I was delighted to have a random mini-boss-like fight out in the open, thinking it was the only one. Then I quickly realized they’re copy and pasted all over the map. I was expecting to see unique mini-bosses or fights in certain locations, but that wouldn’t be possible when they have the loot system requiring you grind enemies over and over to upgrade numerical stats on armor. 

already touched on the point made above a little bit but just had to mention it here as well because as i said, this game takes away any sort of unique aspect to it by beating it to death via copy pasting enemies, mini bosses, and bosses all over its map. you can’t imagine the disappointment i felt when i learned that colgera, aka a boss i really loved fighting at the wind temple, was found again in the depths. and again. i at least fought it three times throughout the game, not sure if it appears more times but when i saw it the second time i was like holy shit, this again?? really? any memory of having such a thrill of fighting it for the first time was quickly erased realizing nintendo just can’t keep something unique in this game. same thing with phantom ganon—encountering it for the first time was cool and intimidating. by the time i rescued the deku tree i was just sick to death of it, so realizing i had to fight it YET AGAIN!!!! at hyrule castle with the whole fake zelda business was just almost unbearable. (man, typing this whole rant out is making me realize just how many repetitive and monotonous aspects there are to this game!!!! and i hate that i keep using that word but what else is there to describe the constant sludge of same same same same this game kept throwing at my face??)

combat gets repetitive very fast.

look, i mentioned it before but i don’t play zelda to custom make doohickeys that can kill enemies. i’m old fashioned and honestly not creative enough (minecraft building wasn’t for me, i just liked to explore), so i like my hand-to-hand combat, with an arrow or two in between. i’ve already mentioned this in the previous section but the combat in this game just gets so repetitive despite the many weapons this game tries to throw at your face. i mean really when you think about it you have three kinds of weapons: your typical sword, the two-handed sword, and the spear. and i guess the bow? (oh and the wands but i’m more referring to the classic combat weapons) but like, for hand-to-hand combat, your overall strategy doesn’t change regardless of the type of weapon you have, which is just wack away as many times as you can, and do some flurry attacks for the stronger enemies like lynels and uh. hmmm. yeah. why not introduce different attack mechanics depending on the type of weapon you are building, like the horizon series does with the many weapon types it introduces in the games?

i’m not saying previous zelda games’ combat was the most exciting or varied, but at least with tww, the special parry attack attack would VARY by either doing a helm splitter or a back slice. but here in botw/totk it’s like…your special sword attacks consist of your classic spin attack and the flurry attack, which just stays (yet again) constant throughout the game. no upgrades like with the hurricane spin or the great spin. with tp and even tmc you had your hidden skills you could learn to vary your sword attacks and even tp gives you a special finishing attack (the ending blow, and actually SS had this too now that i remember!), but these past two zelda games just have failed to give much flavor in the sword techniques you can use. which is kind of stupid when you think about it cus this link is supposed to have been trained in sword combat while tww link is some kid from an island and tp link is just some guy raised in a ranch. i don’t know if this is the game trying to make itself seem more difficult by having removed these types of different sword skills because like, why can’t i side step and do a back slice like in tp? or ANYTHING ELSE other than a damn flurry attack which, if you’re not good at dodging, then good luck with that shit. flurry attacking over and over again just gets old very fast and makes those sponge enemies even more of a chore to fight when i can’t add any flavor to my sword attacks. just yet another thing in the game that i feel severely pales in comparison to past zelda games.

the weapon durability.

speaking of combat variety…i have no idea why i thought weapon durability would go away in totk. do people really like having breakable weapons? it was something i absolutely hated in botw and well, it’s back and HOPEFULLY not here to stay as a staple of new zelda games!

I’m beating a dead horse here, but breakable weapons is not a fun concept at all. It’s tedious and makes finding and collecting new weapons completely moot because “well I’ll be able to use this for a few seconds til it breaks.”  If you want more weapons while keeping the thrill of finding them alive but not having a stronger one that makes others obsolete, then make a bunch of non-breakable weapons that are used differently and better in certain situations than others.

to piggyback on that last point, that sort of matches with what i was saying earlier about having different attack mechanics depending on the weapon that you’re using. i don’t know why the hell we need to have breakable weapons be a thing in this game. is it just to fill the overworld with more treasure chests of weapons you can find like the biggoron’s sword so you can be like “oh, thanks for this, it will break in a couple of hits and then i’ll lose it forever”? having the master sword “lose” its power after certain hits is so damn stupid too. sure zelda roamed the skies as a dragon for hundreds of years to power up the master sword but it still becomes unusable after wacking it against a moblin for a bit too long. this game just REALLY wants you to spend all your time running around and fighting the same enemies over and over again so you can get new weapons/stupid shit to fuse to them to make this game longer than it really is.

the music overall.

anyone who knows me even just a little bit knows how much i love video game music. i’ll even listen to music from games i haven’t even played, and i even cry of just pure joy at listening to some of the video game music out there. but oh god. just thinking about traversing the overworld in this game with just hearing link’s footsteps and the clunky armor is enough to make me go insane. why can’t we have good overworld music in zelda games anymore? as mentioned above, at least when i had to sail around tww’s ocean or ride around st’s tracks, it gave me some damn good music to listen to that, frankly, never got old (st’s overworld theme is still one of my ultimate faves in the series). and it’s not just hyrule, but the sky and the depths have this same problem as well: absolutely nothing but silence or (in the depth’s case) random creepy music from time to time. as if the overworld itself isn’t boring enough, they just had to make its “music” dull and lackluster and honestly non-memorable. when i think of exploring hyrule in TP i think of that badass orchestra-like music playing while i’m riding around with epona. when i think of exploring hyrule/the sky/the depths in totk i think of absolutely nothing but emptiness and boredom, music-wise. SIGH!

but if the overworld wasn’t bad enough, i feel like the locations themselves didn’t…really offer much in terms music that i’d personally want to save in my music collection. there were some exceptions, of course: hateno village (but really it’s just the same music as in botw), dragon head island (really chill music, love it), and…i think the lookout landing had some decent music, but honestly i don’t remember it well enough lmao. boss-wise, sure, the wind temple boss fight music was REALLY cool (dragon roost island sample in there? sign me the fuck up), and the build up as to when you’re going down to face ganondorf was also cool, but…again, for a game THIS damn huge, i’d expect more memorable music, like with the horizon series, minecraft, or xenoblade 1/X. idk, i just am not impressed with the music available in this game given how many iconic songs the zelda games have been in the past. like kakariko village’s theme song in this game is, imo, a disgrace. idk why they couldn’t have adjusted the classic kakariko village theme song to fit the new “aesthetic” they were going for with the sheikah. they did it in tww (where it’s a lively town) and they did it in tp (now in like a old wild west town kind of thing), why couldn’t they do it in botw/totk? ugh, just….so lame and bland.

the depths.

the problem i have with the depths is pretty much the same problems i had with the hyrule overworld except make it ten times worse and also now it’s completely dark. “but omg isn’t it cool how the depths mirror the surface overworld??” yeah i don’t really care, alttp already did that and it didn’t bore me to tears exploring the dark world. seriously, i fucking dreaded going to the depths because if the lack of new and interesting things to do on the surface is bad, then in the depths it’s just so much worse. at least in the surface you can use your horse in some areas to make it go a bit faster, but here? all on foot, baby. imagine exploring the surface all on foot, with barely ANY interesting landmarks, with the same 5 or so enemies, all the damn time, and it’s dark…can’t think of anything worse, game-design wise lmao. seriously, the depths were just idk another attempt to make this game’s overworld seem a lot bigger than it is but god it was just so damn fucking boring to me. i don’t care about the abandoned mines, or the springs, or…well, what else was there? just yet another treasure chest with yet another PART of an outfit? no thanks!!

i specifically remember that getting one part of the TP outfit was such a pain in the ass to get because it’s in that spiral part on the eastern side of the map except well it’s in the depths. it was literally just me running for like 5 minutes straight around this spiral while running past a bunch of bokoblins and other enemies because lmao i don’t want to fight the same damn enemy over and over again as i’m trying to get to the end of this spiral which is actually just part of some abandoned mines with no lore or anything else interesting in it that would make it memorable. and of course what’s at the end of it all? a throwback outfit so that you can think it was worth it to run like an idiot for 5 minutes straight. finding a quiver upgrade or an empty bottle would have felt more rewarding than just yet another outfit that i won’t be bothering to upgrade because upgrades in this game are so damn tedious.

99% of the islands.

i feel like a broken record here so i’ll keep this section short since my issues with the islands are similar to the issues i have with the shrines and the overworld and the caves except now they’re in the sky. other than dragon-head island and the one where you have to like move mirrors so that light shines in certain directions, the sky islands were stale and just a big whatever. i don’t know what else to say that i haven’t already beaten to death here except that the islands in tww are more interesting and rewarding to explore than the sky islands in totk. just would absolutely bore me to tears fighting my nth construct or doing the nth take-this-crystal-to-reveal-a-shrine quest next!

the temples.

again, my problems with the temples are very similar to that of shrines, ‘cus i mean they actually just feel like glorified shrines, but at least in totk they did a better job at having each temple have a different design and feel to it instead of botw where just every beast felt the fucking same (i honestly wouldn’t be able to tell the beast dungeons apart from one another). regardless, i don’t know about you guys but man do i sure as hell miss traditional zelda temples. to quote a person i follow who recently talked about their grievences with botw (waywardsalt):

Older zelda games’ dungeons being tied to their respective items is a big part- to me- of what makes those dungeons so good. […] The dungeons in past Zelda games are practically complex tutorials on how you can use your new items. […] And then you must then use that item to defeat that dungeon’s boss, and you usually have no chance of beating that boss if you don’t make use of the dungeon’s associated item. It’s like a final test for the item, seeing if you know how it works enough to complete the dungeon and use it against a boss’s weaknesses.

much like the beasts in botw, you get to a temple here and they immediately mark the spots of where you have to go. some are more straightforward and simplistic (the water temple) than others (the fire temple—which i think is the best of the four), but they all amount to the same thing: all of the puzzles are just a variation of yet another ultrahand object fusion, or if we get a little bit crazy, you have to use ascend throughout the temple. instead of giving you a mirror shield, the lightning temple just makes you use the ultrahand to move around mirrors to solve puzzles. which was cool at first (who doesn’t love mirror puzzles?), but the temple felt way too damn short compared to other mirror-heavy temples (spirit temple from oot and earth temple from tww), and moving around a mirror that’s laying in the room in plain sight just doesn’t have quite the same zelda feel of “i’ve fought my way through this temple, beat the miniboss, and NOW i finally have a mirror shield i can use to solve the puzzles i had been seeing previously!” ‘cus idk i do miss having that bit sense of progression that dungeon items would add: i DO miss stumbling upon a locked door in a temple and searching everywhere for a key to unlock it, or wondering “wow, i have to get up there, but i think i’m missing the temple item in order to advance, i guess i’ll have to come back here after defeating the miniboss.” instead here it’s just like, ok, i’m in the flashing dot room, what fan/cart/rocket/wing combination do they want me to build yet again??

i always felt like temples were supposed to be a big part of zelda games but, again, other than the fire temple, i felt like the temples here were rather fast to beat, with the water temple just being the worst offender. i mean they can’t all be winners, but considering this game ONLY has FOUR temples, you’d think they’d idk be a bit longer or more difficult to complete like in majora’s mask? there is barely any complexity in navigating temples like with MM’s snowhead temple or tww’s wind temple—the fire temple was the only one that did anything interesting with its navigation and the others were just so fucking flat, much like the beasts in botw. did the zelda team lose its main dungeon designer or something? even majora’s mask’s pirate fortress—a MINI dungeon—was more fun and interesting to navigate than THE fucking water temple in totk. what a joke!!!

the way the story gets told.

i won’t talk about my grievances with the story details themselves, there’s plenty of people who have rightly criticized how simplistic it is and how it doesn’t really make you empathize with ANY of its characters (except, in my opinion, princess zelda): not sorry but i actually laughed when ganondorf killed sonia lol, especially with them being like HA! your fake zelda ways can’t trick us!!! and then WHAM out comes ganondorf and fucking obliterates sonia like lol ok bye girl!!! i hardly knew you and the game gave me no incentive to care about you like i would with medli in tww or grandma impa in ss so your death means nothing to me! oh whoops i need to stop talking about the “story” and its “characters” before i get carried away!

anyway! i absolutely despised how botw told its bare-bones “story” through memories you had to find in the overworld, so can you imagine my utter disappointment when totk has decided to ONCE AGAIN tell its story the same damn way?? i get that they’re going for an open world aspect but my god, some fucking linearity won’t fucking kill you nintendo. plenty of open world games are STILL very much open world while forcing some linearity when trying to tell its story—horizon forbidden west and xenoblade x come to mind. these games still let you explore much of its world as freely as you want while making you progress through its story and make you care about its characters and their purpose along the way. but here with totk i feel no connection to the world or its people—kakariko village used to be such an important place in zelda games and i honestly couldn’t tell you the name of ONE interesting or appealing character from that village like renado in TP or Mila from TWW (what’s the name of that girl that took over from impa? even fucking impa is just another afterthought in this damn game). shit, i’m getting sidetracked again, but god there is just so many things to talk about how poor of a job totk does in making you FEEL something in its damn empty overworld but i got other shit to do and this is already way too damn long (if you’ve made it this far i could kiss you!!!!)

anyway anyway! my main problem with the way that the “story” gets told is that you can collect the memory that explains the bit about fake zelda way early in the game and you’re still running around visiting towns with the new sages being like “omg princess zelda was here and she tried to kill us!! :(“ like, link what the fuck you clearly just saw a memory that zelda is in the past (or has become a dragon if you went and hunted down all the memories right away) and there was a fake zelda back then, SPEAK UP and TELL these people something!!! same thing with those sidequests with penn or whatever, you’re over here hunting down clues about the missing princess, but you already know where she is!! she’s in the past!! the zelda that people have been seeing is more than likely fake!!! she’s a dragon!! but no, because nintendo for some reason couldn’t figure out how to tell an engaging and interesting story while also having an open world (they had 6 years!!!), you have to sit like an idiot as these people talk to you about fake zelda apparitions while you’re just like “gee i wonder what THAT could be!!”

because i found dragonhead island + the fifth sage way before my fight with phantom ganon, one of my friends told me that once you beat him, you can go back to kakariko village and tell people that the zelda that prohibited access to the ring ruins is fake so that they’ll let you explore them and eventually lead you to dragonhead island. but see, i never had to do that so instead i was just frustrated at the game design that i can’t SPEAK UP about fake zelda because the game decided that this is the one time they want some linearity and you won’t be able to say anything about the fake zelda until you defeat her. instead of like, hey, let’s warn the citizens of hyrule that there’s a fake zelda running around and to not trust her?? hello?? just another missed opportunity of having this game somewhat connect you to its characters and surroundings.

likewise with the master sword. i got the master sword before i saw the final tear + learned of the sacrifice zelda had to make, so i was kinda mad cus i feel like the emotional impact of getting the master sword from the white dragon would have been MUCH MORE greater if the game would have FORCED me to see the final tear before trying to retrieve the master sword. so it’s just like, ugh. if i have to play another zelda game that does such a shitty job at telling its story and making compelling characters that evoke empathy and compassion, i will seriously not know what to do with myself. like a mutual (shoutout be-gay-do-crimes) recently mentioned: loneliness isn’t Zelda!!

and i know people have complained about this but like, sitting through the same damn cutscene after you beat the temple bosses was YET AGAIN nintendo showing that they don’t know how to keep things interesting and just repeat the same BS over and over again. why not have each old sage, which of course are just another afterthought in this game’s sea of uninteresting NPCs, add on something new from its POV so we literally don’t have to sit through the exact same story being told and have absolutely no unique perspective from the old sage? is it really too much to ask for a bit of variety for a game that reused a lot of assets from its previous game and had so many years in development? where are the good story writers from past zelda games??

link’s lack of emotions.

i have a full post where i talk about botw link’s lack of emotions and why it was such a disappointment going from tww/tp/ss to….that, so i won’t get too much into this here ‘cus i already wrote another thesis-long post about that that you can find. people defend totk link saying “but his micro expressions! omg!!! you’re OBVIOUSLY not paying attention!!” like ok lmao keep being happy you’re fed crumbs. botw/totk link’s emotions are a fucking joke when you compare to previous zelda games, even oot link showed relief and a smile at zelda when they thought they had killed ganondorf. totk link? exists in a vacuum. to quote waywardsalt again:

the blank stare and limited emoting worked in botw because… there’s a given reason for his lack of outward emotion in the past, plus he has no memory in the present. it makes sense. but this time around, he’s gotten memories in the years between this and the last game, but he just feels like a background character in most of the story beats.

like i’m sorry if i expect link to at least show a fucking SMILE at zelda once she says “link, i’m home!” GIVEN that he knows the incredibly weighted decision that zelda took in becoming a dragon and roam its skies for hundreds of years in order to give link and the people of hyrule some hope that evil will be defeated once again. this is the same girl that spent 100 years keeping calamity ganon at bay waiting for YOU to heal and wake up. and there’s absolutely no emotional payback from link to us the player or zelda now that we know she won’t spent eternity as a dragon? give me a break! botw tried to explain it in zelda’s diary saying that “oh link doesn’t like showing emotion because he feels he has so much responsibility on his shoulder so he doesn’t want anyone to know what he’s feeling” but like, girl he’s not made of stone?? 

imagine if we had gotten a fraction of ss link’s expressions with totk link when he’s reaching out to zelda as she’s falling again after turning back into a human just like ss link did when he tried to catch zelda from falling to the surface. or respond to totk zelda’s “i’m home!” with the same smile that tp link gave to midna when he saw his friend was safe after the light spirits bring her back. it’s just ugh so fucking frustrating looking back at past links and how expressive they were and with totk we’re supposed to cheer that he has microexpressions and praise nintendo for making link such an emotionally-complex character through crumbs. it just makes the totk fanart of link and zelda even funnier considering how non-responsive link is to anything involving zelda. botw/totk zelda has gone through so much shit emotionally to just be talking to a wall. just whatever.

miscellaneous questionable gameplay decisions.

why can’t i call my horse from wherever i am in the overworld like i could in oot/mm/tp. this game tries to be sooo realistic with its slipping from walls if it’s raining or striking you with thunder if you have metallic weapons or well OF COURSE your horse can’t hear you whistling from where you are 10 thousand feet away! but sure i can dive from great heights and not die and i can climb mountains like spiderman and swim up waterfalls with a special shirt (but careful ‘cus this same shirt will make you drown with regular horizontal swimming!) and sure it’s fine for the gerudo to run through the desert in heels. like…make it make sense lol.

and why is it such an odyssey to use a sage’s ability. why do i have to chase them down in a chaotic battle for me to use riju’s ability. why aren’t there shortcut buttons for me to do this. who thought this was a good idea?

why is there no shortcut or a menu where i can easily switch back and forth between my most-used outfits? this was especially annoying in the desert when during the night it’d be freezing cold, so there i go to put on the rito pants and shirt. ah but it’s afternoon again so open up the menu and now switch to the gerudo head gear so you don’t die of heatstroke. like, there’s all these outfit options and this game makes it such a pain to quickly pick my most-used outfits, especially considering that each outfit consists of three parts so you have to be switching back and forth between whatever is currently needed. it’s why i never even bothered to get the climbing outfit because i sure as hell didn’t want to be switching back and forth between THAT and my green tunic just so i can climb this game’s dull mountains. there’s millions types of outfits and upgrading them just give you defense stats. to quote the destructoid article:

 OK, I can swim up a waterfall, but why not let me swim like a Zora as you could in Majora’s Mask? How about on top of just climbing faster, upgrading the climbing gear lets me climb in the rain without slipping? How about at least giving me a hotkey or shortcut to quickly change outfits on the fly instead of going through the menu every five seconds? Those would be things worth upgrading for, not just numerical defensive stats.

but of course you can’t use the same gear for climbing faster AND not allowing you to slip—why, what else would they fill the overworld with if not yet another super specific outfit?

the fusing ability was just a big whatever to me. like, just give me stronger weapons since that’s what i would end up doing 95% of the time with the fuse ability. i don’t care about fusing an ugly-ass looking bokoblin horn to my weapons to make them stronger, or putting a mushroom or whatever on my shield. oh i can fuse fruits and keese eyes and bomb flowers to make fire/ice/light/bomb arrows? very revolutionary.

eventually….ultrahand.

i won’t make this long since i’ve already talked about how i don’t play zelda games for customizations or being able to make my own house or whatever else this game tried to fit into it in a vain attempt to make the game seem bigger than it actually is. sure the ultrahand stuff is cool for the first few hours of the game and your first few shrines, but just like everything else that i’ve talked about on this thesis-long rant, it just got boring and monotonous and uninteresting to me. i honestly went through maybe 70% of the game with just the first zonai battery-thingy that you get from the start since i never really felt the need to upgrade it. ultrahand and its weird-ass puzzles just don’t feel zelda to me, i miss items like the hookshot/clawshots, the boomerang to stun enemies, the whip, the sand wand, the hammer, like…i don’t care that i can make machines that can obliterate enemy camps in an instant, it’s not like enemies are that hard in this game once you get to a certain point—i don’t need ultrahand BS for it. good for the people that are having fun with and making all sorts of contraptions, and yes in a game programming sense it is definitely cool and a marvel to think about, but……idk it just wasn’t for me and the game leaned too heavily on it for my liking. doing the same types of puzzles with carts/rockets/fans over and over again in shrines in the depths in the sky in the temples in the overworld just made me hate the ultrahand mechanic. at least with the ascend ability i felt like it wasn’t as overused as ultrahand but well i guess nintendo really wanted to show off its fancy new toy and say see!! this was worth the 70 dollars!!

—————

whew, well, there’s definitely more things i could talk about in regards to why this game is such a huge letdown for me and one of the worst ZELDA games i’ve had the displeasure to play, but i think i’ll stop here for my own sanity. if there’s one thing i’m grateful for this game is that it made me appreciate older zelda games so much more: i have this huge urge to play through tww and st again, hell even through ocarina of time too even though i’ve beaten that game EASILY over 80 times. i also had a lot of fun messaging back and forth with my buddy downpourstringloop as we would play through the game and exchange our thoughts on it (reminded me of our SS days!), so that was really cool as well. just like with botw, i definitely will not be playing through this game again as i would always do with pretty much all other zelda games (man i remember as soon as i beat ST i immediately started a new run for it because it was just so damn great). it just wasn’t fun for me and i don’t want to wade through 90+ hours of BS just to replay 10 hours of somewhat good moments.

so now that i’ve mostly poured out all most of my thoughts on this game, i hope that totk will not be taking up more of time and make me want to go insane at thinking of all the missed opportunities that nintendo had with this game coming from botw. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: i really hope the next zelda game isn’t in this same lackluster open world format and that nintendo can put back a little bit of the magic that made zelda games great and a joy to replay through. but unfortunately for me, people everywhere love botw/totk to death, so it looks like i will just have to ride it out and wait patiently for this zelda open world hype train to die. maybe then we’ll once again get interesting temples, new unique dungeon items, compelling characters and NPCs, engaging sidequests with worthwhile rewards, fun minigames that are rewarding to complete, gameplay that doesn't feel repetitive and beaten to death, and a story that tugs at my heart like SS or ST did.

PEACE OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ✌️

[hyde-nseek]

Breath of the Wild Thoughts

A completely pointless essay.

I was first introduced to the Zelda series with Breath of the Wild, and that comes with some good and bad things. The biggest downside I've seen from this is that I didn't understand what the characters of Zelda and Link used to be.

Since playing BotW, I have played parts of the other games, including all of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. They've become some of my favorite games to play.

But now that I've had the experience of older games, I realized something about Breath of the Wild, specifically the memories.

Link and Zelda are different before the Calamity. They don't match up with past incarnations.

For a while, I couldn't point out why exactly they were different, but now I have the answer. Link and Zelda didn't know who they were supposed to be in the prophecy. It was only after the Calamity that they understood what their roles were.

Pre-Calamity, Link is a royal knight, something that he never was before. To add to that, he was Zelda's bodyguard.

Canonically, that was a lot of stress for him. That's why he was silent and expressionless: he was too worried that he'd say something wrong or act contrary to his position.

To be fair, the only difference between this Link and the Hero of Hyrule we all know and love is how many people are looking at him. The responsibilities and goals stay the same: protect Zelda and save Hyrule.

The problem is that Link didn't have any freedom in doing that. He was given a specific task but told that he had to do it in a specific way by everyone he met, and it wasn't in the way he was comfortable with.

Essentially, he was doomed to fail.

Now let's talk about Zelda, the princess who didn't know what she wanted to be when she grew up.

I like how they portray Zelda in the memories. She is caught up in three different ideas of who she is. On one hand, she has a passion for research in Sheikah technology, and takes any opportunity to look into it, even if it gets her in trouble. On the other hand, she is trying to be the servant of the Goddess that Hyrule needs.

What I find interesting is that she fails to do the one thing that she knows she needs to do. She spends days worth of time trying to unlock powers everyone says is inside of her.

But they only come out when there is no pressure left.

Similar to Link, she can only function to her whole capacity when she's free to do it in her own way.

The Calamity, in a weird and backwards way, opened Zelda and Link to be who they were always supposed to be. Link was more heroic when there wasn't a plan or an expectation. Zelda was more powerful when she already failed and the expectations were gone.

In a sense they were free to do what they wanted. They were in the wild for the first time when the Calamity hit.

That first breath of the wild was what awakened Zelda's powers. She finally could be who she needed to be, and feel good about herself.

As for Link, he always had a little bit of wild in him, but it was suppressed when he was appointed a knight. When he wakes up 100 years later, he doesn't have those same expectations. He's as wild as ever burning the countryside and making seal puns. And that's what saves Hyrule.

I would also like to point out that Link is the most rigid when he is talking with Impa, the only person who has expectations of him.

And it is at this point into my essay when I realized that I was only stating the obvious. And it could have been summed up into one sentence.

Like the silent princess, Link and Zelda were only able to thrive in the wild.

So.... Yeah.

[gold-rhine]

Not to get political but I think hoyo messed up Inazuma so badly because HoYoverse is a Chinese company and Inazuma is a Japanese-based region. Like we first got mondstadt and liyue whose archons are easily likable with beautiful and bright scenery but then we go to Inazuma where there’s a civil war and always raining, and gloomy, and where you can easily get hit by lightning. I feel like their political ideology unconsciously seeps through into the story which then caused Inazuma to be as messy as it is.

bruh where to start with this one

far be from me to defend hoyo about anything, but like this is i feel like so off-base of what the real issue was. bc like calling inazuma "always raining, gloomy and you can be hit by the lightning" is tbh legit offensive to the area designers. like inazuma is gorgeous, its much more unique, interesting and varied than mond. Mond is the most generic breath of the wild european fantasy rip off, are you for real gonna say inazuma design is less inspired?? design, visuals and exploration wise inazuma is miles above mond and tbh above liyeu too. if you read\watch game critics talk about genshin, like not the genshin youtubers, but ppl who talk about variety of games, everyone called inazuma design the stand-out region where the game really showed its own identity and direction instead of "botw and china-flavored and much more lovingly crafted botw".

not to mention how much more research and references to actual japans history and mythology inazuma has compared to mond. like i love european mythology so i know a fair bit of germanic myths and i live in germany right now, and the most influence you can see of the mythology is on khaenriah of all things. mond feels more like france than germany. inazuma has little details and designs reference actual japan everywhere, including the split of religions visions between the sisters and the isolation barrier. there are like 30 min videos talking about cultural references of scara design alone. there's been very obviously SO MUCH research and effort put into inazuma setting wise, its insane.

like genshin is an anime gacha. hoyo knows their main audience are weaboos, of course they would try to make japan-based region a banger. Inazuma was incredibly ambitious and experimental, not all of it paid off and the story obv failed bc of the waifu-selling focus, but pretending they just didn't try bc you didn't like environmental hazards with it is like???? area design not being saccharine and safe all the time does not make it bad, and writers trying to make complicated characters do not mean they dislike them. raiden's character arc failed, but it doesn't mean the initiative was bad, only the execution, and they actually learned and hit it right with scara's arc. like it's mindboggling to me that by your logic writers should write only plain likable characters all the time or it means they are prejudiced against their country

[waywardsalt]

ok i need to get this off my chest abt totk's dungeon soundtracks this isnt necessarily a criticism but just a... idk man its confusing hang on

ok. totk's dungeon themes. theyre good im not going to lie they arent my favorite of the series but totk did deliver some good dungeon themes. what i'm confused about is the choice to use the champion's and divine beast's leitmotifs in the dungeons, like using daruks theme and bits of rudania's theme for the fire temple. that's the first that comes to mind cuz thats the one i like best but i think it was especially noticeable to me for the wind temple, the water temple's theme has some similar instrumentation and some very similar sounding phrases and when i see comments or people talking abt the dungeon themes it is very common to see people talk about the champion and divine beast leitmotifs being used.

and like. fine it sounds nice there is an emotional connection there if you have played botw but like. why are their fucking leitmotifs in totk's dungeon themes???

if you give a character or something a leitmotif, then that little string of notes represents that character or location or concept. usage of that leitmotif is therefore intrinsically tied to that character or whatever. this worked out with zelda's theme throughout the series, esp in totk when it's given the instrumentation of the dragon's themes, so that musical phrase at that moment basically says 'zelda, but a dragon' and like. yknow. leitmotif that literally represents something.

i believe the wind temple's theme incorporates some of rito villages theme, and in turn rito village having the same melody as dragon roost island makes sense, that's effectively a motif meant to represent the rito, like the reoccurring zora's domain and goron city motifs throughout the series, or hyrule castle. when characters have themes in past zelda games that play at different times, it means something about the character being referenced. midna's lament using midna's theme to show that this scene is about midna, she is in danger. fi's different themes playing when she is the center of attention or her leitmotif referenced in botw/totk when she literally makes subtle cameos. linebeck's theme only every plays in scenes where he has some sort of big moment or in the final boss theme because it's only fair that the final boss theme include the motif that represents him because he is the final boss. groose's theme shows up various times in his little scenes (and i believe there might be hints of it in later imprisoned themes?? i'd have to check but it would make sense since he's helping)

so... if you reuse a leitmotif that is tied to something, then reasonably that means that the context in which it's being reused is somehow related to or concerning what that leitmotif represents.

but... daruk's theme and some bits reminiscent of rudania's theme play in the fire temple's theme. reasonably, i would hear this and be like, ah, so this has something to do with daruk, or the divine beast? the usage of his character leitmotif suggests that he is related to this somehow. thats... usually the point of using a character leitmotif like was done in the fire temple's theme!

and yet the champions and divine beasts are not so much as referenced in totk's stories, and you can't even try to the point of their themes being used due to the new sages being relatives, because tulin is not related to revali- he doesn't even get the great eagle bow until after the dungeon, and still no reference to revali is made when he gets it.

so then... why are we referencing botw's champions if they do not matter? why not use the sage's leitmotifs in the dungeon themes instead? the dungeons are much more related to the new sages, and it would allow players to become more familiar to that leitmotif, and would further tie the experience to that dungeon with its related sage, instead of tying it to dead characters that mean jack shit to the story of totk.

it's just really weird that they use motifs from the champions and divine beasts, since that won't click for people who didn't play botw, and it just calls back to stuff not important to totk anyways. the divine beasts have literally no relation to the dungeons, the champions are barely even relevant to the world in totk. i get that the leitmotifs were used as like... maybe some sort of extra pre-existing racial connection motifs, but... use the sage's themes? don't use leitmotifs that have absolutely nothing to do with this game or it's story? sure it sounds nice but the meaning behind those leitmotifs make no actual sense in this new context, unless you're trying to suggest that they actually have a different meaning than being the motifs of the characters and locations that were originally what they were used for.

[fluffypichu876]

my thoughts on dark souls 1 so far!  

- i honestly believe that people exaggerate a little about the difficulty in this game. sure, it's a challenging game that will kill you over and over until you learn to play it, but it isn't the nightmare some make it to be! in fact, i find it to be quite forgiving in its own very peculiar way. i dunno man, maybe sekiro over-prepared me for this game xD

- on a similar vein, i didn't find the controls to be clunky at all. of course, there are some weird design decisions, like the roll being executed at the release of the button, instead of the press (creating a small delay ok this is certainly my gaming masochism speaking but i actually like the roll delay. it makes dodging feel strategic instead of just mindless roll-out-of-anything-you-see), but it still feels very comfortable to play. i think most players are at first caught off-guard by the slower pace, the stamina system, and the full action commitment, but with time you get used to it and start to notice how much this type of design adds to the game.

- the level and map design is simply amazing. i'd say it's one of the game's biggest strenghts. everything is just so well connected and coherently put together that the lack of fast-travel (until anor londo at least) doesn't bother me at all. this complements really nicely with the slow pace, as it ensures that you're actually paying attention to the enviroment and taking note of every path you take (i got like 95% of the whole game map so far memorized. i can easily tell the shortest path from one area to another just by recalling each shortcut). as a metroidvania fan this makes me very very happy!

- guidances, summoning and bloodstains are very interesting takes on online co-op. fromsoft has this habit of making sure every mechanic fits seamlessly within the lore, vibe, and immersion of their games, and i really appreciate that. there are barely any ui menus that take your mind out of the world of lordran, and instead items that you can use like anything else in your inventory to engage with other players, complete with some in-universe lore about it.

- the bossfights are cool, fun, and fair but sometimes they feel a bit samey. (unsurprisingly?) the duo bosses (gargoyles and O&S) are my absolute favorites so far. they just flow really well with the combat system.

- the ost is very good and the boss themes really deliver that feeling of standing against beings far more powerful than yourself (i know i'm talking about ds1 but sekiro's ost is very underrated. how come no one talks about the father owl theme? it's sooo damn good!). the game is pretty silent though, and most of the time you only hear the sounds of your own footsteps, the clinging of your armor, the goddamn archers in anor londo...

- not sure why durability exists? it's kinda pointless tbh. most weapons and equipment last for a very good ammount of time, and repairing them isn't that costly at all. it's not like botw, where durability is a motivator for exploration (still not the biggest fan of that system tho), here it just, exists.

- miyazaki you evil bastard why did you create curse WHY

- also FUCK THE WHEEL SKELETONS ALL MY HOMIES HATE THE WHEEL SKELETONS

- solaire my beloved

- siegmeyer my beloved

- lautrec i'm going to fucking murder you

- solaire my sunbro he is the best

- black knight sword is such a wonderful weapon i love it very much.

[lord-rodentia]

Eh, just a random headcannon specifically for Sidon. Maybe some ramblings too, dunno yet.

He always has resting bitchface, in public or private. He will also occasionally give people the side eye (as seen with a cutscene/dialogue thing when Yunobo spoke in totk [can't say more about it without it being spoilers]), and he is always very irritable.

Only with Yona and Link will his expressions ever soften, he's usually calmer around them as well. He also has to fake certain expressions in front of certain people, which could be why he tends to seem uncomfortable in some cases. (That could just be my brain though.)

When he's thinking he's always glaring too, even when he doesn't even mean to glare. He also just seems completely uninterested in many things as well. His speech patterns are also odd, like he wanted to say something else but didn't want to just so he doesn't seem like an asshole to the other folks he's talking too.

I don't know though, it could just be me, but he doesn't seem like he's supposed to be his actual self most times, especially with the one conversation with him and Yona where she told him that he wasn't being his usual self and he seemed pretty pissed about it before snapping into a happy mood. Even some cases in Botw he seemed a bit odd to me, he stood out way more personality wise compared to everyone in Zora's Domain.

Sometimes he even glares at Link after conversations, even though that could just be an issue involving some eye animations (like how one of Yona's eyes was stuck in the thinking animation when she wasn't even thinking about anything.)

He kinda just seems always angry, but to be fair, I know little to nothing about shark behaviour, and the complete behaviour of the Zora as a whole (side from them usually being a peaceful people.)

Again, it could just be me, but I've just been thinking about it and it always seemed strange to me how he acts. For all of you who actually use those tags or are followed to those tags, even if not, you can look at this. Maybe think I'm an idiot or just overworking my brain, but I swear he deadass acts like this.

(I know some of the botw peeps know about or also own totk.)

[space-spring]

6, 7, 17, and 19 for the fandom ask game (any fandom of your choice, or multiple fandoms, whatever you feel like chatting about)

Thank you so much for the ask!! :D I think I'm gonna go with legend of zelda on these just to spice it up a bit from my usual SRPG-posting haha. I haven't actually played a ton of the loz games outside of botw and totk, so this is mostly based off of those (although I watched my brothers play a fair amount of the other ones growing up so I have some approximate knowledge of 'em)

6. My favorite character

Link! Probably not a super uncommon favorite character from loz hahaha, but for me it's not super often that I really get into a protag. But there's something about having a little funky just-crawled-out-of-a-forest kid with mutism that really gets me. I've struggled with pretty gnarly selective mutism off and on during different periods of my life, and silent protagonists just strike me as really cool rep for that, intentional or otherwise (and I'd argue that botw link especially does feel like pretty intentional rep given Zelda's journal entries). And there are a ton of cool comics that make me go a little insane about him too

7. My least favorite character

Hmmmmmmm. Zelda's dad maybe? If electric keese count then it's electric keese. I have died to electric keese probably more than any other monster because I have a habit of running around with too few hearts and once they have you drop your weapon I always fumble the whole thing afterwards. 10/10 would not recommend

17. A fandom take I didn’t think about until I saw it, and I fully agree with

I think I was having too much fun to think about it right away, but once people started mentioning it I was kind of bummed that totk didn't really have many callbacks to botw's plot. The champions were some really really cool characters and I would have loved to have seen more talk about them in totk, even just in an off-handed way.

19. Favorite headcanon

Not sure if this is a headcanon per se vs. me just getting overly into the role-playing aspect, but I like to think that Link tries to replicate the Hateno house's hidden study when he builds his new house in Tarrey Town. When I got to the point where I could start building my Tarrey house, one of the first things I got was the little 1x1 study block, and I placed it in this little nook created by offsetting the staircase such that you have to jump off the lower staircase sideways to get to it. Technically speaking at that point I think Link wouldn't necessarily KNOW Zelda was capable of coming back from dragon mode, but I like to think he'd build it anyway out of sentimentality/hope that she would

[stjimmykingofshitmountain]

Cross Stitch

 Oh look Kei remembered how to write.. ANYWAYS.. this is a piece as part of Hetsu’s Gift Exchange!

Ship: BOTW!Link and BOTW!Zelda

Warnings; none really? Mute!Link - he communicates via sign, Zelda might be a bit OOC with the swearing. The format is a little janky

Words: 710.. quite short and sweet

Anyways.. enough out of me! Enjoy!

‘Ok, ok.. Over, under tie the knot and - AAGH’ The knitting needles fell out of Link’s normally dexterous hands with a clatter against the wood of his porch, accompanying the sound of his inner monologue for what felt like a lifetime. In reality it had been at most a couple of hours. 

Link crouched over in his seat with a tense inhale as he reached for the needles and blue wool which had fallen moments earlier and his brain whirred to life yet again…

‘Over, under.. Loop-the-loop and pull..? No! Agh! That’s shoelaces!” They threw the work into their lap with a huff.

To an outsider this would be incredibly decent progress; it was clear that the soft item he was working on was a scarf with yellow,sage and blue wool interwoven intricately to create an almost spring-blossom meadow illusion. However to an impatient perfectionist like Link - it was about as useful as a skeletal Bokoblin arm.. Which to be fair he had found to be pretty useful! OK.. so bad example but you get the picture.

The point is - if it wasn’t perfect immediately - then it was worthless. Given this is a gift for Zelda, it has to be absolutely beyond the realm of perfection and when you’re an adventurer who sacrificed fashion for survival - that was quite the quest.

Link  leaned all the way back in the seat he had brought out to his porch to knit in the crisp winter air and brought his arms up to sign one simple word:

‘Shit’ He dropped his hands with a sigh.“LINK! Watch your fucking language people can see you!” Link almost fell backwards out of seat in shock- thankfully Zelda rushed to help him stay upright, the knitting fell to the floor once again. “Wah! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Zelda fussed, pulling him out of the seat and dusting him off. Link pulled her away at arms length and signed ‘I’m ok’ with a half-hearted grin. 

“Good! Well I was at the market just now and I got you some more glass bottles,some fresh herbs and some - OH! And I ran into Mrs. Itho, you know over on the hill, and she-” As Zelda brushed past Link rambling about her day Link’s eyes fell to the once again discarded knitting and he was just contemplating kicking it off the side of the porch to be swallowed by the trench he dug to funnel rainwater when-

“Link?” He was brought out of his daze by Zelda. “Are you alright, my love?” 

The tips of his ears tinted themselves a warm shade of red as always with any pet name from Zelda, as he looked away signing ‘I’m fine’ once again. Given he’d turned his head he missed Zelda briskly moving around their counter towards where he stood… beelining for his line of sight.

“No you’re not! You’re usually quite daydream-y but you always listen to me talk about my da- What’s this?” Link’s head shot up as he clocked Zelda carefully holding his unfinished…. Whatever it is in her hands delicately, her thumbs grazing the material. “Link? Are you.. Knitting?”

Link's hands frantically began to sign excuses.

‘No! It’s um..’

‘It’s not what you think!’

‘It;s something for my travels in the colder terrain.’

‘I can.. .start it again.’

Zelda just stood staring at her beloved doofus and moved forward to grasp his wrist and lower his hands to clasp together in front of him. Link watched on carefully as she tied off the last stitch with unbelievable grace, set the needles down on the chair and carefully extended the length of the scarf in her hands.

“There we go.” She mumbled softly to herself as she moved her hands to wrap the garment around her neck. “Oh Link! It’s lovely!” She brought one end to her cheek and rubbed it against her cheek. “Thank you!”

Link looked on with the most lovesick expression on his face as he slowly brought his  hands up to sign ‘You’re welcome, beloved.’. Zelda smiled softly and gently held his hands again - only to pull him to her, this time, into a gentle kiss.

As she pulled back and slowly let go of his hands to make her way inside, Link decided he could learn that maybe things don’t need to be immediately perfect - as long as someone else could appreciate his efforts perhaps he could as well.

[moinsbienquekaworu]

okay so your tag ramble on the tulin great eagle bow/revali's absence post was really interesting and I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on that tbh (like, you have the time/inclination of course!)

(for posterity: this is re: my tags on this post)

Thanks for actually asking me!! I'll just rewrite the gist of the tags that got cut, but in a more legible format.

I was talking about not liking that Tulin is descended from the original sage of wind, which, I understand why it's like that, but I dislike it. It feels 1) contradictory to the theme of the Rito "chosen one" being first and foremost a good warrior rather than the leader of their people and of their power being acquired rather than inherited (which is not bad, I liked what Yunobo had going on with struggling to live up to great grandpa Daruk, I just also liked seeing different stories with the different characters) and also 2) since Tulin's power is so similar to Revali, it kind of implies to me that Revali's power was lesser (and by extension the champions were less important than the sages as a group) ? In general this game feels like the story is bigger and more important than BotW's, and it comes out as replacing rather than supplementing it sometimes to me.

Plus, when the sage of wind said that Tulin was his descendant, it didn't feel like they were just tiptoeing around Revali, it felt like they were ignoring him completely. You can assume the lightning, fire and water powers were hereditary all along and the champions just showed them in their own different way, but for the Ritos it doesn't work, and it gives me vibes of discarding a plotpoint you mentioned in an earlier chapter because you realised halfway through that it wasn't relevant to the story you wanted to tell. Plus I don't like unnecessary familial ties when it would've worked fine without them.

I mentioned Revali making me think of Satine in one of the tags, which could be obscure if you're not also obsessed with the same guys as me, so I'll explain. Warning, I'm going to be a Star Wars nerd for the rest of the paragraph, but for real it did give me pause. Duchess Satine Kryze of Mandalore is a character introduced in a side show to be Obi-Wan's love interest (which is why she's named that). She's the pacifist leader of her people, but they have a history & culture of war and violence, so she struggles with that a fair bit. She dies because an old enemy of Obi-Wan wants to get to him by killing his love interest, and encourages unrest on her planet. In The Mandalorian's latest season, her sister Bo-Katan becomes an important character, and her arc is apparently (I'm not done with it so I'm basing this on what I've seen on here, ie all the important scenes giffed) about becoming the leader of her people and turning her back to her violent past. She does the thing her sister did decades ago, her sister who died in part because of her, her sister whom she disagreed with on pacifism, and not once is Satine's name said once in S3. There is a Satine shaped hole in that thing, it's all about her, she was the one trying to bring peace to her planet 30 years ago, but people didn't like her character much so she is ignored when it makes absolutely no sense to ignore her.

Okay I'm done with SW now but you see what I meant? There is a them shaped hole in a narrative that should by all means include them! The way they handled Mipha wasn't ideal but they could have given the same treatment to the other champions! The way they really wanted to separate TotK from BotW in terms of story doesn't work because it doesn't feel like you're really coming back to the same place. They couldn't have known if you'd already met the characters, but honestly I think it couldn't have hurt to have more mentions of what happened about 5-6 years ago in universe. Riju doesn't mention her dead mom or feeling like she lives up to Lady Urbosa now, Yunobo isn't even going to talk about Daruk when it would be a cool thing to have the old boss compliment his personal growth that way, and it would have been so easy to have Teba do that too, go "you showed the same prowess as Revali, the warrior of old, you're worthy of wielding his bow"!

It would have been easy and it wouldn't have stuck out if they'd mentioned it more! If people still made casual references to these old figures, to the warriors who fought Ganon the first time! It could have been a neat piece of background lore, the way the stone tablets of Zora's domain were in BotW!

Plus nobody says anything but the divine beasts were modelled after the sage's masks then?? Because the fact they reused the design means there IS a connection right??? I'm going crazy, that was a great opportunity to mention the divine beasts and the legacy of the sages and tie it all into the tapestry of this Hyrule's history! But no. The guy who wants to see a big horse can come back but Link's fellow champions aren't cool enough I guess. Same issue with the towers & Sheikah tech. I don't know why they did it that way, I suppose it was a way to delineate which game is which and create stronger boundaries?

My last grievance was extremely petty and not serious at all, it's just that when I saw Teba giving Tulin the bow my Link always kept on him I kind of lost my mind lol. Like the 28x3 easy to draw bow with a cool design and lore did not leave my inventory, you best believe that. I won't nitpick that Link lost his whole inventory to the point that his childhood BFF's cultural equivalent to a wedding ring went all the way back to Zora's domain, but I was kind of peeved haha. Like that is MY bow give it back if you're not even going to mention Revali's name!!

Anyway this was me losing my mind over a game I really really love! Thanks again for giving me an opportunity to ramble I love doing it.

[theannoyedskittle]

@polterxgheist

🥲🥲 SHDB THANK YOU!! We really do try and have a lot of wholesome stories mixed with the crazy! Because I never get to really talk about them and in no particular order::

- Parsa and Sudo's relationship: Parsa has the Legendary Super Saiyan gene which means her emotions heavily peak. Whereas Sudo is emotionally "stunted" based on his alien race. The two end up balancing each other out, where Sudo can talk Parsa down and Parsa fills Sudo's emotional gaps.

- Victor confiding in Princess Zelda: Victor is our oc based on an old throw away plot of LOZ where she had a brother. Ours takes place in BoTW, so after Zelda's mother dies, the King - like years later - founded a small romance with one of the servants in the castle. She came to the king saying she was pregnant and he cast her out (same guy who wouldn't let his daughter dabble in technology). Victor was born, but when he was young a wizard killed his mother and raised him as if he was his own. Sewing distrust in the royal family and definitely abusing him. Victor killed the wizard but ended up sealed in his grimoire until Zelda and friends found the book. Victor was a villain for a bit but was also pretty traumatized and not mentally well. One night he and Zelda just ended up having a long heart to heart. Zelda seething that her father kept more secrets from her, Victor just bubbling over and just both siblings bonding. The emotional connection led to Victor vomiting black ooze - malice, originally planted by the wizard to keep Victor angry and spiteful. After that night, the two moved forward as better siblings. He is also very protective of his sister, and same is true for Zelda.

- Yuki and Spencer getting adopted: I've talked a fair bit about my One Piece twins but this one stuck with me since Yuki and Spencer had different lives before reconnecting. Yuki was closer with the scientist that made them, pretty much viewing him like a father figure. His tattoo is where she got her name (though she spelt it wrong). Spencer didn't have that. Yuki had a toxic relationship that led her to joining the Marines where Spencer just floated taking odd jobs and spiraling. The two were in their 20s when they met Reginald - Saika Iblin's butler. Yuki having a romantic relationship with Saika, and Spencer working for him. Reginald was always supportive of the two and worked as a mediator for them for a bit. He went out of his way and even found their egg doner - the person who was technically their "mom". Reginald actually ended up falling for her, and the two made an agreement to pull Yuki and Spencer aside and presented the forms. They were adults, so they didn't have to agree to anything...but they did. It was something they've both searched for all their lives- just a place to belong. And thus, they became a very weird family ♡ (and even got a little sister later!)

There's more but this is long ;A;