#botw/totk Zelda gives me the feels

[nell0-0]

Hi Nell0 how are you? I’m find and thanks for all that useful information for my broken foot! Healing has been ok but it’s hard to be patient for it to heal especially when it’s already hot where I am and I use my pool to swim in it because of my ✨injury✨! Overall patience is virtue they say. Also how that LOZ comic coming along? Reading it while confined would be nice. Ok I’m heading on now but before I go which Zelda is your favorite? I’m torn between WindWaker Tetra and Wild/Tears Zelda! Both badbutt in their own ways! Thx. ♥️

Hello again anon! I hope everything goes well with your foot. I know it seems slow but better slow going and nicely done than rushing and badly healed.

The comic is going okay! I haven't been able to draw much this week bc of work and there was some conferences I needed to attend this weekend (10 hours of my weekend gone, oof) but I'm looking forward to the result when I'm done drawing at least the first part! It would be way faster if I didn't color it but well, I wanted to, so...

Tetra is such a good character, way different than other Zeldas in the franchise. Botw/totk Zelda has the benefit of being a complex character with a good story arc, the way she changes from her experiences. This is honestly difficult to answer bc I like botw/totk Zelda a lot, but if I had to choose one?

Spirit Tracks Zelda. Her chaotic energy is unparalleled in my eyes.

[ganondoodle]

me: finally im able to cope with how much i hate totk and can fuel that energy into other things :)

nintendy: the shiekah tech just dissappeared and no one knows why or cares enough to investigate it lol. lmao. its gone bc the calamity is gone or something even tho it literally isnt bc ganondorf is right there haha lol, stop asking, why do you care. just forget it existed and look at that sexy goatman and glue instead!! glue! isnt that wild?? also its totally a direct, 100% same universe and exact same characters, despite them act totally out of character, sequel to botw-

[rioblitzle]

i guess im not too involved in the zelda fandom cause seeing a post about rabid totk defenders is wild to me. from my perspective people were singing that game's praises for 2 months total before it fell to the "popular game bad actually" criticism wave and i don't think i've seen anyone say positive things about totk since then lmfao

[lucky-clover-gazette]

my least popular loz opinion is that i never want playable zelda ever

[vox-off]

i have settled on why it's been so difficult for me to focus on totk. i played botw for AGES. a solid year, the only game i played was botw. i only finished the game once or twice and the rest of the time farted around the map. i took my time and explored everything i could get to the first couple of playthroughs, i knew that map inside out, but y'know. started zoomin after a while, i'd seen everything already

because they used the same map, it feels like i've already finished totk

[veggiecorner]

go go fight it out

[frankensteinmutual]

I miss actual zelda games so much

[tigergendermoved2tigergender]

I'm ngl the longer it's been since I've played TOTK the less I like it I think

[llamasofchaos]

I only have one issue with tears of the kingdom so far

It is too focused on Zelda.

That was a joke btw

But seriously she takes my house?? Which yes, I like the idea of Link being able to start fresh however it doesn't make sense at all that it is only Zelda's house. In Zelda's diary down in the well she mentions that Link is always with her, always helping her. So if this is the case where does he live? Like there is only one bed, all of his pictures and other decorations are replaced, and there is no other sign of anyone but Zelda living there. So where was he living? Also I personally don't ship this Link and Zelda but if anyone finds his drawer let me know.

Another thing is the horses. Why does Zelda get a new horse in both games and yet I don't get epona?? Like we could have had epona just in game (yes I heard about the amiibo thing however for those that don't have it we don't get to have epona) and instead we get Zelda's mustard horse. Like I am sorry but I am avoiding saving it because the color causes irrational anger in me. Also I am not a fan of them replacing Ganon's horse aka big chungus with the white stallion. Like give me back my boi he did nothing wrong.

Oh and finally why don't my friends remember me????? Like I thought baaz and I were friends? I always let Beetle have any beetles I found, so why don't he remember me???? I was so excited when some of the side characters from botw remember me so why can't my the rest of my friends??

Honestly I am loving the story and I do like the fact that Zelda finally gets to play her part but why did you take my horses, my friends and my house Nintendo? Why??

[ganondoodle]

1 year since i got scammed by nintedno leaving me forever yearning for a game we will never get and an extreme worry for the future

[onewomancitadel]

I'll reserve judgement until I actually play TOTK but they did a story-heavy Zelda once which elevated the gameplay and its mechanics and it was great, without leaning into twee anime tropes

[waywardsalt]

for the zelda ask game: 🎭😔👊⛩️

🎭 When you play Zelda games, do you imagine being Link yourself, or is Link a separate character to you? Basically, are you Link, or is Link a separate character?

I always consider Link to be his own separate character. There's juuust enough to him most games that he has his own character, and I'm not usually one to go full self-insert with video game characters unless that's what the game is really going for. So I generally consider him to be his own separate character.

😔 Least Favorite Zelda character?

Hhhmmmmmmm normally I would say Jolene (and i think she was my answer for a similar ask game a few years ago) but I'm trying to get myself to at least somewhat appreciate her so it would be kind of counterproductive to say it's her. But it's Jolene.

👊 Favorite Zelda Villain/Boss?

Yeah no Bellum is my favorite Zelda villain... also my favorite boss! I think he's a silly little thing and a lot of fun to think wayyyy to hard about and I really like the variety between the three segments of his extended fight, plus just on a story level his whole fight is really cool. I would normally say I wish more was done with him but I can make do with crumbs so it's fine actually. I kind of want a little plushie of him.

⛩️ Favorite Zelda Dungeon/Location?

Hm... it's hard to decide on just one favorite dungeon, I've always been fond of albw's dungeons and both oot and mm have really good dungeons, but I think I'd have to pick the fire sanctuary from Skyward Sword. I really like sksw's dungeons a lot, and the fire sanctuary especially just... looks really nice and is fun to spend time figuring out. I think it's the one I enjoy the most, while the others are just fine or have some snag to them. With locations, I’m a fan of albw’s Hyrule and Lorule, and Clock Town is probably my favorite town in the entire series.

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Always a bit puzzled by people saying that anyone who wanted long-term consequences for TotK Zelda's sacrifice are "edgy".

I'm not even particularly in the camp that she should have remained a dragon forever (I think this should have been Ganondorf's fate, it would have been sooo much more impactful than to explode him and move on but anyway). To be honest, I wish the rules for turning back would have been 1) clear 2) active gameplay on the player so that it feels like it's something we have earned, and 3) not make her have amnesia about it and/or at least having her gain some crucial insight because of the experience.

(also: doesn't she crave knowledge? isn't that insanely mean to have her watch over every civilization and every bit of history ever and then take it away from her? kind of dislike how totk privileges the comfort of the player's feelings over what the characters would actually want or need tbh)

To be perfectly honest, I fully expected us needing to turn her back before engaging Ganondorf so we would fight him together, especially since Zelda as a compagnon exists in the game code already (though in a very subdued state). It feels very very strange to me that all of this mechanic of Sages following us existing and yet we never have the very climactic cool Zelda-staple moment of facing Ganondorf or Ganon together (OoT, WW, TP, ST and probably more that I'm forgetting all did this in some way --even BotW had Zelda more involved than in TotK). I'm not sure Mineru was a compagnon that was needed over Zelda honestly, especially given the kind of non-insight she gives us on the zonai (even if the idea of the mecha is cool, it really could have been Zelda using her zonai + sheikah knowledge to pilot one for us or something).

But anyway: yeah, even if this isn't what I would have wanted personally, I think wanting Zelda to remain a dragon is kind of arguably more respectful of her relationship to Link, in a way, that what the game ended up doing. When she enacted this sacrifice, Zelda decided to trust him to such a extent that she lost herself, reciprocated his trust in her and his devotion to her, and now the future of Hyrule exists beyond her and beyond what Hyrule once was, but she trusts them to follow through and be happy and she will watch over them from the stars moving on. It's fine if we manage to save her from that fate, but even if we don't, honestly this sounds like a beautiful story/tragic romance to me, if you want to read it that way. Tragedy doesn't necesserily involve edginess. Fictional pain isn't always mean, or out to get you.

[blue-likethebird]

Reusing the memory system from botw for the tears of the dragon storyline in totk was such a terrible decision on so many different levels that it’s honestly kind of impressive.

While the botw memory system had flaws of its own, there was one small but significant thing that worked in its favour: botw’s memories were largely separate from the main plot in the past, and have absolutely no bearing on the story being told in the present. Aside from a few specific instances (ie the calamity striking, the ceremony, Link and Zelda becoming closer) the memories are all self-contained moments that emphasize character development over driving the story. Because there’s no major narrative throughline between them, it gives players more freedom to discover in any order regardless of how much they’ve progressed through the main quest without running the risk of stumbling across a memory that ruins something else later on in the game.

(This got long so the rest of my analysis is going under the cut.)

The biggest change between the memories from botw and the dragon’s tears from totk is definitely what kind of information these cutscenes relay to you as the player. Botw’s memories are primarily snapshots of small interpersonal moments that hold very little significance to the greater narrative taking place in the past. Totk’s memories are the greater narrative. With only one major exception -that I’ll touch on in a sec-, every cutscene in the dragon’s tears shows a crucial moment of story development with no time left to explore the characters driving that story forwards. There’s no organic moment revealing, say, a quirk of Rauru’s that Mineru finds annoying, or Sonia’s sense of humour, or any of our literal Main Villain Ganondorf’s motivations for going to war with Hyrule. If there’s any moments of character focus they only happen in ways that advance the plot (meaning the only real character focus is on the characters totk wants the entire universe to orbit around, namely Rauru and Zelda), and as such it’s harder to bring myself to care about what happens to anyone.

To illustrate the point I’m trying to make here, compare the memories of the champions Link regains during the divine beast quests to the conversations with the ancient sages at the end of each temple. The memories make passing mentions of the ongoing preparations for the calamity, but the real purpose of those scenes is to showcase who the champions were as people before their deaths and give us a reason to mourn them, even though we know at the start of our journey that they’re all long gone. In contrast, the conversations with the ancient sages are all about the events of the imprisoning war and their promise to Zelda that their descendants will come to Link’s aid in the future, very obviously copy pasted for each of the five times that cutscene is brought up (which is a particularly egregious moment of bad quest design but that’s a rant for another time) in such a way that none of the 5 incarnations of that cutscene reveal anything new about the ancient sages as characters, to the point where none of them even show their faces. I care about Daruk because the game shows me that he cares deeply about the wellbeing of his fellow champions and brings out the best in others. So why should I care about the nameless, faceless sage of water? What’s there to move me about their struggles if my only interactions with the sages are a series of exposition dumps? If the game can’t give me a reason to sincerely care about its main characters, the whole rest of the story is meaningless.

(As an aside, I get the feeling someone on the dev team caught on to the issue I’m describing here, because the tea party memory sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the dragon tear cutscenes. It’s such a jarring change of pace to have the otherwise plot-heavy dragon’s tears come screeching to a halt for a scene where Sonia sits down with Zelda to have a cute little tea party and talk about absolutely nothing of significance that the whole thing almost seems like it was hastily tacked on to the story later. Given that the next (chronological) memory sees Sonia fall victim to an unceremonious death by chiropractor, it feels like someone realized that Sonia really doesn’t do or say much in the scenes before she dies and threw together the tea party scene so players would have at least one moment to look back on fondly when she’s fridged. But I digress)

The story told in the dragon’s tears is a highly linear one. But the open-ended nature of botw’s memory system remains, meaning that these tears can be found and viewed in any order. At first this doesn’t seem so bad, since the first two tears you’re likely to find if you follow the game’s intended path are also the chronological first and second of the memories you can discover through these geoglyph tears. But after those first two, the game kinda gives up on guiding you towards these tears in a way that flows well with the story they wrote: the closest tear geographically to the two the game initially guides you towards correlates to one of the penultimate scenes of that entire storyline, while the next scene chronologically is found almost halfway across the map. As such, it’s all but guaranteed that you’ll spoil yourself in some way without using either a guide or the (somewhat unintuitive and never fully explained by the game) little map in the forgotten temple. Finding memories in order didn’t matter so much in botw because the scenes you could find still worked well as standalone scenes before you discovered every memory and pieced together the full picture, and the game is never trying to surprise me about the characters’ fates at the end of this storyline: hell the first memory you’re guided to shows the calamity striking. But in contrast, viewing a dragon’s tear at the wrong time can completely ruin the story they’re trying to tell in those cutscenes. During my playthrough, for example, the first tear I found after the game stopped guiding me to them showed Ganondorf removing Sonia’s stone from her dead body. At this point I had known Sonia existed for all of like an hour, so every subsequent appearance she made was ruined for me by the fact that I already knew she was nothing but cannon fodder to be killed off for the sake of another character’s pain (Rauru and Zelda a-fucking-gain). I expected to be pissed that it was so easy to spoil myself, or maybe sad in passing that a character with her potential was so underutilized, but instead I just felt… tired. I wasn’t even halfway to the first settlement and already I was completely numb to the story the game was trying to tell.

But the worst was yet to come. And oh boy was it ever a low point for storytelling in the Zelda series. Remember how I said up above that the memories in botw had no connection to the story in the present? Let’s just say the same cannot be said for the dragon’s tears.

It’s May 2023. I’ve just finished the sage of wind questline. I still have hope that the story the game is trying to tell will be good. Deciding that I’ll go to Goron city next, I head towards the Thyplo skyview tower to expand my map, catch a glimpse of a nearby geoglyph from the air, and glide over to check it out. This geoglyph shows me a memory that not only recaps the entire dragon tear storyline, but also ends on a bit of foreshadowing about Zelda’s fate that’s about as subtle as a brick to the fucking face. By exploring -the thing the game claims it prioritized above all else in the design of its world and quests- I’d once again been hit with spoilers for a major story detail.

My main objective in this game is to find Zelda. It’s the only driving factor behind my journey towards all these different regions. The current big mystery I’m supposed to solve is why Zelda’s causing so much hell for the people of Hyrule. I now knew exactly where she was and what the deal with her appearances in other parts of Hyrule was, and I’d found it completely by accident by doing something the game says over and over again that it wants me to do. Unlike with Sonia’s death, this time I was a mess of emotions. I was pissed the fuck off that this open-world game had punished me twice already for trying to explore. More than that, I was disappointed that a game I had been so excited to play, from a series I had so many fond memories of, had let me down like this. With every subsequent quest where the sages and I chased a Zelda I knew was fake to our next objective, and every NPC wondering where she was that I couldn’t tell the truth to, that disappointment grew. The entire rest of the main story was ruined for me before I had progressed past 1/4th of the regional quests and a third of the dragon’s tears. There was no more sense of anticipation or mystery. I finished the rest of the game with a bitter taste in my mouth and haven’t touched it again since.

Do I think this story could have been good? Honestly, I don’t know, and by now I don’t really care either (that’s a lie. I care so so much and that’s probably why I hate totk as much as I do). But it’s all irrelevant, because like Cinderella’s stepsister cutting off her own heel so she can cram her foot into a glass slipper that’s never going to fit, totk is sabotaged by the devs’ insistence that everything fit itself into a world they custom-made for botw. This isn’t a new formula that the series is following, it’s Nintendo slapping a new coat of paint on an existing skeleton, and I’m not optimistic to see what this particular approach has in store for the Zelda series. Especially not at the price they’re charging for it.

[st-hedge]

I said a while ago that for totk’s one anniversary I would write a weird little review of the game in which I throw roses at it while simultaneously slandering it. So I made an attempt which is very abbreviated

Disclaimer: I’m not telling u how u should feel about totk or what’s the right way to feel about it, I’m just trying to make sense of why the game frustrates me and putting it into words. It’s completely fine if u disagree with me, I’m not pitching an argument but just putting words on paper

Totk is one of the best games I’ve ever had the opportunity to play. The mechanics, the music, the designs, the revised world of hyrule, makes me want to curl up on the floor and cry. It is stunning and done with so much love. Where botw had lacked, totk has improved and gone above and beyond. It had frustrated me that botw only allowed us to explore the ground surface, but botw was an exploration into open world games which allowed for totk to happen. The caves, the boats, the islands, and the depths add so much to already such a vast world. I only wish there was also diving but beggars can’t be choosers beh

Although it still doesn’t make too much sense to me why all weapons are suddenly corrupted, I do love the new weapons system. I love how it gives more variety to explore. Materials which previously sat unused in the inventory are now key and nothing feels like a waste to collect. Even rupees have found another use. I’m not the biggest fan of the zonai devices but the addition feels like a love letter to the creativity of the fan base and it feels at place. They help to traverse an otherwise huge and intimidating world. But at times I feel like they give too much leverage and break down too many boundaries and leave little to solve and explore. What im basically saying is fuck the rockets.

I feel that totk doesn’t have enough progress boundaries that make u pause and explore what u have at hand. I found myself just pushing and pushing, forgetting and leaving behind areas I barely touched. It felt too easy getting into the sky and returning to the islands and they lost some of their mystery to me. I think this would have been a great opportunity to reintroduce the loftwings from skyward sword. I’ve talked before about how much this would make sense for totk. The loftwings could be a means to cross boundaries and explore new territories, but it takes time to catch and tame one as a companion. But like horses they should have their limits, presenting new boundaries u need to overcome again

Where the totk’s hyrule begins to confuse and disappoint me goes hand in hand with my main issue (confusion?) with the game. Although botw felt incomplete (the world was a little sparse and one dimensional), the story was comprehensive and clear. Meanwhile, totk has a complete and lively world but it doesn’t have a story to carry

Totk’s story doesn’t have an identity I can grasp and understand. It’s like it doesn’t know what it wants to tell the player, what story it wants to direct them to. On one hand, it seems to want us to know about the origins of hyrule and the mysterious landmarks and characters that are permanent fixtures in this world (castle, ruins, dragons) but at the same time it suddenly wants to do a retelling of OoT and about the sages and these secret stones. But the game never completes any of these stories. Maybe it wants to tell us these stories through the environment, but there is just not enough embedded into the world to grasp and tie together into a narrative. Which is ironic considering how big the world is

We begin to be told the story of the dragons, we suddenly understand how they came to be (the secret stones). But we are never told about the events of their creation (an act of desperation, like Zelda’s) and we are never close to understanding them. Then we are told about the sages, but meeting them tells us nothing new. No new cutscenes, no new items or lore directly related to them. The new sages are found, but didn’t we just discover the divine beasts with them? Suddenly another layer of importance is added to them which makes the ties between legacy and the current sages muddier. I wish there had been focus on them creating their own legacy instead

I think totk could’ve had a very interesting story to tell if it chose what it wants to focus on. Maybe the secret stones were introduced just as a way for Zelda to become a dragon? I dunno

There are so many new places that feel like fantastic opportunities for moments of pause and to uncover lore, unearth memories. But instead they’re brisk puzzles or empty sites. Like the graveyard underneath the desert, the forge islands, the factories, and the fucking poe statues. Tell me as much as u want that I can’t read environmental story telling, but I’ll just keep saying there’s nothing to read into cuz the game doesn’t know what it wants to say. There’s no thread to follow in the way there was with, for example, the graveyard at the spirit temple in OoT. We could’ve been just left with a strange well and a graveyard and told to figure it out, but a thread is laid down that these are the skeletons in the royal family’s closet.

Totk does have amazing moments, like Zelda meeting her ancestors and giving up her identity to become a living legend to revive the master sword, the discovery of the ancient temples, the story of the zonai and their origins. But these are just pieces with many loose ends around them that go nowhere. Even Ganon is left as a loose end where there was so much opportunity to say something worth saying. He seems comically evil with bogstandard bah I want to rule the world lines. If u want to make a case for evil for the sake of evil, u can at least show me a character repeatedly making horrible choices which lead them to the current predicament. Just like totk’s hyrule, he is lovingly designed but he tells absolutely no story

If the reason behind the lack of story is that the devs/writers wanted us to make our own story out of this, then I think this is a case where it was a poor choice. The fans can make theories, hcs, pick up pieces and make AUs, but we also love the stories told by the games and it’s what inspires us to uncover more stories (hey wanna talk about tp and why we hear Malon’s song at night, or what’s up with the empty desert)

I’d love to see totk from the perspective of someone who had never played or known botw. Did it really help to remove any traces of sheikah tech besides the labs and the guardian limbs in the towers. Although the zonai devices and the sheikah tech are from different time periods, totk was a perfect opportunity to marry the two elements together. The shrines and the divine beasts could’ve collapsed into the depths, but instead they have just vanished like erased history

Totk’s story doesn’t have an identity in the same way botw’s does. Even though botw’s hyrule was much smaller and emptier, we found stories there cuz we knew what that game was trying to tell us. If totk is about making sacrifices, then this message feels obsolete by the end. U should make sacrifices, but u will only be happy again if it all goes back to exactly how it was before

As happy and sweet the ending is, it made all the worry and sadness I felt seem pointless cuz of course everything would reset back to the norm cuz how else would this game have a happy ending. What was there to worry about. Yeah so what that Zelda became a dragon losing herself, she was just asleep the entire time and effortlessly she becomes her normal self. So what that link lost his sword arm, of course he would miraculously get it back even though it took him 100 years to recover from a mortal wound. No trace of the things they withstood and lost, no mark, nothing.

I loved the final battle and spectacle of the dragons struggling against each other in the sky. The battle went from the deepest depths to the highest reaches of the sky and I thought it was perfect. But once again how the story concluded and the logic behind it me made me feel like I was chewing on sand and the idyllic ending just made me look about in confusion

TLDR; totk is an amazing game with a stunning world that lacks a comprehensive story to tell

I hoped that I would get a better understanding why I’m so frustrated by totk, but instead I just feel even more confused by it and I think that’s just how I’ll have to leave it

[deepseasmetro]

if you feel like typing about it can you talk about the misogyny in botw/totk? i did try looking it up first but i cant find anything and i like understanding media better

putting aside from the fact that nearly every legend of zelda game doesn't like women given how it treats them and their autonomy, breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom feel especially egregious given the personality they give zelda to begin with

she is presented to you as this stifled but curious and incredibly bright young woman who wants to help her kingdom the way that she knows how, which is through technology and research. she's very passionate about this! it's something she enjoys doing!

and yeah, her dad's presented as an asshole for not letting her do that, but her way doesn't work, right? the technology she invested so much into turns on them, and causes 100 years of destruction. you can use the divine beasts to help you to fight ganon, but you don't have to. at the end of the day, it's that spiritual energy that she was so opposed to tapping into that saves the day. her agency is completely taken from her. the things that she is interested in, passionate about, good at: none of those things matter, at all. she was wrong. her value to both the story and to hyrule is in her spiritual ability. something that she really has no control over, and that she only has as a result of her lineage.

in tears of the kingdom, they have the opportunity to fix this problem! zelda is free, she's back, and the de facto ruler of hyrule. in fact, she's spaarheading attempts to continue to uncover technology and ancient civilization to better understand this land, and hopefully benefit from it.

... and then she is promptly removed from the story, sent back in time, and once again made to rely on her spirituality instead of her intellect and tinkering skills. her story is given very little respect. you don't get to experience it in order. you don't even really get to experience it with her at all. the two other women in her section of the game are also disrespected, killed off, Etc.

she then sacrifices her own autonomy again to become the dragon, and even this sacrifice is treated so poorly by the game. it's revealed to be this plot twist, this emotional story beat, and then is instantly fixed by link!

to me, these two games feel more egregious in this aspect than some of the other games bc zelda has so much potential in these games, and it is also utterly squandered. and this post is only about zelda! the woman these games are named after! i won't even begin to get into how these games treat its other female characters, but none of them are any better than zelda. and most of them are worse.