#link between worlds the problem is lorule is fucked and it ends with link and zelda fixing that

[jheselbraum]

See I didn't get the "sacrifice is a core message of the game" thing at all during my playthrough. Sacrifice definitely exists and is present throughout the game in the examples you laid out above, but the larger theme of the story is community, not sacrifice. Rauru's sacrifice doesn't defeat Ganondorf it only stalls him long enough for Link to like. Be born. Before any of this shit in botw Link and Zelda both sacrificed their childhoods and it didn't fucking work. Zelda sacrificing herself and Link losing his arm to protect Zelda in totk doesn't work (edit: in defeating ganondorf, pre-final fight). Zelda's still lost in time. Link cannot fight effectively and pays very dearly for his decision to take the hit (a decision that he repeats later in the game, though under much different circumstances and with far better results). In totk, it's not Link and Zelda and the ghosts of their dead friends trying to atone for past sins this time, but all of Hyrule coming together to rebuild something better.

The three most powerful moments in the game to me are 1) the puppet zelda revealed phantom ganon fight when the sages show up, 2) the moment when you're almost at the final boss fight and the sages show up (coupled with the sages taking on the boss rush as well as the sages reappearing to draw agro from the ganonclones, even if they didn't do much to actually damage the real ganondorf), and 3) when zelda shows up in the final phase of the ganondorf fight, and I'm gonna talk a bit about the first two before I go into the third.

So, for both the puppet zelda revealed fight and the approach to final boss, you as the player do not have the option to go get the actual sages to come help you with that. Both times Purah is the one to send word to them to like, you know. Get on that. But Link himself does not at any point ask for help in these fights. And like-- we don't have a ton of concrete information about Link specifically, botw and totk are both about Zelda and the game seems to be content with implying things about Link and letting players sandbox his personality from that. But not asking for help and going at it alone very much tracks for this version of Link. The Sages show up without Link asking them to be there because Hyrule is their home and they want to help. This is the part where Link repeats his decision to just take the gloom hit, but he survives this time because his community rallied around him to show their support.

Like, circling back to botw for a bit, it wasn't Link's idea to find champions to pilot the divine beasts and get all the guardians online. That was Zelda. Best laid plans aside, Zelda's the one who had the bright idea of not facing the ultimate evil or whatever alone. Rhoam was content pinning everything on as few people as possible

The only reason Link survives the puppet zelda revealed fight is because the sages showed up anyways. You know, the representatives from every corner of Hyrule, working together towards a common goal of, you know. Not letting Link die because he ran directly into a trap with zelda shaped blinders on.

And this is to say nothing of the actual plots of the regional phenomena questline (or the side adventures in tarrey town, hateno, and lurelin, which we'll be here all night if I get into those. I'll probably get into them anyways).

Tulin, like Link, wants to go it alone and fight something bigger than him with no allies. He resents what he perceives as rejection from his community until he and Link team up to stop the blizzard and after having learned to work with others is accepted as a warrior among his community. Side note, after you complete each race's regional phenomena quest, members of that race start showing up in Lookout Landing to help out.

Sidon is working himself to the fishbones to keep the water in Zora's Domain clean, on his own, because he can't stand the thought of anyone close to him getting hurt when he could've done something. Link shows up to help him find the source of the sludge of course, but the big moment here is Yona and her attendants stepping up to purify the water together in Sidon's stead, because they are a team and he doesn't have to go it alone.

The goron questline is the weakest in terms of the community messaging but that doesn't mean it's not present. Yunobo genuinely wants to do right by his people and help them out when they're struggling. He's come such a long way since botw (I loved that he was the first to jump into Death Mountain, a wonderful reversal of how Link jumped into Death Mountain in botw) and it's clear that he's only come this far because the gorons are just kind of chill like that, like. Like you don't need to add community messaging to the gorons because they already embody that pretty well just as a baseline.

While the goron questline is the weakest, the gerudo questline has absolutely the strongest community messaging of the four main regions. Aside from young children and the elderly, and the younger shopkeeper npcs, everyone helps defend gerudo town from the onslaught of gibdo. Usually by this point in the game, players have at least encountered Hoz's squad of the monster control crew, maybe done a few missions, and has absolutely seen how shitty sir bucket head and the guy who throws up after every fight actually are in combat. Maybe they've done the Hateno questline and have gotten to help Reede defend his precious pumpkins from. Stalkoblins. Even with the above questlines, when experienced legend of zelda players and players who have only gotten into the franchise recently alike get to this point in the game, their take on the quest is "okay, what I'm hearing is everyone is going to fight the gibdo. What's actually going to happen is I am going to fight the gibdo." This is not the case with the gerudo. While Link and Riju are absolutely the most capable fighters in the group, the gerudo warriors are no joke, and are more than capable of holding the approaching gibdo back and even killing some while the player fucks up their nests and cleans up any gibdo who break through the gates.

I'm going to take a break here to mention mineru's sage quest, because that one is less community oriented and is instead more interpersonal, and it shows in the gameplay, because the spirit temple is drastically different from all the other sage temples.

So, on to Dragon Zelda showing up in the final phase of the ganondorf fight.

Zelda showing up and fucking ramming Dragondorf was the coolest moment in the game, hands down. It's such a good payoff to the question of "how is zelda going to show up in the final phase of this fight, as is loz tradition." Zelda does more work here than any of the sages have done in the ganondorf boss fight itself, btw. Like I love the sages don't get me wrong, but they just draw agro from the ganonclones and even fully powered up they can't actually damage them faster than I can damage ganondorf enough to get into the next phase of the fight, where they're all out of commission. Mechanics and aesthetics of two fuckoff dragons fighting in the sky aside, the fact that Zelda is the most helpful sage in the final boss is not the reason this moment is so amazing and contributes to the community messaging.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, 90% of the time in a given Legend of Zelda game, Link and Ganondorf are playing Dungeons and Dragons while Zelda is playing chess, and in no game is that more apparent than Tears of the Kingdom.

The only reason Link is able to defeat Ganondorf is because of Zelda's actions, both before and after she traveled back in time.

Why do the original sages, including Mineru, know even remotely that they're supposed to give their secret stones to their distant descendants? Zelda.

Why does Rauru save Link? Zelda. (side note this is another example of community outweighing and mitigating the consequences of sacrifice because Link absolutely would have died if not for Rauru's help, Link would've given up his life the moment he was hit with the gloom blast)

Why is Hyrule in even the barest hint of a position to be willing and able to come together to help Link? Not just via the new sages but also via all the ways all the people of Hyrule help Link out during the game? Zelda.

In totk Zelda has expanded upon her original "don't fight calamity ganon alone" idea and improved it to such a degree that she can rely on not just link but all of hyrule to perfectly execute a plan that she knows she won't be aware enough to ensure they get back on track if even one thing goes slightly wrong, ten thousand years in the future. For a sense of how long that is, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest story we know about, was written 4,000 years ago.

So when, at the end of the game about coming together to face a common threat, when Link Sonia and Rauru come together to turn Zelda back, because all three of them care about Zelda that much and want her to enjoy the peace that is only possible because of her, in a way that is in keeping with the established thirty-seven year long tone of these games, I can't really fault it for saying "you know what no Zelda's suffered enough she gets to enjoy the happy ending she created"

I could go into how Link Sonia and Rauru turning Zelda back was absolutely triforce babey but this post is long enough, I've already mentioned it elsewhere, and frankly I don't actually expect this post to actually change your or anyone else's mind about the validity of the ending Zelda got this is solely a "the theme of the game isn't sacrifice" post, so I'll refrain

Them restoring Link's arm was bullshit, but it was bullshit because that's a shitty way to write an ending for disabled characters, not because it's not "edgy enough" or whatever.

Like I'm sorry, this was mostly a theme post but more on the tone thing: if this kind of ending isn't your thing that's valid but I'm afraid that the Legend of Zelda series may not be for you, then. Maybe Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask would suit you better if you're looking for LoZ games to play (notably I don't know if Twilight Princess, the 'edgiest' Zelda game, would suit you), but. Like. As a whole, these games have kind of always been a little bit edgy and a little bit silly with an at least 85% happy ending and a 90% chance of divine intervention to make that happen. This kind of ending is practically a staple of the weird niche "action/adventure, dungeon crawler, puzzle, rpg, open world, medieval fantasy, generally magitech, there's also aliens in one, mecha, they could've made the concept art game where link wears jeans and plays guitar and it'd still fit in" genre that the franchise has sort of carved out for itself. There's nothing else really like it, believe me I've looked I love it and want more of it. And like, you don't have to like it, I want to be very clear on that front, but this is kind of like watching a Gundam anime and saying "the ending would've been better if we saw the overall state of the world tangibly improve, even somewhat, as a result of the character's efforts. The fact that it doesn't makes the whole show seem like a waste of time." Like yeah maybe watch G Gundam if you want an ending like that, but overall this isn't the place you want to look for the kind of story it seems like you want to be told. The Legend of Zelda is not the game series you go to for sad endings. I wouldn't go as far as saying that it is the game series you go to for specifically happy endings, but it is the game series you go to for endings where the problem is solved. The problem in Tears of the Kingdom is that Zelda's fucking gone. The game won't end until that problem gets solved, ergo the game will end by Zelda returning.

Actually I’m gonna rant about the end of totk now. The core message of the game appears to be sacrifice. Rauru sacrifices himself to seal Ganondorf away, Zelda sacrifices herself to be a light dragon and to restore the master sword, and even tho Link’s arm wasn’t lost in a sacrifice, he still lost it protecting Zelda and himself and the gloom just got the better of him. But the message of sacrifice does not shine through with these except for Rauru, because none of these things have consequences.

The ending was super unsatisfying to me because everything was returned to normal, and that’s not how sacrifice works. If they wanted to have this message they should’ve kept Zelda as a dragon, and if they didn’t want to do that then they should’ve kept Link’s arm gone and all that.

With both of them being fully restored, it defeats the purpose of sacrifice. Like yeah none of them expected for them to be restored, Zelda didn’t think that she’d turn back. But it still feels kind of cheap you know? There are no consequences for any of this, it almost makes the game feel pointless.

Every ending to a story needs something to be different. In botw, the champions are dead, forever. Link and Zelda are in a world that they are unfamiliar with, with almost everyone they know gone from the calamity. Their world changed and their lives changed. But with totk, nothing changed. Everyone’s still vibing, everyone’s alive except for Rauru, Sonia, and Mineru but they’ve been dead for a long time so it doesn’t even matter, and Zelda doesn’t even remember what happened to her as a dragon so that feels completely pointless. I was expecting her to be traumatized for seeing things for that long but no everything was fine and dandy and it made it so :/

I wish that Nintendo wasn’t scared to do the risky move and kept Zelda as a dragon to show that she really did sacrifice everything for that. It sad, it’s tragic, and completely selfless and I would’ve loved to see an emotionally devastating ending similar to twilight princess. Imo Zelda turning into a dragon was the best part of the story (I hate the story) so it would’ve really made the ending for me. And Link having his arm back makes absolutely no sense me and is kind of lame. Dude lost his arm, full send or no send.

Idk, I’m just unsatisfied with the ending. It could’ve stuck with me more if they did these things. I have such an intense love/hate with this game and the story is the thing I hate. Just… ugh.