#RITO MAKE THEM INTERACT I WANT MORE STORY I WANT IT

[rebelquilled]

the anger i have that xayah and rakan have not met/referenced/done literally anything with any other ionian champ ( other than the brief fight between xayah and zed but it barely counts because xayah has no idea who it is and zed will never acknowledge it in his canon i bet ) continues to fill me with ire. i know she’s not exactly in the negotiating stage, but i find it hard to believe that she and rakan wouldn’t have run into zed more, the kinkou, or even irelia.  rito stop isolating the vastayan rebellion, it is tied into the whole ordeal with noxus, it is tied into ionia, make it exist.

[nolongerapileofashprobably]

Just like how botw had small details telling us the probable ‘canonical’ route Link took (aka Zora, Rito, Goron, and then Gerudo), totk has something similar. I’m sure all players noticed that the newspapers will feature one region that is meant to direct Link to go aid the people there. First is Rito, next is Goron, third is Zora, and last is Gerudo. BUT! They also added something else.

Zelda’s role in the story. Namely, her interactions with Tulin, Yunobo, King Dorephan, and Riju. Annnnnnddd Link’s reactions to her!

Tulin’s interaction with her is one meant to confuse players: Zelda was in the past, but Tulin saw her? So she’s here in the present and we’re chasing after her. Sounds a lot like Skyward Sword, okay (which was released on the switch last year, so anyone who didn’t play it back in 2012 had another chance to). It confuses Link, but spurs him to become a journalist ? Cool, I’m here for it. I did journalism for 4 years, I’m sure Link can do it too!

Then, for Yunobo, he actively speaks to Zelda, we see her figure, and Link will actively gasp whenever we see her. He has a genuine reaction to her presence, because he’s surprised, but then we see pink gloom glow in the mask that Zelda have Yunobo and it makes him freak out land turn against Link. That’s when we start to put together that maybe Zelda is being controlled? Or she’s NOT Zelda, just as Yunobo begins to theorize but can’t quite wrap his head around it.

Next, we have King Dorephan who is actually attacked by Zelda and is injured to the point that he decides to hide from his people as to not create more chaos in this time. He chooses to give Zelda the benefit of the doubt here— he could have easily had his people turn against Hyrule and all Hylians because of Zelda’s actions. But he doesn’t! Because it simply doesn’t make sense. And by the end of the quest, Sidon comes to the conclusion that the Zelda in the past and the Zelda in the present are NOT the same.

And we see that thought truly stick with Link in a cutscene in Gerudo. After defending Kara Kara Bazaar, Zelda appears and Riju calls out for her. There is no gasp from Link like with Yunobo’s story, instead he watches Zelda with a slightly narrowed gaze and does not stop watching where she was last seen until Riju directly addresses him. They actively show the players that Link is suspicious, but he is still so very dedicated.

And it happens again, in the center of the light triangle. Zelda appears and Link begins to walk toward her, but there is no intake of breath, no shock at seeing her… instead he slowly walks until Riju calls out for him.

After Link finishes each phenomenon, going to Lookout Landing gives the players a clue in how Link is reacting. Specifically, if you speak to Buliara before going to see Purah, she says something along the lines of “Purah is up on the top deck, but don’t miss a wrung in your haste to get up there.”

Link is expected to rush. Because everyone is muttering about a figure that MIGHT be Zelda. At the castle. Right. Then. And. There.

Link GASPS when he first looks into the scope— Purah doesn’t even say it’s Zelda, not before Link sees for himself. It’s seeing her, clear as day, and even if Link KNOWS it’s not her… there’s still that seed of doubt that lives in his mind. And then at the castle, Link does twist and turn whenever he hears Zelda. He rushes after her every. Single. Time. She disappears. Despite that he knows it isn’t her, he can’t give up. He can’t. It’s quite literally not in his DNA. He sees it through; he needs to make sure it isn’t her. And it’s all a trap, one he walks right into, because he just HAS to see that it isn’t her.

And if you want to say “but Ash… this is just a recap of the storyline in the present.. not small details” let us just remember that Link’s driving motivation in this game is to find Zelda and bring her home. So many people just ignore these little moments or miss them completely.

And I’ll be damned if I don’t talk about link’s gasps or his twists and turns or his micro expressions that tell us so much about how he is feeling.

[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.

[thatoneastralpoe]

Okay, so first and foremost, I've said this before and I want to say it again, this project is in no way meant to be any sort of hate on Nintendo, BOTW, nor TOTK, both games are wonderful in their own right, and I love many other Nintendo games! So with that outta the way, let's get down to business!

[TW: Death, Apocalypse, famine, disease, bloodshed.]

Game Play Changes

Companion character

In every Zelda game (minus BOTW & TOTK), Link has a companion of some sort. Even in the newest title Echoes of Wisdom, Zelda gets a companion. I understand why they didn't in BOTW, but I'm a sucker for companions, so I decided that Wolf Link would be canon in this universe. Link wouldn't meet him right away, and he would be unable to speak, but I feel like he sorta fits with the theming overall.

Link would also be able to interact with Wolf Link, and other doggo's as well.

Malice

In this version of BOTW, Malice is going to do a bit more damage, than in the original game. Rather than just creating piles of Malice in the world, when Calamity Ganon shoots out the balls fo Malice, they would taint the land they hit, killing everything it touches and sleeping into the ground. It would also kill any animals/people while strengthening any monsters.

Heart Containers & Stamina Vessels

I would bring back heart pieces, but keep the stamina vessels. The way I would do this is by keeping the Stamina Vessels linked to the spirit orbs, but having heart pieces as a separate thing that would be found through exploration. Likely replacing many of the extra Koroks. (Yes, I would be lowering the amount of Koroks for the sake of mine, and everyone else's sanity) This would keep the heart piece system that every other Zelda game uses (minus BOTW & TOTK), while keeping a bit of the system that Nintendo had already put in.

Shrines & Mini Dungeons

Due to making heart pieces their own thing again, a lot of the shrines would become obsolete. So to make up for this, I would add in mini dungeons. These would kinda be like the one's in EoW, where the boss drops a heart piece, and would be mostly full of puzzles and traps, along with extra lore.

Main Story

My main gripe with the main story of Breath of the Wild is that, unlike every other Zelda game (minus TOTK) we don't really play through a connected story. Don't get me wrong, there is A story, but it's already happened, and the story that is in the present is disjointed and unconnected to itself.

I know that the story wasn't the "main" focus of the game, but I thought that being able to playing through the story was always better than just witnessing it. Plus even the memories which give 90% of the story kinda suck for their own reasons that I'll get into that in a different post.

I had a few ideas that I threw around, one of them being a civil war esq scenario that was inspired by Hyrule Warriors (which is cannon here), but I decided on a different idea.

The decided to look back at the apocalypse theming that Breath of the Wild has, and pulled from it, eventually deciding to use the Four horsemen of the Apocalypse as inspiration for the main story. With each race having to deal with one of the issues.

Disease with the Zora

Famine for the Gorons

Bloodshed in the Rito

And Conquest to the Gerudo

For the Zora, the Malice would've tainted the waters prior to the start of the game, and any Zora that was in the water at the time, or ate fish from the water ended up sick similar to how people are with Gloom and the mud in TOTK. This would've led to the quest in the area. Sidon would also be more involved in this quest, and would get a bit more character building, along with a few other characters. This would also introduce the fact that Zora can manipulate water.

In the Gorons, similar to the main game, Rudania would've been stomping around the mountain, but in this version, the machine would've blocked off the Gorons food source, and the Malice would've corrupted any other viable options. Again, this would lead to the main quest, and give more characters more time to develop.

The Rito would've been suffering from a constant barrage of attacks during their quest, one that had exhausted a many of their warriors, and killed more. The deaths would likely be more implied than explicitly told, but it would still be there. Tulin would also play a role in this quest than in cannon BOTW, this way we would actually know the kid exists, rather than him just popping out of thin air.

The Gerudo would be funding with the Hylian's (this may change for story reasons) due to reasons that will be explained in the post on this quest. During the quest we would get more lore about Riju, her mother, and the Gerudo in general.

I'm aware that conquest and bloodshed sound similar, but I will explain the differences in separate posts that I will dedicate to each race. This is because I don't want to load everything into one post, and I also want to give each part of the story the time it deserves.

I know that the way I've been talking about this makes it seem like there will be a dungeon order, but there wouldn't be. Link would still be able to go through the dungeons in any order they like, and it would even change the story in small ways when if they did.

Anyways, that's all for today folks! Hope you all have a wonderful day or night, and stay safe and hydrated y'all!

[amelias-zelda-calamity-quintet]

MoaH Dungeon Design Principles

I know I talked about this over on Wattpad, but I haven't talked about it here. I'm gonna copy paste a chunk out of the post-GoS update I did on why MoaH is absolutely massive first, and then I'll add more.

Ok. So. I might have been a little overly ambitious with MoaH. When I first drafted MoaH's arc, I was trying to offer a response to BOTW's dungeon design, which I, as a classic LoZ enjoyer, did not think lived up to reputation. TOTK also didn't really address this problem in my opinion, but was an improvement, that came out after MoaH was on hiatus. I have a lot of thoughts on how classic and Wild duo dungeon design differ and why I prefer classic design, but to summarize those thoughts, BOTW/TOTK design focuses on the world as an interactive landscape, classic design focuses on the importance of location. I felt like a reasonable compromise to the shrines vs dungeons discussion was to have a number of shrines working together to explain a dungeon's core puzzle before you did that dungeon, along with the smaller number making the dungeon locations more integrated into the settings they were in, bridging both location and landscape. The BOTW/TOTK tutorial sections do this and the Ballad of a Champion DLC also does this, and those were the elements I applied to MoaH's dungeon design. I also, quite frankly, wanted to see if I could do a bigger setting than BOTW, and now, TOTK.

I do want to expand on the nature of MoaH's dungeon design though because when this is being written, the second "shrine" is going out for book 1. And I want to discuss that some more. And I promise this isn't going to be a shit on the Wild duo hour, but I am gonna be critical of the design for a bit.

To expand on my thoughts on BOTW/TOTK dungeons, I know a huge part of why they are the way they are is because of asset limitations. Nintendo made 120 shrines and then the dungeons, and there's only so much memory the Switch can handle. And in looking at the Wild duo by design, so much of those games focus on the concept of "Ma," which is a Japanese concept on the appreciation of empty space. And that's so much of the Wild duo. Navigating the Wild duo is about experiencing the wilderness of Hyrule. In an example of the exploration of landscape, of the appreciation of nature and Ma, it excels, in spades.

But. I think that comes back to why it feels so strongly off from classic design. Because classic Zelda dungeon design is about the importance of place. About how this location being cursed/taken over directly impacts the world, on multiple levels (grand quest, regional quest, personal quest). To which you might say, that's there too in the Wild duo, and you're not wrong but the framing is different. Let me provide an example:

In Wind Waker, the first full dungeon you go to is Dragon Roost Caverns. Progressing through and solving the issue in Dragon Roost hits all three. Grand quest, you gotta get Din's Pearl. Regional/local, Valoo being upset means that the local Rito can't get the scales they need to get their wings. And then there are multiple personal levels in which that affects; Komali getting his wings, Medli being an attendant, and the relationship between the chief and his son.

Let's compare that to the regional quest in TOTK with the Zora. Seems like it would check off the boxes: need to get to the temple to find Zelda (grand), get the sludge to stop (regional), and help Sidon uncover his role as a Sage (personal). But, there are two other elements that I think these stories fail on.

One, the temple itself isn't impactful to the world because of how removed it is. This is better with the Divine Beasts, but they're still not quite the same kind of impact. The rain and the sludge negatively impact the Zora, absolutely, it's a hazard to them. But the loss of Dragon Roost Caverns impacts the Rito's culture, part of their identity. The temples in TOTK are all so ancient there are barely stories about them. Dragon Roost Caverns is part of the Rito's ongoing lives. It doesn't have that same impact. I get a few temples being like that, but all of the dungeons are like that in the Wild duo, removing some of that connection between the two. It makes it feel too game-y and less connected narratively.

Two, in making the games open world in the way they are and taking out the metroidvania of Zelda games, it also takes out the interconnectedness of the world. One of the joys of Zelda is getting new items and then going back and seeing an area recovered. Better, it's seeing how the people once affected are engaging with the world now. Less in big identifiable NPCs, more in "Oh, we fixed the Dodongo Mines, now the Gorons are scattered around the map." The Wild duo made the peoples so regional that, outside of Lookout Landing, we don't see them interacting with each other as a kingdom. It made sense in BOTW why that would be. By TOTK, it made less sense. It also removes the impact of you as the player's successes in overcoming the dungeons. And personally, because I wasn't faffing with Korok seeds, after I got the shrines in a region, I found very little motivation to go back to areas because of how big the world was. The size of it all actively made the world feel more disconnected and there was no real reward in the world that made completing the dungeons unite it more.

Look, again, I'm not saying that it's bad design. I am saying that it is a hard shift from pre-existing Zelda design. And the series has done more open world settings before without this being an issue (both Wind Waker and A Link Between Worlds I think are better examples of open world Zeldas). I said this before, and I feel less strongly about it now, but if you took out the Zelda names, how easy do the Wild duo maintain their identities as Zelda games? How easy would it be to change them to a new IP? That doesn't make them bad games. It does highlight I think that the jump from where the franchise was to where the Wild duo games took it was a huge leap. All of that to say, this is where MoaH's dungeon design starts its iterations.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Break because that was a lot. I said in the earlier blurb that I thought a good bridge to that design choice was something halfway: a handful of shrines that teach the mechanics of a dungeon OR a bunch of buildings connected together to collectively make a dungeon. I'm leaning towards the former because of MoaH's scale and that would be tedious if it were gameplay for the setting.

I know technically this is spoilers, but also technically going into a Zelda game one will assume there are dungeons. The fun of it is seeing what they're like. The Hyrule arc/book 1 has three shrines, a dungeon, and a bonus dungeon/shrine (scale here is smaller than a dungeon but larger than a shrine). The three shrines (Farore's, Nayru's, and Din's) all serve as examples to the puzzle mechanics that will be in the main dungeon (for now, Hylia's Temple). For book 1, easy puzzles, it's the first dungeon. That's where we get to explore more in the further books.

I also wanted to change how the characters interact with puzzles as they go through the world. That's why each of the shrines has a mini boss and an item (side note, MoaH Link is gonna be kitted to the nines, there are over 40 dungeon relics planned, not counting ordinary items he gets too like the bomb bag and lantern). The expanding arsenal changes how the party is going to be able to tackle problems. I imagine that, fitting for the D&D comparisons, each of the characters have two item slots for relics they can easily carry on top of their own weapons. So the dispersement of that kit across the party changes how the characters are going to be able to confront puzzles and monsters moving forward as they get more. But more kit, more problems, bigger monsters. This is why the moblin comment is in the early chapter. I had to watch my power scaling early. Moblins are serious threats in this Hyrule.

You will also note that most of the shrine arcs are proceeded by chapters on how the situation in the shrine is troubling the locals. And there are always local named "NPCs" affected. Further, NPCs come back. Book 2 has an arc resolution that requires a character from book 1 to come back. The stories of people being affected are not forgotten for the main quest. Now, MoaH also has to balance the party's interpersonal stories as well as the three levels I already outlined, that's why some of the shrine arcs don't all have very in depth NPC stories, they're going on setting assumption that there is a monster there that needs dealing with (and they're right). But all of the temples are still attached or are places that losing directly affects a local area.

On top of all of that, I can't keep this stale. You'd assume after a bit, three shrines, one dungeon, bonus dungeon, that's the formula. You'd be wrong. Not only does the order need to change, but the number of shrines changes when we get into the local religions and how they choose to honor the pantheon (now that 40+ number is adding up).

Further, original mini bosses and bosses for every single one. My creature creating has never been more flexed. And so far y'all have only seen mini bosses. I'll let you ruminate on what that means for bosses.

Look, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here. I'm not saying MoaH is the perfect response to this problem I've outlined. It is a response, and I don't have asset limitations like a console does. But this is the basis for which MoaH design begins. I'll leave the rest for y'all to discover. That's part of the adventure too.

[kintatsujo]

LoZ AU- The Courage of Running Away LABRYNNA EXPANDED (long post alert)

Let's start with a link to the original masterpost since this is plunked in the midst of Part Five of the OG plotting posts.

Labrynna was practically a footnote in the original CoRA plotting posts, it and Holodrum basically getting covered in one post.

But as I've noted since, it turned into its own storyline, and I got wrapped up in Politics, and fantasy politics are my fucking catnip so I have at this point gotten through two whole ass NaNos with it oh god.

Image descriptions will be in ALT this time around so theoretically the seventeen to twenty pictures in this post won't be quite so bad???

So where things pick up, Link has just left Windfish Isle on Uncle Torik's ferry with Marla and Tonbo and they're headed to Labrynna.

...I was going to post the map of Western Aurule here but that. I'm gonna put that in its own post. Here's a link to the map of Aurule proper as it currently stands.

And the first thing Link does, before they even get all the way to Labrynna, is piss off a pirate:

A lot of you are not going to look at the alt text so I'm going to say that he's based on a thorny devil and I did not mean for him to turn out so adorable. (But also I love lizards so maybe it was inevitable that my fondness would show through.)

Link was MOSTLY trying to get him to leave Crescent Island alone so he blows up the figurehead of Kragg's ship.

Which was of Kragg's wife.

Kragg is gonna show back up.

Link and Marla and Tonbo manage to escape to Jabu City, which is based on the fact that there's an OoT-style-Zora Village underwater off the coast in Oracle of Ages because this fic is nothing if not wild extrapolation.

Jabu City is a mixed-peoples city, with Zora, humans, Rito and some Gorons, but it's largely Zora.

Note on mister "Oh I'm in DANGER:" A running gag is that Marla is considered a very attractive Zora and Tonbo is having absolutely none of people hitting on her. Marla takes a lot of delight in this.

Have some more Jabu City fashion because I got carried away:

The trouble is, Jabu City is a beautiful place but the Zora there are generally kind of... hoity toidy high on themselves. There's a few crass comments made about Marla being from Windfish Isle, for example.

So Link, Marla and Tonbo don't spend especially long there and instead head north to the town of Brynna, where Link finds himself instead running into his mother's past-- stories of her adventures, but even more importantly into a traveling story collector who has a bit of a connection to Catena.

I want you all to know that hitting on the idea that the Graceful Gorons are called that because they're all Victorian era-style boxers was the single most inspired moment I've had in this AU setting's worldbuilding, my brain is enormous and I am sexy as hell XD

Anyways Allemande and Courante were Catena's friends for years, and then Catena died so Allemande started taking journeys around Aurule every few years so that he could collect stories about her and about adventurers like her. Think of him as being a bit like an earthier Kass without an accordion.

Allemande suggests that they go to Lynna City, Labrynna's capitol, partly because another one of Catena's old friends lives there now.

But on the way they run into Politics again (they've already run into these politics in Jabu but now it's even more in their face), because they have to cross the Kappakon River to get to Lynna City, and that means interacting with the Kappakon River Zora, who are quite a different deal from the coastal Zora:

What Enhir means when she says "what they're doing to us" is that the mayor of Symmetry City next to Dimitri Bridge is dumping garbage upstream of the nearest Domain, Nuun Domain, trying to get rid of them and mostly making their Patriarch and their tadpoles desperately ill. (I didn't include a sketch of the Nuun Domain Patriarch even though he does have a design because at the point I drew this I already knew this post was longer than most of the original posts for the AU, waagh)

Symmetry City is also where Link, Marla and Tonbo first meet Sturmaz, who essentially joins the party for pretty much the rest of the storyline because I love him and he's a good boy.

I made a post about Sturmaz before and it features a little more art that is absolutely him yelling at Symmetry City's mayor about this mess.

So it takes some yelling at the right people but eventually Link gets the Nuun Domain sorted out and they head to Lynna City to meet his mom's best friend, Githa, who actually lives here because she got banished from Hyrule for reasons that might be clear after the picture:

Notes on Githa: She was originally inspired by Agitha from TP as she appears in Hyrule Warriors with a bit of influence from Purah; for some reason when Invid and I were playing through HW Agitha being a secret criminal or mob boss turned into a running joke along with her NPC mode constantly clinging to giant bosses whenever it was absolutely inconvenient. That turned into Githa.

Also, she doesn't know Catena thought of her as her best friend, which is the real reason Link decides she's a disaster person.

The problem is, now they're in the Capitol and naturally there's more Politics there. For example, Sturmaz's uncle:

(Marla and Tonbo don't want to let Sturmaz or Link think that having shitty father figures is normal.)

And indeed, the stupid hat does come with the job, as Link discovers when he goes with Sturmaz and Nimbas to the Labrynna Senate:

So the idea behind Labrynna's government is that in CoRA's version of events, Labrynna abolished the monarchy after Queen Ambi because they weren't putting up with that shit again (the official line is that so much power is considered too much strain on one person.)

As is evidenced by the Presiding Lady still being a member of Ambi's bloodline and the senator of Brynna being her sister, however, nepotism is still alive and well in Labrynna.

Also Link gets a cute outfit so that he doesn't stand out so much in this crowd:

(It was an emergency situation I swear.)

To be clear this is a man's dress and Link's entire reaction to it is "I don't know how my father puts up with a floor length skirt." Fuck your gender roles.

Nimbas turns out to be more than a bit of a professional jerkass.

(By "river monsters," Nimbas means the Kappakon Zora. Just to be clear.)

Link also visits the Maku Tree, because you don't go to the capitol of either Labrynna or Holodrum and just not visit the Maku Tree.

I wanted the Maku Tree to have an equivalent to the Kokiri for a number of reasons but one of them is that over on the Ghirahim side of the story he's having a silent existential crisis about his backstory and I like narrative mirrors. *thumbs up*

Credit goes to Invid for the idea that the Koroks and Kokiri are actually just the same thing entirely and that the Kokiri put on the Korok masks in order to leave Korok Woods safely.

Also Kula is actually a canon Breath of the Wild character. I made a sound like I was greeting a cat when I found her in TotK. XD

Link finds out, among other things, that the Golden Kragg seems to still be pushing his way up the Kappakon despite that he has to fight every single river Zora on the way. It turns out that Kragg is upset about more than Link blowing up his ship's figurehead:

At some point several years before in Yoll Province, the local dragon went missing, the local lizalfos started acting up, and then the Labrynna Senate, partially spurred on by Senator Nimbas's arguments on behalf of Senator Aldo from Yollton, well, absolutely exterminated the Lizal presence in Yoll Province, and executed the lizalfos leader in Lynna City Square.

Leaving behind her husband, the Golden Kragg, and his lizalfos pirate crew.

So THAT'S not great.

Have a chonky dragon.

Obviously that means that Link has to investigate this shit.

Kragg is heading straight for Lynna City with full intent to carve a new statue of his wife out of the Maku Tree herself, and while the River King Izemaz, living in the Maku Domain, is absolutely going to step in if Kragg tries it, the main bridge Kragg would have to come through is a major marketplace in Lynna and Link can't stand idly by even if it means his destiny as a Called Hero is sort of chasing him around a little at this point.

Which means that Link and party take an express glider to Yoll because time is now of the essence (it is terrible that I didn't draw this. Imagine them sitting in one of those steampunk engine-less plane contraptions and getting launched from a catapult. Also Marla doing lots of screaming.)

Well, shit.

(Link can hear Gabbrosald's sickened godsong because of the pointed ears while Zora are just really sensitive to Things Being Wrong in the Environment. LORE.)

Anyways shit goes DOWN. They have to do a dungeon and everything. And finally, at the end of it, once they've freed the dragon in distress, Gabbrosald gives them a ride back up to Lynna City so they can stop the Golden Kragg from burning Maku Park and using the Maku Tree as carving base, because actually Lord Gabbrosald was rather fond of those lizalfos and would prefer that the Golden Kragg not get himself killed.

Now Link just needs to convince Senator Nimbas that killing the lizalfos that the furious local dragon god is fond of is maybe not the best idea.

[braveheartstoryteller]

The Darkness of LoZ: Tears of the Kingdom Or: a comparison of two versions of the same world.

I think if I could do it again, I would played TotK in smaller sessions than I did. I didn't realize it totally at the time, but the game drained me emotionally. I think I was expecting the game to be like BotW, which it wasn't, not even close. Therein lies the tale between two games, and what they are and aren't. As always, I like putting my feelings into words, so I'm going to dive in and do just that.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Breath of the Wild, like for many, came at the perfect time for me. I needed a break, a place to clear my head, and a bit of freedom to do just that. BotW gave me that. I could walk around this world and explore each cranny and find just a bit of joy in each place. Even in the lonely places, there were peace and light. It was a place to breathe again.

Even BotW's story fits this theme. While each region that was affected by the beasts limited freedom in small way, it was never oppressive, or overbearing. And when you helped via Link, this went away entirely. Freedom was the name of the game.

The book Creating a Champion a companion book to the game, furthers this. It mentions Link's journey, hinting at the fact that he is now no longer hampered by past constraints, and instead had the freedom to free Hyrule in his own way and time. Not even Link's memories hamper this feeling.

And even though we have scars everywhere of the Calamity, and guardians that love to chase you if you come close, you find something else: healing. In all those scars, you find new life everywhere. Hyrule is rebuilding itself, rising from the ashes.

All leading to the fact that Breath of the Wild is a fitting name for this game. You can breathe, inhale and exhale, all while finding that freedom everywhere.

Tears of the Light (Dragon)

Contrast that with Tears of the Kingdom. From the get-go we have a story that goes for the heart. Link loses Zelda. And it all goes downhill from there. Each region is threatened by disaster. Before it was just a taste, a disturbance of life. This time around each disaster goes for the heart of each region. The Goron's food is tainted, and then possesses them. The Rito struggle to fly and find food, making the adults leave the children behind. The Gerudo are forced to bunker down, as fierce sandstorms ravage their town. No more freedom, and no more parties. For the Zora, their life blood, water, is tainted by sludge from the sky. It makes them sick, and Sidon has to use his powers to clean the water just to keep the domain's water clear.

Not even the Hylian's are spared this time, as deep crevasses break open and pour out gloom, hurting anyone who comes in contact with it. Even Link can be affected by this.

The Spark of Tension

There are so many interesting notes here. Yet, in it all, it is hard to interact with, or play the game. The biggest new area to explore is a Dark Realm of sorts (you know I had to get a reference in there) yet it feels cold and unforgiving. You don't want to spend any real time down there. I took the time to light the whole place up, but the light isn't warm in tone, it is cold and harsh. While I suppose it fits for a cave or something else, it lacks any warmth at all. If you can handle it then I suppose you could spend hours down there exploring. But, I couldn't. Contrast that with the Dark Realm of Kingdom Hearts in 0.2 (or Fragmentary Passage as I usually call it) where it is dark everywhere, yet you find these places with warm colors and buildings. That harsh light simply isn't there. It is still a game about depression (at least in my view) however gives those moments of life and warmth.

It is not like you cannot find this in TotK. When you are right under the lightblooms in the Depths, there is a bit of warmth to the light. Then topside you have the little makeshift village outside of Castle Town, which is full of life, and you get to see it grow over time as other regions join the fight. There is of course the rebuilding of Lurelin Village, and the lively places of Hateno Village and Terry Town.

It isn't devoid of it, but the darkness still chases you every chance it gets. Or should I say gloom hands, which pretty much sums that part up. It is inescapable. BotW is an escape of sorts, while TotK makes you face darkness head on. It presses on every side and never lets up.

What's interesting is that unlike BotW you actually get a companions, to help you. You aren't alone, but it never feels enough to break through this tension. Perhaps it is because of how they are presented in the game, or the fact that they really don't do too much. Either way, it isn't enough.

That isn't to say that TotK is a bad story, or even a bad game. I mean I have definite criticisms for this game and story, however this isn't it. These notes do make for an interesting story, and a good one. But it does make it hard for me to spend any time with it. I don't want to pick up the game and play it because it is so thorny to my heart. Thinking about the story itself is easier, but I miss those fluffier moments. Give me something to truly smile about. It makes those harder ones more impactful.

It's like in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. At one point Sora leaves his friends behind, telling them to more or less "get lost." Later, when Sora finds himself in true trouble, they come to his rescue, showing Sora that they wouldn't give up on him. It is a special note, born because darkness intervened and pulled the friends apart.

We do get something like this at the very end of TotK, with Link and Zelda, which is special and amazing. Yet the story could have used more, just to balance out the story. Just to make the "medicine go down" as it were.

The End of All Things

So at the end of the day, that is why I should have given TotK more time. And why BotW is an experience I won't forget any time soon. They do very different things, give different experiences. One you might want to spend hours in, and the other you might only want to experience once. Neither are bad, just both are very different.

[kiddokori]

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

SKELEHORSES CAN GO OVER GLOOM??????

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[sisters-sideblog]

Jewelry

I'm working on an actual "start of the story"-story for my (still untitled) Links Meet AU but have also been writing little snippets to start getting a handle on personalities and interactions. I liked how this one came out!

Fandom: Legend of Zelda (Not LU!) Characters: Legend, Wild, Mask Rated: PG (mild language) Wordcount: 680

“Y’even wear that outfit when you’re climbing up on mountains? With snow? Don’t you get cold?” Mask’s slightly louder than necessary question turned a few nearby heads, Legend’s included. Wild didn’t appear to be bothered by the extra attention.

“Sometimes, if it’s cold enough. That’s why I wear this.” She thumbed the jewel centered in the circlet over her brow, then bumped one opal earring with a curled finger to make it flash in the light. “These have an enchantment, too, but I’m just wearing them today because they’re pretty.”

Ravio and Men turned back to the ledgers they’d been pouring over. But Legend, sensing a more interesting conversation, twisted around to peer over the back of his chair towards where Wild and Mask sat at the dining table. “Is all your jewelry enchanted?” he wanted to know.

“Most of it. I helped someone out who makes them, she gives me good prices. I’ve commissioned a few mundane things from her too.”

“What kinds of enchantments?”

“Mostly elemental effects. Protection and the like. Why?”

Ravio gave him a shove and a cross look; he was probably being distracting, calling across the room like this. Legend got up from the couch and instead dropped down to sit across from Wild at the table where she and Mask had been swapping stories that, so far as Legend could tell, had meandered away from comparisons of their versions of Death Mountain to, somehow, climbing things.

He held out a hand, on which glittered some of the things he’d managed to bring back from his adventures abroad; the rings that had been on his fingers and looped on a cord around his neck when he shipwrecked for the second and final time. He pointed to the one with a heart-cut ruby set in gold. “This one has a slow healing effect.”

Now fully interested, Wild bent over Legend’s hand, asking after the rest. It didn’t take long for both of them to be bringing out everything they had on them, comparing the spells.

Mask’s eyes darted between them, watching and listening with his chin propped up on his hands and his swaying feet occasionally finding Legend’s knees and shins beneath the table. Eventually, he seemed to tire of the topic. “Masks are better,” he declared, with just a hint of defiance and a challenging gleam in his eye.

“You trying to start shit, pipsqueak?” Legend demanded, squawking when Mask kicked him again, deliberately this time.

Wild nudged him with her elbow. “If you used them enough to be titled after them, I can’t say I’m surprised. Sometimes it’s nice to feel pretty, though.” She patted at the jeweled band around her bun.

“I’ve got a mask for that, too.”

“A mask for feeling pretty?”

“This I’ve got to see,” Legend said dryly.

“Is it one of those fancy ones with lots of beads and ribbons like the Rito use in their festivals?” Wild guessed.

Mask shook his head. Grinning, he ducked under the table. When he sat back up, he had on a mask depicting a feminine face that trailed long streams of bright fuschia hair, all wreathed in plants. It had an ethereal quality to it that made Legend squint with niggling recognition. He saw Wild doing much the same.

“Huh,” Legend said.

Wild ran her hand down one of the mask’s multiple ponytails. “It’s got nice hair?” she offered. She pulled her hand back, an abrupt motion, staring between her fingers and what they’d just been touching as if they’d done something unexpected. “That’s, uh. Floating?”

“Wait, it is?” Mask twisted around to look. The hair streamed after him, drifting up and around as if following the movement on a gentle current. “It is! You two can sit here and talk about your jewelry, I gotta go find the fairy. Bye.”

With that, he shoved away from the table, twisting his head from side to side before following some unknown prompting of direction from the mask and trotting towards the door.

Wild and Legend both blinked.

“Wait, it finds fairies?” Legend yelped.

[catsbootleg]

★ ~ Hello, and welcome to the Star King's Palace ~ ★

★ my name is jade ^^ (he/they/star) (you can call me jay if we're cool) (we usually are)

★ I have 3 main romantic F/Os, and while I do have others, there's only 3 guys who hoard my brain space.

★ It's Papyrus [Since August 2016, Undertale]. He's in the brain 24/7 and God do I love him never ask me anything about him as a character I blow up. and also my opinions/headcanons are. mediocre at best.

★ and I'm also in a triad polycule with master kohga (since june 13th, 2024, botw, aoc, totk) and sooga (since june 18th 2024, aoc [but he's alive in the other games my [redacted] works at nintendo they told me]). but don't tell anybody you saw this edit bc I don't want to have an f/o that somebody out there already has and make them sad or feel odd. also my self-insert is a rito. if you care,,

★ My main interests beyond my sweetheart of a skeleton and the Yiga polycule include...

Splatoon/Mario (I am also generally knowledgeable about other Nintendo franchises and am particularly fond of the N64 Era of games. However, I also am fond of some games from the GameCube, Wii U, and SNES.) (Side Note: As long as Nintendo either distributes their games (capcom/bandai namco) or they're competitors/closely affiliated (sega), I'll know some of their products too. I'm kind of familiar with PlayStation stuff too, but never ask me about Xbox franchises because I will not know anything about them.)

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (non-manga parts, haven't read the manga yet)

Touhou (UPDATED: Not as familiar with print works unless it's Curiosities of Lotus Asia, but I know the basics of the plot of every one of the main games/am familiar with the characters thus far, except Double Dealing Character and the story of any of the .# games, except SHOSS.)

★ As a side note, I (also) love VOCALOID and UTAU, but that's more of a music thing than an active interest. My favorite (vocaloid) artists are Wowaka, Kikuo, Machigerita-P, mothy, nyanyannya, and Ghost. I also follow a lot of UTAU cover artists (mainly Yokune Ruko users).

★ Changing this section as it was kind of undermining how I am, but I am awful at social stuff, somehow more so online??? (I can talk to people in public but I cannot make friends because my brain does not let me.) I'm trying to improve and stuff, but I still suck at finding the courage to interact or say anything even though I care for those I mutually follow and adore seeing their silly content. (You people know who you are! ,,,maybe) I'm simply a lurker but I promise I think you guys with your ships are so cute and it's canon in my head. I would make you two (or more) in tomodachi life and make you become a couple.

★ You can also ask me anything or just random bs go, it doesn't matter, as I said, I appreciate it lol (and unlike conversations, I can definitely answer and keep up with asks.)

!! proship dni !! i don't want you in my silly blog !! (as well as basic dni criteria)

[marshmalleaux-queen]

kinda dead horse I’m beating here but I still have some Opinions™ about Age of Calamity that I just feel like sharing. Spoilers ahead, of course - also it’s long fjkdsjgk

Age of Calamity was cool in the beginning, but for me, it didn’t take long before the novelty wore off.

Don’t get me wrong, of the mainline series BOTW is my absolute favorite. I loved the story, I loved the characters, really everything about it. I get that at the time, BOTW was kind of the “it” thing so they were like “ah, let’s make the next Warriors title BOTW-centric!” but it really feels like less of a Warriors game and more like BOTW 1.5, with some Warriors elements sprinkled in it.

The story was fine - I thought the new villain was kind of clichéd but it makes me think of the older Zelda games where the Dragon to Ganon really was just some evil magic guy. I like that there’s more interaction between the Champions because we didn’t get to see a whole lot in BOTW, and I think the explanation for how you can have the ancestors/successors fight alongside them works fine in the context of the story (that is, it doesn’t feel like a total ass-pull like when some games go “oh!! suddenly time travel!!” or something)

The gameplay was neat, characters have their own gimmicks like in the first HW which I like, it makes them stand out more and gives them some extra utility in certain scenarios. Some of them were kind of tricky to wrap my head around, like Zelda with the Sheikah Slate and the Great Fairies but overall I liked how characters played.

I wasn’t a fan of how keeps/outposts weren’t named or made too terribly distinct on the map - but maybe I’m just misremembering that part. Also kind of nitpicky but I didn’t like how elemental rod usage carried over between battles. Made it kind of a hassle to remember where I could pick up more uses and go out of my way to refill it there, before going into another battle where it was easier to use the rods. I would have liked if they reset after each battle but meh. I also feel like the smithy in this game was either too complicated or too far removed from how it worked in the first HW, and I definitely didn’t get the most out of it like I should have, but maybe that’s just me being bad at reading comprehension or my brain going “less thinky thinky, more hacky slashy” adskjf

I think I was most disappointed when it came to the roster. To be fair, you can’t have a BOTW-centric Warriors game without the essential characters - Link Zelda the champions, their successors, etc. But I think there was a lot of missed opportunity as well. Some characters I didn’t fully expect but was happy we got, like King Rhoam, Hestu, Master Kohga, Purah/Robbie. I ended up loving Terrako and Sooga as well. Maz Koshia was neat and I get where they were going, but he’s kind of... there. kdjfhj

I knew that playable Ganon would be hard to incorporate this time around due to the fact that in BOTW he was an absolutely massive abomination, but something about his design and his gameplay this time around just didn’t sit right with me. Maybe it was his unique mechanic, maybe it was the fact that he reminded me of OOT Ganon if someone on deviantart made an edgy recolor of him, or the fact that his inclusion tacked on at the end really made it seem like an afterthought. And honestly, we really could have done without the Battle-Tested Guardian - that one absolutely felt like an ass-pull, and wasn’t very fun to play as.

Entirely personal preference here, but I would have loved for us to get a Lethal Joke Character™ similar to Tingle in the first HW - my vote would have gone to either Beedle or Kilton. I think it’s such a missed opportunity for them to not have included Kass, but maybe they just didn’t want a third Rito? And I can’t fathom why they didn’t make Astor playable when he’s very much an integral part of the story, whole moveset programmed when you fight him and everything... I remember getting excited for Cia/Volga/Wizzro in HW when they finally became playable so I was kind of expecting the same here.

I also would have liked more dialogue for things like getting x amount of kills, capturing a keep, that kind of stuff, or more dialogue between specific characters outside of just the roster, but I can guess a few reasons why they didn’t add more of that. There’s already a metric fuckton of dialogue in the game as a whole, and the backlog for the little messages getting in the way of triggering certain events was probably a big complaint in the first. And also, maybe they didn’t want to bother giving Link a companion to talk for him so they just cut out anything that could be said on his behalf dkjhfg.

There’s more stuff I could ramble about - like the material system, the lack of costumes for just about everyone except Link... but I think this post is long enough. I also still have lots of wishes about the roster in the first HW but that’s an even DEADER horse.

Speaking of the first HW though, I’ve actually been revisiting it recently, and... I feel sad that for such an old game, I’m still enjoying it more than AoC, even after investing countless hours into the latter. Like, even to this day I haven’t 100%’d HW (granted there were long gaps of not playing, but still), and there’s so much replayability. But I pre-ordered AoC, and even before the DLC came out, I literally only had like 1 more sidequest before there was nothing new to for me to do.

Anyway, I complain too much about games that aren’t really relevant anymore - I should probably try to get to bed at a decent hour tonight.

[tinypurplewizardfan]

What about Garen? You said you like Demacia, so I’m interested about what you think of the spinny man. I wish Rito would explore him more :(( (for the most liked least liked stuff)

send me a character and i’ll list:

favorite thing about them You know, I could spend a thousand words describing the hidden intricacies in what at first appears to be LoL's most simplistic character, but instead, I'm going to make you all read his short story. It does the most incredible job illuminating what exactly I find so fascinating about him.

But to summarize as best I can: he's lawful to the truest extent of the word. He loves his sister but struggles deeply with reconciling his love for her with the knowledge of her magic. He's fighting not only against his cultural upbringing but also a personal tragedy caused by magic in his family before. Despite this, though, he willingly carries that conflict rather than wanting to be unburdened from it.

He's one of the most fascinating characters for me.

least favorite thing about them Whatever the fuck Riot thinks they're doing with him and Katerina. Garen's entire character conflict is he's caught between his Demacian ideas and his love for his sister, which goes against that. Having him go gaga for the Noxian bimbo with zero regrets devalues that conflict. (I also hate Katerina so that certainly colors my opinion.)

favorite line I must say, Garen is not one for words. I do, however, love this interaction with Darius.

brOTP Fiora and Garen are unstoppable force meets immovable object. It's the perfect dynamic. Their friendship is the greatest thing.

OTP The closest thing I have to a ship with this dude is him having an unrequited crush on Jarvan IV

nOTP Garen x Katerina. bleh

random headcanon He's that one guy who's never forgotten a name in his entire life. This doesn't come easily. He's a bit of a forgetful person, but he goes out of his way to match people's faces to their names if he's met them properly. It's one of the many standards he holds himself to.

unpopular opinion The fact that I actually think he's a complex character is pretty funny.

song i associate with them Defender by Manowar. Classic high fantasy power metal ballad. It's about a young paladin being inspired by his father before him. There's even a lyric about fighting wizards. It's the perfect fit.

favorite picture of them I am nothing if but predictable. This comes from the last issue of the otherwise mediocre Lux comic.

[deiliamedlini]

WIP Wednesday

I wrote this last night and really don’t know where I’m going with it because I wrote another section of this that’s completely different from this first part, but I’m having too much fun so this might become a long oneshot or like a two/three chapter short fic eventually. I signed into my Guild Wars account for the first time in forever to watch the chat and apparently Lion’s Arch isn’t as interesting as it used to be. Not that any of that is really relevant. 

This is Zelda and the Champions as internet friends playing a MMORPG video game called Hyrule Warriors. 

~

Zelda Harkinian loved Fridays. Not that it was a rare thing to be obsessed with the weekend, but she maybe loved it a little too much. After a week of lesson plans, and cleaning the classrooms, and sneezing students, and emails asking for an extension on a paper that wasn’t even due yet, she relished the escape the weekend provided. Granted, she still had to grade about a hundred tests, but that was a problem for Sunday or even Monday.

Smiling down at her roommate, a kitten she’d raised when she found it in the street all alone, Zelda fed her girl—whom she’d named Duchess because she had every intent of treating her like royalty—and played with her for a bit before throwing down her bag in her room and then grabbed a water and a granola bar before heading to her desk. She flipped her laptop open and booting up Hyrule Warriors, her favorite open world MMORPG.

Her internet sucked, so she grabbed her phone to aimlessly scroll to see if there was any news or updates. But it was pretty dull.

Instead, she thought back to how this whole weekend ritual began.

She’d been in a cavern just off of Death Mountain for about three days killing fire keese, lizalfos, and beamos. As a mage, her AOE skills made short work of the larger groups, hitting them all at once. It was especially useful here because her main specialties were water and light, but she struggled when boss fights came out. The NPCs weren’t great teammates, and she constantly found herself resurrecting far from the boss, only to make a long run with a health penalty that ended with her getting killed again, until her heath penalty was maxed out and she had to restart for any hope of succeeding. As a mage, her light armor made her vulnerable to physical attacks, and this boss was very physical.

Zelda didn’t like interacting with people in this game. It was massively popular, and the chat was always running. Sometimes, she’d just sit at an outpost and watch people talk. Her favorite interactions were often the random ones. She’d begun to look up the acronyms everyone used in chat just to understand them better. WTS= want to sell.

Indigo2421: WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Indigo2421WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Indigo2421WTS: Guardian Short Sword 4k rupees

Britneigh4Horses: WTS My mother. 1 rupee. Will pay postage fee.

But after her days of suffering in the lonely caverns in Death Mountain, she relented.

A quick search had her hands shaking, but she typed quickly so she couldn’t back out after she’d hit enter.

xPrincessZx: LFG Dodongo’s Cavern

Holding her breath, she’d waited in the hopes of a private message being sent to her.

One did.

(PM): ThunderstruckQueen: What missin are doing there?

(PM): ThunderstruckQueen: Mission*

(PM): xPrincessZx: I have to kill the Dodongo boss for the main story

ThunderstruckQueen would like to join your party.

Biting her nails, she’d accepted.

(PM): RockRoast12345: Still need someone?

(PM): xPrincessZx: Yes! That would be great! Thanks!

RockRoast12345 would like to join your party.

That had been how it started: A goron warrior with a Warhammer and some serious defensive moves joined as the tank to take as much damage for the team as he could stand, and a Gerudo Paladin had joined her party. Zelda was jealous of the purchase-only red hairstyle the Gerudo had for her character. She had a sword and shield, but her body flickered with elemental lightening magic. In-game purchase effects.

They’d defeated Dodongo with ease, and had gone on several missions together that day, taking down their storylines with relative ease. But they couldn’t function with the NPC healer who barely functioned at all.

So, ThunderstruckQueen had taken to the map chat and put out a request.

ThunderstruckQueen: I found someone. She’s a Zora Cleric. Level 40

RockRoast12345: Let her in! I want to get this one over with

Rutella Zoran IV would like to join your party.

After that, the four of them realized they worked so well together that they’d formed a guild. The Champions. ThunderstruckQueen paid the guild fee, bought a hall, and began decorating it with merchants, and chests. Zelda still shuddered, wondering what she did to have so many rupees ready to go. Needless to say, she made herself the leader.

Some days, they didn’t play together. Other times, only two of them were on. But on weekends, they all came together.

But it had been a Monday when Zelda played, and she’d been alone. Having already tossed her tissue box across her room in frustration, she debated making a new character with more defense, but she sucked it up and went into the Castle Town map, ready to ask for help. She couldn’t wait until she could get to be a higher level. As it was, she’d only gotten to these level 40 areas as a 32 because of Rutella.

Suddenly, a random Hylian man in green with a fancy sword and shield ran up to her and bowed. Zelda scoffed at her computer screen, unsure if she was supposed to respond.

She didn’t need to.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Hey Princess

(PM): xPrincessZx: Hello?

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Jst wondering if u have a spare flower crown from yesterday’s festival. Missed it. Will pay

Zelda pulled up her inventory, forgetting she was still wearing her flower crown from the Flower Fest. It must have been what tipped him off. In fact, she had four spares.

(PM): zPrincessZx:  Yeah, I do. Come to the chest and I’ll trade.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: Thx

She’d never done a trade with anyone who wasn’t in her guild, so she’d felt nervous running to grab it.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: How much u want?

(PM): xPrincessZx: Actually, I’ll give it to you free if you’re willing to help me with a quest? Or 10k.

WildKnightOut2 would like to join your party.

She accepted and watched his character appear in the corner of her screen.

WildKnightOut2: That’s a rip off, btw. Crowns are with 15k at least. Don’t undersell

xPrincessZx: Thanks. I didn’t realize. I’m still kind of new.

WildKnightOut2: Howd u get out here then?

xPrincessZx: I had a run from a friend in my guild.

WildKnightOut2: Got room for a warrior in there?

Zelda introduced him to the other Champions when they’d signed back on, and after a few weeks, Zelda had leveled up enough that she didn’t need to constantly rely on a teammate. But still. She liked Wild the best after ThunderstruckQueen.

They’d brought in a Rito Ranger named TheBestYouveNeverMet, which immediately set Wild off.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: should I aggro a group over so he has to fight them for us?

(PM): xPrincessZx: No! Don’t do that! I’ll get sent over to deal with them!

(PM): xPrincessZx: HEY! I SEE YOU ON THE MAP!

(PM): xPrincessZx: WILD GET BACK TO THE GROUP

On the mini-map, she saw a hoard of red coming at them and rolled her eyes before joining TheBest to kill them with area attacks. Rutella stayed back to heal them, but Thunder and Rock both continued on, unfazed.

ThunderstruckQueen: Wild you’re an idiot

But that was then. This was now.

They’d been together for months as a guild, and now, the six of them knew how the others worked.

If Wild or TheBest took off on their own, no one would follow. They’d both been killed numerous times in an attempt to piss the other off. Zelda had learned to stay with Thunder and Rock. Rutella flitted between running back to revive the idiots, or sticking with the smarter members while letting them heal on their own.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: u wound me

Zelda chuckled, but he wasn’t done.

(PM): WildKnightOut2: After all ive done for u

(PM): WildKnightOut2: u leave me to die

(PM): xPrincessZx: Don’t run off next time

It was a Wednesday when she and Wild were playing alone, so they freely used party chat for ease. She’d surpassed his level, and towered as a 93 while he was an 87.

WildKnightOut2: Hang on. Fuzzball wants food

Zelda stared at his character on her screen, wondering if he looked anything like that avatar. Blonde hair, muscular, piercing blue eyes. She’d made her character look like herself, so it wasn’t hard to imagine others had. Plus, he was the only Hylian. She highly doubted that RockRoast12345 was actually a giant rock-man, or that Rutella Zoran IV was a short fish lady.

She knew everything about these people except their names, faces, and voices.

She knew that ThunderstruckQueen was a single mother who called her daughter Ri on chat. She was a chief of police, and had a few hundred of her force to look out for. Still, she wanted to quit soon to join the military reserve forces now that her daughter was getting older. Devoted and loyal, Thunder occasionally snapped when everyone would start fighting with each other, though it was usually directed at TheBest and Wild, the annoyance sometimes extended out to others.

She knew that RockRoast12345 was older than all of them and had a young grandson. He’d bonded with Thunder over their children at first, and then, without meaning to, they became the parents of the group. Recently, Rock had retired from working as a supervisor in a mine, and gaming had become his way of relieving some of that boredom. But he told the best stories when they were idling around, just stories about anything, and they were always captivating. Also, he was afraid of dogs.

She knew that Rutella Zoran IV was the daughter of a politician. She cared for her little brother like he was her own, and sometimes, he took control of her character, proudly revealing that his real name was Sidon. She was in school to be a doctor, and that made her family prouder than anything. She lived and breathed for her family.

TheBestYouveNeverMet was a pilot. His schedule was the most hectic out of everyone’s because of the flights, but he was sarcastic to the core, and sometimes, the sarcasm was simply rude and definitely didn’t translate well over chat. He was superior, and since he’d been playing the game longest, he thought it entitled him to make more decisions. But Zelda knew from her private conversations with him that deep down, he was sweet and caring. He’d always be the first to ask her how her day was, and he’d learned some of her students’ names to ask if they’d been nuisances.

But Zelda spent the most time talking to WildKnightOut2, so she knew the most about him. At first, they’d bonded over the fact that they both had cats. His was called Fuzzball, an orange, fat cat that needed to exercise more. He’d tried to leash him, but Fuzz wasn’t interested. Sometimes, Fuzz would crawl over the keys, send Wild running, and send chat a long stream of letters.

He was funny and made comments in her private chat while they were playing that had her roaring at times.

He was a rock-climbing instructor and in his free time, he was a free solo climber. When she’d looked it up, she’d been horrified to see that he basically climbed mountains without a harness or ropes, and a fall could kill him. She’d asked if he was good at it, or just did it for fun, and his answer had been an ambiguous “yes.”

She knew about his family. He didn’t live near them, but he kept in contact with his grandparents, his father, and his little sister.

WildKnightOut2: k back. Where we going princess?

xPrincessZx: I need to farm for new armor out in the Haunted Wasteland. Do you need to do anything?

WildKnightOut2: I need to help u farm in the haunted wasteland. What do you need?

xPrincessZx: 10 Rubies

WildKnightOut2: damn ok I have 2 u can have so u only need 8

xPrincessZx: Thanks. How’d that party go last night?

WildKnightOut2: Sucked

xPrincessZx: Cool details

WildKnightOut2: If ud been there, ud have hated it

xPrincessZx: Why?

WildKnightOut2: Bunch of self-absorbed idiots. Like TheBest is

xPrincessZx: Lol. He’s not that bad.

WildKnightOut2: if u say so

They headed into the Wasteland looking for red poes that had rare drops for rubies. She and Wild took out a few groups before they started to struggle. Neither could play and talk at the same time fast enough to warn the other that something was happening, and they both ended up at the shrine of resurrection more times than they cared to admit.

xPrincessZx: Hey Wild. This might sound weird, but do you have that gaming app where we could just maybe voice chat?

xPrincessZx: Unless you’re not comfortable with that. We can invite the others, and when we play together, and it would probably make life a thousand times easier

xPrincessZx: But it’s okay if you don’t want to

WildKnightOut2: yeah I have it

Oh, Zelda thought to herself. That was easy.

xPrincessZx: Do you want to add me? I have the same name

She watched her phone like it was food in the microwave, only occasionally glancing at her computer to see if Wild had sent her another message. She drummed her fingers and her leg started to bounce until her screen lit up.

WildKnight has sent you a friend request.

She hastily hit accept and grabbed her headphones from the drawer before typing into her phone.

xPrincessZx: Your name is missing a few things here.

WildKnight: Yeah HW already had someone with this name so I added on

xPrincessZx: The meaning completely changes

WildKnight: which do you like better?

Zelda froze, unable to make her fingers type. Was he flirting? Was that how people flirted online? She was really good at reading body language cues, and that was always how she knew someone was flirting. But this? There was no context! How was she supposed to know?

xPrincessZx: Which fits your personality more?

That was a safe way of getting out of answering while still sounding maybe like she was flirting. Right?

WildKnight: this one

Zelda’s face warmed up and she put her head in her hands, unsure how to respond. How does she respond to that? What if he wasn’t flirting? What if he was.

[the-hero-of-ancients]

Introduction

Hello! Im Aki, the runner of this Legend of Zelda roleplay blog. I wanted to make this introductory post to set ground rules and give the basics of my oc! Im new to this business, so feel free to send me an ask about my oc or to start a roleplay!

Ground Rules

No NSFW! I am an asexual minor who is very much uncomfortable when that kind of thing comes from no where! And i dont want it anyways!

Keep cursing down in asks/responses, please! I understand and am okay with it if it matches the situation or character, but excessive cursing makes me uncomfy.

Don't be pushy or such in my inbox! I want to take this a few threads at a time or else I'll get overwhelmed. And I have a life outside of Tumblr!

For roleplay

Smaller responses are fine, but they need to be more than a few sentences! And preferably, send me a dm or in your ask let me know the premise for the interaction! I do roleplay best knowing what's happening!

If you're sending a rp starter, please state somewhere that you are!

Interaction with characters not set in the general botw area is completely fine! Villains, heros, ocs, whatever.

I'm great with whump, fluff, hurt/comfort, and just silly interactions!

Character Introduction

Name: Lyss/Link

Age: 15

Race: Gerudo-Hylian

Pronouns: She, He, They (changes; genderqueer)

Ability: they're able to change their appearance to look like more masculine/feminine/androgynous (not really important for rp tho, i guess)

Key items: Sheika Slate, hero's outfit, gerudo outfit

Languages: Hylian, Gerudo, sign for both and Rito but ptefers to use a mix of all three when signing.

Story line stuff

Lyss is the hero from 10,000 years before the events of Calamity. They're the hero that sealed Ganon under the Castle of Hyrule, and was there for the development of the guardians and divine beasts. However, due to a series of accidents, they accidentally threw themself into the future (to botw's time, post Calamity while Link is running around the Great Plateau). Needless to say, it was quite a culture shock to them. So they're running around Hyrule while trying to figure stuff out! Sometime they'll run into the feral child that is Wild (botw Link), but that's for later.

Appearance

They have dark, fluffy red hair that is often in a ponytail and is rather tall due to their gerudo heritage. Roughly a head taller than Wild, and has a good build. They lost Fi and the Master Sword somewhere along their travel to the future, so they have to rely on the Gerudo and Guardian swords they had on them and whatever else they can find. They also have burn scars from Malace from their fight with Ganon in their own time on the right side of their face from their eye down. They can still see.

If you'd like to roleplay or just ask questions, feel free! My asks are open and ready!

[socially-awkward-chocobo]

Ok, so, the Corrupt Hylia au

Okay, so, out of the four art posts I've made, two of them have been tagged with "Corrupt Hylia au." An au I haven't really talked about that much. I should probably fix that. (Definitely. I mean definitely) Prepare for an info-dump

The Corrupt Hylia au was created when I was reading a fanfic at the same time I saw a post about how Hylia's existence made everything black and white. Some details of it were on my mind and I thought, 'hmmm, the story is too black and white,' and thus an au where Hylia is a manipulative b-tch controlling everything for her perfect hero villain story was born. Fabricating a curse, creating villains, capturing a certain someone to be the hero's "test," all with the Sheikah (but not the Yiga. They defected for a reason and Hylia is half of it.) I'll explain the 5,000 yrs ago plot, since I have that figured out but not the actual plot. It’s gonna be long and under the cut for those interested.

During one of the loops, one where she's there physically to make sure everything stays on track, a Shadow escapes and finds the hero. Lies are revealed, and all goes well until a Sheikah goes there "searching" for the hero and they have to interact with Hylia. Anyways, anyone can tell there's something wrong with Hylia, including the princess. The (corrupt) goddess just has that offsetting aura around her. Link meets here and they formulate a plan when they know they aren't being listened to. Anyways, it takes two years but they get a lot of people on their side. (Ganon, Vaati, Ghirahim, the Twili, Rito, Zora, Goron, and Gerudo) Vaati and Zelda (who have become research buddies) devise a spell to remember past lives - and that's how they learned the curse was fake, because Hylia f-cked around with the first hero's memories a lot, and the spell undid it while keeping those fabricated memories. You may have noticed, but things are going too well.

Anyways, at a parade or festival for who knows what (certainly not me) the Sheikah - who were sharing "experimental" (read: tech they've been hogging) so even people who aren't there can watch it happening. This was all part of a plan made by the Sheikah because (somehow) replaced Ghirahim's earing with one that would mind control him. (think what happened to Ingo in OoT manga.) The plan was to control him and make him wreak havoc, make people not trust him, and by extension, Ganon. That doesn't work, because Link (and Shadow) manage to break the jewel. Hylia tries to do some sort of "what an evil barbaric individual" speech, but Link cuts her off and calls her out on her bullsh-t. Not just about the parade, but about everything - the fake curse, messing around with the first hero’s memories, creating villains for the hero and princess to defeat, having the Sheikah do dirty work in the shadows, manipulating a darkling for the sake of “testing” the hero, controlling the king’s free will - EVERYTHING. And remember those speakers and cameras the Sheikah were sharing? They broadcasted all of it to Hyrule. And because Link had always been a good person, helping people out of the kindness of his heart, a lot of people believed he was telling the truth. This is the start of the war.

The ruined parade is the battlefield, they win and push back Hylia this time because she was caught off guard. But now she knows what's happening, and she is p-ssed. After the start of the rebellion, it is the first time she infuses her magic with malice. A few more battles later, a major one at Korok Forest that gets the forest children involved, and the crew makes the decision to split the Triforce into eight pieces. Ganon, Zant, and Ghirahim each have 1/3 power, Zelda, Midna, and Vaati all have 1/3 wisdom, and Link and Shadow each have 1/2 courage. If Hylia wants the entire Triforce,  they're gonna make her chances of getting it as slim as possible.

One year into the war, and the scales haven't really tipped to either side. But Shadow (who was incapacitated and couldn't come out), Ganon, and Link were up against Hylia. Hylia uses an illusion on Link to make herself look like either a Marin or a past Zelda, and it makes Link freeze up and give Hylia a chance to attack and try to kill Link. Except that Ganon took the hit instead. Link snaps out of it, stuns Hylia, and tries retreating with Ganon. He doesn't get to Ghirahim in time, and so by the time Zelda can heal him, it's too late. With the demoralizing death of Ganon, things start to spiral downhill. Over the next three years they lost Vaati, Zant, and almost Midna. The only small victory that happened was Shadow breaking the mirror the Sheikah had forced bonded them to, and would mean that the Sheikah wouldn't be able to just count on Shadow stumbling out of there when he died anymore. (Shadow thought this meant his next death would be his last.)

Four more years after that, there are more fights and they get pushed back more and more. Somehow (haven't figured out how yet) they get in contact with the main three goddesses (Din, Nayru, Farore) and Hyrule will be sealed underground by them, Hylia with it. They know this won't be permanent, and hope it buys them enough time for the next reincarnation cycle to happen. As they leave, they're being followed by Hylia and the Sheikah. Link and Shadow make a decision to stay behind and make sure Hylia stays underground until the sealing. They know they're going to die doing this, but the worse they hurt Hylia, the longer it will take for her to break the seal.

The other leaders try to argue to let somebody else do it (mainly Zelda and Midna), but Link argues back that Hyrule needs their leaders, and Ghirahim made a promise to Ganon, one he can't keep if he's trapped or dead. So Zelda caves and creates a bow of light with enough charge for five arrows. The other leaders (and Ghira) all add some of their own magic to it, and Link and Shadow head off. The next part is going to be ripped directly from my notes because I'm lazy I don't know how else to phrase it.

Once they get to where the Sheikah are, Shadow immediately starts using the shadows to teleport and starts killing large amounts of them. Link kills whoever is foolish enough to attack him head-on swiftly with the Master Sword. They carve a path to Hylia.

The fight with Hylia is long and brutal. It is clear now that Hylia is using malice and is clearly affected by it. Malice-like pink is spreading on her along with one of her eyes becoming a malice eye. And it has not done anything for her sanity.

Hylia sends a lethal blast of light magic into Shadow and Link is covered in Malice injuries

Link gets separated from the Master Sword. Hylia is about to land the finishing blow on him when Shadow - who is currently dying btw - picks up the Master Sword (which is actively burning his hands and speeding up his death) and stabs her from behind. Shadow says something and Link uses the Light Bow. One shot in the head, one shot in the throat, one shot in the heart, one shot in the stomach, and one shot right on the master sword - which causes a beam affect that they learned about in one of the war’s earlier battles. Hylia isn’t dead, but she won’t be recovering for a while.

Link and Shadow share some final words before dying.

I still need to figure out the actual plot and stuff, but uh, if you read to the end, I hope you enjoyed! ^_^ 

(Ps: if there’s anything triggering or stuff, ask for me to tag and I will)

[muffintonic]

Alright, I think i’m done BOTW 2 spamming for today. Anywho, time for some thoughts in general!

1) I hated how the shrines in BOTW were so cold and dark compared to the bright and lively nature outside (I wish they had all looked like the Master Trials challenge where there were trees and stuff incorporated inside), so I hope if we’re forced to have dungeons they’ll be more like the Wind Waker ones. 2) I hope they don’t make us use the grappling hook or anything like in Wind Waker to move around the sky islands (I hated that mechanic). 3) I’m probably one of the few people who wanted less Zelda and more of the Champions in HWAOC since i’m only really attached to BOTW (and we saw a fair amount of Tetra in Wind Waker)/apparently Zelda’s been sidelined in all the other games, so i’m hoping in vain that we get more Champions material in BOTW 2. Also, Link could stand to have some more cutscenes centered around him as well (the few we got in some of the sidequests in BOTW were great). 4) I only really somewhat care about Riju and Sidon, so I won’t mind if the new gang gets sidelined in BOTW 2 (I still think Nintendo wasted the found family/band of brothers aspect on the dead characters--I love them so much and they’re all I want!! The problem is, they’re dead and I don’t really care all that much about their replacements!!! I dunno, maybe i’m hampered by the fact that I can replay the original champions’ memories whenever I want/read their diaries, but I can’t rewatch the new gang’s cutscenes AKA i’ve forgotten their characterization since they don’t talk to me much now that the game’s over). It’d be great if they have some weaving storylines in BOTW 2 that will get me more invested in them, but currently i’m not that interested. 5) Speaking of which, I know it’s 100% not going to happen, but goddang if I don’t want the Champions to have been returned to life. Nintendo totally squandered HWAOC by not making it a true prequel/canon to BOTW (the Champions Ballad confirmed that the Divine Beasts had trials in order to be synced to the champs, so the new gen use of them wouldn’t have happened without that + Mipha thought Link had changed in BOTW yet says in HWAOC that he hasn’t changed + some scenes like “Champion Revali’s Song” never happened at all/got replaced with alternative scenes that really changed some dynamics + basically all of Revali’s time-relative characterization from his diary/pre-100 years of solitude got thrown out + I feel like Daruk got totally sidelined), so i’m still craving that Champions content. Also, I feel like it’s totally unfair that Zelda came out of 100 years totally unaged while everyone else died. Life seems to really suck for people in the LoZ universe who aren’t chosen by divine powers. 6) They’d better keep it open world and non-linear. I can’t go back to being forced to backtrack/trudge through things, I just can’t. BOTW was everything i’ve ever dreamed about in a game (truly open world + non-linear + interactive + meaningful story + lots of outfits + beautiful landscapes) with Skyrim previously being the only thing that came close to what I wanted, so I really hope BOTW 2 doesn’t deviate too much from that. 7) I really liked Kass in BOTW, but i’m not sure what direction they’d go with him in BOTW 2/i’d be fine if he sat BOTW 2 out. I worked so hard to complete all his quests in BOTW so he’d go back home to his family, GODDANGIT, KASS. 8) Someone mentioned that since the first trailer had underground aspects, we’re probably going to be playing as Zelda with the Slate there, and I agree. They didn’t make a playable model for her in HWAOC for nothing. 9) I want to be able to stable the deer and bears and stuff, but I know that won’t happen. Being able to ride the moose and rhino things from the Hebra area probably won’t happen either, but I want to ride them!!! 10) I hope there’ll be at least a few new buildings and stuff in the towns/they’ve started construction on some areas in Central Hyrule, but I guess that’ll depend on how long it’s been in-universe since BOTW. Or maybe not, considering how there’s still Karson and Hudson even though Bolson retired from Bolson Construction--insta-towns like Tarrey Town could totally be feasible if they wanted! 11) I have one foot in the camp that believes there’ll be time shenanigans in BOTW 2. HWAOC totally threw me off with it being an alternate timeline, so i’m not sure whether we’re going to be experiencing that again or time travel itself, but I definitely won’t be surprised this time around if Nintendo goes that route again (and it would be super interesting to see the Link from 10,000 years ago). I’m not entirely convinced that the Link we see exploring the sky in the second trailer isn’t our Link, mainly because he seems to still have on the blue boxers from BOTW. 12) I also heard that maybe this will be the last LoZ game ever since something something Demise something Skyward Sword something something lore from games i’ve only vaguely looked into (i’ve only ever played BOTW --> Wind Waker --> HWAOC)??? If so, it kind of sucks that I came in just when they started making games with playstyles palatable to me (I had to look up every single thing when playing Wind Waker, but BOTW let me solve things according to MY logic/I missed being able to explore in HWAOC), but at least it’ll end on a super high note/I won’t experience later disappointment, I guess. If BOTW 2 involves breaking the reincarnation cycle for the Triforcers, I would be really surprised. (On a related note, Nintendo making Ganondorf good would also be a 100% shock to me, but it would be great to end on that as a subversion. Yes, I want them to bring back the semi-complicated Ganondorf from Wind Waker.) 13) I hope they don’t rush releasing it. I heard they pushed back BOTW originally (I got it in 2019), but it came out fantastic for it! I know COVID’s been affecting things, so I really hope they’re treating their staff right and are mindful of crunch. 14) I want even more outfits (there seem to be at least two new ones, if the variant of the Hylian Tunic crossed with Link’s Champion’s Tunic counts). Give me all the outfits!!! Also, I hope we get even more hair variations in addition to the hair down option (which is all i’ve ever wanted since I saw the mod that altered the Ancient Helmet). 15) I wonder if we’re going to get a bonus for having both BOTW and HWAOC save data. 16) I wonder if we’re going to be keeping the Champions’ skills. I’m going to miss being super overpowered, if not. 17) I hope Nintendo doesn’t cave in and make surfaces climbable in the rain. Having that limiter is more realistic and Link would otherwise be too overpowered with a super climbing ability. 18) I liked BOTW’s scattered music that got more noticeable in populated areas because it was fitting for the post-apocalyptical/nature aspect. Hearing your footsteps in an open field and the buzzing of insects was super nice and prevented me from getting music fatigue (which i’d probably experience since whenever I play BOTW it’s for 5-10 hours at a time). I hope Nintendo either keeps that or makes audio options. 19) I heard that BOTW 2 is going to be super dark or something, and i’m okay with dark, but not GRIMdark, so I hope it doesn’t go that far. From what we’ve seen in the second trailer it still looks beautiful, but I hope it doesn’t do that thing that some games do where after the midpoint/a certain story point all the scenery permanently changes to be dark and scary (that’ll seriously hamper post-game playability for me if so). 20) If they expand on the Zonai, that would be super cool! Doubly cool if the time travel shenanigans involve them/ancient Link being one! 21) I kind of want windstorms to be a weather feature. We had lightning, heat, and cold, but no wind! No, I don’t count the wind geysers and the occasional breeze in Tabantha. 22) I want a chest in my house to hold more weapons than just the gear mounts. BOTW only had enough mounts for the champions’ gear, but it also had rare items like the Kite Shield and Forest Dweller’s Sword that you can’t get anymore once you use them up! 23) I want to be able to stable my horses at my house. What’s the point of that little area if you can’t stable your horse there! 24) Speaking of Link’s house: where is Zelda going to live? If the castle’s not reconstructed, it’d be neat if Link adds an extension to his house for her. 25) I hope they open up part-time jobs (think Mabinogi) as an option to earn rupees. Having to hunt for Luminous Stone deposits or feed Trott to make money can be such a chore. I think some of BOTW’s minigames/sidequests might count as those, but those minigames were either frustrating if your goal is to earn money (since most of them cost money to play in the first place and the mechanics weren’t always easy), or didn’t earn that much in general. 26) I wonder if Kilton is going to have updated items since the monsters seem to have changed. 27) I want to be able to dive underwater (mainly so I can explore the beautiful reefs over at Lurelin). A dive meter like the one from Super Mario Sunshine would be cool. Also, it’d doubly be neat if you had a separate stamina wheel for swimming and could permanently upgrade your swim/diving stamina (the speed+ swimming items just consumed your stamina faster, which was a pain)! 28) It’s definitely too late for this, but it’s a shame that the Hylians have so many face/body/hair and outfit variations, but the Zora, Rito, and Gorons don’t. The Gerudo were kind of okay with the hair and body variations, but the other races seemed to have a serious copy-paste problem. I guess technically some of the more important NPCs (ones with quests/cutscene triggers) had different coloring, but they were severely lacking in clothing variation. Also, the only old Rito was the elder??? At least the Gorons and Zora had some old folks besides their leader walking around. Very weird, but I don’t think BOTW 2 can fix any of this. 29) I wonder how they’re going to do the final boss battle, considering how epic/cinematic the BOTW 2x battle was. What can top fighting (on horseback, no less) a giant, flaming boar made out of malice? 30) I wonder what the Yiga are going to be up to, considering how Ganondorf seems to be somewhat kicking in BOTW 2.