#champion abilities

[aurelion-solar]

Hwei, the Visionary - Champion Insights & Concept Art

[gothic-soda]

Accepting help: Tulin and the Champions

For all the problems I have with totk, one thing I love about it is the development of the sages, particularly Tulin.

His arc is about learning how to accept help from others, which is so interesting when compared to Revali, who was very isolated and had to be self reliant. Revali seemingly had no family or anyone else in his life to fall back on, and as a result he had to become the best possible version of himself as a warrior to make up for that. In BotW we see Revali go to EXTREME lengths to be the best warrior he can be.

A comparison could even be made between Revali and the rest of the Champions. What they all have in common is that they all died alone in their divine beasts. No one came to rescue them. Zelda and Link had each other, and that’s ultimately how they both managed to survive the calamity. The champions had only themselves to rely on in their final moments, and in the end it wasn’t enough.

But back to Tulin, his arc (and to a lesser extent the other Sages arcs are about this as well) is about accepting help from others. Tulin has his parents, Link and the other Sages to fall back on. Tulin wanted to prove that he was strong enough on his own, but eventually realised that his strength came from those around him. Tulin receives the Great Eagle Bow when he shows that he can be strong AND accept help when he needs it.

Even the new Sage’s powers are all designed in a way that reinforces this. The Champion’s abilities were all gifts that they honed to use by themselves, they used their powers to fight alongside their allies, but still their powers were never really meant to be used though a second party. In a way, their gifts are weakened when they are given to Link. For example Mipha’s Grace can only be used on Link in BotW, but when she was alive she could heal anyone.

By contrast, the Sage’s abilities are supposed to be used with the aid of another, they are amplified by Link. Tulin’s gust is more or less useless to Tulin himself, but with another person it had a lot of utility. Yunobo requires someone to aim him to get the most out of his charge. Riju is still learning how to control her lightning and needs someone else to direct it. While Sidon could probably use the water shield on himself, Sidon wants to protect others, so his power manifests as a physical shield to protect his friend.

This idea of the champions being isolated and not being able to receive much help from others makes a lot of sense. They were the last line of defence for Hyrule, they were the Plan B incase Zelda did not awaken her powers. When they became Champions, all of them were well respected warriors amongst their people, a lot of responsibility fell on them to be the protectors of not only their people, but all of Hyrule. For them to show weakness would mean Hyrule losing faith in their beloved champions.

The new Sages have a support system that the Champions did not have, they are allowed to have faults and not be perfect, because they have other people to support them and I think that’s beautiful.

[good-advice-ganondorf]

[b4kuch1n]

toy doctor redux

plushy based on this guy

[gemsbian]

Frankie finally gets another steel type pokemon? It'll be nice to have a pokemon that actually battles, especially one that can mega-evolve

[bloomingbluebell]

thinking about the inevitability of botw.... idk, there's something about how calamity ganon was only able to be defeated after he pretty much won. the champions all lost, and DIED the first time around. they were not set up for success. the calamity was a perfect storm - everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. the guardians and divine beasts were taken over by malice and turned against the kingdom. the champions all faced blights specifically designed to ensure their deaths. the hero fell trying to keep the princess safe. the kingdom fell into disrepair after the princess sealed herself away with calamity ganon to protect what remained. but after link woke up, freed the divine beasts... only then did they win against the calamity. it sort of feels like the calamity HAD to happen in order for it to be defeated.

and again, in a way, this led to the events of totk. because ganondorf CREATED calamity ganon. and it didnt take anything at all for him to wake up again. link and zelda just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

[ganondoodle]

as i was awake in the middle of the night for like 2 hours bc i felt sick i had more somewhat random totk thoughts

one being that i really hate how raurus response to concerned zelda is, after sonia died in that almost funny how little impactful it was way, "im sure you are here for a reason" (actually, i hate how often this sentence is used in general to .. idk i guess its supposed to be inspiritational???)

bc what does that mean actually? him saying that to someone who got there absolutely by accident really just sounds like "i dont care go figure it out yourself bc i dont want to think about anything concerning you or your troubles lol" i guess its meant to sound like OOOOH fate has BROUGHT you here bc you have to furfill a role you dont know yet (spoiler its being a sacrifice girl with no personality) and besides me hating the 'inescapable fate' trope in general (at least the way its usually done in these games, which is not to struggle against it but willingly accept whatever you are told and pretend thats good) its really jsut goddamn boring and is really only an excuse to well .. ignore her and her trouble; shouldnt you, if you were actually such a cool guy like the game wants me to believe so bad, do everything in your power to get zelda back to her own world before shes pulled even further into the war you caused now that her only ""mentor"" that could help her get more use of her pretty much useless sudden powers is gone too?? i know shes basically dead wife sonia replacement (can of worms ugh) but it still grinds my gears whenever i think of that cutscene, bc i cant help but hear it as the lamest excuse in existence to not care about her and just kinda .. see what happens which in this case means leave zelda completely on her her own since both rauru and mineru die as well (honestly shouldnt rauru have thought about like .. any plan to defeat gan besides dying himself, given hes the oh so cool and goodest guy king whos only mistake was not stabbing gan the second he stepped into their kathedral castle thing, like even if you had a plan it can still fail but it seemed like he just kinda went in with a handful of people that didnt seem to know each other at all, never got names or faces -or unique voices for that matter- to fight gan face to face inlcuding the girl that came from a different time and had nothing to do with any of this conflict and couldnt even really control her sudden new powers just seems pretty stupid)

thought 2

how totk really feels like botw but for the people who didnt like shiekah tech, its not a sequel, its botw again, but version of only sonau, its like a pokemon game that had two versions but one has weirdly incoherent story and acts like the other never existed jsut as a whole its like retreading the same points but worse, all shiekah tech that was so integral to the world and had such a long history just vanishing and no one caring about any of it like it never happened, HELL the titans were called divine beasts in english but i guess they werent divine or important enough to keep around LOL champions WHO and isntead a never before seen or even heard of race for that matter showing up and planting their ass in every place the shiekah were before, dare i say it feels weirdly manipulative, like either them or some outside force erasing every fact about the ancient shiekah and replace them with sonau stuff bc they are the hot new shit now

this is a point that just doesnt stop bothering me, how the shiekah tech seemed so carefully designed and integrated into botws world and story, its a difficult to keep balance after all, integrating high tech stuff into a medieval setting, but they made it work! and then totk comes around and throws a bunch modern day tech into it puts some vague greenish stone filter on its exterior and call that even better more ancient tech; why did they even bother to make pottery inspired laser shooting spider legged robots so well integrated when they throw a car and rockets into the next game without a thought and call it a day, what was the fucking point

it feels like someone was dead set on having a set of legos thrown into the game it had no place in, if you want players to build whatever they want make a building game instead!! especially if you are just gonna throw it in with seemingly no consideration how out of place it feels togehter with the fACT THAT YOU ALREADY HAD AND ANCIENT HIGH TECH CIVILIZATION WITH A VERY DISTINCT AESTHETIC THAT WAS ALREADY WELL INTEGRATED INTO THE WORLD YOU ARE PLANNING TO REUSE WITH ALOT OF MYSTERY AND UNKOWN STUFF ABOUT THEM TO EXPLORE FURTHER YOU COULD HAVE USED!! but i guess they just "didnt want to play with you anymore" and that so much so that they went out of their way to erase every trace of it, i dont think the words shiekah tech are ever used in the game, and the purah pad and her towers just drive me more isnane bc they are the same shit but called different and also much worse, liek the purah pad isnt some more developed shiekah stone, no its a glorified camera with a teleport function and thats it

(i know i said this before but i really cant stand how obsessed every single NPC is with sonau shit, you get told to your face every second line of dialog that they are so cool and are so mysterious that it just makes me annoyed of them even more, the game is obsessed with shoving them everywhere and telling you over and over you too should obsess over them, they werent weird like that about the shiekah stuff in botw?? the biggesst talking point in botw was calamity ganon ..... which makes sense and in totk its like ... gan is mentioned what, in a newspaper article??? once???and then not even by name i think???)

aside from that big point which will never let me go, its also just .. its not moving forward anything, it actively walks BACK the progress that was made in botw, call me dumb but i dont really count moving one step up in the social roles of each race as a character development (for the side characters like the champions desc- ahem SAGES) but mainly zelda ... god how dirty she was done, totk pretty explicitely makes her regress any development she made in botw aside from she likes link uwu and some people like her too, but also not enough to notice that that weird zelda being all evil and weird isnt her (INLCUDING THE CHAMP- SAGES WHO YOU ARE SUPPOSEDLY FRIENDS WITH??? you dont have to be a genius to pick up on that my god, were you all given the mc dumbo potion or what)

she gets put back to square one, back into the little itty bitty princessy maiden role forced upon her by her royal parentage, this time rauru edition, back into a white little dress, back into the scared puppy eyed teenager, back into a situation she cant handle, back into losing everyone around her (tho honestly botw made me care more about rhoam than totk did about rauru), back into being forced to do a big sacrifice- but worse actually

in botw she went to FIGHT AND HOLD GANON IN THE CASTLE SO LINK HAD TIME TO RECOVER AND IT WOULDNT DESTROY THE LAND!! and you are telling me in totk rauru takes up her botw role and she bascially killed herself to ... restore the mastersword.

......... she ... she did that only to be a glorified version of the stone pedestal in the forest. and then she gets returned to normal itty bitty girly no problem via magic sparkle beam at the end and

DOESNT

EVEN

REMEMBER.

it really is just botw but worse, you even get yet another ghost king of hyrule to guide you around (rhoam did it better fight me ... we dont talk about the questionable choice to make himself darker skinned when posing as just some guy)

i honestly dont think i was ever truly taken aback by anythign that happened in botw, while in totk, the further i played, the more i had to fight with myself to keep the feeling of unease, disappointment and betrayal down

its such a god damn shame, totk should have stayed a DLC, i will forever mournfully dream of a game that explores more of the ancient shiekah, doesnt erase integral parts of the world, developes characters more instead of making them regress back and make them end up even less developed than at the start of the game, dives into buried secrets and mistakes of dark pages of history without giving into a weirldy nationalist(imperalisitc?) narrative and lets characters have some agency for once

if it werent for the yiga i might have actually considered refunding the game, just to be at peace with myself

anyway, aboslutely incoherent word vomit.

[quixoticvalkyrie]

champions powers >>> sages abilities

seriously though, why were they downgraded so much?? Ah yes Sidon, your sister would save me from death on the regular but your little splash power is very useful

also Yunobo, I know damn well you have Daruk's Protection, you can't loan me that instead?

[bacchuschucklefuck]

the boy-but-not-that-way-ism of riz gukgak send tweet

[orykorioart]

Mr. Recoil over here with his nth recoil TM :-/

[aurelion-solar]

Miss Fortune VFX Update (source: SkinSpotlights) Base (same as Captain Fortune, Road Warrior, Waterloo) - Candy Cane - Secret Agent - Pool Party - Cowgirl - Crime City

[redbean-nom]

kind of funny how the legends explanation for why boba's armor looks so beat-up in rotj is that, in the time it took to deliver han from the empire to jabba, he ended up going on an arena-championship sidequest, getting randomly shot at because jabba put a massive bounty on his head, getting in a muffled brawl with chewie while hiding from four syndicates and vader, getting almost blown up like three different times, and blowing up the room he was standing in to steal han back from the rebels who had stolen him from the empire who had stolen him from crimson dawn who had stolen him from boba. he really had a horrible week huh

[spiritsong]

something I need to know about veilguard no.3: what are the mage specializations 👀 I'm guessing necromancer has to be one, which means it's highly unlikely that blood mage will be an option (rip). what about the other two? possibly arcane warrior?

about the other specializations — we have the specializations for rogue and warrior! duelist, saboteur, and veil ranger for rogue; reaper, slayer, and champion for warrior.

looking at the specializations from previous games, it seems like duelist is simply the return of the duelist specialization from origins and da2. saboteur is an interesting term to use. is this the class most akin to assassin from all three games? maybe a specialization that gives the quintessential rogue experience? veil ranger is entirely new so I have no thoughts on this one!

then for warrior — reaper seems like stylistically it'll be similar to reaver; namely the darker flavor. there's probably some element of self-inflicting damage (or some other debuff) for more power. it's described as "equipped with lifesteal and other freaky powers" and "big damage, stealing health from enemies, etc". slayer is described as "big swords, big damage" and "who can wield the biggest blades", which sounds new to me — but feel free to tell me otherwise if you're someone who is more familiar with playing as warrior. we're also seeing the return of champion from origins and inquisition, though I find it interesting that it's been described as "paladin-like"; I wonder if they are leaning in more to that fantasy.

EDIT —

We now know from the developer Q&A from the official BioWare Discord that the three mage specializations are (actual names pending):

necromancer, elemental, and combat mage

[ambereddragonfire]

Warforged Charles AU!

[muchmossymess]

It might be the weirdo in me but imagine an anamatic to the song shiny from moana with an evil/antagonist revali as the crab and link trying to recover the master sword as maui and zelda as moana

[bloomingbluebell]

wild. wild what does this mean.

(art credit @linkeduniverse)