#skyward sword liveblog

[eerna]

TotK is the most romantic stuff ever. except when it isn't. yes the game is about Link's journey to finally catch Zelda's hand and save her. yes she turned into an immortal dragon for 10000 years and forgot every single thing about her entire existence EXCEPT that she had to protect and save him. but we're gonna pretend it isn't happening <3<3<3 why are you surprised he no longer lives in Hateno <3<3<3<3 why did you expect any kind of a reaction from him upon learning the tragic sacrifice she'd made for Hyrule <3<3<3<3<3<3

[lovelesslittleloser]

Accidentally started a new anime and I’ve decided to liveblog it or whatever it’s called because it sounds fun. The title is Infinite Dendrogram & so far the MC’s pretty basic but there’s a cat AI who said kind of a lot about him being able to choose to be a villain so my hopes for that are unrealistically high

[hyah-lian]

*in botw zelda voice*

The angy avacado rises

[sage-nebula]

So I've now watched all the geoglyph cutscenes.

This story fucking sucks, man.

[tsvai]

lol

i did not need any of those potions

[wanderingandfound]

LoZ:TotK first Impa quest spoilers

The relief that washed over me when Sonia introduced herself. I was so so worried my girl Zelda would be the first queen/her own grandmother.

[blueskittlesart]

I've heard that while most people really really love BotW and TotK, some people hate those two for going open-world, and some people hate TotK specifically for something about the story. As the resident Zelda expert I know of, what do you think of those takes?

"something about the story" is a bit too vague for me to answer--if you look at my totk liveblog tag from back when the game was newly released or my general zelda analysis tag you may be able to find some of my in-depth thoughts about the story of totk, but in general i liked it.

the open world thing though is something i can and will talk about for hours. (I am obsessed with loz and game design and this is an essay now <3) breath of the wild is a game that was so well-received that a lot of the criticism from older fans who were expecting something closer to the classic zelda formula was just kind of immediately drowned out and ignored, and while i don't think it's a valid criticism to suggest that botw strayed too far from its origins in going open-world, i am more than willing to look into those criticisms, why they exist, and why i think going open-world was ultimately the best decision botw devs could have made. (totk is a slightly different story, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.)

Loz is a franchise with a ton of history and a ton of really, REALLY dedicated fans. it's probably second only to mario in terms of recognizability and impact in nintendo's catalog. To us younger fans, the older games can sometimes seem, like, prehistoric when compared to what we're used to nowadays, but it's important to remember just how YOUNG the gaming industry is and how rapidly it's changed and grown. the first zelda game was released in 1986, which was 31 years before botw came out in 2017. What this means for nintendo and its developers is that they have to walk a very fine line between catering to older fans in their 30s and 40s now who would have been in nintendo's prime demographic when the first few games in the franchise were coming out AND making a game that's engaging to their MODERN target demographic and that age group's expectations for what a gaming experience should look like.

LOZ is in kind of a tough spot when it comes to modernizing, because a lot of its core gameplay elements are very much staples of early RPGs, and a lot of those gameplay elements have been phased out of modern RPGs for one reason or another. gathering collectibles, fighting one's way through multilevel, mapless dungeons, and especially classic zelda's relative lack of guidance through the story are all things that date games and which modern audiences tend to get frustrated with. for the last few releases before botw, the devs had kind of been playing with this -- skyward sword in particular is what i consider their big experiment and what (i think) became the driving force behind a lot of what happened with botw. Skyward sword attempted to solve the issues I listed by, basically, making the map small and the story much, much more blatantly linear. Skyward sword feels much more like other modern rpgs to me than most zelda games in terms of its playstyle, because the game is constantly pushing you to do specific things. this is a common storytelling style in modern RPGs--obviously, the player usually needs to take specific actions in order to progress the story, and so when there's downtime between story sections the supporting characters push the player towards the next goal. but this actually isn't what loz games usually do. in the standard loz formula, you as the player are generally directly given at most 4 objectives. these objectives will (roughly) be as follows: 1. go through some dungeons and defeat their bosses, 2. claim the master sword, 3. go through another set of dungeons and defeat their bosses, 4. defeat the final boss of the game. (not necessarily in that order, although that order is the standard formula.) the ONLY time the player will be expressly pushed by supporting characters towards a certain action (excluding guide characters) is when the game is first presenting them with those objectives. in-between dungeons and other gameplay segments, there's no sense of urgency, no one pushing you onto the next task. this method of storytelling encourages players to take their time and explore the world they're in, which in turn helps them find the collectibles and puzzles traditionally hidden around the map that will make it easier for them to continue on. Skyward sword, as previously mentioned, experimented with breaking this formula a bit--its overworld was small and unlocked sequentially, so you couldn't explore it fully without progressing the narrative, and it gave players a "home base" to return to in skyloft which housed many of the puzzles and collectibles rather than scattering them throughout the overworld. This method worked... to an extent, but it also meant that skyward sword felt drastically different in its storytelling and how its narrative was presented to the player than its predecessors. this isn't necessarily a BAD thing, but i am of the opinion that one of zelda's strongest elements has always been the level of immersion and relatability its stories have, and the constant push to continue the narrative has the potential to pull players out of your story a bit, making skyward sword slightly less engaging to the viewer than other games in the franchise. (to address the elephant in the room, there were also obviously some other major issues with the design of sksw that messed with player immersion, but imo even if the control scheme had been perfect on the first try, the hyperlinear method would STILL have been less engaging to a player than the standard exploration-based zeldas.)

So when people say that botw was the first open-world zelda, I'm not actually sure how true I personally believe that is. I think a lot of the initial hype surrounding botw's open map were tainted by what came before it--compared to the truly linear, intensely restricted map of skyward sword, botw's map feels INSANE. but strictly speaking, botw actually sticks pretty closely to the standard zelda gameplay experience, at least as far as the overworld map is concerned. from the beginning, one of the draws of loz is that there's a large, populated map that you as the player can explore (relatively) freely. it was UNUSUAL for the player to not have access to almost the entire map either immediately or very quickly after beginning a new zelda game. (the size and population of these maps was restricted by software and storage capabilities in earlier games, but pretty muhc every zelda game has what would have been considered a large & well populated map at the time of its release.) what truly made botw different was two things; the first being the sheer SIZE of the map and the second being the lack of dungeons and collectibles in a traditional sense. Everything that needs to be said about the size of the map already has been said: it's huge and it's crazy and it's executed PERFECTLY and it's never been done before and every game since has been trying to replicate it. nothing much else to say there. but I do want to talk about the percieved difference in gameplay as it relates to the open-world collectibles and dungeons, because, again, i don't think it's actually as big of a difference as people seem to think it is.

Once again, let's look at the classic formula. I'm going to start with the collectibles and lead into the dungeons. The main classic collectible that's a staple of every zelda game pre-botw is the heart piece. This is a quarter of a heart that will usually be sitting out somewhere in the open world or in a dungeon, and will require the player to either solve a puzzle or perform a specific action to get. botw is the first game to not include heart pieces... TECHNICALLY. but in practice, they're still there, just renamed. they're spirit orbs now, and rather than being hidden in puzzles within the overworld (with no explanation as to how or why they ended up there, mind you) they're hidden within shrines, and they're given a clear purpose for existing throughout hyrule and for requiring puzzle-solving skills to access. Functionally, these two items are exactly the same--it's an object that gives you an extra heart container once you collect four of them. no major difference beyond a reskin and renaming to make the object make sense within the greater world instead of just having a little ❤️ floating randomly in the middle of their otherwise hyperrealistic scenery. the heart piece vs spirit orb i think is a good microcosm of the "it's too different" criticisms of botw as a whole--is it ACTUALLY that different, or is it just repackaged in a way that doesn't make it immediately obvious what you're looking at anymore? I think it's worth noting that botw gives a narrative reason for that visual/linguistic disconnect from other games, too--it's set at minimum TEN THOUSAND YEARS after any other given game. while we don't have any concrete information about how much time passes between new-incarnation games, it's safe to assume that botw is significantly further removed from other incarnations of hyrule/link/zelda/etc than any other game on the timeline. It's not at all inconceivable within the context of the game that heart pieces may have changed form or come to be known by a different name. most of the changes between botw and other games can be reasoned away this way, because most of them have SOME obvious origins in a previous game mechanic, it's just been updated for botw's specific setting and narrative.

The dungeons ARE an actual departure from the classic formula, i will grant you. the usual way a zelda dungeon works is that link enters the dungeon, solves a few puzzles, fights a mini boss at about the halfway point, and after defeating the mini boss he gets a dungeon item which makes the second half of the dungeon accessible. He then uses that item in the dungeon's final boss fight, which is specifically engineered with that item in mind as the catalyst to win it. Botw's dungeons are the divine beasts. we've removed the presence of mini-bosses entirely, because the 'dungeon items' aren't something link needs to get within the dungeon itself--he alredy has them. they're the sheikah slate runes: magnesis, cryonis, stasis, and remote bombs. Each of the divine beast blight battles is actually built around using one of these runes to win it--cryonis to break waterblight's ice projectiles, magnesis to strike down thunderblight with its own lightning rods, remote bombs to take out fireblight's shield. (i ASSUME there's some way to use stasis effectively against windblight, mostly because it's obvious to me that that's how all the other fights were designed, but in practice it's the best strategy for that fight is to just slow down time via aerial archery, so i've never tried to win that way lol.) So even though we've removed traditional dungeon items and mini-boss fights, the bones of the franchise remain unchanged underneath. this is what makes botw such an ingenious move for this franchise imo; the fact that it manages to update itself into such a beautiful, engaging, MODERN game while still retaining the underlying structure that defines its franchise and the games that came before it. botw is an effective modern installment to this 30-year-old franchise because it takes what made the old games great and updates it in a way that still stays true to the core of the franchise.

I did mention totk in my opening paragraph and you mention it in your ask so i have to come back to it somehow. Do i think that totk did the gigantic-open-world thing as well as botw did? no. But i also don't really think there was any other direction to go with that game specifically. botw literally changed the landscape of game development when it was released. I KNOW you all remember how for a good year or two after botw's release, EVERY SINGLE GAME that came out HAD to have a massive open-world map, regardless of whether or not that actually made sense for that game. (pokemon is still suffering from the effects of that botw-driven open world craze to this day. rip scarlet/violet your gameplay was SUCH dogshit) I'm not sure to what degree nintendo and the botw devs anticipated that success, (I remember the open world and the versatility in terms of problem-solving being the two main advertising angles pre-release, but it's been 7 years. oh jesus christ it's been SEVEN YEARS. anyways) but in any case, there's basically NO WAY that they anticipated their specific gameplay style taking off to that degree. That's not something you can predict. When creating totk, they were once again walking that line between old and new, but because they were only 3ish years out from botw when totk went into development, they were REALLY under pressure to stay true to what it was that had made botw such an insane success. I think that's probably what led to the expanded map in the sky and depths as well as the fuse/build mechanics--they basically took their two big draws from botw, big map and versatility, and said ok BIGGER MAP and MORE VERSATILITY. Was this effective? yeah. do i think they maybe could have made a more engaging and well-rounded game if they'd been willing to diverge a little more from botw? also yeah. I won't say that I wanted totk to be skyward sword-style linear, because literally no one wanted that, but I do think that because of the insane wave of success that botw's huge open world brought in the developers were under pressure to stay very true to botw in their designing the gameplay of totk, and I think that both the gameplay and story might have been a bit more engaging if they had been allowed to experiment a little more in their delivery of the material.

[ordon-shield]

Tears of the Kingdom Liveblog

Part 2

My thoughts over the first four and a half hours:

- Zelda being like every Zelda theorist ever

- ZONAI

- Hurt by three Keese Zelda?

- Skyward Sword retcon??

- Ganondorf not Demon King?

- THE IMPRISONING WAR??? DOWNFALL TIMELINE

- Hidden lore behind bombable rocks taunting me

- White/blue energy converted to green?

- GANONDORF <3

- He knows how the NAMES

- The HAND

- How long have I been asleep Rauru.

- Arm replaced!

- Lookie his hair

- Eh I can probably still stab someone with that

- Gloom = Malice+

- Worried for a bit that I’d skipped the green clothes

- Robot friend :D

- Skyward Sword vibes with the Zelda mentions

- Slate!

- Or Purah Pad lol

- Temple of Time!

- Ghost Rauru!

- ‘Source of the Right Arm’

- Bet that sounds better in Japanese

- Actually instead of a ghost maybe a hologram? Uploaded intelligence??

- Shrine time!

- Ultrahand time!

- It’s a pretty fun ability so far

- Ok so rather than gaining power like in BotW we’re getting rid of the gloom so we can use it

- I like the new item dropping feature, very sexy

- Link is no longer shirtless!

- Zelda being weird, recall acquired?

- Huh nothing from the goddess statue..

- Fourth shrine?

- Ah there she is

- Time travel stuff!

- Zelda using Fi to know what Link is doing in the future?

- DRAGON

- POES CONFIRMED

- PURAH <3

- Sorry Skyward Sword Link, your place as first king of Hyrule has been taken by the rabbitman

- Also Purah has an apprentice!

- Hidden room!

- Also the newspaper seems important

- Zelda?!?

- I have constructed my first proper vehicle!

- It has caught on fire and been destroyed!

- Paraglider time!

- I’ve been waiting to get it back!

- Time to add to the list of Link’s to be shot out of a cannon

- Rito first huh?

- So far, seems a lot more directed than BotW was.

[elder-sister]

Gonna liveblog playing every Zelda game in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

Skyward Sword part 2 this Saturday

"oh where is 1" it's on YouTube (our @ is The_Bean_Team) I'll fill in on part 2s posts tho

[gerudospiriit]

[catch me liveblogging the final battle and shit under the cut tho aljdf]

[I wish I were livestreaming this fight rn but this is the best I got alsjkdfkjaf:

oh boo i have to fight dehydrated Gan--nevermind. how you doing, Gan? 😏 have a nice rest? you probably really should have rehydrated sooner to get used to having you know...a not corpse body by lets gooooooooooo.

plan of attack: wail on him and try to figure out his moveset. so far, it's kind of working 🤣

oh fuck he can do the witch time thing too fuck. but it's good you can dodge out of it.

it's really cool that he's a master of all three types of weapons like link. that's neat and terrifying.

you can't flip out of the flurry rush liek me that means im better than you lol

now it's demise's turn i see

now you brought in reinforcements. BUT MINE ARE BACK TOO ASSHOLE HAAAAAA

glad you're enjoying this as much as me man. this fight is pretty legit fun.

wow those were my pals how dare you. and don't taunt/beckon me like that unless you plan on a different kind of battle somewhere more comfortable ok

wow man was not just glooming my hearts but also stealing my hearts wow. that was pretty tough

oh is he gonna eat it. is this what got spoiled. oh shiiiit

gandragoooooonnn

oh is he just gonna look like calamity ganon ish? laaaame

oh i got eated. shit.

is zelda dragon gonna come save me?

ah nabs is hurting again good. great. her feels.

oh there we go. now we got dragon ganondorf

yeah theres zelda dragon gonna boop his nose. or catch me. preesh

imagine if they all just ate their stones. what a battle man

zelda. zelda plz. catch meeeeee. :'D in all seriousness tho this is a neato fight too like daaaaamn. jumping off dragons and shit? fuck yeh.

so does this mean zelda didn't lose herself? called that one. She's always special girl haha

okay but i really feel like ganondorf is just making the same mistake as jafar here, like esp in kingdom hearts since video game comparison. so far, this fight is so much easier, and part of that is because he can't really touch me.

skyward sword prepared me for these midair fights and sky diving.

oh that blood moon is a nice touch wow

where am i going? his head? jump straight in his mouth, got it. (jk i see the glowing weak point lmao)

rip ganondorf again

another head stab nice

catche meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. thnks

this is how you do a final battle fuck. botw was so lackluster in comparison. THIS is memorable holy shit

A NUKE???

is link gonna go the way of goku at the end of gt? fly away on zelda's back?

rauru???? wait my clothes? where tf

oh we returning zelda back? oh rauru and sonia? wow

idk im gonna miss dragon zelda man. but she's baaaack. i knew it would happen but yaaaay

ey links arm is normal. and aw that's sweet. rauru and sonia leave together

gotta catch zelda now oh shiiit

OMG THE REACH TO MIRROR THE BEGINNING I GOT CHILLS AAAAH

im glad you understand cuz i don't. so did rauru and sonia like...keep her from losing herself? the warm loving embrace thing? or was that just want brought her back. the three of them together? their love and all that?

aklsjdf athat was honestly so good. liek im so glad they did amillion times better with totk than botw. *chef's kiss* im still confused af on a lot of things and might makes some more comprehensive posts about shit later, but this was a solid game outside of causing confusion lore 😭😭

[eerna]

Zelda throwing away her role as the sacred princess who needs to be protected and jumping in front of Link VS Link throwing away the Master Sword and jumping after Zelda

[lumberjackloverboy-moved]

might liveblog skyward sword once I get back from therapy

[mememan93]

Me blocking someone who seems cool and normal but is clogging the entire skyward sword tag with liveblogs

[star-ocean-peahen]

just fought final stage Ghirahim

um

my hands are still shaking

cuz like–I did the boss rush to get a piece of heart right before so it’s a double adrenaline whammy

and man, I LOVE Ghirahim.  The insults in his dialogue, his growing frustration with Link, his devotion to Demise.......

and GROOSE

JUST GROOSE

HE IS THE BEST GROOSE THAT EVER GROOSED AND I LOVE HIM

dang

[catofthebarricades]

I hate the silent realms so much I hate being the chosen one why!!

[imstillyourzelda]

groose’s room. gotta love that punching bag with link’s face on it.

notice link giving it the side eye as I took a picture of him with it 😅 he looks amused to see it there no 😅