#totk was keeping me from that but now that I know that the game does nothing with Link

[smilesrobotlover]

I cant take this anymore. Take him. I don’t have a name for him nor for the others but I love them all. I’ve explained a bit for Age’s dad’s personality and his story. I’m gonna talk about a certain battle from AOC so spoiler warning for that. It’s not connected to the story at all but just in case

There’s this battle called “a Knight’s nightmare” or something like that, and you basically have to go rescue Link who is trapped in a small area completely surrounded by guardians. It’s actually a quite challenging battle if you’re unaware of what’s happening cuz Link’s health goes down VERY quickly. It’s a sad battle really cuz it’s implied that Link is terrified of guardians and being surrounded by them, and in botw, that’s essentially how he died. Anyways I miiiight have this battle happen with his dad involved, but it gets so bad that his dad ends up losing his arm. This is after the calamity, but he loses his ranking and is pushed to retire, living in Hateno with his wife and daughter again. He doesn’t have that much time to be with Link unfortunately since Link is doing heroic work, but at least he can see his daughter more often.

His dad is a very positive man, a guy who tried to be positive even when things are bad. He’s a glass half full kinda guy, but losing his arm was very hard on him since he is an active person and gets stir crazy really easily. Out of stubbornness he does learn how to do most of his activities with just one arm. He shield surfs at mount Hylia a lot, learned how to use his sword with one arm, and a whole lot other things. It helped with him being forced to stay home, but he does miss the traveling and the action. Tho he’s just happy to spend time with his family, he only wishes that Link could be there more often.

He was also close with the other bodyguard of the king. There were two in AOC who were with Rhoam all the time tho I don’t remember what they look like lol, but I think he grew close with his partner. I’m sure he misses the talks they used to have. Rhoam is a very strict and serious man so I doubt he was super close with the king, but he was close enough to have some pleasant conversations. But the looming calamity stifled a lot of friendly conversations

Also when I was designing him, I always had Leon’s facial hair in my mind, so you know that Linebeck is gonna confuse the two of them SO much. The biggest difference tho is that they’re almost a foot apart in height (Leon is almost 6’ while this guy is around 5’-5’2) I guess the missing arm and chipped ear are good differences as well lol

Sorry for the rambling it is late and I can’t stand not rambling at times so take this dbsksbksb

[love-toxin]

ELLIE!! SO happy that totk finally released bc there's a chance you might hyperfixate and give me the yandere link content that sustains my life force. oh and uh, cuz we waited so long for this game too, of course!

prrrrr i really do love yan Link! so many potential avenues! i was replaying totk recently (bc i was so excited for it i literally blazed thru the whole gam 8 days after release LOL) and some gems really cropped up:

1. Link makes you a little dream house in Tarrey Town to keep you safe and to take advantage of your inherent housewifery. He's so feral you don't even think about leaving even when he's gone for long stretches of time, because you know he'll track you down and drag you back home because you're not the hero silly! :) you stay home :) where it's safe :)

2. Yiga clan member reader who is constantly being hunted down and "rehabilitated" by the Hylian hero. Which is incredibly frustrating to you because a.) ur trying to kill him and b.) the other yiga quickly lose respect for you/shun you when they find out you're practically Link's little playtoy. Especially when he goes x2 as feral on the other yiga in battle when you're around cause he's bricked up at the very sight of you, and you end up getting chewed out by Kohga for letting him hit it and just escape afterwards.

3. You work at one of the stables or the little inn at Hateno village and Link falls so hard for you he's downright creepy. He's constantly hanging around and bringing you gifts and stuff you didn't ask for but you can't just tell him to go away cause...he's the hero. So you kinda just have to deal with his awkward stare and the fumbled kisses he steals behind the barn and try not to hurt his feelings because what are you gonna do if the hero of time decides to quit saving Hyrule because he got rejected?

4. You're part of the Gerudo/live in Gerudo town and Link is undeterred in his attempts to woo you, even though he can't step foot in town or he'll get locked up. So he either dresses up in the vai outfit or just lies in wait for you to leave the city for one reason or another, and then ambushes you and follows you around like a weird little stalker until you love him. Bonus if he scares off another suitor or saves you from a Molduga or--my personal favourite--your sand seal gets spooked and takes you far out into the desert and strands you by accident, and you're forced to accept Link's help when he comes to save you. And now, you owe him.

5. Much like Link, you're a fellow adventurer/wanderer/merchant/etc. and bump into him out in the wild. Maybe you share a campfire for a night and swap stories, or you give him directions, or you just wave at him in passing, and now Link is completely obsessed with you. He stalks you through the wild areas of Hyrule and never lets any harm befall you, be it monsters or gloom pits or pools of malice or just general unluckiness, and while you don't realize it's him you slowly feel less and less alone when you're out in the field. You swear you can even feel some kind of warmth when you lay down in your tent to sleep, like someone's curled up right next to you....

6. Link kidnaps you and takes you to Hyrule castle where he forcibly makes you pretend to be a princess. He dresses you up in pretty gowns and kills all the monsters lurking around so you'll always be safe, and he acts like you're his damsel in distress that he's constantly saving even though you're just some farmer girl he picked up off the side of the road and fell in love with. You're the pretty princess, he's your loyal knight, and if he does a really good job at "saving" you, maybe you'll let him stay in your room for the night when he keeps watch...?

[the-emblematic]

I’m really enjoying the reversal of who knows what from botw to totk

in botw, link wakes up not knowing who he is, where he is, how he got there, who the voice in his head is or why he’s naked. Just thoroughly concussed. And he spends most of the game kinda just going along with what everyone says he needs to do without really understanding anything until at least the mid-late game

whereas in totk, once you finally get back to the ground everyone is running around trying to figure out what’s going on with these new mysterious artifacts. While Linky boy has one grafted onto his body.

Could this all be from…the zonai?? Yes. In fact, Link was just hanging out with one

Did I really just see the princess fly away and disappear??? Yeah she does that now, keep up

like don’t get me wrong, my guy is still incredibly confused. Just slightly less so than everyone else

[ganondoodle]

still thinking about how even just the decision to basically act like the shiekah tech never existed is just ... so baffling to me

bc again you could have done all the sonau tech does with shiekah instead, and they were perfect to be explored more in a sequel, why wouldnt you grasp that potential, the literal building blocks for more??

if you are that tired of shiekah tech .. dont make it a fuckign sequel to the game prominently featuring it???? totk doesnt take place generations after botw in which things could have changed drastically, its just a few years afterwards??

you want to reuse the map and get rid of shiekah tech? ok fine take LINK into the past then and the focus is for you to find a way to return; do some neat twist where its revealed that link was the one who sealed gan bc he couldnt defeat him without zelda or something if you dare (they wouldnt)

want less work than that and still reuse the map and get rid of shiekah tech AND reuse characters? ok then make it some alternate universe thingy like majoras mask in which everythign is the same but also isnt, its weird and creepy how characters you thoguht you knew suddendly dont act like themselves, shiekah tech doesnt exist, malice is now miasma, etc, it would give reason to why you feel so much like something about this world is familiar yet also very wrong

as far as im aware every "sequel" we have had so far were either generations apart from the first one, some alternate universe or a different location altogether- in all of which its plausible that things are different, things seem weirdly familiar but also wrong, or that another continent just works different from hyrule

but totk does none of that, its supposedly just a few years after the first game, same world same character, but its BUILT like some strange jumbled mess of stuff from botw and new stuff out of nowhere that just .. doesnt fit, but feeling a strange sense of otherness, a déja vu of something you know but it acts off, like an imposter, thats NOT intentional and it shows, its a mess of botw stuff, from stuff that people missed from the old games and entirely new stuff; i dont doubt it CAN work but the way it turned out is like a mix of 3 different puzzles forced together and being told 'see it fits!' even tho you can clearly see the pieces dont look right in these places

again it feels like a sequel that desperately wants you to forget the first game happened, that anythign from it mattered at all

and that isnt really ... the sense of a sequel? why insist on it being one when it only creates problems? is it marketing?? just like it was marketing to call age of calamity a telling of what happened before botw but then it wasnt that at all and that is still the sole reason why i dislike it? bc i was lied to? totk is like 10000 times worse than that, its a main title and doesnt even have the excuse of yeah its basically an excuse to play all your fav characters in fun ways and the game beign well aware that being its main appeal; what is totk appeal? a toybox with botw aestethic and none of the flavor?

(on a sidenote; the sonau tech doesnt even .. matter? in botw at least calamity ganon was made of shiekah tech parts and him overtaking other tech is a big point, the sonau tech doesnt serve anything but .. idk minerus useless mech? gan doesnt even aknowledge it, he doesnt care, all it is is toys for the player, not link, but the player. the monsters mining the tech materials? what for? gan doesnt give a damn and they dont work for the yiga either??)

i said it before but it gives me the feeling that the way botw invited you to theorize, to look beneath the surface, the way it intrigued you and laid the groundwork for so many interesting things without denying anything.. was accidental? or perhaps put in the game without the directors noticing? i cant stop thinking about them saying sth like "after botw zelda wondered if the kingdom of hyrule needed to keep existing the way it had been before the calamity, but then totk happens" bc it just feels like they realized too late that botw naturally led into questioning the status quo and they scrambled to fit it back into a flat and boring road we have seen so many times before (or even worse really) with totk

zeldas character naturally leads into her questioning and reexamine their history and set of rules? we gotta teach her a lesson of why she is importante god given monarchy girl that has to keep it bc what if evil brown man shows up again for no reason

maybe im grasping at straws here but looking at it this way the sonau .. make more "sense"; the shiekah were a group that was under the rule of the royal family, and misstreated before (oh no look soemthing interesting) so they dont lend themselves well to be used for teaching zelda that lesson- the sonau however are tailored really to be just that; they are a supposedly godly race from the literal sky that founded this version of hyrule, that had tech even more advanced and better than the shiekah, she gets put in the past to meet the perfect god king of goodness personally, also his very fridgy wifey that zelda later replaces in a way, shes put there and treated like family and then gets to see just how evil that evil big man from the desert is, sonia is falcon-punched to death solely so zelda can feel obligated to take over her role, have her new, better 'family' hurt by gan; similarly so raurus sacrifice, look what a noble and good king he is, he payed the ultimate price to lock that evil man away, now zelda you cannot let their sacrifice go to waste, rebuild that divinely good kingdom like it was!!

and even though they go so much out of their way to put the cart back onto the rails of black and white-good and evil in an even flatter way than the old games, it still doesnt feel right, at least to me, it still feels like zelda shouldnt have gone along with all of that, it feels like even her character from botw was walked back entirely, except for the intro, it made her feel like a stranger to me-

because this is a sequel, i know this zelda, she wouldnt act like that after all that shes been through, this feels ... off

and it all just insulting to anyone who cared about botw more than surface level, or the zelda lore in general, i dont even care much about the timeline, but theres alot of lore and themes beyond it that felt ignored, especially so given that .. its a damn sequel, non AU, not generations apart, directly part 2-

but its not.

it even feels very "corporate", put zelda in a dress again, people liked that, put crazy abilities in the game to flashbang people with how insane it is even if its not the best for the gameplay or the story, put a new asthetic into it out of nowhere bc its 'new' and act like its been there the whole time, put gan in there bc people miss him and find him sexy even if his role is just as flat as that of an evil cloud monster-

*sigh*

you know, i saw a post that said aoc was like a bad fanfic (affectionate) and totk was like a bad fanfic (derogatory) and tbh thats like one of the best comparisons/summaries i have seen ..

[undercityrezident]

So, did anyone else notice during Memory 4 that the Dueling Peaks is a complete and single mountain?

So that means, at some point between when Zelda arrived and the present day, according to Shay at the Lakeside Stable (in Breath of the Wild), "...legends say that a dragon god split the mountain in half to forge a way through, and that's how how it went from one to two."

It's worth mentioning that he talked about this while also mentioning "the presence of the shadow of a large creature on the surface of Lake Floria," which largely connects this dialogue to Farosh, the dragon often seen diving into the waterfalls near the peak of Mount Floria (in Breath of the Wild). The fact all this information comes from the same source may be the game's way of telling us that Farosh was responsible for the state of the Dueling Peaks.

However, I have a hypothesis to offer (which contains intensive TotK story spoilers, hence the readmore):

The way the camera pans in the memory to show the Dueling Peaks (or peak, rather, in this era), feels somewhat purposeful to me. And knowing that Zelda becomes a dragon in order to help restore the Master Sword over the aeons, I can't help but wonder if she might've been the reason why it happens.

Not that I blame her of course. She's a newly minted dragon, likely bursting with emotion and pain she doesn't understand or know how to cope with as she's just lost her sense of self. She could've gone mad for a time, flying erratically and ploughing through a mountain in her time of grief before settling into her new draconic existence.

Does this disprove that Farosh, or any of the other three dragons could've been responsible?

No, it doesn't. But I propose the idea that the other three dragons have existed much longer than her. By the nature of their names, they're connected to the three goddesses, Nayru, Farore, and Din, and have likely been around since the world's origin (or very close to it). Further, the Zonai have many carvings and depictions of dragons, meaning that dragons existed during and likely prior to this era, given their longevity.

Why is this important? We can look to how the three main dragons behave: they have regular patterns of flight, likely formed out of habit or preference, and do not go out of their way to harm people or impact the landscape in any significant way. For the most part, they're high in the sky where little can reach them, save for a hero with a paraglider.

Grant you, their paths have changed since TotK debuted, but the landscape itself has changed, as has the state of the world in general. The depths are now readily accessible, and perhaps there's an obligation on their part to survey it or maintain order wherever they can venture.

But my main point is that the dragons, given time, tend to settle and keep to their own habits and paths. If the three dragons already existed long before Zelda transformed, it's unlikely one of the other three dragons would find reason to deviate from their normal behaviour and plough through a mountain to split it in two.

But the new Light Dragon hasn't settled yet. She's wracked with emotion, grief, and new power she doesn't know how to control. She could almost be considered a newborn in that sense, and what might a newborn with nearly god-like powers do?

Split a mountain in half because it was in her way...

Also, keep in mind the former Temple of Time where Zelda transformed is not all too distant from that once unified Dueling Peak. As well, Zelda's own draconic trailblazing hasn't been consistent either in the present. At the beginning of TotK, she's seen flying in circles near the Great Sky Island before she boldly plunges through the cloud layer to open up Hyrule to Link once he's finished his trials there. As far as dragons go, Zelda doesn't have the same temperament as the other three.

It's true that there could be another dragon, or being that approximates one, that is responsible for the splitting of the Dueling Peaks. Maybe it was a more nefarious dragon sharing heritage with the likes of Volvagia, Argorok, or some progenitor of the Gleeoks.

Still, I think that it would be interesting to believe that the once gentle Zelda's sacrifice may have had a bigger hand in shaping the future of Hyrule than only her dutiful task of revitalizing the Master Sword. It would further contrast the change between the woman she was and the dragon she became, and emphasize the tragic nature of what she had to do in order for us to finally defeat Ganondorf.

[phoenixcatch7]

Thinking about possible totk dlc again... Listen, we all know we want it XD.

Thing is, I've read the interviews, and I think Nintendo is right. There's just no more mechanics they can add to the game without completely breaking it. Totk is maxxed out on mechanics and options and playability. There really is nothing more they can add ability wise without bogging the whole thing down and causing a million problems, both for themselves and players.

But that's not all there is in a game, is there?

There's master mode, for one. Gold enemies are missing from totk entirely, never mind all the craziness of regenerating enemies, new mob camps just floating around, the gleeok they'd probably put on the great sky island. People loved master mode in botw, there's no reason not to at least drop that button back in.

But... People do have a few complaints. There's stuff they're missing, stuff that leaves loose ends, stuff that wasn't explained well enough. It all mostly boils down to one thing.

Story.

We could have an answer to where the divine beasts and all the sheikah tech went. We could find a giant scrapyard at the bottom of a new/old chasm because hyrule tossed everything in that could be pried up. There could be like five remaining active guardians, just so we can mess them up like we did in botw. There's voids where water is on the surface, there's plenty of space! It'd solve both the 'where tf did they go' and the 'man I wish we still had guardians' issue in one fell swoop.

We could get casual dialogue that all the divine beasts were driven out to sea and sunk! I don't know! Some sort of closure! We could talk about generational trauma responses! The instinctive fear of sheikah tech if there is one! Link is certainly canonically traumatised, did you see him with the first sky tower??

We could get wolfie back! Update his teleportation code so he can keep up with our stupid endeavours and not get caught in crossfire! Make him immune to zonai tech, idk.

We could get a resolution to kass and Penn! That whole storyline ended so sadly, and the lack of kass is straight up disturbing. We could rescue him from the depths where he fell in or smth idk!! Just because you're a bird does NOT mean you can fly a kilometer + straight up in pitch black through a narrow cylinder with lethally toxic sides. Now he's got enough material for life! (and probably trauma. The only food down there is stuff the yiga brought, which - well, it's not like they'd worry about thieves down there.

That stupid chef from lookout landing who ran off to the castle. That's TOTALLY a quest come on :(. Let him come home.

More lookout landing expansion, if you're desperate for stuff that isn't 90% dialogue! Please let me install bigger towers and a bathing area and more shops or SOMETHING. Little outlet stalls from every capital! Let me rebuild the first home in castle town! I! D! K!

More newspaper news! We could randomise it like the spider man ps4 news feed, that was hilarious. Absolute hogwash rumours and stupid feuds between neighbours and the results of pumpkin growing competitions! Mix it up, traysi had bonkers stuff, it was so good. What does life look like from inside the world?

Hylia gossip? We know she doesn't keep strictly to her 'find shrine rewards for increased gains, link' thing. Let her ask link for random stuff for 'power buffs' and give him, like, a random buff that lasts precisely 24 minutes.

Maybe even a 'now we opened the plateau again, people want to investigate' side plot. No one wanted to see :(. I didn't like that the only people up there were yiga :((. Send some new research team dude to wax lyrical and beg link for photos of different areas or symbols.

Gloom hands should be able to attack link in the depths. This would solve nothing and in fact make things much worse, but it happened to me twice and it was so much worse than on the surface lol.

Maybe some idiot managed to make it to a Sky island with balloons but now they can't get down, whoops lol. Some of them really aren't that high up and there's a lot of very determined people XD.

Someone's been captured by the yiga and link has to do a full infiltration and smuggle them the keys to their cell. Come on, the yiga base is underutilised!!

The gerudo stable was being shut down because of the sandstorm turning away travellers. After we solve that, maybe we could help reopen it? It made me so sad...

Link vs the flower lady. She wants a sample of every single flower in hyrule to get it all nice for her majesty! She remembers his crimes...

Link and the new sages could have a silly bonding quest each! Let him test his mettle against them in a spar! I don't know!

The ability to pet dogs and horses! An idle sitting animation that makes link sit down properly to enjoy the view!

Heck, a master cycle equivalent....

There's just a almost infinite amount of options available for real, actual content, it doesn't just have to be new mechanics and new dungeons. Yes, it gets the adrenaline going, but neither the fans nor Nintendo want nor need more of that.

We know the story is more lacking in botw/totk than previous zelda games, an understandable and acceptable sacrifice when you're working with such a huge and complex open world as this, but this is the perfect opportunity to fix that, Nintendo, don't you see? Give that incredibly elaborate coding a break and give the writers something else to chew on.

Tag what quest line or question you want answered in the comments or tags!

[blackstarchanx3new]

If you like TOTK I sugjest you don't read the unhinged ramblings of a man who picked the game back up because I'm losing it just a bit

I'm getting so fed up with how badly designed a game TOTK is.

Literally what the fuck is this game's problem with making something fun.

Why does it deter you from fun at EVERY SINGLE JUNCTURE???

Why does it take everything that was dogshit about BOTW and amplify it by a billion.

Why does this game fucking blow so hard.

I want to enjoy it. But I just fucking can't.

Doing anything and everything in it is just painful and annoying.

Can't upgrade shit without doing a million other fucking unrelated things.

Can't do dick because I funneled all my crap into stamina to get the fucking sword, WHICH THE GAME WANTS YOU TO DO CLEARLY FOR A DOGSHIT STORYLINE.

But haha guess what, now you got no hearts and can't do DICK

Let's make all the shrines STRIP LINK OF HIS CLOTHES AND HAVE NOTHING SHRINES. LET'S MAKE EM HALF OF THE FUCKING SHRINES YOU DO.

AFTER MAKING YOU GO THROUGH SO MUCH SHIT TO GET TO THEM TO BEGIN WITH.

I'm losing my god damn mind.

This game makes me feel like I have ADHD with how much road blocking it does to me doing ANYTHING without doing a MILLION OTHER FUCKING THINGS.

I'm just getting so frustrated.

AND I HAVE YOUTUBE TUTORIALS ON THIS HORSE SHIT.

This game would be god damn unplayable without that shit.

Sorry for being so negative I'm just genuinely having a shit time with this game and I put it down for AWHILE after doing the dragon quest. I was like "Maybe I'll have fun next time"

Nope. I honestly think I hate it more now.

And if you wanna nag me with "you're playing it wrong"

I'm literally following other people's tips and shit because I keep getting stuck idk what to tell you.

[mooshs-crack-headcanons]

My go to plan as soon as I get totk:

Get through the tutorial area (probably in the sky then need to get back on to the surface)

Go to hateno. See if the zelink living in the hateno house together fanfics were real.

Check out something specific relating to the art book leak. (Not describing or sharing the leak so don't worry about spoilers from me! :)

Find a horse that at least looks like the one I had in breath of the wild, my beloved baby boy Romeo who can do and hasn't done nothing wrong ever in the entire 6 years of his life (he kicked me off a cliff four separate times):

Go to Gerudo desert because out of all regions it's the one I'm the most interested in seeing the state of post Ganondorf resurrection(?) murderous pissy fit.

I'm going to build me a big fuck off Zonai tractor.

Zelda. I need to know if she's alright, I would like to find out this earlier on but that's probably going to be found out through story and I really do want to take my time with it.

I need to see what the hell is happening with this korok with a backpack:

Speaking of the koroks, uhm... korok forest is gone. I definitely want to check that out. (Sorry this picture so so fucking blurry with how it's zoomed in but the forests gone)

I need to find out if I can glue two Royal claymores together (or an equivalent) to make a big fuck off abomination claymore that does double claymore damage that looks like this:

Go back to eventide. I wonder if they added something there. It seems like something thats a no brainer to do.

Check out what the fuck is going on with the labyrinths I can't find the screenshots now but I remember seeing some of them floating with the sky islands at some point.

If if I can find a sky island resembling at least a little bit of skyloft. I feel it in my bones that Nintendo would pull that type of shit. Or not because this is also Nintendo.

Documenting literally every even hint of a zelink moment in the entire game so I can make several posts gushing over it in the future.

Take lots of screenshots! I actually played breath of the wild on wii u and never on switch so of course I never really had that screenshot or recording capability so I finally can really go all out in this game.

The dragon that is 10000% a fucking Gleeok on the bridge of Hylia I've already determined is going to be the first overworld boss I fight. 🙂 I can't wait to fight it with only five or so hearts 🙂

Amd finally since amiibo support is confirmed and costumes are too - the artbook actually confirmed it but I don't really think that's a spoiler because it's a very obvious mechanic to bring back than just having them be used once only for the paraglider skins you get that was officially confirmed here below so I can't wait to get my ocarina of time and twilight princess gear back that I can wear for the whole game!

Over all I just really want to have fun in this game and really it looks like it's going to deliver. I can't wait to sink hundreds if not thousands of hours into and I REALLY REALLY hope it can at least fix a lot of it's predecessors issues, especially with how it executes it's story. I keep saying it, breath of the wild *had* the potential to be one of the best zelda stories ever but it was done so extremely poorly trying to tell it, majority of it is just ruined. I sincerely hope Nintendo has learned their lesson from that and actually let the Link/you the player actually play throughand experience the games narrative instead of just... having it exposition dumped onto you over and over in flashback cutscenes as stuff that's already happened and can't be changed. I went having this game with very low confidence it was first revealed in 2019, but the more and more I keep seeing it now the higher my optimism gets and I actually genuinely hope this game is really good.

I'm actually wishing the best for it and desperately hope it doesn't disappoint. We've all waited so long, and now we have only a little bit more to go.

[cerame]

Artisan’s and Archer’s designs

So a little bit ago, I got a compliment on the two designs of Echoes of Courage I'm proudest of. I do love all these characters, but these two took a bit more creativity on my part, so I'm going to explain them because I am a sucker for design. I will try to remember as many of my own details as I can, but no promises.

Let's explain Archer first.

Behold, the most recent Link! Breath of the Wild took a departure from the classic green, so I kept with that and made his tunic the main splotch of color on him. The browns and monotone colors are subdued in comparison so that the blue can have the spotlight.

In regards to the tunic itself, botw and totk both have significant influence from traditional Japanese culture, as seen with the sheikah taking on a more japanese fashion sense and the dragons being eastern instead of european shaped, so I kept that with the design of his shirt. His tunic was originally the shape it was in botw, but after the calamity, it sustained such damage that Impa was only able to save some parts of the tunic. Using those parts, she repaired it as best she could, but Archer took a liking to Kakariko fashion anyway, so he's perfectly happy with it. In addition, with the looser fashion of the ancient clothes, I changed his belt to a more ribbony shape.

Thinking about how his shirt might have worked during botw. Perhaps he wore it as a haori, or maybe it was damaged, of a shorter cut, etc. and his Zelda made him the current one. Nothing is concrete about that yet, and I think it would be neat if it was different than it is post-totk.

The turtleneck and the leather armor from the new tunic in totk is incredibly charming to me, so I naturally had to keep it, but in order to show it off practically over the tunic I'd decided on, his sleeve got pulled down. I also designed him before totk came out but after the first trailer came out, and from the trailers, we could all tell that something was going to happen to his arm. I had no idea what purpose it would serve or how Link would end up by the end of the game, so I kept his arm covered up but outside his shirt. Turned out to be a good call.

As for his hair, I loved seeing his hair down so often in totk. It feels all free and wild and soft, so I kept it, except it felt a bit impractical to have it hanging all around him like that, so I did a half-bun. He gets to keep his hair down while tying it out of his face. This also lends itself further to eastern style inspiration.

A note on the smaller details: he does wear his amber earrings, and he's got scars across his body.

Now, we have Artisan.

It was a bit more difficult to figure out Artisan at first. I took inspiration from as many links meet aus as I could find, but everything for him is so varied, and while it's fun, it does make it difficult to nail down what does work. Unlike with Archer, I had no real direction in the beginning, so I searched for what made him unique as a Link. I also went back to the original ideas of character design, the most prominent being outlines and silhouettes. I'm still a bit iffy on his silhouette, but overall, he works.

First, the albw aspects: His bracelet from Ravio went inactive after the rifts between Lorule and Hyrule closed, but he still wears it. It's becoming comforting to him. As for the clasp on his cloak, it is absolutely the two triforces, and he got it custom-made in Hytopia. His pegasus boots are also from albw, and since Collector and Forge both had their unique pegasus boots, I had to come up with something just as striking for Artisan..... and then, I looked upon none other than the Zelda cartoon of olde, and I decided that Artisan would absolutely wear over-knee boots. So that's what he got.

Now, his triforce heroes parts. I know the green one is player one and all that jazz, but I wanted to see if I could do something not-green, just like Archer or even Piper. The sword suit in the costume catalogue stood out, and not just because the red link is wearing it in the official art. It's more tame than most other choices, and it's casually royal, which is a strange flavor of style, but I discovered after significant experimentation that when you pair it (or the idea of it) with poofy bardic sleeves (yellow, courtesy of albw's blue tunic) and gloves, it takes on an almost roguish look while maintaining the fancier feel. Also, when I lined him up next to Collector and Scout, I found that their colors together were red, blue, then green, and I couldn't not keep him blue after realizing that.

Notes: his cloak is still a bit weird to me, but I've gotten too used to it. Hytopia pushes the boundaries of fashion anyhow, so he can do whatever he likes. His hair is dyed because that's just fun, and it's braided because everyone else in this AU has short hair or a ponytail, and I wanted him to feel more well-groomed than everyone else. He gets to take care of it, and he has gotten hair care advice from Princess Styla. I didn't originally intend for this effect, but the pale outlines of white and gold on his clothing really make his outline pop. The consecutive dark colors of his tunic, pants, and boots would not work without those lines. His eyes are, in fact, purple! Ravio, in turn, has green eyes. I did doubt the choice of yellow sleeves at first, since it's not exactly the secondary color of my choice, but I went with it, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it work so well. Perhaps it was the yellow of his hair and the golden accents, but I am very pleased with it. He only comes a century or so after Collector, so I had to pick a tunic shape that could hold similarities between the two of them, which is why the collar of their outer layer is the same for both of them.

Archive

[michpat6]

the champions shouldn't come back

I’ve been seeing a lot of people say that the Champions should come back to life in TOTK, and can I just say please no. This isn’t even about shipping, I don’t give a fuck about that right now, this is about narrative.  

Breath of the Wild is a story about grief. Hyrule is a grave and each ruin is a tomb. Zelda is holding the Calamity back from adding to the body count and Link is the only one who can help her stop him for good. To do that, he needs to help the kingdom move on from its death a hundred years ago. He needs to free the Champions’ spirits from the Divine Beasts and destroy Ganon and save Zelda.     

Based on how the map is laid out once you get the Sheikah Slate repaired, Vah Ruta is first. It’s closes to Kakariko/Hateno and the enemies are the easiest. The game tries to subtly funnel you in that direction with the random Zora laid out in the area, searching for Hylians for Prince Sidon, and there’s a reason for that, narratively. 

(or there isn’t and I’m reaching, but bear with me)

Mipha was Link’s childhood friend. She (and Zora’s Domain as a location) is the representation of his youth and the child he was before he pulled the Master Sword. She’s his innocence, ripped away by the sword a hundred years ago and handed back to him by the Shrine of Resurrection a hundred years later, even though he doesn’t remember. It’s how he rediscovers his lost innocence, through Muzu being pissed at him and Sidon hiding his sadness, an innocence which he loses again once he frees Mipha’s spirit from Vah Ruta. 

She tells him, “Yesterday, I was awash in a pool of tears. I had nearly given up hope and resigned myself to being trapped here, as a spirit, for the rest of eternity. But now you’re here”. In this moment Link faces the reality of what the Champions being dead means. He’s been told by everyone that they’re prisoners, unable to move on, but now he’s seeing it for the first time, hearing in Mipha’s voice the pain of what these hundred years have been. He knows now that he really is the light, our light, that must shine upon Hyrule once again and that if he wants to remember more, he needs to go free the next Divine Beast. 

In freeing Mipha, Link gets hope in the form of her Grace. 

The game tries to funnel you to Vah Rudania next. There’s a very easy path from the Domain to Death Mountain, with the stable where you get the heatproof elixirs close by. Goron City is the Okay, I know what’s really going on, now what? of the game. Daruk was Link’s rock (pun not intended but it’s true), a grounding presence, the person that keeps him himself once he’s saddled with the burden of being the Hero of Hyrule.

He calls Link to Death Mountain in the memories to show off his progress with Rudania, yeah, but also to have, like, guy talk. He mentions “all those delectable rocks” and then reminds Link that he’s not alone in protecting Hyrule, that, “I’ll protect this land of ours to the death!”. He’s reassuring Link that he’s got his back and then literally does when those rocks fall and he uses his Protection. 

Daruk gives him that Protection once he’s freed from Rudania, that encouraging smack on the back that says, Go get him for us. 

Then there’s Revali and Vah Medoh. Revali was a jerk to Link, and sure he’s jealous that Link is The Hero, that the Master Sword is arguably the most important piece of the “killing the Calamity” plan, and that all he’s going to be is glorified backup, but the point of Revali is that he keeps Link on the ball.

By that, I mean that Link’s little rivalry with Revali (whether or not he actually sees their relationship as such) is akin to, like, a sports team. There’s always that one person you don’t necessarily get along with, but you know you can count on them to push you to be your best and be there to pick up the slack whenever you stumble. Rito Village is home to Teba’s pride and the spirit of Revali’s arrogance lives within his landing, and Link is able to remember that one time Revali made fun of him for not being able to fly, how that eggs him on to find a way up to Vah Medoh in the present just to rub it in the archer’s face (at least, that's how I felt when I first played the game). There’s a method to Revali’s madness and it’s to make sure Link is in tip-top shape if he’s supposed to be the one to save the world. 

Revali then literally uplifts Link with his Gale after he has control of Medoh again.  

Finally, we have Urbosa. Like Daruk, she was a reassuring presence, but not in the sense of, I’m your shield, I’ll be watching your back. She’s comforting in the way having five 100+ damage Lynel weapons in your inventory is comforting. She’s reassuring in the sense of, I’m your sword, I’ll be next to you on the front lines. She reminds Link that despite his youth and the burden of the sword on his spine, that he has a duty to protect Zelda, and that by protecting Zelda he is protecting Hyrule.

She’s not forcing him into the role, but she’s keeping him on track whereas Daruk allows him to stray for the sake of his mental health/childhood. She’s saying, Be a child for as long as you can, but also be the Hero. It’s why she tells him to open up to Zelda, so he can have a friend his age that he can be around 24/7, so he can have someone to relate to (and so that Zelda can, too). Urbosa is the representation of Link’s duty and his relationship with Zelda (whether platonic or romantic, I don’t care in this context), and how that relationship with Zelda turns into Zelda finally unlocking her powers on Blatchery Plain. Without Urbosa’s presence, Link isn’t in the right headspace to even be the Hero.  

Now that Link knows exactly what he’s lost a hundred years ago, and what he’s then regained during his quest, he can take her Fury and use it as a conduit for his own. 

Link starts Breath of the Wild a blank slate tasked with saving the world. Throughout his quest, he remembers his lost childhood, but regains that little spark of hope, that thought of, I can do this. He remembers that he wasn’t alone in his task, that there were other people right there with him, and that it was the actions of a monster that took them all away from him, not the unheard prayers of the princess he was sworn to protect and then came to genuinely care for. He learns that there’s nothing he can do to change the past, that all he can do is let his dead friends move on and do his best to do the same.

It’s why he takes their weapons. It’s why he buys the house in Hateno. It’s why he furnishes it. It’s why he builds Tarrey Town. He accepts that his old friends are gone and that the best thing he can do for them is make new ones with the people who helped him free them. In dealing with his past, in accepting it, Link sets up his future for after the dust settles.

TLDR: To bring the Champions back to life in Tears of the Kingdom is to ignore all of the progress we as players made in Breath of the Wild, it ignores the point of the story the game is telling, and it does a disservice to the character arc that Link has over the course of the game.

[linked-through-the-centuries]

do you have any specific design choices in mind in order to distinguish between the different links?

I DO I DO, I’m just an awful artist so I can’t like… fully sketch out what I have in my brain but I can do my best to describe it!

Warriors: Would he even be HW Link without that damn scarf- It’s a staple part of who he is at this point, and it was a gift so of course he always has it. I haven’t done much to change what he wears, it’s very similar to the green tunic he wears in game, just with a lower cut V neck and the fabric of it reaches his knees. He has a few more “professional” looking outfits, he likes to dress nice and look presentable. Also I have designed him better boots because drawing his canon boots killed me. He doesn’t wear the blue earrings he did in game, he’s switched them out for gold ones

Tears: This guy’s wardrobe would have Warriors on the ground sobbing if the good captain ever caught the full extent of it. Tears likes to mix it up, wear new outfits, their favorite is the Frostbite Armor tunic with the strappy sandals you get at the beginning of totk, and he likes doing his hair nice, but that’s not always practical, so they have the hylian trousers and champion’s tunic that they wear most of the time. He also has multiple piercings, so they can wear more of their charmed earrings at once

Wolf/Twilight: Well right now he’s stuck as a wolf, but if he weren’t, he’d wear his Ordonian clothes. They’re comfortable for him, and they remind them of home (he really misses his family). He does still have his green tunic which is more comfortable to wear armor with, but again, he is stuck rn as a wolf so clothes are the least of his concerns. Tears saw he had pierced ears and gave him small earrings with guardian resistance

Sky: I’ve definitely redesigned his outfit in my mind quite a bit. I imagine he’s very attached to his green tunic, but I think he’d wear the red piece of his “casual clothes” (i don’t know what it’s called) over that. The sail cloth is wrapped around him kinda like a shawl. He has feather earrings from his loft wing, and he wears his blue earrings right above them (so he has two holes in each ear). Sky also has a tattoo that wraps around his right wrist (his sword arm), and it’s his loftwing’s wings

Tune: Another one I’ve redesigned a bit. He wears a loose fitting dark green tunic that he leaves incredibly loose around the neck, tucked into pants and belted. (Think William Turner from pirates of the Caribbean. There’s one specific outfit of his I’m thinking of, with the dark red shirt from I wanna say the third movie). He wears an eyepatch, and his hair is quite long and very curly, but he ties it up and out of his face. His hair also has several braids woven into it. He has a lot of piercings, several in his ears and an eyebrow piercing

Hyrule: Very similar to his in game design, simple green tunic with brown sleeves and brown pants. He doesn’t have much, but he likes his clothes. They’re a bit worn, so they have patches and places where embroidery covers small holes, and at this point he could afford to buy new clothes but he’s sentimental. Wears small gold hoops in his ears as a last resort to sell if he really runs out of rupees (it has never come to that)

Past: They have very long, bright pink hair that they sometimes tie up, but a lot of the time is just loosely braided to keep it out of their face. Down, it reaches just past his collar bones. He has a long green tunic that’s kind of dress-like, belted with a flashy belt, and wears shorts under it and then boots. The fabric of the tunic is a bit flowy like a dress as well, and Past has embroidered little patterns and flowers along the bottom hem. They got bored one day. They have a lot of earrings and necklaces, they like shiny things, and have a staff they claim is used to channel magic but really is just a fancy walking aid (he doesn’t need the staff to do anything magic related. It’s literally just cool to them and it also helps them walk when they need it)

Calamity: Champions tunic or full on soldier gear. He hasn’t learned to relax much, he’s always a bit stressed and he dresses to impress and to look “official”

Mask: He’s another one I took creative liberties with. He wears incredibly casual clothes, mainly a plain white linen shirt belted over plain brown pants, because he doesn’t want to be associated with the Hero of Time (which is he, he just won’t tell the others that) and he doesn’t own a whole lot of clothes. His hair is shoulder length and cut a bit choppily (he did it himself), and sometimes he pulls it back. He has simple but pretty blue earrings, which were a gift from Warriors for one of his birthdays during the war

Spirit: He wears his engineer’s clothes, they are usually covered in dirt or coal

Minish: He wears something VERY similar to his in game design, except I’ve also given him a small, darker green cape. He gets cold a lot, and he often wraps it tight around himself. He’ll also put the hood up sometimes to try to remind himself of Ezlo

One day I’ll have to get over my inability to draw and sketch these out, but for now I hope this works!! None of them wear the hats, those were just things they had for their adventures :)

If you have any more questions please ask them!! I would love to talk more about these guys I just literally don’t know what to say

[alys-gay-parade]

Some deep thoughts about Zelda before I go to sleep tonight:

I grew up with oot being my introduction to the series, and over the years, it consumed my life. Botw was exactly what I wanted from a fully open world zelda game, and totk has only built up from that. This is the franchise that taught me how to world build, write characters, and explore my identity. Looking back at my adolescence, I can safely say that Link and Zelda (as she slowly became an actually compelling character) were the opposite ends of my gender envy spectrum. I loved the effeminate twink that I could easily identify with (people who say he never had a personality before TP are wrong, my boy has always been a sassy bitch with a big heart) and the regal lady who was not opposed to getting her hands dirty to do the work she needed to do. Sheik being Zelda is still one of my favorite plot twists in the franchise, my girl rlly said "Fuck it, I'm gonna pose as a man my whole adolescence." Iconic.

I love how they imply in totk that the games in the timeline pre-botw are the legends passed down over hundreds of generations, explaining the thin and inexplicable timeline away as just cultural histories becoming warped and lost with each retelling. I bet they argue about the order of events in-universe, and you can not convince me otherwise. It makes me laugh looking back at oot seeing rauru portrayed as a pudgy old man hylian, knowing now that he's just straight up a god-like being that married a hylian woman.

This brings me to the future of the series, and a proposal: remake the old stories, but with the new lore, as they Actually Happened. Make the players figure out what parts were true and what parts were warped by time. Hell, make them with the effects of the new timeline Created by Zelda in totk. How does her presence alter history? How can we reimagine the events of pivotal games in the timeline with our new information? How can we keep improving our open world gameplay while revisiting the history that became fables?

I fell off of Zelda in my depression. But totk has renewed my love for what the franchise is and can become. They've really created so many opportunities to expand on what we know, as well as avenues to tell more new stories, possibly both in the same game if they play their cards right.

Thank you, Zelda Team and Miyamoto-san. You built a core aspect of my identity and continue to strive to improve and explore a world that means a lot to many. You honestly are a golden example of what making a compelling universe looks like.

[jullbnt]

Hi I read your rant! (I'm asking here cause I don't wanna clog up your previous post with my words lol) and honestly yeah I don't blame you for being confused about the time travel stuff! I'm also confused by it as well lmao! I like the idea of there being a split timeline after SS! And SS!Link being the Hero of Time as well would be such an interesting concept! I could be wrong but I like to think that Hyrule Warriors (not the Age of Calamity one) is the reason why everything exist in Botw/Totk. I know it's not technically canon but the game has all the other elements from the previous games and it kinda merges them together.

As for the Zonai? According to Zelda, they existed in heaven alongside the goddesses and also were gods and goddesses themselves! Then they came down to Hyrule during the imprionsoned war which takes place much later in the timeline (the downfall timeline) so Hylia and those three goddess could still technically exist!

In TOTK Rauru and Sonia were said to be the first people to rule Hyrule. I have a headcanon that all the history before them disappeared or were lost before that happened!

Sorry this was long 😭 I wish LOZ lore and the timeline were linear but it's also fun and interesting to discuss certain elements of the game

I’m glad you like my ideas! The previous post is here for anyone who’s curious :)

I’ve heard of that theory about Hyrule Warriors, maybe it could work but I don’t really like to include HW in the timeline (I can’t take this game seriously haha, I never recovered from Cia 😆)

I believe the Imprisoning War mentioned in TotK is not the one we knew of in the Downfall timeline (before ALttP), but maybe we’re not talking about the same thing?

So if the Zonai are gods/goddesses, what’s their role? Are they lesser deities than Hylia? Were there more of them than just Rauru and Mineru? And why does Rauru not know what the Master Sword is? Can he be both a Sage and a god? And did he and Sonia truly have descendants? I have so many questions about this haha, it’s so weird

And I guess being a god would make Rauru aware of Hyrule’s history, so he would know he’s not the first king even if all records of Hyrulean history were lost. Or in case he really believes himself to be the first king it’s a huge coincidence that he’s also calling his kingdom Hyrule. Idk this whole thing is kind of a mess

I agree it’s definitely fun to theorize about the timeline!! But to me TotK is too disconnected from the rest of the lore and makes things way too confusing, I’m not a fan of that. It bothers me that the Zonai are now such a big part of Hyrule’s history despite being barely fleshed out. TotK’s story was so disappointing to me and I’m a bit afraid the whole lore has been retconned and things that were established in older games will keep being ignored.

And that makes me sad :(

[raylin-creates]

What Tears of the Kingdom Means for the Timeline

(The timeline I made as reference for my major LU+First Hero fanfiction project, I mean, but a lot of it, most of it, applies to canon as well)

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR TOTK AHEAD

---

Surprisingly TotK actuality fits pretty well with the larger Zelda timeline I put together for my Toss Another Stone AU.

I know a lot of fans headcanon Sky as the first king of Hyrule, and I've read some amazing fics where that's the case, but seeing how Skyloft functions and Sky's personality I just couldn't see that happening. So I had Sky and Sun co-founding the surface settlement and the kingdom being established from that settlement generations later and Sky being posthumously named the first king when the monarchy is established.

So Rauru and Sonia being the founders of the kingdom of Hyrule fits extremely well and saves me a lot of work with the half baked backstory I was trying to build for the founding of the kingdom. (It was mostly the names. I am shit at naming things. Luckily Rauru and Sonia have names! Unfortunately the original sages still don't.) Making Sonia be Sky and Sun's descendant makes it fit even better, especially with my headcanon of Hylia being the goddess of time and Sonia's time power.

The game didn't confirm my theory about this being the end of the cycle, but it didn't refute it either and we don't know what effects swallowing a secret stone and having that stone destroyed could have so I'm keeping that the same until a new game refutes it.

My Link OC I've been calling Wraith who I based off of the sealing hand in the trailers we now know is Rauru, can no longer be claimed as canon compliant, which I expected but I'm still reluctant to part with him. Though honestly Wraith's backstory that lead to him becoming a spirit hand is actually very similar to Rauru's so other than the exact timeline placement (Wraith sealed Ganondorf a couple centuries after 10k while Rauru's era is clearly long before 10k since we have no sign of Guardians or Sheikah tech even ignoring the 'founding Hyrule' thing) it doesn't affect events too much, which I'm happy with.

There are two main tangles the backstory of TotK throws into my nicely constructed timeline.

The first, which is less of a tangle and more of a missing detail my brain won't stop chewing on: WHERE IS SONIA AND RAURU'S CHILD?? For Zelda to be their descendant they have to have had at least one kid and we don't get even a hint of their existence. It's easy to see how the developers maybe forgot about this detail with all the *gestures in demon king* you know, and it's easy to imagine they exist outside of the limited scope of the handful of memories we see, but it's something to think about. Also who ruled Hyrule after them? Rauru and Sonia are dead or as good as, and Mineru and Zelda, the only known relatives of them, are ALSO unreachable now. The kingdom must have been a mess after. You ever think of how those poor sages had to deal with the fallout?

The second, bigger tangle:

If this really is the original founding of Hyrule as a kingdom, it would take place before every other game except Skyward Sword, but Rauru seals Ganondorf and Zelda has the sages promise their powers will reawaken when the demon king rises again... but what does this mean for every other time Ganon/Ganondorf rose up as the enemy in another game (which is most of them)?

I can think of two explanations at the moment:

One: This is not the original founding of Hyrule.

It is in fact, a refounding of the kingdom after a time when the kingdom fell and the monarchy dissolved. This is not unheard of in the series, for the kingdom to be defeated or destroyed. In the Adult timeline the kingdom is swallowed by the ocean and destroyed entirely and is refounded later in the timeline. In the Fallen timeline (I haven't played the Adventure of Link yet so lmk if any of this is refuted in that game) There's still technically a princess and a castle at least, but the world is overrun by monsters and the people we see are mostly hiding and fending for themselves. The "kingdom" seems to exist in name only and the monarchy is defunct as a governing entity. Rauru and Sonia could have founded a new kingdom of Hyrule after the Fallen timeline, or during any of the large gaps between games.

Two: Ganondorf had not qualified as the true demon king until now to bring those promises into action.

Anyone who's played Skyward Sword to the end knows of The Bringer of Demise: the literal Demon King that put the entire cursed cycle into motion, and Ganondorf's... predecessor? Creator? Regardless, Demise is certainly responsible for why Ganon just keeps coming back in one form or another. And in TotK, when Ganondorf transforms into the "Demon King Ganondorf", he looks A LOT like how Demise appears in SS. I believe that this Ganondorf is closer to being the demonic god of hatred that started all this than any other prior instance of Ganon. He's more powerful, more obsessed, and had more time to let his hated fester. (So much so that that hated manifested as a writhing semi-sentient mass of malice known as Calamity Ganon, but that's a different topic.) He's become the Demon King on a level prior Ganondorfs simply hadn't achieved.

I think the most likely answer is a combination of both.

I think it makes most sense for Sonia and Rauru's era to be taking place prior to the 10k Calamity but after the three timelines either merge or become synonymous (with botw's and therefore totk's canonical timeline placement being "at the end of all of them"), after an unseen event causes the kingdom to completely collapse and they refound it as a new kingdom and reestablishing the royal lineage of Hylia's blood.

This easily fits within the looseness of the canon timeline and avoids contradictions with having Ganondorf sealed by Rauru while another Ganondorf is running around causing havoc in Ocarina of Time.

I Also think that this Ganondorf DID become a being closer to Demise than a mortal man when he took the secret stone (which,remember, amplifies the power already there, which in this case would be his connection to Demise), his appearance, speech, and powers all reflect that.

TL;DR:

TotK mostly fits well with my headcanon timeline, the main snag being: if Rauru is sealing Ganondorf underground from near the beginning of the canon timeline all the way to the events of TotK, what does that mean for the games that take place between that period where Ganondorf/Ganon appears? I've concluded that Sonia and Rauru are in fact refounding Hyrule in an era after the other games but still long prior to the 10k Calamity, and that the Ganondorf in TotK became something closer to Demise than any other version of himself.

[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.

[localicecreambiter]

Zelda Main Theme/Title screen tier list

before we begin, this is my own opinion and preference in music! we all have different taste, so dont let mine invalidate yours!

im putting explinations for my choices below the cut, so if you wanna hear me yap about zelda music nows your chance

Triforce Heros: 10/10 i absolutely ADORE the triforce heros sound track! (actually listening to it as I type this) its such an underappreciated title (being the "bootleg" four swords lol) but has such good composition its hard not to love it. its similar to botw's rito songs in which acordians are found in a lot of the tracks- anyway back to the topic of the main theme: its great. a refreshing change from the main zelda theme (as was trend with the DS games) and has a lot of character to it. high energy too!! exactly what i want to hear! a straight vibe that id wait to start the game just to listen a little longer

Spirit Tracks: i think we all know why this is 10/10 spirit tracks is another one of those underrated titles, especially for its music! i love how the melody (extremely catchy by the way) is played by a flute here, corresponding to the instrument you get in game :) it feels like im about to embark on an epic cross country ride

Wind Waker: even without knowing the plot of the game it feels like a sailor tune that would be played at dinner on a ship. its simple, and cutesy like the games art style, but fun and catchy too! a classic, one that really gets you into that sea fairing mood

TOTK: The only reason this one isn't higher is because I don't like that beginning bit with all the weird whisper singing. it fits the game really well! its just not my favorite sound in the world, but the melody hits HARD and really plays with the emotion of the scene that accompanies it in game. its high energy, but not in the same way triforce heros was, rather in an epic way rather than bouncy (if that makes sense?) its composed SO well, AND THAT BIT WITH THE SMALL BIRST OF PICCOLO??? chefs kiss. favorite part. not to mention the small zelda's lullaby motif at the end?? THE BOTW MOTIF??????

Skyward Sword: ballad of the goddess is genuinely just SUCH a good song, and the way its composed for the main theme gets you in all the right ways. the deep brass makes it very dramatic, especially with the drums it uses (love me some boomy drums). I love the woodwinds playing with the brass too! scratches the itch just right

BOTW: another great theme! it manages to change up the format a bit, but still keeps that dramatic vibe a zelda theme should have (for the more serious games, I mean, triforce heros doesnt count-) the acordian returns!! the melody! oh my god the melody!!!! its definitely a breath of fresh air (hehe get it?) it manages to encapsulate what a plesant breeze blowing against your face feels like somehow, and im living for it. i love the use of the dragon instruments after the pause! it feels like all the different cultures of botw hyrule has been rolled into this song with the instruments and all that

hyrule warriors: bet you weren't expecting that one, huh? its the only semi-traditional zelda theme in the top tier, and why? im a bitch for motifs, okay? I wasn't diging it at first, because it just sounded like a recomp of the classic zelda theme just really damn epic, but then it hit me with that tiny twilight princess motif and I knew I was in for a ride. THE BALLAD OF THE GODDESS MOTIF GAVE ME CHILLS i was not expecting it at ALL! and tHEN IT TRANSITIONED INTO HYRULE FIELD FROM TP??? AND THEN IT DOES IT AGAIN LATER IN THE SONG? i love you hyrule warriors NOT TO MENTION THE OTHER MOTIFS IT SHOVES IN THERE?? OOT?? MORE TP????? i am unapologetically a motif lover and i will stand by my decision

Minish Cap: i was ranking the track "story" since the intro screen was just 8 seconds and not really a song. i love how peaceful it sounds, and really befitting for a legend. ironically, it reminds me of The Legend from deltarune in a way. the whole song feels like an exposition, and personally one of my favorites which is why it ranked so high

Age of Calamity: ah, hyrule warriors' more popular, edgy, younger sibling. i wont lie to you, the melody is killer! and i love how it goes from eriee to epic final battle-esk music half way through. it feels like a final stand, and my GOD is it good

Twilight Princess: its so empty and woeful sounding, yet oh so full of hope and light i can't help but love it. its so pretty, so SO pretty. it does so much with so little and thats one of the things i love about it. i think the best compliment you can recieve is "you look the way the twilight princess main theme sounds" plus the wolf howl at the end is so funny

Ocarina of Time: i love that OOT makes the ocarina the main melody player and started the trend of the main game instrument being featured in the title/main theme. this one is pretty in a different way than twilight princess, this one is peaceful which is so misleading from the actual game story that i love it even more

Links Awakening (2019 Switch Remake): I separated this one from LADX because its VERY different from the original opening. Obviously, this one isnt retro music and that kind of adds to it, but its also the different beginning bit that sets it apart. the small mabe village motif before the actual zelda theme plays? love it. i really liked how they composed this version with all the different koholint instruments, it was like giving the song a new coat of paint. i love the classic zelda theme, but once you hear it so many ways it can get a little old, so it was great to see them do it like this :)

Majora's Mask: this is really only ranked so high because clock town is an absolute killer song, and I listen to it on loop. the only other reason is because that sharp turn at the end? my god its so disruptive but so good at the same time. the way the background cello gets intruppted by an ominous bass that grows louder, and how the clock town melody abruptly stops? such an amazing and indirect way forebode the dark theming of the story. both MM and OOT have such peaceful themes for their story lines, its good to see mm actually show that in the theme music

The Legend of Zelda: a classic, and what started it all. its simplistic with a great, strong melody, and i like how its paced a lot slower than most of the other games. that opening bit and the transition with the bassline is my favorite part.

Four Swords Adventure: this was another one I wasn't digging at first, but once you got into the meat of the song it was really nice. It starts as one melody, but gains a trumpet echo and a violin. its somehow chaotic but cohesive? i like how that reflects on the game

Oracle of Ages/ Seasons: OOA/S has nearly the same exact theme as LADX and four swords, only composed slightly differently. It keeps things simple, yet its very effective and plesant to listen to. a bouncy rendition of the main loz theme, just like FS and LADX. the only reason this one is ranked higher is because i liked the lower tone of the ooa/s rendition compared to LADX

Four Swords: im going to be honest, the retro sounding bassline with what i think is a snare? it felt a little strange, but i liked the little bits of the higher sounds acompanying the melody here with it. it felt like it was trying to be grand, but didn't quite hit what it was aiming for all the way. it was the beginning that through me off, really-

Links Awakening DX: simple, effective, yet a little too simple compared to the previous two since its the same rendition just with different make ups (if thats the right term) i know it was literally the 4th game to come from the series, but the original zelda theme felt like it had a bit more going on. still a good rendition of the main theme though! i like its bounciness

A Link to the Past: iconic. but, this was difficult to categorize since theres not much of a title theme? theres the selection screen music, but that became the fairy theme so i dont know if that counts either? either way its an 18 second clip or the fairy theme, which both are good, but just not really a show stopper (dont come at me alttp fans i dont mean it like that!! spare me!! mercy!!!!)

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: why are you so LOUD holy cow- i like the theme, its pretty, but its short so it gets repetative if ykwim. i like the part with what im assuming is supposed to be some sort of bassline :) its my favorite part

Phantom Hourglass: i know its a wind waker sequal and i guess it makes sense, but just reusing the great sea music and changing up a part slightly felt kind of lazy to me? i do like the parts they added though! i think they're great sounding! but still feels a little lazy :(

A Link Between Worlds: I know what you may be thinking: "why is it so low? you LOVE albw" and to that I have to say, you know me so well, dear reader. You will also know, that just like the game its made after, there isnt really a title/main theme. the intro bit is about the same length as alttp so it gives you little to work with in terms of song. plus after the opening bit, it just kinda repeates the same few notes. going through the playlist i was kind of disappointed getting to albw, because at least alttp had selection music. this game has some of my favorite tracks to come from the series in it too so the intro being as it was (outside of a music standpoint, the intro is absolutely epic, don't get me wrong) i was just sad

anywayy! that was all of them!! if you actually sat there and read all of that, im proud of you. thanks for reading my yappage