#not reset it like totk did

[ganondoodle]

so, im thinking about making the totk rewritten project into a giant big ol collection of redesigns and rewrites instead of somethign akin to a comic, since im already working on one and i also want to dip my toes into gamedev and it would get a little much

i thought about separating it into segments like, world (sky, surface, underground), gameplay (abilities, combat etc), narrative (story/lore) and so on

i would do sketches of varying quality with explanations and mechanics; a little bit like a making of .. but its instead a rewrite lol, kinda like the concepts i already made but more orderly put together like an actual design document thing

made a blog for it where i will put all those concepts once i have it all together @totk-rewritten

[waywardsalt]

bc its been bouncing around in my head i think another little tiny grievance i had with totk is that i got to the end and just felt a sense of ‘well what the hell was that all for then’

[ink-plays-games]

Are we gonna talk about how the "Zelda" that tells you about the Blood Moon in TOTK is the fake Ganon illusion Zelda, and that she disappears and you no longer get that voice over in the cutscene after you figure out she's a fake, or-?

[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.

[charbies]

I'm mashing together my review of totk and reactions to random encounters with the masterworks I've had lately into one stream of consciousness

Totk should have had true continuity, not a 6 year time skip that we never get to see, experience, and feel. It's not that hard to bridge 2 games with a 1-2 min cutscene, esp in a zelda game. Majora's mask starts with quick, but meaningful exposition that bridges OOT to MM! The intro to wind waker is a 6 minute long cutscene!! This series thrives with its detailed, intriguing intros, so what happened?? Before I even launched totk the night it came out, I booted up botw and replayed the final boss & ending because I was so stoked to see the transition in story/world and wanted to honor both games. Instead boom, we're walking in a cave w/ no context.

I was so disappointed that zelda wasn't a companion character to link in totk, it was disempowering to her character arc. Really thought this game would build off of botw's snippets of link & zelda working together in memories. The teasers and trailers for totk gave this perception that she would be there (which would also "break tradition" like devs wanted, ffs). When I was on the tutorial island I was fully convinced I'd be finding her and we'd reconvene like "ok what's next." When I realized 20 mins into the game that she was GONE gone, as in will not reappear likely until the end of the game damsel-in-distress-style, my verbatim thought "wait... really? Is this still going to be good?" Which was kinda sad, for a game I waited so many years for :/

I had major pet peeves with the copy/paste nature of the cutscenes with the old sages. The dialogue, bgs, pacing, literally all identical. They just hot swapped the character models for the sages and said that was good enough, wtf!!! I live for cutscenes in games, I have since I was like 5. This felt lazy, and seriously demotivated me from completing the dungeons bc I knew there was going to be nothing novel or intriguing to look forward to

The secret stones were gimmicky af. Sorry. Also stupid name, they couldn't even opt for "sacred?" Ik in other languages they have way cooler names, which would have helped. Link's fucking thanos glove of stones was a stupid gimmick, I cannot believe they didn't think to alter that concept to be more mythical, or creative, or just original. I would have killed for the stones to relate to the triforce in some way, or to do away with the stones and have this game connect to the triforce, since the whole direction of this story was going back to ancient myth & lore.

the Zonai lacked depth, and honestly just felt like a boring distraction even tho they were supposed to be a central focus of this game. I 1000% agree with other folks posts on the take that rauru was a flat, 2-dimensional colonizer. Sonia got sidelined. yikes. ew. no thanks.

^similarly, ganon really was given no character or depth imo. It's like they did a fantastic job making him visibly LOOK scary, so they didn't bother to give him motives beyond "I'm bad, I do what I want."

the cliche "back to normal" at the end irked me. Link could have come out with no arm, keeping the zonia arm, or at least scars w/ the zonai arm pattern and that would be meaningful. Zelda got factory reset from irreversible draconification in a method that for all intents and purposes, could have been done as soon as link got rewind ability. There was no investigation or inclusion of the other dragons, which seemed like a missed opportunity. Actively working on reversing her could have been a main quest in game!! Like 1. Complete all dungeons/get all stones, 2. you can now go round up the spirits of rauru & sonia and reverse zelda yippee, 3. you and zelda go beat the shit out of ganon together. The dragons fighting was beautiful, powerful imagery, but honestly I think too much potential was traded away just to execute that one fraction of the boss fight.

The masterworks book annoys me, which is sad bc I love concept art. I wanted to be a concept artist growing up, I can accept that you'll often see things that never make it into the final cut. I was enamored with early posts abt things like zelda's haircut, char designs, etc.

But more recently I'm seeing the anthology side of the book taking major liberties that it didn't even bother showing us directly or alluding to in the game, and I think that's such a cop-out. They are literally telling us instead of SHOWING us in the game they release a year ago, and spent SIX YEARS making. There was a festival celebrating the return of zelda/defeat of ganon?? Freaking show us that!!! Show us link & zelda acclimate to post-calamity life. Show us imperfect, non-linear healing and resilience. I would have loved a festival scene w/ link and zelda that conveys the nuance of celebration and recognition of their efforts, and the contrasting weight of what they went through. Show me zelda, exhausted after a festival struggling with guilt and indecision about whether to bring back the monarchy with hyrule's restoration. Throwing in a "oh btw imagine if we actually had done this" post-game makes me so irritated and feral. It's like the post-release canon is sidling up to fanon and saying, "hey look we can do that too! look at our fan art" idk if that makes sense, I don't think I'm explaining it well. But it just feels disingenuous.

I'm not a timeline purest, I don't need everything to interconnect, but I don't love how assertions in this book invalidate connections and lore of other games. Also really don't love how this game overwrites and sidelines the sheikah.

I know majority of my disappointment stems from my own, personal expectations of a game that, let's face it, was probably given many mandates and initiatives to appeal to *everyone* in broad, lackluster ways. I still love the world and characters of zelda, if anything, totk reaffirmed what I love and want to prioritize in my art that I didn't see present in this game. Fun fact I used the world of botw to learn a lot about drawing landscapes & composition. It actually inspires me a bit to try to learn to do comics, which has been a longtime goal I've been too busy and/or timid to pursue lol.

mmm anyway if u read this and any of this resonated DM me and lets froth at the mouth and commiserate lol

[aur0ralights]

Im starting to think, with totk now out, that when the topic of the master sword came up Wild would say it broke on him.

I can see the chain laughing about like ‘man, you broke the one unbreakable weapon’

But sky i can see like, after the anger hed probably feel immensely guilty. ‘He didnt forge the master sword strong enough’, or ‘i was the one who reset wild a second time and made him have to work for everything AGAIN’

Even tho sky did literally nothing wrong, hes the type of person to feel everything is on his shoulders anyways. Angst beloved <3

[skyward-floored]

this is your invitation to yap about TOTK

- hero-of-the-wolf

And I will yap!

First of all watching Zelda geek out under the castle was the best, she was so giddy by the time she figured out the murals and everything, and Link was just nodding along like “I only half know what you’re saying but I love hearing you infodump”. Plus the stuff about her always being told “the tunnels under the castle are forbidden” like girl you’re telling me NOBODY went down there?? Highly unlikely. I don’t buy it.

The lore in this game is already driving me nuts. There’s people from the sky but they’re not skyloftians. They founded hyrule even though the skyloftians did that but also the inprisoning war is in there somewhere which makes NO sense because it seemed like in twilight princess it had nothing to do with the founding of hyrule, and what’s all this about Rauru being the first king? Excuse me? Did nintendo just soft reset everything because I don’t like that—

*ahem*

I’m holding out hope that more will be explained. And it will make more sense. Maybe. (I’m not very positive lol)

Zelda gets an amber relic but it’s white and shiny instead! Neato! Obviously this is important since more with it shows up later. I don’t totally know what yet though... I’m suspicious.

also I didn’t know the corpse would talk. that was terrifying actually. listening to him crack as he shifted around was! Horrible!!

I’ve screamed about the hand grabbing thing back when the trailers came out but hwwwwaaauuugghghhg. He tried so hard to save her and she fell anyway hhhhhhhhhhh. Link my poor son.

WHY DOES POOR LINK KEEP WAKING UP UNDERGROUND IN HIS UNDERWEAR WITH NO CLUE WHAT’S GOING ON. Once was weird enough but twice??? this poor man. And he doesn’t even have the questionable luxury of memory loss this time, you know that boy is worrying his head off about Zelda. And his arm. Ow.

Nothing funnier than hearing a disembodied voice be like “sorry, I couldn’t save your arm so I just gave you mine.” Sir.

The sky islands are so pretty. I saw one of those weird hairy ostrich things and for about two seconds went LOFTWING?? but alas. it was not so. I like all the animals up there, though I have to wonder how there weren’t issues with in-breeding, and how several species are identical to ones on the surface despite being separated for literal thousands of years.... I’m probably thinking about it too hard.

The robot guys are so cute, and the noises they make are pretty too. They look kinda like geckos to me :) though the enemy ones are mean. At least I stole a flamethrower from the one guy.

Rauru: dang it my arm is too weak to go through the door. Sorry bro. Fortunately there’s these shrines—

Link: *flashbacking to the Great plateau* say no more.

GLUE GLUE GLUING THINGS EHEEHE

Koroks again... oof man. At least the little quest things you do with them get you two. Helping them is fun, plus they’re so weighed down by their bags their legs just wiggle in the air ahaha they’re like beetles who got stuck upside down. They’re so cute.

STICKING THINGS ON WEAPONS EYEBALL ARROWS AND CRATE SWORDS HEHEHE

Of all the things I expected going into this the giant blupee frog was not one of them. Whuh. Cursed blupee? Blupee that ate too much? Something?? Hrmmmm. I bet you’ll have to give the little blupee pendant things to Satori or something. Or somebody on Satori mountain.

The glow flowers (who’s name’s I forget) are soooo pretty. I love how there’s caves in this game, it’s so fun to climb around in them :D except when there’s a like-like because eeeeuuugghhgg. I didn’t think anyone could make a like-like grosser than it already was and yet here we are. EW. kill it kill it kill it—

Bird gliders are SO FUN

All of the abilities are fun but I like rewind a lot because it’s so simple. It’s like, fun because it’s less complicated? Idk it’s just neat. Plus Zelda gave it to us so it’s special :3 or her echo did. Or something. I’m suspicious.

Okay. Glowey spot. Broken master sword. Chiming and Fi’s theme (waaaaaah). Put the sword in the glow and it looks like we rewind and Zelda takes it. THEREFORE Zelda must have been yeeted to the past by that weird rock she picked up, and I hate nintendo because SERIOUSLY TIME TRAVEL AGAIN???

I already have a headache trying to make this fit into my understanding of Zelda games. *shakes fist*

Okay Zelda talked to us at least, that’s good, now we’re getting somewhere. Surface time babey!!!!

Trying to orient myself after I fell was so confusing and it took me a solid half an hour to figure out where I should maybe go and then Skye reminded me there was a glowey marker on my map telling me where to go lollll

Also I caught a horse and there were shenanigans involved in getting him to a stable but I did eventually register him (his name is Lucas after Lost’s dad but also I just like the name). And pony points are the best thing I’ve ever heard of <333 mad you still can’t pet the dogs though. LAME.

Lookout Landing is amazing. It’s so great. The music is catchy and they’re all so organized and rebuilding and Hyrule in general just seems so much more thriving now and I’m so proud of Link and Zelda waaaaaaaaaugh

Also everyone being so worried about Link (or straight-up not recognizing him lol) was sweet, I love how relieved people were to see him again.

PURAH’S OLD(er) AND IT KINDA HAS ME SHOOK. Her assistant is real sweet though, Josha I think? Nice kid. I don’t know if she’s eleven or sixteen or some other age entirely, but nice kid.

Just realized this is getting very very long. I didn’t do a ton else except pop up to the castle (creepy and unsettling with no guardians trying to kill me) and see Zelda appear then disappear (very weird and I’m suspicious again) so I’ll stop here. Ohhh also I popped down to the depths, but I didn’t do too much under there either. Just crept around and caught some bugs and killed some monsters (weird-looking monsters) and took a picture of a statue.

So endeth the thoughts of peggy on totk. For now lol.

[all-hail-trudos]

The way Zelda redditors behave like BotW is going to be the template for future titles is absolutely hilarious. They are convinced that Nintendo is done with classic Zelda elements forever. TotK proves it! Never mind that they can barely agree on whether this even deserves to be called a new game or overpriced DLC. Or that Nintendo themselves have said that this was a very big experiment, where they let a team comprised of mostly younger devs run the show, and the director of BotW has actually left the company to go work on Infinity Nikki of all things. I don't know what the future of Zelda is going to look like. I can't see Nintendo just walking back everything they did in BotW. (And they better not. Skyward Sword is the worst mainline Zelda title, and BotW was the exact opposite of the hand holding the series had gotten really bad for). However, we can guarantee one thing for sure. The open-air game concept that specifically defined Breath of the Wild and its direct sequel Tears of the Kingdom is not simply going to be the new template for the series.

I could leave it there with a "because Nintendo said so" but it's midnight and I'm already making bad decisions, so I'm going to go one further and back this up with a second supporting argument. That's not how Nintendo as a company works. That's not how they've ever worked. They stopped doing rational, clear iterative upgrades when they followed up the Gamecube with the Wii. The Zelda series itself has constantly been one of self reinvention. Ocarina of Time is incredibly special in that Breath of the Wild is the first time they've so clearly broken away from the model it set. But when you look at the rest of the series, it's obvious BotW was the biggest experiment, but not even remotely the first. Majora's Mask turned the main gameplay concept on its head by putting everything on a Very. Tight. Timer. When you hit midnight of the third day, that was it. Rewind or die. All your progress was reset except for your sword (iirc), your masks, and your rupees if you put them in the bank (because the banker was a time traveler?). Wind Waker flooded the whole continent and had you sailing around on a boat, using a proto-physics system to fill your sails. The wide open world of OoT was gone altogether, and Princess Zelda didn't show up until halfway through the game (we won't talk about what they did to Tetra). Twilight Princess made the game super linear and made Zelda herself almost secondary to the plot. Actually, TP almost feels like the most direct callback to OoT with the doubling down on horse mounted combat, an art style that looked more like it next to whatever WW was doing (but which would ultimately age a lot worse), dungeons that also felt more directly inspired, and a combat system that was a little less fluid and reactive. But it also had Link temporarily become a werewolf, and gave us an egregiously underappreciated Spaghetti Western shootout that came out of nowhere and was all together too brief. Then Skyward Sword came along, which was the least reinventive of the bunch mechanically, but which did at least try to turn the classic narrative on its head. Also Zelda went from being barely there to being a driving character in the narrative. And she walked so BotW Princess Zelda could run. That said, imho, you can see why they leaned so much harder into experimentation with their next game that nearly skipped a whole console generation, because by SS the series tropes were getting a little too strong. The series was actually drifting into iterative territory, and that's not the typical Nintendo way. Especially not with one of their two core in-house franchises.

(Please don't bring up Pokemon here. I know it's Nintendo's third core franchise. But please remember, Zelda and Mario are solely owned by Nintendo, while Pokemon is at this point is at the center of an entire corporate conglomerate, which Nintendo is only part of).

I get that some people didn't enjoy BotW. I can sympathize with the people who did not want more like it and who were consequently less than thrilled by TotK's arrival. But bemoaning the fall of the franchise and saying Nintendo is going to be like Ubisoft, EA, and all the other trend chasing studios out there is really going too far. Nintendo has spent too many years baffling investors to start doing that now. Yes, Tears of the Kingdom exists. No, it's not proof of the trend. It was a planned sequel (itself an enormously rare concept in Zelda history). You can't make a planned story and gameplay sequel to a game and just throw away the concept you're following up on. That would be an enormously bad idea. (Worse, even, than trying to make your sequel game stand on its own for new players and erasing nearly all memory of Link from the same people he helped save. I love TotK so much, but I am not blind to its flaws, what few there are).

ALSO yes Echoes of Wisdom has Zelda stacking beds into a diy staircase. NO that doesn't mean we're seeing a return of this apparently beloathed systems-based physics gameplay in 2D fashion. If there were physics, the beds would have fallen over. That's like calling Minecraft or Dragon Quest Builders a physics based exploration game just because they have objects you can stack. That is the dumbest take I've seen come out of a community that is profoundly skilled at coming out with dumb takes.

[thebreathofthewild]

one thing i really did like about the TOTK footage tho is it basically eliminated my main gripes with weapon durability in BOTW:

1. very little power over it. it seems fusing makes it last longer, or resets timer, allowing you to keep your faves around for longer. it also drives curiosity and playfulness about new weapons that *seem* weak but might secretly be great when fused.

2. sometimes it wasnt worth fighting enemies, cuz the weapons you got were worse than the ones you break, leaving you with shit inventory as the price paid for trying to have some fucking fun without thinking about weapons management for two seconds. since it seems anything can become a better weapon when fused, that concern is essentially gone. you can have fun, and actually experiment! and seemingly do it all without constantly worrying about which encounters are "worth it" and which are just a useless durability drain in exchange for a single opal.

i feel like some people treat weapons durability as a binary where you need to be either for or against it. i'm okay with it, but it could be better. it was a pain sometimes in BOTW - and not always in a way that promoted creativity or quick thinking. sometimes it was just frustration about which encounters were worth the inventory drain.

while i'm still a bit skeptical about some aspects of TOTK (mainly related to story, especially zelda's role) it seems the creators really did a lot of cool shit on the gameplay & mechanics side. this i appreciate, as a longtime zelda fan who was always torn on some of the changes & new mechanics brought into the franchise by BOTW.

[imthepunchlord]

So with the dragon and tiger now Yin-Yang tier, does this mean you'll be making changes to your version of the rabbit and peafowl?

Rabbit will keep Hustle.

I did browse around Superpower Wiki for ideas and came across another I could give to Tiger that can play off chaos and still be a counter to Dragon's time powers: space manipulation, which is a gravitational influence, allowing the user to manipulate their own personal gravity, move as if they're not tied down, become heavy, lift what is near you like it's light, make the area around you heavy, walk on any surface, ect.. I think I'll call it Hissterics.

The power of resetting time at a checkpoint I will give to Dragon and have it be Recoil.

Peafowl now will keep Fantom (pausing time for five minutes), Fowl Play will now be the ability to selectively rewind time like LInk in TotK, and will now have Foresight, to see potential futures, the closer the more likely.

[rain-nap-write]

I’m gonna set this idea here and maybe come back to it, maybe not. I don’t know how to make it short, so it would probably be long and I don’t know how motivated I am for that LMAO, I am still working on that Claude one! Anyhow, here’s an idea for a totk link x reader! (It’s kind of long). I like to come up with scenarios in my head when I listen to music, and this was one :)

Ok so,

In the events (early) of breath of the wild, you’re part of the yiga clan, but you’ve been having doubts because most of the continent is afraid of you. Trouble is, you’ve been there your whole life, you’re one of their important fighters, and the blood moon resets nature.

You were technically involved with the recent events between the yiga and shieka, but you and (can’t remember his name but the guy in kakariko who has two kids and left the yiga) we’re in kahoots, and you did everything you could to protect his wife. She knew that, and urged you to stay quiet to protect yourself. This was another thing driving you away from the yiga. But how were you supposed to abandon everything, where would you even go? You loved these folks and you didn’t think the shieka would accept that you had a change of heart, even if (the dude’s name) vouched for you. That might even get him in trouble!

So for now, you’ll stick it out.

When link first gets off the Great Plateau, he has an encounter with you. You beat him and he’s not really fighting you back, so when you’re over him and hoisting a weapon to lodge in his throat, your hesitancy that has built through the battle finally takes hold. You’re kinda like, “Wtf?? Why aren’t you fighting back??” He answer back like a, “I want to help people, not hurt them.”

After that, you can’t really find it in your heart to kill him. You even give him some healing potions and take him to dueling peaks stable (in disguise) and point him towards kakariko. Tbh you’re kind of worried about him.

The next time you’re sent to fight him, he’s on his way to zoras domain to take on the divine beast and you pop out of the sky. You didn’t now it was him, since you were just sent after a guy sparking some Link rumors among the yiga. You also didn’t know that you popped up between him and a battle between a monster encampment. Taken off guard, you were struck from behind, but you fended them off the best you could, given that you are on the verge of a blackout. Link helps you and gives you some healing stuff this time. He asks you if you’re going to hurt him (he recognizes a mark on your mask) and stares at you, waiting for an answer. After thinking about what to do, you answer no.

You even decide to help him. While you’re not ready to drop everything and join him (yet) you will make him a charmed necklace. You make it, and let him know that it will ward off the tracking of the yiga, honing that knowledge, and if he’s in danger or not, to you alone so you can come when he needs. (He’s gotta hide it, so that if the yiga in disguise catch him, they won’t catch on).

He finds out after he reaches the Zoe as domain, that if he thinks about you really hard, you’ll be summoned. You think he’s in danger, so you get kind of annoyed when he does this (he does it a lot on his way to the next divine beast, he is lonely and sad. Plus, you’re kind to him. Even though you get super annoyed bc you never know if you’re about to get hit or watch him roll around in the grass or smth).

At some point before the second divine beast, he stops in a field of dandelions and thinks about you really hard, wanting you to enjoy it too :) Of course, you pop up and start your little half hearted annoyed rant, but you stop when you notice him. He’s just been looking at you with the sweetest smile on his face, even though you’ve been kind of upset (not really, you love when he calls and he is very smug about knowing this). It literally makes your heart ache.

You tell him that you want to join him, and leave the yiga (but if he goes to kakariko, you’ll be at dueling peaks (until you eventually reconcile) shaking in your boots). Link is so happy, you think you’re going to have a heart attack. You tell him you’ll be back by night, you’ve gotta get your belongings and make sure it’s untraceable, maybe fake your death. He’s got a smile from ear to ear and he’s excited to have you along, nearly tearing up as you teleport away.

Little did you know you would not have to try faking your death, as you’re getting jumped by the yiga as soon as your sigils show up. Everyone is acting weird and so you decide sooner rather than later, and grab your stuff because your spider senses are tingling. At that point, you notice something’s about to go down and you’re sprinting for the entrance. You don’t want to fight these folks, they’re your family. Or, they once were, years ago. Anyhow, you’re dodging left and right until you’re in the lil canyon spot and get confronted by kohga and a bunch of blade masters. You take them on, but you’re pretty wounded bc a bunch of more advanced foot soldiers had also caught up.

You do your best to get their unconscious selves next to a fire in the canyon because the sun is going down, and you can name these people (you don’t want them hurt). You drag yourself to the bazaar and they help you heal up, a few of them saw the fight and were grateful (not knowing the story) and you return to Link.

Link was taking down a lynel, trying to build back up his skills after struggling with the polymus one. He spots your sigils and gets a little freaked out because of the situation you’re all about to be in (even more freaked out when he catches the state you’re in). You help him out a little, as best you can, and he’s making sure you don’t take more damage (while being careful himself. he only earned a scratch, which you fixed up).

You share a heart to heart, and it’s kinda romancy. You share a bunch of those throughout the botw events, and heartwarming moments. Also several “oh no! One bed!” Moments. But you don’t get together until after Zelda is safe. Link is a sap but he’s got goals (I say as he was romancing you the whole way).

ANYHOW, TEARS OF THE KINGDOM! SO,

Y’all are adventuring the castle, and the Gannon event starts happening. You’re sprinting for Zelda and grab her hand, but you’re both shoved off by Gannon attacking Link. As you’re falling you squeeze Zelda close to you and are getting ready to pull out a glider or teleport, when y’all are pulled back in time.

You’re kind of there protecting Zelda (in link’s place instead of beside him 😔). The day the memory happens where Sonia is got by gannondorf, you happen to catch him just before he gets there. You’re strong and skilled, but you’re no triforce wielder, and you don’t have the sword. But, he sees potential in your strength, and sees the magic that you possess (yiga stuffs), so he’s holding you by the throat and goes to the spot behind Sonia. You can’t even brush your feet on the floor, and you’re helpless as it happens. Zelda is trying to figure out what to do, because you’re held hostage, but Sonia needs immediate assistance. You’re waving at her to shoo her away, signaling that you’re ok (not true lmao). So, when rauru comes, they make their escape. (POV: Link watching in absolute horror)

Gannondorf drags you to wherever the chasm is and figures he can use you as an amplifying power source (like a horcrux prism or smth). He uses the tear on you to kind of make you suspended in his malice in an everlasting state of giving and taking power from you. You are where most of the never ending malice comes from, even while he’s sapped dry, for him and the other gannons. (It’s kind of like when aang is in that water monster thing, but gone completely wrong). But because of this, you are able to be mindless through eons of time (took inspiration from the Zelda dragon).

On his way to the second or third sage, Link is exploring a chasm from a well in some ruins (pretty close to the korok forest maybe?) and comes across a being of malice chained to the floor. It had been shunned by the light for all of these years, stuck in the darkness far underground. It put him on the verge of tears to look at it, but he wasn’t fully sure why. Maybe a part of him knows that this is where you ended up. The dark to contrast Zelda’s light.

As he’s fighting you in malice and chains, he’s created an opening. It is one that the malice flowing out of you is quickly trying to cover, but not quick enough. Link got you out of the being that was suspending you. a cord of the malice was still attached, and with watery eyes, he quickly separates it from you using the sword of light. With bated breath, the hero checks for signs of you being alive, and upon confirmation begins sobbing. The tears that had welled up were cascading freely down his cheeks as he cradled you close to him. Much of the malice surrounding y’all (along with your malice suit) and in the chasm, and some in the overworld, is gone now.

All these months, he felt he had been staving off insanity. He went from living a mostly normal life, surrounded by the love of friends and of you, to being completely alone, fighting for ghosts of the past and the future in the blink of an eye. He had seen you through Zelda’s memory, watching as you and the others no longer partook in those, one by one. He longed to see the both of you again. Link begged to embrace you in his arms night after night.

Finally, here you were.

Link stopped everything when he felt a hand on his cheek, softly brushing the tears away. He looked down at you, and only began to cry harder. You were crying too now, as you fully embrace him.

The two of you then go on the adventure to save Zelda again :) it would def have bits of romance, but I fear writing it would be repetitive (only because it’s me. If someone else did it, it would probably be fine. I think maybe I would have to make it after he has the sages, then he gains you and fights Gannon. Maybe even after he saves Zelda!)

[zebanon]

The zelda lore theorists are in shambles and im here to correct their shortcomings, in this essay of a tumblr post i will attempt my best to correct some large problems i have seen within zelda lore as of late.

“Where did all the shekiah tech go from botw?” It went back underground as we clearly see most of it rise from the ground in botw, and for the guardians they were used for the new towers, as for the divine beasts they were most likely buried once more, weve seen that they were originally buried prior to the age of the botw champions (the time 100 years prior to botw) so they were most likely just reburied for convenience.

“But there were too many guardians for how few new towers there are?” are you expecting hyrule to understand this massively advanced tech on their first try? Hell even some of the quests for the new towers involve them being buggy, meaning they still havent perfected their understanding of ancient shekiah tech

“Why is hyrule been founded again? Did nintendo reset the timeline?” No you idiot, hyrule has been founded again multiple times before now, we just havent seen it actually happen in game or in cutscenes, why do you think zelda games have wildly differing landscapes?

As for the zonai being introduced, they were probably there the entire time. Think about how in the start of totk zelda says that the murals say that her ancestors partnered with gods to create the kingdom of hyrule, this makes me think that the three golden goddesses from earlier zelda lore were probably zonai.

So, in botw and totk, the three dragons that we technically dont know the identities of are named naydra, dinrall, and farosh. The three golden goddesses are named nayru, din, and farore. If we consider that they were most likely zonai they most likely had access to secret stones, of which allowed them to be viewed as gods and eventually become the three immortal dragons we farm for parts in botw and totk.

Now, for the differences between malice and gloom as well as calamity ganon and ganondorf, this is a smaller misconception that ive seen that i still wish to correct anyway. Gloom is not malice but malice is gloom, if that makes sense. Basically gloom was first created by ganondorf when he acquired the secret stone, however gloom became malice after ganondorf was sealed away and he developed so much hatred that it leaked out in the form of malice and calamity ganon, attempting to destroy hyrule castle as on a stone tablet we can find in game, it is stated that the castle was made so that ganondorf would not be disturbed while sealed. However after the great calamity from botw the castle was left in shambles and ganondorf’s seal was disturbed heavily, but not enough for him to escape, however after calamity ganon is destroyed and all the malice disappeared, time passed where the castle was just kinda left to rot, its not known exactly how long has passed between botw and totk, but seemingly enough for the seal on ganondorf to effectively become useless and allow him to start spreading his gloom more. Basically, gloom is directly and intentionally made by ganondorf, but malice is just because he was literally too angry to die.

If i find any other problems with current zelda lore i will add onto this post, but for now this is all my adhd riddled brain has to say.

[maryellencarter]

"low fast travel" run continues: having climbed all the way up to shee vaneer because i discovered you can see shee venath from a korok spot above bosh kala (look it's the photographic memory i'm pretty sure i know all 120 shrine names if i think about it okay? the totk ones aren't sticking at all though. i can clarify locations and associated puzzles about the botw ones but i'm not sure anybody reading this... cares really), i am now considering whether i'm stubborn enough to do the glide-and-climb *back* up to shee vaneer after solving shee venath.

(i am still doing them guideless or i could just look up the answers :P i had to look up some for my first all shrines run but once i've seen the solution it's much easier to understand the possible strategies to get there)

(technically "guideless" fell to "i have been around the entire circumference of the great plateau wall looking for a sword i know is here but my fucking irl perception check is not high enough to spot it" but i'm okay with that. i'm trying to rely *primarily* on memory and exploration, as much as possible. sometimes i need to know where to look and/or what i'm looking for, or i will Not See)

i am entertained to discover that from the summit of shee vaneer peak you can see ta'loh naeg through a gap in the pillars of levia, hinting you towards kakariko if you've been ignoring it thus far.

i really, really need to get back on the damn path though. i need hestu. i have nineteen korok seeds and i keep dropping perfectly good weapons i haven't even used because i only have eight slots, and i'm committed to keeping my basic tools on hand at all times: a torch, a hammer weapon, an axe, and a korok leaf.

(what am i gonna do when i've broken all the axes and they're not respawning because it's a no blood moon run? i rely so much on the respawning double axe at woodland stable. ...hopefully have the master sword or something? jeez. i usually try to save it for situations where it gets powered up, like the divine beasts and the castle.)

i did successfully manage the exploit to delay the blood moon for another week -- you save around 11:57pm in game, let the last few seconds run until the first frame of the blood moon cutscene hits with that BOOM, hit home and close the game, load it up from the manual save (not the autosave from the blood moon occurring), and the extra loading time squeaks past the "blood moon timer is reset to zero" flag but doesn't actually trip the "enemies and weapons are all respawned" flag.

the exploit itself is so simple you can do it by mistake, and in fact that's how the streamer I learned it from discovered it. The challenge comes from paying attention to the blood moons; remembering not to leave a shrine, divine beast, or the castle right after midnight unless you're sure it's not a blood moon night; not being able to roll over nighttimes with beds or fires unless you're *very* sure it's not a blood moon night; using your knowledge of the game to pace out your kills so that, for instance, you don't go after a lynel or a hinox until you have space for his weapon drops; the possibility of running out of weapons is a little higher in master mode because of health regen (calamity ganon in master mode is a *beast*, i doubt i'll ever play master mode myself for that reason, i'm too cautious to play a mode that doesn't allow for slowly whittling down health), but i'm sure it could also happen in normal mode, especially since there are just fewer total weapons in normal mode.

I don't know if it'll be physically possible to fill out the Hyrule Compendium without buying any pictures, during a no blood moon run. I'm stacking a lot of goals that I haven't seen anyone else do all in the same run. I know it's possible for certain weapons to go extinct in the game even during normal play -- I killed all 22 lynels in my main save without ever getting a mid-tier gear drop, because I was so scared of them that I put them off until they'd all evolved into white-maned or silver lynels. (There's a non-scaling blue one in the castle gatehouse for the compendium photo, but he won't drop his weapons unless you save-reload during the fight.)

in other news i have successfully parried a chuchu! it didn't damage it any though. shame.

[zorasapphires]

for my first text post i wanna talk about some zeldy thoughts. these are like raw thoughts bc ive just come from writing a 10k assignment and don’t feel like sticking to proper writing structure right now lmao. major end game totk spoilers

something that i saw talked about that frustrated me was when people say that like, the zelda/ganon dragon fight at the end doesnt make sense within the lore of the game, seeing as you “lose yourself” when you swallow a secret stone. and while i get why ppl think that, i think it bothers me bc it kinda seems like a shallow interpretation of the lore.

i think on a basic level there are still very clear good/bad dynamics that play in all of LoZ (in totk there’s light/gloom, light/evil) so i don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility that zelda as the light dragon can sense the evil presence of ganon as the demon dragon. i.e. while they have lost what makes zelda zelda and what makes ganon ganon, they maintain that sense of good or evil. so zelda will come to the rescue, and ganon will continue to try and destroy.

(god i have so much to say here because like. what even makes ganon, ganon? im kinda disappointed at the lack of character depth ganon got despite the opportunity in this game!! he had lots of screen time, but a real lack of motivation beyond the evil villain for the sake of it.)

BACK TO DRAGONS THOUGH, i think that this good/bad dichotomy can also explain why farosh, dinraal, and naydra WEREN’T part of this fight. in botw they are framed as an extremely neutral presence, and that is continued in totk. it would have been ooc for the dragons to come help, just like it would be ooc for zelda as the embodiment of light to NOT show up. in botw, the 3 dragons just fly around the map, not directly influencing anything good or bad. they don’t attack you, but there presence can harm you unintentionally.

i know that in botw all we had were those 3 dragons, but i think it’s shallow to assume that all dragons in the world would act like them, especially when we have no confirmation of how these dragons came to existence i.e. did they or did they not swallow a secret stone (i have thoughts about this too dw). in the confines of totk, stones amplify your power. zelda as the holder of the power of light would inherently work to repel and destroy evil. she might lose HERSELF, but she isn’t losing that power. that power and her are separate. same with ganon but with evil. at the expansion of all of LoZ lore, zelda is the reincarnation of wisdom, and i believe the light dragon to be the essence of that reincarnation i.e no zelda remains and she HAS lost herself.

that being said, i still do critisise some of the ways that totk’s story expanded, specifically the end cut scene. the “reset” felt shallow, cheap, and forced, and i definitely wanted to see some consequences to both link (losing an arm) and zelda (permanently staying a dragon or at the very least being permanently scarred by the experience and not just waking up from a deep sleep lol)

EDIT: OH YEAH AND brief dragon immortality thoughts: immortal in the sense of age, not immortal in the sense of damage and life force, which is how demon dragon can die

[dogshit-enchantment]

My 2023 video game year-in review (aka I'm just yelling into the void don't mind me lol)

Game Of The Year: Little Goody Two Shoes. I'm at about the halfway point but I have just been so completely and thoroughly impressed with it at every turn. The writing is exceptional, the story itself is incredible, the graphics??? Obsessed. AND THE MUSIC. AUGH THE MUSIC GOES SO HARD!!!!!!!!! And the fact that it's gay??? chefs kiss.

Honorable Mention(s): Pikmin 4 (the love of my life, I love you oatchi you are my babiest baby boy. Literally the only reason it's not my goty is just because rpg maker style games rule my heart), Vampire Survivors (switch co-op is so fucking pog), Harvestella (2022 game but I beat it in early 2023 so it counts for something), Fear & Hunger (not a 2023 game but that's when I played it. I love you, Funger)

Most Anticipated: Tears of the Kingdom which. If you've read any of my previous posts about it you'll know I did not enjoy it. TOTK now stands as the second-ever zelda game I didn't bother to finish. (First being Wind Waker but only because my fear of the sea/getting the triforce pieces in the gamecube ver was SO HARD FOR NO REASON. Love Windwaker so much, my not-finishing-it is a me problem, where as with TOTK it's a game problem)

Award Of Most Mid: Tried Fall Guys at a friends place and gotta say, it's just mid. Frustrating enough to not be fun but not frustrating or rewarding enough to warrant a feeling of real challenge/desire for mastery.

Worst Game: Didn't come out this year obvs, but Disco Elysium for switch. Controls are dogshit, text is illegible when on a tv not even 6 feet away, and the way that the stats are explained (or rather, not explained at all) is super frustrating given how shitty/infrequent the autosave is! The plot itself is probably fine, and the world building is interesting, but the game attached to it feels like something off of an early 2000s rpg, and I don't mean that in a good way. While Fear & Hunger gets an honorable mention despite being even harder, there's something about it that sets it aside from Disco. Funger is a game where you're meant to die, and often. While Disco feels like a game where you're not supposed to die, and doing so puts you back as far as the last time you saved. The game doesn't take care to set checkpoints or a reset spot because it's not meant to happen. Funger is a game where you're meant to die/retry so of course theres limited saving, thats the point. Intentional vs Unintentional difficulty/unfairness

anyway these are my personal opinions, feel free to disagree with them if i liked/disliked a game you feel opposite about.

[vulpiximisa]

Finally finished the game 

I’m mostly disappointed in the fact that I had pretty much predicted most of the major plot twists. Which again isn’t bad because it just means they left enough hints for anyone to be able to draw that conclusion. 

Oh, the Pink Blood though, that’s absolute genius. Not sure what that’s like to anyone that had not played DR, but it was so on the nose. I loved it. 

As for the Yuma past reveal, I’ve already said I wasn’t a big fan of the Specialist Boy reveal. But at the same time, I kind of hoped that there were some hints dropped about it during the game. I had the same problem with Hinata/Izuru but given that he was supposed to be reset, it was passable that Hinata wouldn’t randomly exert super skills. Yuma on the other hand, even though his memories were wiped, I feel like he never displayed any super critical thinking skills that went beyond a normal person’s, like none that would qualify being a supposedly most genius brain in the WDO. Not sure if because the cases were too simple or because of Shinigami’s “help” or that the ML we’re just not a good way to show it. (Having  muscle memory from holding a gun didn’t really count)

Was discussing the majority of the finale with my sis who was watching my playthrough and we both kind of agreed that even though Info Dump from the Villain is Not Fun, the constant QTRs were also not really fun in terms of gaining new information. I get that it was supposed to feel really fast paced but there wasn’t much room to think or any of the reveals weren’t mind blowing. 

Also discussing with sis, and hate to compare it to other games, but the MLs are just Not Fun. There never really felt like there was a triumphant moment, because even though you get the cool It Was You finger point moment, it doesn’t feel Good because it’s not even Real and Then They Die. I get it in terms of lore but gameplay wise I do not look forward to them. 

Not sure if because the last game I played was TotK but I honestly really wanted a scene of the Nocturnal crew to burst in through the Labyrinth to tell Yuma he wasn’t alone. Makes absolutely no sense, but I’m a sucker for that kinda stuff. 

It only made sense for Shinigami to be the one to have to knock some sense into him but I didn’t think it held a lot of weight. Her time with him always felt borrowed so her saying She Is With Him didn’t amount to much for me because they had a pact. Not saying that they were strictly business but it just felt like she wasn’t going to be there with him forever. (Not like the Kinomoto Sakura and Kero duet song called Zutto Zutto Zutto) Got just a little sad thinking about what would happen to her. Made me think of Death Note where the only way a Shinigami dies is if they fall in love. Not to say her bond to Yuma is romantic, even with the kiss, but I know that she has an attachment to him. 

Was hoping to get a “bad ending” by choosing to stay but I guess it turned out to be the right ending. Will go back and see what the other choice brings. I also have to get the rest of the Gabs, which I missed most of them in chapter 3 somehow. 

A little disappointed finishing the game didn’t unlock any new content like art or music gallery. I know since DR were ports and had lower graphics that they could cram all this extra stuff, while Rain Codes graphics were really good so I guess there was no room for anything else. 

Did solving the extra cases in Kanai Ward do anything at all? I was afraid I chose the wrong answers for some of them (the kid getting ghosted away, not telling the guy waiting for his dead gf) so I don’t know if there was any impact on the ending at all. 

Anyway, I don’t know how much I’ve craving content of the other characters because I don’t think I was going to get the DLCs if Yuma isn’t in it.