#there is still much for me to learn in totk btw

[seagullcharmer]

thinking abt totk and oot and how we, the audience, recognise rauru's name as the sage of light in oot, but in totk meet a new rauru, who was both the first king of hyrule, but also a sage of light. timeline-speaking, was the rauru of oot just coincidentally the sage of light and shared his name with the first one? or was it his fate, and his parents named him accordingly? or was he a history nerd who chose that name willingly? makes me wonder......

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Hello!! I'm back for: more whining about TotK Quest Design Philosophy

I can't reblog a really great post I just saw for some reason (tumblrrrr *shakes my fist*), but hmmmm yeah not only do I completely agree, but I think I might expand on why I feel so much annoyance towards TotK's quest design philosophy at some point, because it does extend past the fundamentally broken setup of trying to punch a pseudo-mystery game on top of BotW's bones, where the core objective was always explicit and centered and stapled the entire world together; or the convoluted and inefficient way it tells its story through the Tears, the somehow single linear exploration-driven quest in the entire game.

Basically: I'm talking about the pointless back-and-forths. There were a lot of them, a lot that acted against the open world philosophy, and almost none of them ever recontextualized the environment through neither gameplay abilities nor worldbuilding nor character work.

I'll take two examples: the initial run to Hyrule Castle (before you get your paraglider), and then the billion back-and-forths in the Zora questline.

I think?? the goal of that initial quest to Hyrule Castle is to familiarize you with the landmark, introduce the notion that weapons rot, tell you about the gloom pits, and also tell you that Zelda sightings are a thing? But to force any of these ideas on you before giving you a paraglider is, in my opinion, pretty unnecessary. I think the reason it happens in that order is to prevent Link from simply pummeling down to the gloom pit under Hyrule Castle and fight Ganondorf immediately while still introducing ideas surrounding the location; but genuinely, the Zelda sighting makes the next events even more confusing? Why wouldn't you focus all your priorities in reaching the castle if you just saw her there? Why lose time investigating anything else? Genuinely: what is stopping you from getting your paraglider and immediately getting yourself back there, plunging into the depths to try and get to the literal bottom of this? (beyond player literacy assuming this is where the final boss would be, and so not to immediately spoil yourself --which, in an open world game, you should never be able to spoil yourself by engaging with the mechanics normally, and if you can that's a genuine failure of design)

I think, personally, that you should not have been pointed to go there at all. That anything it brings to the table, you could have learned more organically by investigating yourself, or by exploring in that direction on your own accord --or, maybe you think Zelda is up there in the castle, and then the region objectives become explicitely about helping you reaching that castle (maybe by building up troops to help you in a big assault, or through the Sages granting you abilities to move past level-design oriented hurdles in your way, etc). Either way: no need to actually make you walk the distance and back, because the tediousness doesn't teach you anything you haven't already learned about traversal in the (extremely long, btw, needlessly so I would say) tutorial area.

But to take another example, I'll nitpick at a very specific moment in the Zora Questline, that is honestly full of these back-and-forth paddings that recontextualize absolutely nothing and teach you nothing you didn't already know. The most egregious example, in my opinion, is the moment where you are trying to find the king, and you have to learn by listening in to the zora children who do not let you listening in.

So okay. I think Zelda is great when it does whimsy, and children doing children things guiding you is a staple of the series, and a great one at that. But here? It does not work for me on any level. Any tension that could arise from the situation flattens because nobody seems to care enough about their king disappearing in the middle of a major ecological crisis, except for children who are conveniently dumb enough not to graps the severity of the situation, but not stressed out enough that it could be construed as a way for them to cope about it and make anything feel more serious or pressing. It feels like a completely arbitrary blocker that isn't informed by the state of the world, doesn't do anything interesting gameplay-wise with this idea, doesn't build up the mood, and genuinely feels like busywork for its own sake.

This is especially tragic when the inherent concept of "the zora king has been wounded by what most zoras would believe to be Zelda and is hiding from his own people so the two factions do not go to war over it" has such tension and interest and spark that the game absolutely refuse to explore --instead having you collect carved stones who do not tell you anything new, splatter water in a floating island, thrud through mud who feel more like an inconvenience than a threat or, hey, listen to children playing about their missing king less than a couple of years after being freed from Calamity Ganon's menace. It feels like level designers/system designers having vague technical systems that are hard-coded in the game now, and we need to put them to use even if it's not that interesting, not that fun or not that compelling. It's the sort of attitude that a lot of western RPGs get eviscerated for; but here, for some reason, it's just a case of "gameplay before story", instead of, quite simply, a case of poorly thought-out gameplay.

Not every quest in the game is like this! I think the tone worked much better in the sidequests overall, that are self-contained and disconnected from the extremely messy main storyline, and so can tell a compelling little tale from start to finish without the budget to make you waddle in a puddle of nothing for hours at a time. It's the only place where you actually get character arcs that are allowed to feel anything that isn't a variation on "very determined" or "curious about the zonai/ruins", and where you get to feel life as it tries to blossom back into a new tomorrow for Hyrule.

But if I'm this harsh about the main storyline, it really is because I find it hard to accept that we do not criticize a structure that is at times so half-assed that you can almost taste employees' burnout seeping through the cracks --the lack of thematic ambition and self-reflection and ingeniosity outside of system design and, arguably at times, level design-- simply because it's Hyrule and we're happy to be there.

There's something in the industry that is called the "wow effect", which is their way to say "cool" without saying "cool". It's basically the money shots, but for games: it's what makes you go "ohhhh" when you play. And it's great! The ascension to the top of the Ark was one of them --breathtaking, just an absolute high point of systems working together to weave an epic tale. You plummeting from the skies to the absolute depths of hell is another one; most of the dungeons rely on that factor to keep your attention; the entire Zelda is a dragon storyline is nothing but "wow effect" (and yeah, the moment where you do remove the Master Sword did give me shivers, I'll admit to this willingly) and so is Ganondorf's presence and presentation in the game --he's here to be cool, non-specifically mean, hateable in a non-threatening way and to give us a good sexy time, do not think about it too hard. What bothers me is that TotK's world has basically nothing to offer but "wow effect"; that if you bother to dig at anything it presents you for more than a second, everything crumbles into incoherence --not only in story, but in mood, in themes, in identity. This is a wonderfully fun game with absolutely nothing to say, relying on the cultural osmosis and aura of excellency surrounding Zelda to pass itself off as meatier than it really is. This is what I say when I criticize it as self-referential to a fault; half of the story makes no sense if this is your first Zelda game, and what little of that world there is tends to be deeply unconcerned and uncurious about itself.

And no, Breath of the Wild wasn't like this. Breath of the Wild was deeply curious about itself; the entire game was built off curiosity and discovery, experimentation and challenge (and I say this while fully admitting I had more fun with the loop of TotK, which I found more forgiving overall). The traversal in Tears of the Kingdom is centered around: how do I skip those large expanses of land in the most efficient and fun way possible. How do I automate these fights. How do I find resources to automate both traversal and fights better. It's a game that asks questions (who are the zonais, who is Rauru and what is his deal, what is the Imprisoning War about, where is Zelda), and then kind of doesn't really care about the answers (yeah the zonais are like... guys, they did a cool kingdom, Rauru used to run it, the Imprisoning War is literally whatever all you have to care about is who to feel sad for and who to kill about it and you don't get a choice and certainly cannot feel any ambiguous feelings about any of that, and Zelda is a dragon but we will never expand on how it felt for her to make such a drastic and violent choice and also nobody cares that's a plot point you could *remove* from the game without changing the golden path at all).

I'm so aggravated by the argument "in Zelda, it's gameplay before story" because gameplay is story. That's the literal point of my work as a narrative designer: trying to breach the impossibly large gap between what the game designers want to do, and what the writers are thinking the game will be about (it's never the same game). And in TotK, the game systems are all about automation and fusion. It's about practicality and efficiency. It's also about disconnecting stuff from their original purpose as you optimize yourself out of danger, fear, or curiosity --except for the way you can become even more efficient. And sure, BotW was about this too; but you were rewarded because you had explored the world in the first place, experimented enough, put yourself in danger, went to find out the story of who you used to be and why you should care about Hyrule. I'm not here to argue BotW was a well-written game; I think it was pretty tropey at large to be honest, safe for a couple of moments of brilliance, but it had a coherent design vision that rewarded your curiosity while never getting in the way of the clarity of your objective. There is a convolutedness to TotK that, to me, reveals some extremely deep-seated issues with the direction the series is heading towards; one that, at its core, cares more about looking the part of a Zelda game than having any deeper conversation about what a Zelda game should be.

[honeyimissjoo]

CCs - link your favourite and/or most popular post from each month this year and tag CCs you love.

tagged by the talented & lovely @dreamaze. thank you for the tagging me, wings :) hope u dont mind that i stole your layout idea

tagging @eggheons @lunetual @nunutual @bearwoo @changkkyun @05-14 @we-called-monsta-for-a-reason @imcks @ye-xiu you're all really neat and wish i could gif like you thank you ily

I started giffing in 2023. It has been a fun and frustrating time filled with learning and tears. my laptop gets overheated easily for any given task much like me, but hope to make more this year and make more friends! i love you all. thanks for making 2023 fun when irl has been a dumpster fire ❤️🍉

January

❤️Popular: Kihyun's hand choreo in the Reason cb 🍉Favourite: Yamapi's ass-ets in alice in borderland. I kid you not this 1 gif took me 2 hours to make. I had to resize it so many times and ps kept crashing. i wanted to cry but his round 🍑 made me want to gif more loll

February

❤️Popular & 🍉Favourite: Hyungwon dissociating in public

March

❤️Popular: Shownu in Shoot Out era 🍉Favourite: POV Minhyuk giving us tiffany's ring his enlistment letter. Ididnt know how to do add a picture disappearing in ps so i made a video and then made a gif out of that vvideo 👍🏽

April

❤️Popular: totk trailer 🍉Favourite: shownu best leader for #shownureturns here i'm starting to learn how to add multiple gifs in one

May

❤️Popular: Link in Tingle outfit Best outfit in botw/totk btw 🍉Favourite: Jooheon living up to Hype Energy moniker. i think this is my best work and i cant ever top this

June

❤️Popular: Shownu superpowers 🍉Favourite: Changkyun Overdrive solo. Trying out different styles but my colouring was still not it

July

❤️Popular: Death Comes to Permberley proposal 🍉Favourite: NEWS - weeeeek. i made this for me and the 1 other news fan on tumblr

August

❤️Popular: Mignon "Please dont throw me away" 🍉Favourite: Slam Dunk Jooheon & Miyeon

September

❤️Popular: Mignon yin and yang 🍉Favourite: "Passion Passion Passion!!" by Lee Jooheon

October

❤️Popular & 🍉Favourite: Jooheon Bday set. i overworked this month and then went to japan and hk to spend all the money i earned so i didnt have the capcity to make gifs. what a time to be alive

November

❤️Popular: Showheon popo set 🍉Favourite: Minhyuk bday set. i was sick while making this lol fun times

December

❤️Popular: petition to add the horse move to mx choreography 🍉Favourite: Lee Sun Kyun in My Ahjusshi. am devastated by his passing. It was cruel how his business was in the news constantly. the media, the people who wont stop talking about him and his family, the women who extorted him are all to blame.

[tnc-n3cl]

More Rito Headcanons!

Something of an expansion of my "Rito Biology 101" post, but I'm not going to bother with the in-universe POV and talking about a couple different things here so...

Here's the original. Now that TotK is out, we got some new info so I'm going to go over things. (Namely a new Tribe for Penn and some thoughts on the aged up kiddos.) There my be some minor spoilers in the images, so I'm going to put them below the read more line.

Minor edit: 7/30/23, realized that one of the new NPC's mentioned something I forgot to talk about!

New Rito Guy! Penn is a reporter who you team up with for a few sidequests. Clearly he's some kind of pelican, so a quick search on Wikipedia and... Pelca Tribe (from Pelecanus the genus that contains all living pelicans)

So a couple things here. One: the triangles on his little sash reminds me of Kass' scarf. (What did you do to Kass Nintendo?!) Two: his outfit appears to be made of some kind of blue leather. I'm assuming that all Rito wear leather armor basically (except Saki and the little ones). Interestingly, I had drawn an axe that had talon grip handles in the axe head that are sometimes made out of leather sourced from blue monster hides. Doubt that's the case here since he's not a warrior but still...

His catchphrase... You can see they did the little hook on his beak! Is that yellow on his chest part of his clothes? Hm...

Including this because, A: this is quite possibly my favorite quote from him and B: you can see he has webbed feets! (Still say they should have given the Rito four toes but whatever...)

Look at his tiny pen and notebook! (The dangles on his hood are shaped like pens!)

Okay, that's enough Penn for now... In other news, new color morphs just dropped ya'll!

So the first guy looks like he might be a shade or two lighter than Huck, but the second guy is a new color altogether. We gots purple Orni Tribe Ritos now! Really don't have much to say about these two, but more variety is nice.

EDIT: Actually I do have something to say about Ornest. He mentions that all Rito have the ability to manipulate the wind, something I was theorizing to be the case. So, headcanon confirmed!

Moving on to the kiddos!

Kotts! Again her headband makes me think of her father's scarf and I miss him so much!

Here's BotW Kotts for comparison. As you can see, the white on her face is starting to fade, and she's lost her "bangs", and her head is starting to be more bird shaped. Rough estimation is that TotK is around 5 years after BotW and I'm assuming that she's 5 during BotW so that would make her 10 in TotK. (I'm going with Rito living around 80 years on average BTW).

She's almost as tall as Link! Also that dialog speaks to me on like, a molecular level. (She gets up at 10AM BTW) Also note her Saki-like clothing.

BotW Molli

TotK Molli

I, uh, don't think she grew at all...

She wants to make cool arrows so her dad will use them with his bows... (Why's there no emoji/emoticon button?! I need a big eyed sad face here!)

Speaking of her dad... Here enjoy this totally unrelated to anything I'm talking about shot of Harth actually standing! He gets to do stuff in this game guys! (Can you believe I almost forgot he existed when I went from BotW to Age of Calamity? How could I forget this unique bird?!)

Last but not least, Bird Son himself...

Tulin!!!! Look at this adorable little guy! LOOK AT HIM!!!!

I like to think he admires the hell out of Link and so he's mimicking Link's pose as much as he can. Speaking of which... Get that guy a cowboy outfit and a giant belt buckle!

Look at him some more!

So I don't know if that's eyeliner or just natural markings but he's doing his mom's thing and I can't even you guys!

I am SO normal about these birds...

*regains composure*

Okay, so what have we learned from this? Rito start off with blue sclera (the whites of the eye) when they're little. Around 10 or so the sclera becomes white and the irises are blue. Given that neither Kass nor Amali have blue eyes, I'm going to assume at some point their daughters will develop yellow eyes like them. Tulin... Let's just say his eyes stay blue.

Fluffy white baby feathers on the face slowly fade over the years until they their faces are solid colors (Orni Tribe at least). Tulin's little bun, is this like his mom's "hair" or more like his dad's floof? His he tying it back? You can make out something around the base of it in that second image of him so I think so... What if he ends up with a braid like the Ancient Wind Sage? (Why couldn't you just name them Nintendo? You could have just used the Divine Beasts' names and it would have been fine!)

None of the kids have proper tail feathers yet, so I hesitate to call them juveniles... Give them a few more years and they'll probably start growing them.

I like Penn, and pelican/waterfowl Rito fit in with ideas I was having for my fanfic so... Just gotta find a way to fit him in...

I made it so that different Rito settlements have different symbols. Normally these would be found on the cloth around their waist. However, Penn has this unique symbol on his chestpiece... Granted there's some similar symbols around the village but...

[alelelesimz]

here's a long and non exhaustive list of things i want to see in a totk dlc (big spoilers btw)

i want to learn more about the zonai. people in hyrule spend the entire game trying to learn more about them and in the end when purah sees the temple of time and says "just when i thought i started to figure out the zonai!" there's still sooooooooooo much we don't know about them that i wish we could learn somehow.

ganondorf and the gerudo. in the story we learn that he is the king of the gerudo, he's evil, he wants power and loves darkness. that's all. i want to learn more about who he is in this story, his motives, his relationship with the gerudo, etc. are ALL the gerudo of that time with him? are they all evil? do they leave him once he becomes the demon king? when he gets the secret stone we don't see the gerudo warriors anymore, what happened with them?

KASS. WHERE IS HIM???????????? IS HE OKAY? ARE WE GONNA SEE HIM AGAIN? MY BOY MY DARLING PLEASE COME BACK. i truly can't believe nintendo would leave out such a beloved character without an explanation. even his family is still there. i would've preferred him having a minor role than completely disappearing :(

the connection between ganondorf and calamity ganon. are they related at all? [tangent warning] my guess is that ganondorf/demon king happened first, from there god knows when ganondorf's evil leaked in the form of malice (in botw it's said that he came from the depths of hyrule castle so that checks out) then creating calamity ganon (the one 10000 years prior to botw), which is evil in its purest form, from there he gets sealed away and 10000 years later he comes back and the great calamity happens which destroys hyrule castle and that's what weakens rauru's power therefore gloom spreading more and more and making people sick, and then totk happens. [tangent end]

who's the ancient hero??? okay hear me out here's another tangent: the ancient hero set is a reward after a huge task, so it definitely cannot be only a fan service, right? it is the look of the hero that defeated calamity ganon 10000 years ago. he's obviously not a hylian, at first i thought he might've been a zonai but he doesn't quite look like one? granted, the only zonai we've seen are rauru and mineru, maybe the others looked different, BUT if he's a zonai then calamity ganon must've happened BEFORE ganondorf??? bc by the time ganondorf appears the zonai are pretty much extinct so my theory above would be wrong. BUT if he's not a zonai THEN WHAT IS HE WHO IS HE I WANT TO KNOW! ofc 10000 years is an insane amount of years, that's longer than the entire documented history of humanity, so maybe he's a completely different race that disappeared long ago and hasn't been mentioned yet. if that's the case i wanna know about that too.

naydra, farosh and dinraal. i actually don't think this one's gonna happen lol, but i'd love to know more about them. we know that they represent the triforce and in totk we learn about dragonification. i've seen theories of them being zonai sages who swallowed their secret stones long ago. it would be so much fun to learn if that's the case and why they did that.

what happened to the sheikah technology that was so prevalent in botw? it would make sense that all the guardians in botw just died after ganon is gone. their parts were used for the skyview towers and i saw someone making the argument that they do explode when they die, so that would explain how they were completely erased from the world, although it still baffles me how despite most of the world is still in ruins, there's absolutely no trace of the decayed guardians ANYWHERE not even in the most remote parts of the world. what happened with the towers? they raised from the ground, we see the one in the gerudo canyon came all the way from a chasm which we can now explore. i wish we had more of an explanation of what happened to them.. and as for the divine beasts, it is implied that they've stopped working in the end of botw, but these machines were huge, where are they now? did they bury them again? so many questions that are probably never gonna be answered honestly :/

[kiddokori]

but you're so right about everything with totk. you put it in words so well 😭 idk if you found memory 9, so i won't spoil anything, but it was SO GOOFY look up gmod smile after you watch it and explode instantly. loftwings would've made the game infinity better, like skeleehorses can go over gloom (such a silly name btw) and horses are always great, but there's nothing to ride in the sky??? missed oppurtunity imo. i basically play with no tech becuase i hate using it 😔 i have much to say on this game and sadly most of it around the plot isn't thatg nice

SKELEHORSES CAN GO OVER GLOOM??????

but no yeah i dont enjoy the tech lol. i think modern tech in fantasy is a slippery slope from “woah cool its so interesting how this fantastical society developed things we never couldve thought of” to “this isnt even fantasy its just sci-fi with medieval paint slapped over it” thats what botw vs. totk is to me. we went from giant magical mechs and tech that felt more like sentient creatures to a straight up four wheeler. also its just clunky. to me. vexes me.

i am playing it very slowly for several reasons so im not far im only two memories in (trying to do them in order) lol but im not impressed by the writing either again ive only beat the rito “dungeon” idk what to call it. it was fine. really felt like they just tried to replicate the divine beasts but it didnt work. the weird disembodied voice felt forced in totk its just this random exposition guy that felt like he was just there for the sake of mimicking the structure of the champions talking to you where in botw that makes sense because they’re important characters that you learn more about and play a role in the story and also they literally died and their souls were trapped in their beasts. and totk was like ah shit ah fuck we gotta have another disembodied voice throw this guy in there and have him lore drop on you. who is he. who cares.

and then the divine beasts were like interesting involved puzzles there was one i thiiiink the camel you literally had to turn entire parts of it to line up electrical signals to get places and unlock things it was a little frustrating but i had to think about it!! same with the elephant you had to control the entire mechanism to move things and you had to Think about it. the rito ship was just go find these things. ok the divine beasts were also that with the terminals but you had to work for it. totk really just went go walk around for awhile and find them. no real puzzle to it. there was a little bit with the doors/levers but it did not feel nearly as involved or thought through.

i will say i did like the boss fight the ice guy. cool guy. looked cool baller music neat new little thing you had to do to beat it i liked it. that was cool i will give them that they know how to get me pumped for a boss fight

ok but the cutscene with zelda near the beginning was goofy as hell. just straight up like woaaaahh she floated into the sky thats crazy!!! whaaat!!!!! felt extremely silly. i was sitting there like is this a gag is this supposed to be funny i cannot tell. very much threw me off. could not take seriously

also. fucking. got rid of her again. if they wanted to have the same success of botw maybe they should’ve gee idk changed the formula again and let zelda be with us. a two player zelda game would be so cool. even if it was still single player and we could just interact with her and have her with us im thinking kindof last of us/resident evil 4 style where she helps you do certain puzzles or helps you fight like other npcs. even if she just stayed at the base and helped purah with research and you could talk to her thatd be more interesting. GIVE HER TO ME!!

the intro really just felt like oh we have to get rid of zelda again because we need link to be alone so we can copy botw uhhhhh magic rock teleports her to the past yeah yeah that works. they decided they needed this to happen and then made a story to excuse those choices rather than actually construct something cohesive.

im not even halfway through the game so i dont wanna be tooo hard on it or form strong opinions but id rather be pleasantly surprised than disappointment after getting my hopes up. i havent been spoiled for anything but i have seen people complain in general so im kinda leaning towards disappointment lol. like its zelda im still having fun i just also am looking at it from a critcal point of view and i have plenty to say. i used this as an excuse to talk for a looong time anyways. im currently working on getting specific horse colors that i preplaned by looking at this horse chart to name after characters from a book i like ✌️ i didnt pay 70 dollars to not have any fun with this game so help me god i am going to enjoy Some of it

[candy8448]

I wanna fight ghirahim again

Thing is, when i first played sksw, even in the third fight i still didnt know that the trick was to fake him out so it made the fights so so much harder and then more fun but knowing the trick, the fights are much easier and not as exciting as they used to be

Same with demise, once i got the rhythm down, i could refight him easily and it was nowhere near as hard as the first time i fought him.

Honestly though with demise, it was so much fun to slowly piece together the trick to fighting him. Like i would slowly add more onto my strat to get rheough the first phase then get to 2nd phase and get stuck again, by then i learned how to quickly get through the first phase, letting me focus on the second and it was super cool to chip away at the fight till i figured it out, then come home the next day, try again and then get it finally and watching that last final strike.

Whoa that was good

I wish i could relive that moment of finally figuring it out

This game man... i know i say it every time i talk avout skyward sword but it really is the best zelda for me

(This is very mild, barely spoilers for the totk final boss fight btw)

Ganondorf was also like this, slowly chipping away at each phase until i got the first phase down really well, and built this whole conveluted strat with the rockets. I had this whole thing where i had to pre-prepare certain things, preserve them throughout the fight to use them at certain times to finally beat him and that was so amazing to do, to finally figure out slowly over many refights what worked and what didnt until in the final time i put all of it to use and beat him up good

[tfp-enthusiast]

hello! first time requesting a matchup, hope i did this alright. either faction is fine.

i’m short, in my early 20s, (ftm) trans, autistic, have a bad case of baby face and i dress comfortably (sweatpants/tshirts/light jackets or flannels to make up for the discomfort of my binder). i haven’t medically transitioned yet (sadly) but i plan to when i can afford it. i have shoulder length dyed hair, one side is white and the other black. i’m usually at home (because of dysphoria/anxiety) doing self assigned chores or writing but i have a few friends that i hang out with sometimes. i’m definitely not a conversationalist, and i unintentionally give one word answers to everything. i have three geckos, all selfish little bastards i love. i cling to any rule i can, i hate to waste someone’s time by being a bother. i play a lot of video games (animal crossing, botw/totk, smash bros) and practice german (still learning) when i’m bored. i have drawing, painting and writing as hobbies. i get overwhelmed really easily in loud or busy spaces and i just get very quiet. i listen to a lot of 80s music to cope with anxiety.

i hope that this is enough to match me up with somebot special. thank you! -💫

[This is my first request for a Match-up so sorry if it's a little underwhelming or something.]

]Btw. i know no one asked but I actually speak german! It's funny to me because I learned that a lot of blogs I follow learn/are german. idk why I said it but anyways-]

Match-up: Breakdown

You would probably meet while he's on a mission or in a fight because he tends to forget that he should keep a low profile.

No matter how you meet, he would take because he wouldn't know what to do now that you saw him and the Autobots did the same- why can't he do the same? (yes, he thinks the bot's just picked their humans up)

When he brings you the ship he would try to keep you secret, the vehicons and Soundwave know about you but don't care, and he will ask you thousands of questions when alone.

He will call you cute because of the way your face looks, if you don't like it he would still do it but it just slips out of him sometimes, and then tell you that you have the coolest hair he ever saw. Like he knows that humans die their hair but he never saw two colored hair before.

He doesn't really understand that you have dysphoria and what that really is but he understands that it may be a touchy subject for you so he doesn't ask. But he looks a little into it is a little offended when he finds out jow much money you need so that you can be comfortable in your body, like, wtf, why do humans do that??? for cybertronians a procedure like changing your gender isn't really that much of a big thing but then again there isn't much to change on cybertronians.

Tries to hug you but if you don't like that he will focus on telling you how he thinks that you are beautiful and nothing could change the way he thinks about you etc.

If you don't like physical contact he can also switch to verbal affection, he's not picky about it.

He also get's a little frustrated about your one word answers and likes to tease you about it. He will do that no matter if in a relationship or not but when you are in a relationship he will say that he needs a hug and/or a kiss as a make up for you not talking to him much.

He also likes the way you dress because you look relaxed to him that way and he somehow would think that people that wear more thighter clothes are stressed or serious, you know what I mean? (cause I don't tbh)

When he learns he can't just keep you and let's you go to your home, you get around 6 hours for yourself bc he can get clingy once he likes someone, he will probably complain a little that you don't leave your home unless he's there but if you explain him why he doesn't anymore. (he can relate a bit but also thinks he shouldn't talk about such topics)

Introduce him to video games he will lose his shit. He quickly learns to love Nintendo games, almost everything they ever dropped, and wants to play at least 3 hours a day with you.

He thinks your geckos are cute but he doesn't really care aoubt them that much, he still loves to watch you care about them and laughs with you when they do something silly or don't move even though you lay their food right in front of them. (fun fact: I had 2 geckos and they where just so lazy that they never moved and sometimes they waited for a grasshopper to jump in front of them so they wouldn't have to move XD)

He is really confused when he sees/hears you practice german. He knows that there are many different languages on earth but he's surprised that they sound so wierd. He would after some time probably ask you if you can teach him what you know about it because he finds different languages so fascinating.

He thinks the music you listen to is a little wierd but he finds comfort in it and finds himself listening to it even though he is alone.

[arkon-z]

Once again - okay, but WHY Tulin?

He was a set piece in BOTW. Just sort of there to give Teba some depth of character. I only found out about him when he started showing up in fanworks. In AOC, he's not even in the main game, just the DLC, where I asked the same question of: why Tulin? (BTW, if you think AOC felt like a wish-fulfillment fanfic, then the DLC is 'hold my beer') All the other missions made sense in the established setting of AOC, but Tulin showing up was the one that really broke my suspension of disbelief. But that's another post.

Which brings us back to TOTK. Why have Tulin be the Rito companion? We already know the New Champions (or at least, Champion Hopefuls) from BOTW. They're bringing Sidon and Riju back, why not bring back Teba too? (I presume Yunobo will show up too, and I'll tell you why in a second) Why remove a popular character and replace him with his son?

Because TOTK seems to be about the new era of Hyrule. It's being rebuilt, it's setting aside the past it had been trapped in while Calamity Ganon was still a problem. It's the new generation of Hyrule, starring the descendants (or relatives) of the previous generation of heroes. In short, young people.

Tulin is young. Teba is not. That's why Tulin is here. And that's also why I think Yunobo will show up. Because he's young. It's a choice on the part of the writers/director to establish a new generation. But here's hoping Teba will at least make an appearance.

That all in mind, let us ask once again, why Tulin? He was a mere named NPC in BOTW. He does run a mini-game for Link at the flight range, but aside from that, he's not a plot character. And yet, he's in the TOTK trailer as a main character. What I'm asking is this:

Would they still have used Tulin as the young Rito champ if the AOC DLC had never been published?

Because if Nintendo wanted to make a point of this 'new generation' setup with a young cast, I'll betcha they might have picked some young Rito rando instead. Teba, being a father, is no longer 'young'. And they could easily still have done that and we'd just have to learn about this rando, but no! They picked someone we know and someone who was now an established character. It's just unusual that a mainline game wasn't the one to establish him.

Look, I could be way off base here. They may very well have planned to pick Tulin all along, especially once they realized how popular he was with the fandom even before AOC. This is all pure speculation. We won't know why until the game actually comes out, or until we start getting interviews with the devs. We may never know. But it really does make me wonder how much of an influence AOC had on the development of TOTK.

[masonsystem]

super long post of me complaining abt totk irt to my totk playthru bc I <3 Complaining ❤️❤️

maybe its cuz i played like a fuckton during the first week (tho i only have 65 hours total so idk how that compares to the average playerbase) or maybe its cuz ive been playing in an unconventional way, but totk is starting to feel boring to me... (or maybe the game design just sucks..?)

i play unconventionally in that i have disregarded the plot.. bc in botw it was so boring to me. and i watched all the totk cutscenes online anyways and it was as i suspected, i wouldve been disappointed and annoyed if i wasted time collecting all those memories just to get some half-baked story.

im on the fence for doing dungeons tho.. i see my sister doing one, and it does actually look kinda fun, but i worry how satisfying it will actually be, and if i finish the dungeon's boss, will this game's final boss(es) be too easy? (thats what happened in botw.. but maybe ill just do the dungeon and skip the boss? if i can do that?)

i did do the beginning of the gerudo main questline, and it was rly.. boring.... fighting the gibdos was rly boring.. i guess figuring out that mirror puzzle with little help was fun. but it was overall pretty (._.) have yet to enter the dungeon. again idk if i want to

but also another thing is that like its rly rly Really hard for me to gaf abt any npcs in this game LOL.. they just like. say a whole bunch of nothings..... bc like in older games, dialogue helps w worldbuilding since theyre so technologically limited. but in a game like this, you see the world that you get. theres not much that their dialogue adds on, and its only sometimes funny anyways. and i always find myself mashing thru it anyways, bc i just.. dont care.. and also, even if they are saying something supplemental to the world, a useful tip or whatever, its 1.) a teeny tiny tip that i probably could or wouldve learned online or 2.) a mini questline with the most eh reward ever.

i guess cuz in older games you Had to talk to people to figure out what to do next. theres no 'what to do next' in this game so i just.. yeah. im just often unmotivated to know what theyve got to say. of course theyve helped me here and there but its like.. in most games i play, i try to talk to as many npcs i can. but i never feel the need to do this in totk, from either how uninteresting they are, or bc the info they tell me tends to be something i already know.

and my apathy of npcs unfortunately extend to the main quest as well (gorons rito etc), and although i say i wish this game gave me more reasons to talk to npcs, i still end up disliking how totk/botw goes around w it in their main quests; cuz now theres like, a break in the gameplay, where i Must speak to NPCs to advance the 'plot'. my gameplay of exploration, engaging in combat whenever i please, and so on, has to be paused to do this quest. and arguably these quests do provide me the opportunity to explore and whatnot, but its no longer done by Myyyy pace. i have to follow whatever pace and order the game has set for me to do. which Sucks. it really sucks to have a game which im enjoying bc of the freedom, to restrict my freedom like that.

(and this is also why i disliked shrines in the first game.... my regular gameplay gets broken up in order for me to enter shrines (which all look the absolute same as every other one btw, so theres no motivator of 'ohhh i wonder what this shrine looks like?'). and i have to solve the shrine in whatever way its making me to. and obvs some shrines have multiple solutions but more often than not it tends to be limiting.... anyways this is why i deeply prefer shrine quests in the overworld over basic shrines. i much prefer solving puzzles as im exploring as opposed to having to essentially pause my gameplay just to earn hearts and stamina.

in terms of exploration + combat (bc the two go hand in hand).. after getting all the towers, i feel that theres little left for me to do. now that i have a decent amount of hearts and stamina (8 hearts + 1.75 stamina wheels), theres nothing tht really motivates me to do more shrines. the shrines in this game are a lot better than botw's (most of the time), but once ive lost the desire to do shrines as well its a bit.. (._.)

and ive explored most of the west side of the depths, i think roughly 30% overall, but that has gotten a bit boring as well. which is a shame, bc i think its a lot of fun to explore in pitch-black terrain. but as ive said before, it visually stays the same throughout the entire terrain which ends up making it feel very monotonous. same ol grey and purples forever and ever... i wish there was a variety of biomes and landscapes or something (itd be nice if the east looks drastically different but i sincerely doubt it). so far its just grey stretches of land and monster mine camps and maybe the occasional flux construct boss like :/

and combat... ergh... EH.... well just like botw its a blast in the beginning when everything is still hard. but like... all my weapons are pushing 40 atk power now. im like. Ripped. the monsters.. do not reflect this. like firstly u still get those annoying one hit monsters like chuchus, keese, and bokoblins. which is whatever i guess.. annoying but theyre there to spice it up. so whateves. but its when the monster camps still have red monsters like.. what?! even having blue monsters is pushing it honestly. the red ones dies in one hit, and the blues dies in 2-3 hits. black ones are starting to catch up in this regard, but are still a challenge. but there just isnt enough silver ones which ideally should be spawning at this point...

its come to a point where i just end up ignoring most monster camps, bc the reward drops just aren't very good either. like i do not explore in a conventional order, so im already stacked with royal gear. i do not need traveller sword #5. and the game has not adapted with that. i wish it did, bc man the game is getting boring 😮‍💨

there is more to say. maybe ill be more coherent after i get off my bed LOL. but yeah totk still has the same issues as totk which is... erm. not great