#Because she doesn't want Tulin to play with them

[melonthesprigatito]

I've been hurrying to finish my Breath of the Wild playthrough, so I stopped off at Rito Village to get the Great Eagle Bow again and I happened to run into Saki and I like her, so I talked to her to see what she had to say

And uh…. Hoo boy, this dialogue hits different knowing what happens to Tulin in the sequel 😬

[a-bit-too-much-of-a-zelda-fan]

Why Tears of the Kingdom's Story Doesn't Work

While I will defend the lack of nuance in the text of Tears of the Kingdom, what I will criticize is how the story was executed. TL;DR: The writers tried to tell a story like Skyward Sword, but were limited by Breath of the Wild's nonlinear gameplay formula. Read on below the cut. Spoilers, obviously.

Let's start with Skyward Sword's story and how it was executed so well. There are three arcs: Find Zelda, find the sacred flames to purify the Goddess Sword, and seek out the dragons to find the Triforce. The first arc is notable here, because it's a suspenseful mystery. Link is constantly a step behind Zelda. He's chasing after her with no goal other than to just reunite with her.

The story is able to move from arc to arc and tell a story that evolves over the course of the game because of how rigidly structured the progression is. You will go from point A to point B, whether you want to or not. That way, the writers could drop the right story beats at the right time. It's traditional storytelling, because no other medium has the same level of interactivity as a video game, and it works. Regardless of how it feels to play, you can't deny that the story was executed very, very well.

Breath of the Wild, by contrast, is nonlinear to a fault. You can go anywhere, anytime. The writers were cognizant of this, so they wrote a one-arc story that was compartmentalized into four entirely separate plot lines. Link has one goal that never changes across the game: free the divine beasts to defeat Calamity Ganon. You go to one region, free that divine beast, then go to another at your pace and discretion.

Nothing carries over between plot lines. Nothing you did for the Rito has any impact on what is happening to the Gorons, because every plot line had be to designed so it could the first or last one you tackle. This approach deprived the story of depth or any sense of momentum. They aimed to make up for this with the memories: cutscenes that tell a linear story with more depth, but can be discovered in any order then rewatched in the proper order for the "complete" picture. Critically, though, the memories only provide context to the current events. Knowing what happened in the past has no bearing on the present.

Now we come to Tears of the Kingdom. They went the same gameplay approach as BotW: complete non-linearity. But they tried to tell a mystery story. This fundamentally fails because, like BotW, nothing carries over between the regional plot lines, and they should be impacted by the dragon tears (TotK's memories) but aren't. There are so many ways this falls apart. I'll talk about it through the order I played the game in: Zora, Rito, Gerudo, Goron.

Once Link returns to the Surface, witnesses Zelda appear and disappear at Hyrule Castle, and tells Purah what happened, she instructs him to investigate the odd regional phenomena. So he goes to Zora's Domain and starts working with Sidon. Zelda appears to them, and at this point, Link--and the player--has no idea what's going on. After that, Link goes to Rito Village, finds Tulin near the huge blizzard, and they see Zelda. Alright, something isn't adding up. By the time Link gets to the Gerudo Desert and sees Zelda there, he must know something is wrong. That is not Zelda, and it's pretty obvious at this point. But he still acts as if he knows nothing.

Finally, when he and Yunobo are chasing after her on Death Mountain, there is no fucking way he doesn't know it's not her. Yunobo is all like "oh no, we have to find Zelda! We have to go after her! Is she okay after going into the ceiling like that?" At this point I am screaming in my head, "Link! Tell Yunobo it's not her! You know it's not her!" Because Link is clever. He can put two and two together, so why the hell isn't he? Well, it's because he's doomed by the format of the narrative.

This is made doubly nonfunctional once you find all the dragon tears. Once Links knows that Zelda is the Light dragon, there is no way on God's green earth that he is fooled by the Zelda that he sees with any sage afterward. But he acts like he is. Brother, Link talks so much in this game. He's constantly explaining shit to people. They really got their mileage out of his "moving hands as if explaining something" animation. But when it matters most, he is fucking silent. It's disrespectful to the player's intelligence and Link's character.

Look. When you're trying to tell a mystery, as your audience's knowledge of the situation increases, your main character's knowledge needs to as well. If the character witnesses a major clue, they can't just forget that clue so they can discover it again but in a different place. It just doesn't work like that. There need to be bread crumbs. There needs to be momentum. There needs to consequence, cause and effect. Mysteries are linear stories. But when you try to tell this kind of story in the nonlinear way that this gameplay formula demanded, it does not work.

What kills me is that each of the four plot lines in TotK are well-written and fun (quick ranking: Rito, Gerudo, Zora, Goron). But through no fault of their own, they decline in coherence and satisfaction as you progress through the game. I can imagine that someone who played the order opposite I did was as mystified as Yunobo, but screaming at Link to just tell Sidon that's not Zelda.

The nail in the coffin of this story's nonfunctionality is that the longest side quest has Link going around Hyrule's stables, trying to find clues to Zelda's whereabouts. He works with Penn to investigate and set these stories straight. But once Link discovers that Zelda is the Light Dragon (or at least, that the Zelda who keeps appearing isn't really her), he should be able to tell Penn the truth. But he doesn't, because he can't for the side quest to function.

I managed to put aside how frustrating all of that is by rationalizing "well it has to be this way for the gameplay to work the way it does", and that's fine, but they didn't have to write the story they did. BotW's story worked because they wrote it in a way that it can be thoroughly enjoyed in any order. TotK's doesn't because they tried to have their cake and eat it too: tell a story with depth, but tell it in any order. They could have written a story that worked with the gameplay, but they didn't.

TotK did a lot of things right. On their own, I think the regional plot lines are more compelling than BotW's (especially the Rito one, and maybe except the Goron one). Having the soon-to-be-sages follow Link through the dungeons was a good choice. The search for a fifth sage provided a feeling of momentum that BotW was sorely lacking. And from the moment the search for the fifth sage starts, the story works just fine because it becomes linear. I had a fantastic time playing this game. I wouldn't have played it for over a hundred hours if I wasn't enjoying myself. It's just a shame it didn't turn out better.

[neverchecking]

I wanted to check if your requests were still open or rather if your inbox was open. But since I have the green light, let's get this trainwreck happening :D (This is a lot of text and I apologise)

Her name is Tia and she's a reincarnate isekai. Maturity-wise, she's about middle 20's, but her physical and chronological ages are two wildly different numbers. She has memories of our world and of the LOZ games. She remembered her past life at the age of seven. She doesn't like her birth name. Her priority is always Link. Her moral basis is mostly "A kingdom that writes its peace in the blood of children is a kingdom that deserves to burn." Tia has since spread this belief. She also believes in learning self-defence and is a decent swordswoman. She keeps her hair long and in braids.

And she reincarnated as Flora.

(Let that sink in.)

Tia calls her past life 'visions' and plays on the whole 'prophecy runs in the family' to get people to listen to her. This allowed her to save a lot of lives during the calamity, but rather than falling protecting her, Link fell protecting other citizens. Tia had to do the whole century-long calamity thing, but since she also knew about her time powers, she managed to save the champions, the backup she ensured they had on the Beasts, and several pockets of survivors. She also managed to act as Link's travelling companion, guiding him and helping when she could. (She couldn't take full human form so she travelled with him as a fox spirit. Link nicknamed her Foxy.)

(I like to think that the gods aren't stupid enough to give Zeldas obscene amounts of power while they're still kids and growing so they either have to grow to the age of wisdom [17] or Ganon needs to be a threat to Hyrule. They still gotta earn it though. Flora turned 17 but didn't earn it until Link fell. Tia managed to unlock it a bit earlier, but she unlocked all of her power and her body nearly tore itself apart due to barely not being physically old enough to handle it, leaving scars all over her body like cracks.)

She also warned people about the Upheaval, the Demon King and prepared them for it. Hyrule walked into that particular paradox, ready and prepared. In terms of certain side-quests, Tia told people why she blocked off certain things or why she was borrowing certain items.

She also warned people about an imposter (IYKYK) and made sure she could be identifiable by wearing something green. Her imposter never wore green. And she told Link everything she could and wrote it all down for him, helping him in any way she could. She also warned him about her fate if things played out like her 'visions'. Which they did, but Link had full permission to use whatever he needed from her (IYKYK). She prepared the sages, past and future, for the long term. She always made sure to ask for help and never implied about Link being the one to face Ganon, making sure he had a choice. (She really hoped Revali would take up the mantle of Wind Sage, but knows she can't control fate and prepares for all outcomes. Tulin is still the Sage and Tia is so proud and so pissed.)

Tia does everything she can to protect Link but always gives him the choice. Link is her priority since 'none of her ancestors ever really did so.' (Tia can count on one hand how many of her ancestors she actively likes and still have fingers left over. [Rauru and Sonia don't count])

So take all of this and then throw her into Sage's Hyrule.

Watch the trainwreck.

(Meanwhile, her Hyrule is in uproar because Tia has never just vanished like this. Especially without telling her Link who she has a very deep platonic bond with.)

Here's a doll-maker pic of her in casual clothes. Because I can't draw

Thank you for letting me ramble. I just wanna share my girl.

So, first off,

I LOVE HER HFOFHF I LOVE HER

And her morals? I love them. I'm adopting them.

The whole vision bit is always so interesting to me because you can play around with it so much. And with her being reincarnated as Flora? Even better. Like this is so much better than whatever the hell Flora was doing. Saving the champions, keeping the hold on the beasts, AND GUIDING LINK AS A FOX HOFHFO

(While I do think the gods are in fact that stupid, I think they still have to earn it, hence the whole BotW/AoC thing where Flora/ Fauna had to go to the springs and stuff constantly. However, with that amount of power I can imagined that would be a lot for a single body. My own OC has issues handling her power as well, which is another thing I love playing on when it comes to OC's.)

Her explaining things is so much better. ( I do know!) And giving Link a choice in any world is always great, just butters my biscuits like- hfiofhf GIVE HIM A CHOICE- Honestly, and don't get me wrong I love Tulin to absolute bits, he's my favorite Sage, but why wasn't it Teba?...The ADULT?

Sage being faced with someone who's so involved in a choice, and saving him before anyone else??

MMMMM-

AND HER HYRULE GOING INTO MASS PANIC BC THEIR SWEETHEART IS GONE?

I'm just picturing-

Tia, to Sage: I gotta get back to bed before Link realizes I'm gone!

Her Link: Tia?

Her Link: T I A?!?!

[dogshit-enchantment]

thoughts about totk

i dont know if its just me, but does anyone else feel like the story direction for this game is kindve ... bad? like the actual plot itself was interesting at first but everytime the characters try to deliver a serious line of 'my secret stone' I can't help but laugh at them. It sounds like a mistranslation you would see in a 90's port of a game, not a multi-million dollar triple A title in 2023.

Not only that goofy nature of it but like, why is Zelda so british? No one else is, not even her dad. Why did they chose a VERY british direction for her voice and no one else? It's so distracting and every time she talks I don't pay attention to what she's saying cuz I wish she would just stop talking. (I still hold a grudge over her for feeding Link a fucking frog and then people have the audacity to be like 'oh theyre in love' like no thats fucking sibling behavior at best.)

There's so many aspects of the game where it feels like they want a very specific series of events to happen and there's a very intended player experience. But then... you can go anywhere. Do anything. You can EASILY miss important things (I missed several of the Dragon's Tears because I wasn't aware there was something I was supposed to be grabbing from them I just thought it was scenery) and you can easily find yourself in areas you're not meant to be in yet. "Just teleport out!" Why didn't they just make a linear game that wasn't built as a wanna-be DLC expansion pack?

Having to re-explore a world I'd already put 200+ hours into is frankly tiresome. And to make it THREE TIMES as large??? Exhausting.

I wanted to like this game so much. I preordered it. I went to the midnight release. I played it for six fucking hours the first full day I was able to play it. And after leaving the Great Sky Island all I'm left feeling is... frustrated.

Frustrated at the unclear, hidden direction of where you're supposed to go. Frustrated at the massive size of the map that doesn't have That Many Changes to make it worth going through the nooks and crannies. Frustrated that they turned botw -my favorite climbing simulator- into a gimmick-based game that doesn't like you to use its own gimmick.

The constructs break apart too easily. If you build a flying construct that works well it breaks after about a min and a half of flying. If you build a car to traverse the land it despawns if you hit any cutscene trigger - which are often invisible and unavoidable.

This felt more like a Zelda game in the general flavor of it; you get the classic enemies back, you get actual bomb flowers again, Link is wearing green for fucks sake, and you get actual temples. But the actual heart of it doesn't feel like a Zelda game. The plot feels sloppy at best, rushed at worst, and the voice acting is so genuinely bad it's distracting and embarrassing. The only voice actor I didn't hate was Rauru (Chris Hackney, Legend) and Tulin (Christina Vee, also a Legend), even Sidon felt incredibly stilted.

It feels like the game punishes the player for using the mechanics it gives you to use and play with. Even the fuse mechanic feels like such a back-hand. "Oh we heard the players got frustrated at weapons having a limited usage, so instead of extending it or offering a repair service, we just made Every Weapon Shitty" like wtf. And even for the fuse mechanic theres only ONE PLACE that lets you unfuse and it's through a clunky dialogue menu! (my favorite!!! totally not the reason I stopped playing acnh!!!!) I played for 50 hours and was positive you couldn't unfuse weapons. Wow.

botw was fun and I thoroughly enjoyed it and the fact that your tools were simply on a cooldown. totk feels like a resource-scavenger except the resources are so hard to actually acrue. Not only that, but I've seen other ppl complain about how much harder it feels to upgrade your equipment. As if they needed some way to bloat the game even more.

This is just me rambling about my feelings and maybe talking in circles about it but I feel annoying trying to actively discuss my feelings with anyone so I guess this will do.

I've only beaten half of the bosses and 3 of the temples, but I don't know if I'll be able to keep going. I got stuck at the fire temple boss and I would argue its the worst temple in the game and I haven't even gotten to the Gerudo one. That's just how strongly I feel about the fire temple. I hate the minecart layout, I hate the lava puzzle mechanics, and I literally rage-quited after my 10th attempt at the boss. The water temple boss was annoying but it was mostly just learning patterns and having good reaction time. The fire temple boss is JUST rng.

which sucks cuz the wind temple was sick!!!! it was so cool!!! and the boss was probably one of my top 20 bosses!!! and then I did the water temple and Sidon kept glitching out and wouldn't accompany me for half of the trip up to it, and the GRAVITY!!!! UGH!!!!!!

I'm trying to think of points of the game I've truly enjoyed and I think the highlights of it have been: got to keep Epona from my botw save. But then that turned out to be a nothing burger since you can't have her tow anything. (also the fucking towing minigame that feels so insulting. "please take us to the great fairy!" YOU COULDVE JUST WALKED ITS LITERALLY A FIVE MINUTE WALK)

uhh, other good points uhhh, the new armor is pretty cool. I really like the Ember and Miner set. I really like the cave system. (shouldn't really be a feature but whatever) and uhhhhhhhh, yeah idk. I'm struggling to find points I truly enjoyed past the introductory level. like yeah building a car is cool! ... until it despawns and you lose 40min and work, and yeah I know autobuild can rebuild it but I'm not made of spare parts. And like, the korok puzzles were cute! Until you find one every 15 min and they take at least 10 to get them to their friend.

I think the most enjoyable minigame was the one with the sign dude on the side of the road where you help him hold it up. That was one of the better, more enjoyable parts of the game for me so far. It felt like it actually tested your building skills while not being truly punishing. Just start over if it doesnt work.

botw was a strong like 8/10 for me, and I think totk is gonna unfortunately be like a 5/10. The direction is janky at best. The gimmicks of the game are viable for most of the game. Exploring the same world with minor changes is frustrating and boring. Exploring the Depths makes me want to personally throw up since I have a phobia of dark, open spaces with Things lurking inside. Exploring the sky is fun but I didn't realize you could *reuse* the sheikah tower until 45 hours in because why would I think it would let me do it again??? So it felt inaccessible and frustrating.

The ability to fuse anything to anything and have it run and work well is a technical marvel! I'm not saying its not. But does it make a good *game*? Does it make the story direction work? Does it make the boss fights and dungeons work? imo... no. It doesn't. It makes a good tech demo. It makes an impressive piece of programming.

maybe i'll have more thoughts but I just needed to get all that out.

if you read it all thanks if not you wont be seeing this lol

[gloryseized]

Link's fist bobs in a weak nod, although he's not sure Tulin sees it. He doesn't have the strength to sign more at the moment, doesn't even know what he would say if he could sign. The tears still fall down his cheeks and he still finds himself hollow with them leaving. They don't change anything, they don't mean anything.

Shoulders shudder in quiet gasps, trying to pull air into overwrought lungs, mouth growing sticky with the tears he's crying. And still Tulin hugs him close. A presence, a friend, a support. It's been so long.... so long since he's been hugged by anyone. Link's not sure how long he remains in Tulin's hold, a breeze playing through his hair but otherwise the night standing still.

Even if the tears don't mean anything, they do release something, thoughts settling slowly into place one after the other as the emotion slowly leaks away with the tears, taking the confusion with it. And Tulin's comfort does help too. Link's face feels congested now, cheeks chapped from dried tears, but the emotions are at least settled for now. Reaching up a hand, he wipes it over first one cheek than the other, smoothing away the tear tracks, before he turns to meet Tulin's face.

Tapping his chin, he swings his hand forward. << Thank you, >> the sign is less pronounced than usual, again a more subtle sign than typical for him, but his fingers feel clumsy too after the crying. He doesn't pull away from the hug though. Because even with the tears gone, he still doesn't know what to say. He owes Tulin the truth, owes the Rito and explanation as to what might have prompted such tears, but Link hardly wants to admit it to himself, let alone sign to someone else what might be the cause.

And unbidden, his eyes drift over to the Sword back near his bedroll--the weapon so bitterly claimed and so long carried. He hates the sight of it, the mere thought of the harm it had done, but at the same time he can't simply abandon it. Not after all she had done for it. Tapping his chest, his left hand reaches forward to pinch pointer and thumb together, lifting slightly. Right and left hand meet, before he pulls his left hand away, swishing it back and forth. << I found the sword. >> he signs and then stops, staring at the blade unable to sign more.

     Link's tears are quiet.

     Through all the winters that Tulin's known him for, that sorta quiet has never really bothered him. It was just another part of Link to accept — even back when he was simply guy and not yet Link — the way the colour of his hair was or his cool tricks with the bow were. Tulin thinks he might've asked his dad 'bout it one time, out of curiosity more than anything, and found the answer so unimportant 'gainst Link's everything-else that he honestly can't even recall it.

     Now — as he holds Link up, as the droplets seep into his feathers, as he feels all the tiny quakes running through his friend like tattered threads unravelling or cracks in a vase spreading — he thinks 'bout how he wouldn't have woken if not for Link's hand.

     He thinks 'bout how Link could've— could've just laid there.

     He thinks, with something big and painful scrunched up in his throat, 'bout how easy it could've been to go on without knowing—

     Link's more than not okay, he's hurting.

     The thought, in its fullness, sits in his mind like some heavy stone sinking to the bottom of a lake. Growing, festering, 'til the ache's not only there in his throat: it's a faint tingling behind his eyes, too. He blinks rapidly, heart thumping the beat it does when he's gotta do something, when he's filled with the unbearable need to change something — different from the desperate frustration of trying and failing. But— Tulin doesn't know what to do, can't figure out what to do, 'cept maybe squeeze tighter.

     So he starts there.

     He pushes himself closer. Curls 'round Link even more, presses the side of his face into the bent nape of his neck. He can't pick out all the exact scents that greet him with how distracted he is, but Link's have always tasted like the first breezes brought by a sunrise. A memory surfaces, then, and the lump in Tulin's throat shrinks in the face of it — enough for him to whisper the words that always make him feel better whenever he needs a hug from Mum or Dad or Uncle Harth.

     "I'm— I'm here."