#totk discussion

[navisakura]

People love to talk about the Frostbite armor and say it’s “Links sluttiest outfit” but like have y’all SEEN the Charged set?

The low rise pants? The top draping over his shoulders and barely covering his titties? The exposed midriff? The fact that he’s got his dogs out? The bracelets? THE ANKLET?!

And like yeah there’s the backless thing and the skirt is cute but like the Charged set is also backless?

Also when people draw him in this it’s usually only with the shirt and they choose to completely ignore the bell bottom ass pants and flats but with the charged set THE WHOLE OUTFIT IS SEXY

I will say that the blue nails stand out more and that’s pretty slay but like Charged set will always be superior in my eyes and I need more people to draw him in it please and thank you

[moonglide]

Identity of Ancient Hero and Princess

Theory/Headcannon:

Calamity 1: No Tech Vanilla Addition occurred a generation or two after demise was sealed under the isle of the goddess. The second one (with tech, all goes well) occurred a generation or two after the totk imprisoning war where ganondorf was sealed. Sonia and Rauru had to have kids running around in the background, or else the blood of the goddess wouldn’t have continued. I think that the link and Zelda that sealed Calamity 2: Hyrule Engineering are related, and descendants of Sonia and Rauru. It explains how the ancient hero looked like a zonai, but wasn’t one (zonai/hylian hybrid) and (while this could happen otherwise, but it’s still a point for the theory) how the Zelda of that time (according to the mural) had darker skin than most Zeldas throughout the games. Who was a hylian queen who also had darker skin? Sonia.

And we know the link/zelda wombo combo that sealed Calamity 3: Guys, I Think We Fucked Up

If anyone finds any major problems with this theory, please tell me

[cwazytvthings]

Just some more Totk thoughts:

I love the game and I love exploring but I'm finding it hard to complete. Not because it's difficult or anything, the gameplay is fantastic. The reason why It feels hard to complete is because I'm not vibin with the story. It's been out for what two months now? And I'm just playing at a snail's pace because I can't get into what we were given.

I really wished they delved more into the sheikah tech instead of leaving basically none of it behind. Including the sheikah monks, divine beasts, ancient flames... they're just all gone. They had so much left untold, like if we don't get a dlc I'm going to be really disappointed. I also can't stand the heavy focus on Link and Zelda because it always leads to a ship war. Like, link is supposed to mirror the player yet I feel so disconnected from him. I also dislike how the cliche, "Zelda is strong because she needs to love someone." Like why couldn't we just get a strong female character who attained her power from realizing she is more capable than what her father thought?

Also don't get me wrong, Zelink is cute but It takes away from the story when everybody is basically shipping "you" and Zelda lmao. In my opinion, Link is the player, and it just throws a lot of stuff off when people are telling you to go save your girl. Botw and Totk did this and that's where I feel like I'm old school and just kinda want Link's "love interests" to be anonymous. (I.e. ocarina of time, twilight princess.) I'm a major story person so yeah, this game's plot bothered me a lot. Might honestly just go back and replay wind waker or oot, hell might even replay Botw. I genuinely miss the ancient sheikah stuff. And as I've said before, Totk feels like a disconnected story atm.

Like it feels as though it takes place in an alternate timeline because yeah, time passed but damn, no way y'all moved a whole Sheikah tower for the heck of it; Sheikah technology should have at least been preserved in a museum somewhere no matter how dangerous one might have previously thought it was. Also don't get me started on Ganondorf. I've also said this before; his story is lackluster. Boss fight is cool af but story... it's so empty.

Sorry ik this is an incoherent ramble and mostly just personal biases but yeah, just wish the story was a little stronger. Everything feels absolutely thrown off.

I seriously enjoy every other side plot over the main one 💀

[sonocomics]

Have you started playing totk yet?

I remember reading and watching an old comic dub of your comics for botw so I was wondering

Also if your wanting to know what video it's this one

https://youtu.be/aGw7bow3i58

I have not. Honestly I probably won't for a while

I tend to wait on bigger games until later.

[skullvis]

Oh no….tears of the kingdom storyline extremely extremely disappointing…

(Disclaimer: you can disagree with me this is subjective I’m not going to argue with anyone who likes the story to say it’s bad…I’m just. SUPREMELY disappointed by it and think it did a terrible job building on botw storywise.)

(Game play wise ToTK is a fucking masterpiece but so was Botw AND its story was cool and interesting)

[nattousan]

@vampire-wizard-solidarity you have it exactly right, and i don't want to derail but I'd love to hear you comment on what I and many of my friends perceive as a conservative emphasis on het relationships in the game and the active narrative discouragement of anything that could even suggest the possibility of any gay shit going on in hyrule.

At least in my playthrough, I noticed a lot more npcs talking about their wife or their husband/kids which in itself wouldn't be enough to raise my dander but coupled with the whole Lady Yona disaster, it puts a bad taste in my mouth.

Its giving the same vibes as those "get a wife and procreate" propaganda animes that show how cool or nice it is to have children/be married. Even themes that were present in BOTW like the Gerudo town's "Voe and You" class assurance that absolutely NO lesbianism happening here seems weirdly prominent as well. Not to mention that for Gerudo town specifically, Bolson is just allowing his only daughter to be taken away and never to be seen again bc TRADITION. Like yea he's sad about it but he doesn't even try to fight it bc rules are rules!

Im rambling but I wonder if anyone else picked up on this.

a lot of people have already pointed out how totk has a lot of themes of imperialism and generally leans conservative ideologically, but what i think is interesting is how totk subtly redefines what a “researcher” is.

zelda wants to be a researcher in botw, and what this means in the context of botw is largely someone who works with sheikah technology. she wants to figure out ancient sheikah tech, she has an interest in botany and otherwise nature and biology (the whole silent princess and the frog thing), robbie and purah, the two characters who are the closest to us seeing what a researcher in the context of botw is are basically inventors. in totk, however, the main researchers who are presented to us are all historians.

this is an interesting pivot, because in botw zelda is not really interested in history. if anything, the one who’s deeply concerned with history is rhoam, wanting to preserve historical tradition and his uncritical reliance on said tradition and historical precedent is what leads them to their doom. in botw, zelda is narratively opposed to history, if anything, all the ancient tech backfires on them and traditions fail to awaken zelda’s power. zelda’s urge to be a researcher is in wanting to understand the world around her, not just blindly follow ancient plans but rather have agency within them.

totk, however, is obsessed with ancient plans. the only real moment where zelda gets to geek out in totk is her getting all giddy about finding out more about the divine origins of hyrule. all the researchers in the game are concerned with finding out more about the zonai. since all the mentions of ancient sheikah technology are scrubbed from the game purah and robbie read more as strange outliers, the sheikah slate is no longer, now it’s the purah pad, a product of purah rather than something larger. the whole game is literally about following an ancient plan, a plan most characters don’t fully understand as they sign up for it. totk’s main story is built on confusion, on the characters not knowing what’s fully going on but having faith in ancient sages telling them what to do. in botw, following ancient plans you don’t fully understand was the thing that doomed you. in totk, following ancient plans you don’t fully understand is the gimmick.

that juxtaposition between the two games has an ideological through line: botw posits that progress is necessary. mindlessly relying on tradition doesn’t work. prophecies are omens, not instructions. history must be learnt from, not repeated. the ancient sheikah aren’t a group to be emulated, but rather to be learnt from, considering their machinery backfired and the royal family betrayed them. totk, however, is obsessed with the mythical history of hyrule, a time where everything was idyllic until one bad man showed up, a time we must emulate in order to win. i already talked about how the past in totk is zelda’s life pre calamity but better here, but that also plays into the idolisation of that era and its royalty. in botw, even the myth of the first calamity preserves the fact that the yiga clan has origins in the royal’s family persecution of the sheikah, even the time when they successfully held back the calamity is tinged with mistakes that still affect the world ten thousand years later. in totk, ganondorf’s origins are nebulous. nobody provoked him, nobody did anything wrong, he’s just evil because he is.

a lot of right wing ideologies are hinged on preservation, but more than that: the belief in the nebulous mythical past in which everything was better. “make america great again”, the fascist’s idolisation of ancient rome which is represented largely inaccurately, look at any conservative rhetoric and you’ll see people complaining about how things nowadays are ruined or are being ruined, how in the past things were this way and they’re not anymore, which is bad. the belief in the fact that in some past period we were great and are not anymore, and the strive to emulate that past is a trait highly typical of right wing ideologies. and in totk the past as a great era is an idea presented completely uncritically, the narrative is entirely controlled by the game and doesn’t dwell on any of the inconsistencies in this idea.

now, obviously, not every story in which a great ancient era exists is fascist, right wing or conservative. but to me what’s interesting specifically in totk is this shift between the two games: botw is critical of the past. it’s critical of arrogantly repeating history, it’s critical of having blind faith in great relics of the past. totk isn’t. totk idolizes the past, totk tells legends and tells you to believe them without any doubts. botw believes researchers are those who seek to understand the world, innovate it and solve problems without relying on ancient ways. totk believes researchers are those who discover ancient instructions, ancient ways and relay them to great men in the present to be followed. the four mainline regional quests in botw are about discovering four ancient relics that are terrorising the land and fixing the mistakes of the past. the four mainline regional quests in totk are about discovering four ancient legends are true, and receiving instructions from an ancient sage on what to do.

totk is not simply neutral, it is ideologically conservative in stark contrast to botw, because of the things it chooses to leave uncriticised, notably the things botw was very poignant about examining critically. the way totk redefines what is a researcher is indicative of this, indicative of the way it chooses to idolize or present as an unexamined good that which was nuanced in botw. totk isn’t just conservative in the sense that it presents uncritically a “good king” and “evil conquerer”, it goes deeper, it’s notable because botw was starkly opposed to the thematic axioms totk presents.

i just think it’s very interesting that they made a sequel to botw, and completely redefined or otherwise ignored botw’s thematic core.

[ganondoodle]

in other news, i still hate the 'curse' demise says being seen as a literal thing so widely, like he is somehow powerful enough to bend the world to that cycle and even the gods being helpless against it (unless they want it or even orchestrated it but that option never comes up does it), its never even considered to perhaps not be real, like its a literal law of the zelda world, imo its pretty boring itself and also boring as an explanation for the cycle and most often really only gets used to or talked about to make ganondorf be just a helpless evil guy that is born evilly bc he is cursed and if you took away tha demon juice he would side with hyrule and be good tm (a side effect being that people think he is the actual reincarnation of demise like zelda is supposedly of hylia which also sucks IMO) .... or to make demise some sort of puppet master, which i hate even more no .. no i hate that the most (bc it makes ganondorf a puppet and demise the evil demon master and thus ruins both my favs yippie)

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Actually I think we should all collectively work harder at misunderstanding TLoZ canon and simping for Ganondorf and I'm not even kidding.

[jack-shadow]

Its crazy how quickly pepole have really turned on Tears of the kingdom. Like a few months after release we were all talking about how incredible it was and saying it made botw look like a tech demo, then pepole starting comparing it to breath of the Wild, and more pepole were siding with botw because it's story was a bit less all over the place, and it had the fully original world with totk just kinda piggybacked off of, which makes sense, though frankly I think it's pointless considering that both are so amazing.

But now is seeing a really negative reception, like pepole are saying it shouldn't have released, and now the public opinion is thar it was pointless or unnecessary. It's just crazy how the public consensus has changed.

And frankly I kinda miss the more positive perspective, it's not a perfect game, the sky islands are repetitive, the fused weapons look ugly, the story feels separated from breathe of the wild, and it messed up the timeline. But it also has the best combat of any zelda game, has way more interesting enemies than botw, has amazing caves, the depths were perfect, the building system was beautiful, and the story is genuinely beautiful misteps and all. I understand looking at things with a critical perspective, but can't we just enjoy flawed things and be more positive towards media, not everything needs to serious and have a point, least of all games.

of course this is not to say that pepole who didn't enjoy the game are negative pepole, I'm just saying we don't need to constantly be critical, we can just have fun

[cooking-with-hailstones]

I LOVE all of this, and yes that's something that really struck me. Link isn't unknown anymore: basically every single person in Hyrule is just like "oh yeah that guy!"

We know he's beloved of the gerudo, the gorons, the zoras, the rito. He's got connections to every settlement, every stable. And they're all saying "like there's any way in hell we're letting you go through all that alone AGAIN"

We have an unknown voice saying "link is our last line of defence"

And then another voice telling us "but you are not alone"

Ganon wants to rule the old Hyrule, of spirits and sages and magic and Goddesses and lone, chosen heroes. But he hasn't prepared for this new Hyrule, born of grit and blood and ashes and hope and LOVE. It is love and community and collective solidarity and a refusal to surrender to darkness and despair.

And tbh I'm really emotional about this for a few reasons,but particularly because breath of the wild has helped me a lot with dealing with my climate anxiety. The world ended, and everything fell apart, and civilization as it was then known collapsed. But the people survived. They bonded together in tight knit communities and took care of each other. And the world moved on, and nature, the wild, reclaimed its domain. And now, we're seeing that bear fruit. There is life on the other side of death, joy of the other side of grief. Friends and community to fight against the darkness.

Anyways, that's my rambling thought of the day.

Totk last trailer thoughts - Ganondorf, temples, tears…

I sorta wonder if what Ganondorf pulls out of the earth with his awakening are all the old temples - all the traditional dungeons we didn’t have in botw. Where the origins of the sages/zonai/ deities (whatever) were kept or intentionally burried long ago… maybe to start anew or they realized collectively the only way to keep him sealed was to burry it all- including themselves (the sacrifice “the tears” of that kingdom). And he’s like no, look at it all (don’t look away), the ruins, your tombs - he’s pulling up the hyrule he tried to rule (he was meant to rule) 10,000 plus years ago back to the surface. He doesn’t care/ doesn’t know this new hyrule. He’s been stasis forever. He wants the hyrule he lost and he wants revenge on the people(s) that took it from him. He’s literally pulling up the past and Zelda, through magic, is thrust into the past when it all started.

And then we have Link who loves this hyrule (not the 100 year ago hyrule he barely remembers), the one he’s helped open back up, breathed life into, built many parts from the ground up. We have a hero that isn’t plucked from a forest or off a farm- he’s so much a part of the whole Hyrule from his journey in botw.

And this hyrule loves him. They are not an old man handing a child a sword, this isn’t just some terrible fate thrust upon him…They are his people and they decide this time, we fight with him. Beside him.

I wonder if with each temple you take a different companion and that’s how each chosen person/being ends up with a tear. They become the new sages of hyrule together.

The old loz phrase is literally put to rest, “It’s dangerous to go alone, take this” becomes “it’s dangerous to go alone, take me.” This time link doesn’t have to do it alone.

[creativesplat]

Growing up together: A very quick doodle!

[strawbkiwijuice]

always a bad day when you have to kill your bf in a dramatic sky battle to the death

[madamnerd]

I've deleted my Epilogue to my thoughts on Tears of the Kingdom post, basically because after a while, I realized that I don't quite feel that way at all, and was really only going off of what people said, so here's how I honestly feel about TotK. Spoilers ahead, so don't read if you haven't played it.

TotK is a fun game to play, and I enjoy playing it, but I have two major problems with it:

1. The game's mechanics and Zonai devices give the player unlimited freedom to the point of absolute ridiculousness. It's fun to play with, sure, but honestly I can't take it seriously as a Zelda game at all. It just looks too goofy... What I feel like they should have done is kept the concept of the Zonai as the Ancient Warrior Tribe of Faron (not bloody Ancient Aliens that practically replaced the Gods/Hylia, that was ridiculous) and made them magic users, while still keeping the Sheikah Tech from BotW... Sheikah Magitech combined with Ancient Warrior Zonai Magic... Now THAT would've been awesome!

2. The Story was shit. I'm sorry, but it just wasn't good at all... Not to mention that it makes a huge plot hole with Zelda becoming the Light Dragon for 10,000 years just so she could restore the Master Sword and return it to Link, like ??? Where was that in BotW then?

The total disregard for BotW that TotK has in general pisses me off so badly... I wanted a true sequel to Breath of the Wild, not a remake of it wiping out everything important before. Why is there still no Triforce? What the hell were these Secret Stones? Zelda doesn't need retconning like this (imo, it doesn't need it at all). Keep to the original driving force of the series, the Triforce. It's what's always been the center of the Zelda Universe.

... Maybe I'm just getting older and more set in my ways... I know that many of you out there love the game, and I'm happy for you, I am, and as I've said before, I like playing it too, it's fun to ding around with, but to me it just isn't Zelda. I know alot of older fans were really confused and let down by TotK. It was supposed to be huge, and, again imo, wound up being one of the biggest cash grabs Nintendo's put out there...

Hopefully Nintendo will learn from this mistake and combine some of the new elements with the older formula (cooking, multiple outfits, outfit dyeing, horse customization, multiple horses, ect.).

Feel free to comment and reblog. You think I'm wrong or an idiot? Go for it, tell me why. You agree with me or want to tell me something else? Go for it, tell me why. I welcome all opinions. Thank-you for your time in reading this.

[edgier-than-a-diamond]

In my own opinion, the single greatest flaw in both BOTW and TOTK is the lack of options when it comes to fighting strong enemies such as lynels, in TOTK especially so.

It would be much more interesting for strong enemies to have a special attack with a smaller, more obvious range that could destroy constructs.

For example, gleeoks could have a tail attack and wing attack both with a bright pink aura to denote that the attack will destroy constructs on contact. This way, players could plan how to create unique constructs and protect them while fighting instead of being prevented from using them at all.

Yes, there are ways to create constructs in totk that are useful while outside the range of the monster roar, and glitches that can prevent constructs by being destroyed by it, but casual players are not very likely to encounter these types of solutions.

[cosmicangsts]

a 3 year toxic & abusive friendship just ended y'all! he literally got mad at me for spending MY money i set aside ages ago for something i wanted ( acheron ) & today msged me an ultimatum about our friendship while putting me down, expecting me to piss shit & cry & i DIDN'T & instead stood my ground & called him out on being a controller who doesn't see me as a person with a savior complex so he DIPPED! ♡ ( not without the classic ' i'm sorry u feel that way ' & ' caring for my friend is NOT a savior complex ' & making it all about himself u best believe it was OUTSTANDING but i literally don't care i've cried so much over u )

if the new trend is a breakup at the start of every year & it means decluttering my life of incessant negativity, then honestly i am HERE FOR IT

[themarydragon]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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