#botw spoilers

[prokopetz]

The thing I like about the Blood Moon mechanic in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is how it affords game-mechanical transparency to the player.

Like, we all know the reason it exists is because, like any complex open-world game, BotW and TotK periodically need to hit the reset button on all non-trivial changes to the world state; in games that don't, your save file has unbounded growth due to the need to keep track of every little thing you've ever done, and eventually the system runs out of memory, save/load performance goes to shit, or both. It's basic software engineering constraints dictating the shape of play.

The thing is, most open world games try to do this subtly, perhaps by setting individual timers for the consequences of different actions to expire, or by linking world-state cleanup to proximity to the player character, but in practice it never works – trying to be sneaky about it paradoxically makes it more obtrusive to the player by rendering it opaque and unpredictable, often prompting the development of superstitious gameplay rituals to work around it.

BotW and TotK take precisely the opposite tack and make it 100% transparent and 100% predictable. Once a week, at exactly the same time of day, there's a spooky cutscene and an evil wizard undoes every change you've made to the world that doesn't have an associated quest log entry. Why everything at once, and always on the same schedule? A wizard did it. Why exactly and only those changes that don't have quest logs attached? See again: a wizard did it.

And this isn't just a gameplay conceit. Everybody knows about the evil wizard! The fact that the evil wizard keeps resetting everybody's efforts to fix the befuckening of the world is a central plot point. There are organisations whose chartered purpose is to go around redoing stuff that's been undone by the wizard.

It makes me wonder what other potential synergies between fantasy worldbuilding and mechanical transparency are going unexploited.

[puyoupuyou]

staring into the sun

partly inspired by a video essay, a great watch even tho there’s nothing relate to zelink lol

[fancyhdraws]

My favourite of Link's optional dialogue in BotW 😂 He's as dense as I am.

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[giriduck]

Maybe I’m just in a mood, or maybe it’s a cutscene-without-context thing, but rewatching the end of BotW, it’s irritating how Zelda is freed from Dark Beast Ganon, blasts the beast into oblivion with her golden goddess powers, gracefully collapses the explosion and residual Calamity whisps into a singularity, then turns to Link and thanks him / the player for defeating Ganon.

Little lady, YOU defeated Ganon. Yes, Link ran around Hyrule for weeks (or months) and recollected memories, regained his own powers, and helped pretty much everyone in the kingdom. Yes, he defeated four Blight Ganons and Calamity Ganon. Yes, Link accomplished a tremendous amount of work and absolutely deserves thanks. Yes, he is a true Hero of Hyrule.

But YOU also kept Ganon sealed for a century. YOU gave Link—and the entire kingdom—time to heal. Link freed you, so that YOU could deliver the finishing blow; something that only YOU could do.

Zelda deserves more credit for her part in this enormous team effort.

[amnesiamilk]

Things I’d like to point out about the ancient hero

Spoilers ahead for TOTk and botw

So it’s accepted that this is the hero depicted in the calamity/imprisoning war tapestry in kakriko(apologies for misspelling) village . He obviously hold the master sword which means that Fi must have chosen him to be worthy . I’d also like to point out that he has no horns, smaller ears , and red hair. The lack of horns could just be that he’s young and zonai must not get horns until they’re of age , but still. The smaller ears mean that he has some sort of Hylian blood in him . I’d also like to point out that ganon says that Mineru and Rauru are the last of their kind, even though the ancient hero exists . Maybe ganon doesn’t consider anyone with Hylian blood to be zonai , which is why he was so judgmental of rauru marrying a Hylian . (Ok ganon we get it youre racist). this is just me drabbling my thoughts . Please add anything if I missed soemthing

[alithographica]

ok you said we could ask about weird biology and this is close i think. ok so minor totk spoilers? these r in the depths and its not story related but still beware: yknow the dark skeletons? the huge fully formed ones? what creatures R Those?

I have not yet encountered the dark skeletons and the pics on Google are not helpful so I might have to update this when I actually find them, but...

The BotW great skeletons/leviathans spawned some speculation that they were references to creatures in other Legend of Zelda games—but I can't speak to that because BotW was my first LoZ game. What I can say is that they were very reminiscent of whale skeletons, just with a fantasy flair. It wouldn't surprise me to find that the dark skeletons are similarly cetaceaned.

All 3 of the BotW leviathans were slightly different variations on this theme:

Second pic © Manyee Desandies

Those are both baleen whales—no teeth, they filter their food with a sort of hair-like structure (a baleen.) There are also toothed whales, like orcas, that have pointy predatory teeth. Now, the leviathans back in BotW...

Beyond the obvious size, note the curved upper jaw, the sweeping arc of the two sides of the lower jaw, the low and protruding orbit (eye socket), the ribs that terminate partway down the spine...That's a whale model, even once you throw on some hind limbs or wings or an armored head like BotW did.

So whatever's down in the depths: Probably also whale-adjacent fantasy fun!

[chriskotiesen]

Breath of the Wild fanart

[cultycatlady]

To become an immortal dragon is to loose oneself.

Close ups below the cut <3

[affogato-analysis]

Hylia discourse

aka i don’t like botw Hylia and here’s why!

So i think everyone who likes botw Zelda dislikes her father which, fair! I however have seen very little Hylia discourse so here we are, getting into Hyrule’s Temple criticism!

Just to establish a couple things: we’ll call the ���Temple” the institution and practices linked to the worship of the divine, so here Hylia (and maybe the other three goddesses but botw isn’t trying to be heavy on its religious worldbuilding so it won’t change much for us). I chose ‘temple’ simply because there are, well, temples in Hyrule (it's basically Hyrule's equivalent to the Christian Church).

Also, i’ll establish here that this take is based on the assumption that Zelda’s power is mainly linked to Hylia, because she prays to that goddess in particular and she’s the only one really mentioned throughout the game (by the monks, the statue, the Sheikah and really everyone who spoke about religion in this game)

I don’t know like any lore about tloz as a general rule because i played like half of Twilight Princess, all of botw, EOW and i have played totk a bunch although i’m not done with the main quest. As I said, the following analysis is purely based on botw, although if someone more knowledgeable than me wants to add something/explain how I'm wrong, I'd be really happy to read that!

I repeat, this analysis is purely about botw content, and does not include elements from totk (i have an actual explanation to that and it’s that i’m not done with totk lmao) (and also i have some thoughts about the continuity of the two games but i’ll write about that later)

Spoilers for botw, by the way.

(also this is like 2k words)

SO! Religious and political discourse, my beloved.

Zelda prayed relentlessly to Hylia for years, in different springs to the point that she once fainted in one, and it did not work out. Zelda’s power manifested when the guardian was about to kill her and Link, most definitely not when she had any hope for it. She was just standing in between Link and death and it worked!

I can think of two interpretations as to why her power was unlocked here and now:

Zelda’s power was inherently hers to unlock and Hylia herself had no say on the how and when it’d be released.

Hylia gave it to her then when she needed it to protect her friend, and not before when she was just praying and asking for it like a tantrum child unable to earn it.

We’re gonna tackle that first option because it brings us to the Temple as an institution and the way Zelda was made to pray for years even when it didn’t work.

We don’t know if there is a religious chief (pope equivalent) in botw. With Zelda being the literal descendent of Hylia, I’m going to assume she’d rank pretty high on the scale of ‘how much does one matter to the Temple’. Which does not, in fact, give her that much power. She is stuck in a role that is constantly reaffirmed with every ceremony, trapping her more and more under layers and layers of symbolism.

I’m not gonna delve into sociology right there but symbols matter so much. They shape our beliefs, our beliefs shape the way we perceive the world and our actions. Symbols also shape how others see us. Symbols define what is right and wrong for someone to do, and that moral judgment is internalized. 

To put it simply, the more you present Zelda as the goddess of the legend, the less she can be anything else. She stops acting according to that picture of herself we’ve been given to see when she gets agency beyond that role — alone with Link after they become friends, when she’s studying the ruins, when she’s with Urbosa.

We won’t delve here in the question of why is she pictured in this or that way, IRL we could retrace the patterns and historicity of these symbols but we are in a game and pre-calamity Hyrule isn’t nearly developed enough for us to try a socio-historical analysis. Even my entire rant about symbols up there is already expanding a lot on the very little we actually see.

SO THEN! Symbols don’t just happen, they’re made. So how did these symbols get here and why are they relevant? symbols can die, lose and regain their relevance. Let me introduce you to the religious institution of the Temple.

We’re gonna extrapolate a shit lot over there, all of these are assumptions mostly based on very little factual information and a lot of assuming botw religious structure isn’t some highly elaborated innovative organization and looks enough like irl religions (Catholicism, Islam, Judaism because these are the only ones I know decently enough) (albeit mostly Catholicism).

There has to be a religious corps of people who live for and by religion. Because you need to get that temple running, and even if we never meet a priest-equivalent or anything, when Hylia’s existence is such an admitted fact, barely a belief at this point, there ought to be people devoted to that task.

I’m going to assume these people are in charge of spreading these symbols, because religious education and maintaining the Temple is their job. (I specify that because I don't want to make them sound evil and all, they spread the legends and teachings of their goddess because they love her) (wrecking both Link and Zelda’s lives is an unforeseen, unwanted, unnoticed side effect.) Their job makes them the most competent people when it comes to religion, so their power is basically a monopoly over any knowledge about the literal one way of salvation for Hyrule.

All of this to say, Zelda prays because that’s all that she knows. Because worship is seen as the one way to connect to Hylia — because most people aren’t her descendent — and the only people here to teach Zelda, especially after her mother’s death, rely on what they know to help her. And so, they send her praying. (And I get why they do, because when Link prays to the statue, Hylia answers and helps him regain his strength in exchange for emblems.)

And the Temple’s power is so massive that, when it doesn’t work again and again, they blame it on Zelda. Their knowledge can’t be wrong, they can’t be overwhelmed (just like her!) by the enormity of the task of awakening the power to seal the literal embodiment of evil, so it has to be her. She mustn’t pray hard enough, long enough, maybe she’s praying at the wrong spring. It can not be that their teachings are wrong and actively wasting her time, she must pray to connect to Hylia and her power.

And it doesn’t work. And when the calamity strikes, Zelda is still just a girl who has to face Ganon without divinity by her side.

And, when she stops trying to pray, when she reaches out to anything really as long as she can stand in between the calamity and her friend, her fingers wrap around her power and finally, finally, she is able to fight back. When all ended, when the springs failed her, Zelda found within herself the power she’d been asking someone else for.

In this perspective, Zelda’s power was hers all along and could not be awakened by Hylia, in a spring. The same way the sword chose Link and no one else, Zelda’s power had always been within her and in no one else’s hands.

(Also, and just maybe, a power meant to manifest in the face of evil was gonna manifest in the face of evil and not when a kind and benevolent goddess was looking at her favorite daughter, sheltering her from said evil.)

The Temple has knowledge and symbols, and with their authority on the religious domain, they trap Zelda in her role as a praying, waiting girl who has to earn, through her devotion to a goddess, a strength that was hers from the start.

And it kills many.

The second option is that Hylia didn’t want to give her power to a spoiled brat of a princess who thinks she can just ask for it instead of working for it.

It doesn’t change the fact that Zelda should probably not have been sent to pray that much and it was still a waste of time. No, the main thing that changes here is that Hylia was watching and she was the key to unlocking Zelda’s power.

And she didn’t when Zelda was praying, because a princess isn’t a beggar and Hylia’s descendant would have to be worthy of her birthright. Zelda would have to prove herself able to stare down Ganon himself.

So, when Zelda was constantly ushered away from the battlefields and protected at the expense of her people, when she was made to beg uselessly in the springs instead of reaching for knowledge — her own part of the triforce! —, when she lashed out at Link instead of working on bettering herself, Hylia did not answer.

Only when she stood up to Evil itself in a last ditch effort to protect her people did Hylia see in her what a princess, what her own child should be and deemed her worthy.

Why would she answer a tantrum child after all?

…

…

WELL!

When your answer to “why did you let Hyrule burn when you could have stepped in so much earlier?” is “I don’t respond well to tantrums”, I ask “where do your priorities lie?”!

A Goddess who condemns her entire people because one child didn’t live up to her expectations for maturity at the ripe age of seventeen is a Goddess who is, herself, throwing a tantrum.

“Force that girl to meet my divine, inhumane expectations, or you will all burn” is not the Word of a kind and benevolent goddess about her favorite daughter. This is the mentality of a tyrant too self-absorbed to step down from her ego and save her people, because she does not like the crying girl at the altar (as if the girl hadn’t been a sacrifice herself). This is a tantrum, just as much as Zelda’s anger at Link for trying to protect her. Except this tantrum threw Hyrule in a hundred years long misery, killed all five Champions and forced the now worthy Zelda to face the calamity on her own for a century, with the cruel assent of her Goddess.

One of my friends pointed out it might have elements of both. The religious corps pushes Zelda in the role of a begging, waiting, passive girl and Hylia stays resolutely quiet until Zelda breaks out of this mold to prove herself.

Which means two terrible things!

This religious corps tried its best to help Zelda unlock her power and only condemned her to fail repeatedly. They stuck her in a dress and made her pray and Hylia looked down upon her and refused such an heir. In their best attempts to help Zelda unleash her powers, they lock it further away and condemn themselves to destruction.

Hylia watched Zelda try her best to reach her according to the best of their knowledge and could not be bothered to send a word to her daughter. Not giving her the answer or her power, but just telling her ‘I see you’ would’ve been enough for Zelda to know Hylia was there. A simple ‘this is not the way’ would’ve been enough.

The more I speak, the more I think that maybe the Yiga clan had a couple points.

I also wanna point out really quickly the whole classism aspect of that ‘a princess isn’t a beggar’ sentence because, it’s not said in game but I said it while trying to figure out Hylia’s potential train of thought. Classism is a form of discrimination that assumes that poor people are less intelligent, morally inferior and generally worth less than rich people and it’s quite a piece of shit thing to say. So ‘a princess isn’t a beggar’ is inherently looking down on beggars and assuming that a princess should be inherently morally better. Classism sucks and I want to reinstate that my interpretation of Hylia’s silence isn’t my own opinion. No one is ‘less’ than someone else and I stand by that.

So yeah, what do we think?

[themarydragon]

So my friend sent me this link to a youtube video about why the TotK lore isn't interesting. I couldn't get through it without a ten-screen discord rant (on my PC monitor, not my phone) so I thought I would put some thoughts here.

I don't delve too deep into TotK story but there are def some spoilery statements below, consume at your own risk.

The initial assumptions here seem to be that (1) BotW was more respectful of "The Lore" than TotK, and that (2) TotK made some unforgiveable sins that BotW absolutely avoided.

Both of these are completely false. And I am NOT saying that neither BotW nor TotK shat upon accepted lore. They did. There is no recovering the Hyrule Historia timeline, objectively. Instead I contend that the truth is the precise opposite: Nintendo has NEVER actually cared to try to make LoZ games have ANY amount of continuity.

Take the slide at the 5 minute mark of the video linked, above, in which we see the Master Sword was created specifically to be used against Ganon, and then the 7 sages set out to find somebody valiant enough to wield it (this is from the user manual of A Link to the Past, from the SNES, which also was about The Imprisoning War). Which, if you're playing the home game, you know got ret'conned TWELVE YEARS AGO by Skyward Sword. He's using the slide to explain why it was ridiculous that Ganondorf was able to shatter the Master Sword in the prologue to TotK, which tells me they didn't pay much attention to the mechanic in BotW in which the Master Sword "runs out of power" if you use it too much. If Ganon is an aspect of Demise (again from Skyward Sword, far more recent lore than the slide being used in the vid) then the secret stone he's wielding is amplifying DEMISE (WAY stronger than just some dude), which is why he's able to shatter the blade - but still isn't enough to destroy the sword. His entire complaint about the Sword being broken suggests to me he either didn't play Skyward Sword or has forgotten it existed, and has DEFINITELY forgotten the 'weapons breaking' mechanic started in BotW.

He makes another complaint later about there not being an explanation for the disappearance of the Divine Beasts. Which, sure. I wondered what happened, and figured the 5ish years since then made it old news nobody was talking about it anymore. I get why that might have been a breaking point for somebody else. But it's not just a TotK problem; BotW didn't address it, either. We see the Divine Beasts being dug up by the Sheikah in Rhoam's flashback - how did they get buried? The towers shoot out of the ground, how did THEY get buried, after the last calamity? Who put the guardians underground? How? HOW, if nobody is allowed into the tunnels under Hyrule Castle? It didn't get explained for BotW, so why is that an unforgivable sin in TotK? They give more than a passing suggestion that Purah has repurposed the guardians - just LOOK at the Skyview Towers. The jumpscare for BotW players when you get grabbed in the Lookout Landing tower TELLS YOU where the guardians went.

There is a significant section in which video creator is quoting an interview I haven't seen (and don't give two shits about), and I think it needs to be said: what is in the game is canon. What is in the interviews from other people is, by definition, not game canon. If it was meant to be game canon it would be in the game. Neil Gaiman talks about this when people ask him for clarification of his stories, go check his FAQ if you want a really good delineation of canon from somebody with way more clout than me.

So let's just look at the lore he's defending from BotW. The map is wrong. Straight up wrong, from all the earlier Zelda games. Nintendo cannot decide where the Lost Woods should be, much less Spectacle Rock. The Temple of Time, which again is mentioned early on as a clear homage to the lore, is in the wrong damn spot. If this is the new Hyrule formed post-WindWaker (as indicated by the existance of Rito), the Temple of Time should have been destroyed. And why do the Rito and the Zora both exist? According to WindWaker, the Rito evolved from the Zora, who couldn't live in the salt of the sea. Which is a pretty big jump from the original game that had Zora in the ocean, and the two games following THAT in which they were straight-up monsters. I don't want to get into ALL the ways BotW breaks from the established lore, but there's a LOT. They don't mention the fucking Triforce ONCE, ffs, that's sort of a big damn deal.

I get there was a canon timeline published in Hyrule Historia. I bought that book for that exact reason. And, as someone who has loved this franchise since I got that first golden cartridge in 1987, I looked at that timeline once, laughed at it, and moved on with my life. BotW de-canonized that timeline already, in a LOT of ways.

So saying that TotK is evidence that Nintendo no longer cares about continuity or lore, and by NOT villifying BotW (or TP or SS) for the exact same problem is disingenuous at best. Saying that TotK is just nostalgia-baiting is ignoring the BotW map (Lake Saria, anyone? Ranch Ruins, anyone?) in general, as well as all the game-specific loot that had NO other reason to be there but straight-up nostalgia. The only reason for Zelda to mention the other heroes in the blessing we hear in the first memory is to (1) destroy the established timeline (skyward bound, adrift in time, or something about twilight, all in a world where Rito exist), or (2) prey on our nostalgia. TotK isn't any worse for putting the WW shirt and the Awakening armor into the game, in terms of wrecking the timeline or trying to feast on our nostalgia.

I'm not going to try to hypothesize what this person (or all his commenters) didn't like about the game, or why they're so willing to overlook all these problems in BotW to villify TotK. And everybody is welcome to like to dislike a game for whatever reason they want, IDGAF, you do you. What I AM saying is that for someone who's upset about the lore, he really doesn't seem to actually be aware of how inconsistent it's ALWAYS been. If TotK is the game that taught you that Nintendo isn't trying to follow their own lore, then I don't think you have been paying attention to the lore for a good long time.

tl;dr this is still my favorite series and if you hate that it breaks its own continuity then you've been asleep for the last 12 years of lore drops my good dude.

[almostfini]

I restarted TOTK after like 9 months break and I'm finding a lot of the same frustrations I had the first time. There's a lot of aspects I really like, but it's really imbalanced in other areas and I kinda hate it as a sequel to BOTW. Most of my friends say it's 10x better than BOTW so I feel like a party pooper but

1.BOTW is one of my favorite games of all time and

2. Part of one of my favorite series of all time

3. And I have some experience with game design so certain things bug me that other people don't care about (and that's totally fine).

I'm going to be posting about some of the things I like and dislike about TOTK and I'd love if other people shared their unpopular TOTK thoughts too (please be nice, this is just for fun)

[multbasa]

TotK spoilers: Dragon Tears quest and final boss

Visual timeline to compliment my theory about where the Triforce is throughout BotW and TotK as well as why the knowledge of the Triforce disappeared from Hyrulian society

[almost-correct-quotes]

love the way revali calls link "little knight". aw, are you only like the second shortest champion, counting him? gay little bird

[that-mysterious-table]

Ok but like, what if totk does the same “dying scene” they did in botw but with the roles reversed? Like Link shows up too late or Zelda sacrifices herself and temporarily “dies”? We watch him gather her in his arms and you can see the exact same words zelda said in botw in his eyes. He realizes how limp she is, tucks her head under his chin and the erhu version of Zelda’s lullaby we’ve been hearing in all the trailers starts to play as it hits him. She’s gone. He’s failed. Not just as the hero, but as a knight. As a partner. As a friend. His eyes widen. His shoulders start to heave and you realize this guy, who’s been calm and stoic for the whole series, is panicking. He knows he needs to move; to make a new plan now that Zelda is no longer there to help save hyrule. But he can’t. He cradles her and stares off into the distance because he can’t see his future anymore. In that moment, a safe world doesn’t mean anything if it’s without her, hyrule be damned. He’s alone in the one way he prayed he’d never experience again. He squeezes his eyes shut as tears begin to stream down his face and he mourns.

[amnesiamilk]

Botw/Totk Headcannons!

SPOILERS FOR BOTW AND TOTK’s ENDINGS

Riju is obsessed with sand seals because before her mother died she watched her mom sew the sand seal stuffed animals found in her room

Prince Sidon and Lady Yona are married for political reasons , they’re besties but they do not see eachother as romantic partners . Lady Yona is asexual and lesbian and has feelings for her guard. (The black Zora, i forgot her name sorry) .

Link brought The Light Dragon/Zelda silent princess flowers every day and often times braided them into her mane

Rauru and Sonia adopted Zelda , not legally , but she’s basically their daughter .

Bularia isn’t just Rijus guard but also acts as her mother . She cooks her breakfast every morning and sang her to sleep in botw, when she was younger.

Link and Zelda shared that one bed in their home . Infact this isn’t even a headcannon , it’s straight up canon .

Link uses sign language

Tulin and link are practically siblings , Teba doesn’t mind the chaos but doesn’t quite appreciate the explosives .

After Botw, the champions felt that they had served their purpose in the afterlife and therefore took away the ability that they gave to link as they passed to hylia’s lands .which is why link does not have the abilities in totk . Sometimes the champions visit him in his dreams though .

link is very cuddly and fluffy with Zelda and allthough it’s strange to zelda, she appreciates it nonetheless

Sidon and Riju are very good friends . Siblings almost . Riju tries to do sidon’s make up every now and then.

Speaking of makeup , gerudo make-up is made from hydromelons being ground into fine powder . This is used for eyeshadows and blushes . The iconic blue lipstick is made from chu-chu jelly .

The longer a hylians ear is, the more Royal blood they have .

Zelda keeps a portrait of all the champions and sages in her house .

[houseboywife]

Zelda was in stasis for a hundred years and her age didn't change. Fair enough. Purah has invented a way to de-age. Weird implications but ok. But what about master kohga???? Motherfucker was around in age of calamity looking and sounding the same way he does now and there is NO explanation. That guy's fucked up man.