#totk doesnt and its driving me nuts

[ganondoodle]

every now and then i get comments on some of my older rants about totk and im pretty sure its usually the very first post without any of the additions i tend to add later on-

old post about how i found it a lil weird that the one of the first things rauru and sonia doing is put zelda back into a little white maiden dress even tho her own clothes didnt look damaged at all and were far more practical and someone commented that its so she doesnt stand out (something that was said in nearly every comment i got on that post already) and that it was only weird bc i was making it weird or sth xD

but it made me think about it again, so .... that excuse doesnt work for me at all bc .. why wouldnt she want to stand out? whats the danger of that? her suddendly appearing out of nowhere, not knowing anything of the traditions or happenings of the time, being around the king and queen all the time with a duplicate enigma stone and unknown technology (purah pad) isnt weird? i know the excuse of oohoho shes a distant relative of sonia (i know its far stretched techinically true i guess) but why even do that, why go to such lengths of keeping her time traveling secret? making her less of a target for gan isnt really sensical either bc he went for sonia anyway, despite zelda clearly being the younger and less experienced of the two with less control of her power, and if he knew she was techinically more powerful .. well then shes even less in danger, and if he might have wanted to get information from her what could he have gained from it really? she didnt really know anything more anyway? like all she could tell him would be like you will lose i guess lol

(also you could keep it secret from him but why from the others, i just dont see the point, i dont find her look pretty either, she just looks uncomfortable, like if she gets put in to a lil white uwu maiden dress AGAIN im just gonna assume ok you are stripped of all your agency and will sacricifce yourself again wahoo what fun)

in a world were time magic is normal why wouldnt you just say yep she literally came from the future to help us? the usual rules of time travel, as in, dont tell anyone who you are, dont mess with the happenings bc everything can have major consequences, doesnt apply anyway, she goes around by her real name and is involved in literally every major happening .. so why care?? keeping it secret from gan for the future? why? he literally recognizes her within a split second anyway

(no gonna get into why i think her time travelling in the first place is like .. so forced? its only segway to put her out of the game essentially and the oh no tragic twist, but like why, she got the powers and the stone so she unconcisouly travels ... back in time ..?? why not reverse the stones she fell from or something, if it was soemthing that would come up again ok! like she did the time travel accidentally and then learned how to return over the time she spent in the past thats good!! i like that idea, but its never broguht up again, the closest thing to it is the weird two time bubbles that just serve to give you her time powers (whats up with how that went down anyway) and then to send the mastersword back ... why even do that when it could have fallen and travelled back with her right away?? and both of those are at the very start of the game AND IT NEVER COMES UP AGAIN, like fine if it was her trying to go back but not getting it right so she creates weird ass time bubbles cool! why not put them all over the place with them getting bigger and maybe being able to talk to link from the past idk SOMETHING- ok ill stop here ...)

[ezlo-x]

Just found out that totk Ganondorf’s motives was butchered in the English translation!! 😁

[ganondoodle]

wait i just realized... the mastersword isnt even important enough to warrant zelda doing to such extreme lengths to repair it bc its NOT EVEN REQUIRED FOR DEFEATING GANONDORF

idk about you but the mastersword being not just this weak after all this but also not even required is like ... hurting the whole plot SO bad for all that zelda knew she was basically killing herself by doing the dragon thing ONLY for the mastersword, which isnt even needed to reach the end why do the dragon thing at all??? she could have put it in some other divine place for it to recover (she knew where the springs are, she knew where the krog forest is, heck she even knew where the forgotten temple is BC THEY WERE ALL THERE* and im not going to belive any of them came into existence afterwards), in botw it took 'only' a 100 years to regenerate the damage it took in botws past which, while not as extreme as in totk, was pretty bad! yeah it gets outright broken in totk but like ... really? far over 10 000 years to recover it? through ZELDA? one of the most divine being IN THE FORM of one of the most divine beings aside from the very gods themselves?? whats the use of it being able to regernate if it takes THAT long?? feels easier to forge a new one for that matter?? and the excuse that "it needed to be able to resist miasma" is like .. why tho? yeah ok fine i could do the entire bossfight with JUST the mastersword, but again, its not required! i can do it with anything else!! and its doesnt cleanse miasma either, like the sword did in tp when you could do away the twilight stuff when it got the super glow stuff so its really like ... she did that JUST for the sword? really? the fact that her becoming a dragon is the way to get her back into her time isnt something she could have known and it working out like that makes it feel like a massive fail of the writers bc it makes it feel less like an actual decision she made for good reason and more bc its a decision the writers made bc the writers already knew where it would end, the writers knew shed be turned back in the end no problem so they had her do the dragon thing despite it being pretty senseless from her perspective

(wouldnt it have felt more in character and logical to put the mastersword somwhere safe where it can recover over all those centuries and search for a way to return to her time herself? like in these two games ZELDA feels like the more important thing that the sword, -zeldas prone to sacrifice herself for other- WHY! its better for everyone if you are alive rather than dead! you got to this time by yourself and also somehow not jsut shifted the time but also PLACE bc you sure as hell didnt appear in a cavern in the middle of the land, you have wielded incredible magic before and are a researcher, surely theres some way for you to at least TRY to return on your own?? how cool would it have been to find little markers and spots where clearly she has left you some sort of message, maybe like a way for you to do something that helps her in the past, USE THE WEIRD ASS TIME BUBBLES FROM THE TUTORIAL AGAIN!! send back something she needs to return! go and talk with impa and purah to determine what shes trying to tell you, help her along the way and in the end she makes her triumphant return, having grown and learned with what she did instead of regressing her chaarcter to the big eyed maiden that you get as a reward at the end through unsatisfying bs reasons and hurray she doesnt even remember, perfect little fairytale of no consequences wahoo- im salty about this let me be salty-)

you can absolutely combine a free to explore open world with good story without restricting it by much, like locking the bossfight behind aquiring the mastersword doesnt feel like that big of a change and its not making it a whole lot more linear, most people do it anyway right?

(also a thing im doing in my rewrite of it is locking certain things for some parts, it just makes sense if you are trying to tell a story, but its pretty clear now they werent trying to do that, just throw you into a box of virtual toys, and i think thats just sad)

*yeah actually whats up with the sonau/rauru putting their little nuclear super weapon storage room inTO THE ANCIENT RELICT OF THE FORGOTTEN PAST TEMPLE BEHIND THE BIGGEST STATUE OF HYLIA IN EXISTENCE?? you cant tell me all those ancient ruins (springs, forgotten temple) were made AFTER all of the shitshow that went down in totks past; putting it behind that statue? building it into there feels incredibly disrespectful, maybe it makes more sense if you just see it as the devs wanting to put somethign new there, but if you consider it in universe its just ??? also HOW is any of it in such a good shape??, it looks like they buried sonia there a year ago, the structures look like they just came out of a 3d printer despite supposedly being older than their recorded history??

on that note ... how does the room with the order and location of zeldas tears make sense .. are you telling me someone of the past ran around after dragon zelda recording where her fucking tears went down and what markings it made on the ground and then built a room next to the nuclear weapon storage room with the laughably unceremonial grave of the fucking queen just to put all that into statue form? also none of the geographical things changed in ALL that time?? the castle is drawn on there too so i guess that was super fresh then since it "was built above ganondorf as a symbol of royal blahbla" at least in botw you had the photos on your SHIEKAH stone to recover them once you found the place they were taken in, it felt so organically integrated ..

[ezlo-x]

i think i know how you feel about this one. but ganon having the power to kill tetra the whole time and saying that it is his objective but he doesnt do it makes me so sick in the head

literally turned into an animal five times and shredded my skin and started to walk on all fours

cause no it drives me nuts its drives me sooooo nuts cause after his whole speech he beats Link up right? and he says he doesn't want to kill him and just wants his piece of the triforce and succeeds so right? and then he fails and it breaks him and he has one final battle with Link and Zelda........he knew from the beginning he wasn't going to win he's just putting up a show as a last ditch effort BUT EVEN THAT when Zelda joins the fight and is shooting arrows at him he flies to her mind you Ganondorf is wielding both of his swords....

he puts back his swords and just "pushes" her away....he could've killed her but then again there was no point on killing her...just like the first time he just wanted the triforce, but even then she had no triforce piece at this point either

what drives me more nuts is everything before the final fight where Zelda is nicely tucked into a bed and Ganondorf is talking about her dreams. Everything about Tetra/Zelda and Ganondorf drives me up a wall in a good way, every other Zelda and Ganondorf iteration Ganondorf never acts this way as far as I remember. OoT Ganondorf sealed her in a crystal, TP Ganondorf uses Zelda as a puppet, TotK Ganondorf........................... and with Wind Waker he never seals her like in OoT, never controls her like in TP, he captures her....and he doesn't really do much further then that. Like she's not held back in some barrier you can tell in the final fight she's there ready to fight along with Link.

Like what did Ganondorf see in Tetra/Zelda? Did he see himself? Did he see a child who never knew that she was destined to wield a piece of the triforce? Did he reflect on his actions....what

[ganondoodle]

genuine genuine genuine question- wwwhy do you not like the zonai? (zonau? not sure if thats like. the worlds coolest plural or a translation difference) given your content with more monstery designs i would have thought they'd be up your alley!! however. i have also not played skyward sword (as much as id like to) and i know most of peoples upset with their existence and the totk storyline is because of its conflicts with that plot? i'm very excited to see what you do with your rewrite/botw2!! given their slight presence in faron in botw, it would be cool to see you repurpose the zonai in some way that doesn't conflict with the plot you're going for, something that makes more sense with the cryptic kinda bare minimum we had in botw? sorry if you've explained your stance on the zonai before <3

hhhhhhhh i had ranted alot about it but i hope you are prepared- (also "zonai" is sonau in german but im choosing to write it with a z so people recognize it at least, im pretty sure zonau is also the orignal japanese word for them)

i am fine with their design, in fact, i LIKE their character designs, however i dont like everything else about them.

and no its also not bc it affects skyward sword bc it doesnt affect ANYTHING in skyward sword, bc skyward sword is the VERY FIRST zelda game in the timeline and totk is nowhere near it, totk draws several paralels towards skysw bc its meant a sort of soft reset for this new era but its really just thematic overlap and references bc those are cool (i know alot of people are trying to convince the entire fandom that totk somehow is crammed into the old timeline but trust me its never anywhere near confirmed nor does it make any sense, heres the lil graphic i made last month to clarify how i think its meant to be understood .. quite obviously even -

i dont mean to sound .. mean, but some people read too much into little phrases or references to older titles (like first king of hyrule .. doesnt have to mean the literal firstest of the first ones in all of forgotten history ever, just the first of THIS hyrule for example), and while im not against theories i am very annoyed when people try to say its somehow canon when its NOT)

with that out of the way;

i dont like how they are 'integrated' into botws world, they feel unnatural and shoved in everywhere, they have been everywhere and did everythign better and cooler and no part of (this) hyrule was untouched by them their architecture feels not integrated well either and design wise its rather bland, while the sheikah shrines for example while obviously not natural and very 'techy' they still build a harmonizing contrast while the totk shrines are pretty laughably unfitting compared to them the basically complete disappearance of all sheikah tech related stuff bothers me immensely bc why would you just get rid of it istead of developing it further (i know about purahs towers and think they are just like a worse version of the previous ones; and before this argument comes up again, them destryoing it all -somehow- bc they were afraid of it being taken over again is a dumb excuse bc then they should be even more scared of zonau tech- even MORE unknown and advanced tech literally falling from the sky) you could have done SO MUCH with the ancient shiekah tech it drives me nuts

i also think it tipped the delicate balance of the kinda medival setting + high tech that botw had set up compeltely over, the zonau tech just .. is so painfully obviously only the way it is to give you little lego parts to glue together (i know its a focus of the game ... or at least the gamePLAY but it could have been done better, again i think they managed the balance perfectly with shiekah tech, its weird and isnt natural but doesnt endanger the believability of it ... the zonau tech just throws that out the window rly ... how cool would it have been if you could built lil guardian walk thingies djknhfkd )

in general they just feel like a complete replacement for the ancient shiekah and are so SO desperately trying to make the zonau the COOLER and BETTER versions of what the shiekah were (you COULD have connected them in a cool way, like there being ancient shiekah labs build in the old zonau mining facilities bc they used zonau tech as basis for their own tech etc)

like instead of building on the set up and potential botw had prepared, they just scrambled to make a 'better' version of botw, like oh no forget THAT ancient civilization we have an EVEN MORE ancient, and EVEN MORE highly developed peoples there that were also everywhere before you but also were never really hinted at- and then repeat botws structure .__.

having an old and forgotten civilization of whom only some withered ruins remain gave botw a much more real feeling, a world with a history that you will never know (you know, bc that makes it intriguing and is just .. a good choice of worldbuilding imo)- and then totk comes along and reveals everything and also nothing, we know too much of them to be intrigued by their mystery and also not enough to actually care about them (also them beign presented as the good perfectly perfectestest kingdom of light that can do no wrong other than underestimate the eeeevil guy while they also had their hands on every part of the land and made all other races be their face and nameless servants just ... thats weird man!! i know its a game, even if its only aimed at kids my god they arent stupid either!! you really present me with that and expect me to take it at face value what argh)

again i think they COULD have been integrated into it, but the way it was done completely threw me off, im not mad about them EXISTING but about how it was DONE in the game

the way they were done robs not just totk but also botw of mystery and intrigue, for example i much rather had them stay a mystery, only ever talked about in some text and some old and almost completely withered ruins left, you never get so see what happened there in the past, you can only guess, but you have to deal with the fallout anyway and thats just ONE possibility, there are so many and it feels like they chose the most boring one every single time

sometimes knowing less is better than knowing half

(maybe i can make it clearer when .. or if i can get to illustrate what could have worked -in my opinion- better .... sorry for ranting again ;__; )

[ganondoodle]

(your addition is very welcome, you often know much more about general fandom stuff than i do and are pretty good with words!)

i personally wasnt in fandom when botw was new (obsession with it started way later xD) and didnt play it on release either bc i didnt have any money so i dont know what early reactions to zelda was- but i have heard of people being very weird about zelda being what, a little mean to link? like, once? for good reason too? tbh its kind of sad how this zelda is one of ones with most character development (in botw that is, totk zelda barely has a character lmao) when she just doesnt like link (for good reason) from the very start- like it'd be so interesting to have a zelda and link that dont get ever get along tbh

anyway, the fact that a female character cant even be a little mean once without getting hated or labeled as abusive is in itself pretty sexist, like god forbid women are .. people

im still confused as to how anything i or the other person in the og reblog chain said translated to thinking of her as a 'whore' though xD (also since when is my thought bubble the 'general fandom', isnt it exactly the other way around O.o)

i havent played a link between worlds but knew the basics of it- yeah, its really 'interesting' how for hilda its good but when you think of ganondorf like this its annoying and bad, i wonder what the difference is there :)) (no no, dont you see, its da cuuuuuuurse)

it really annoys me how when you ask for even the bare minimum of at least awareness or care in like, big media stuff its now labeled as unreasonable modern 'progressive' demands, its really just their way of dismissing anything they dont want to think about (which is often some form of racism) like our end goal is to have perfectly puritanical(?) paste of nothingness (i certainly didnt have the same view as you, being white and having been a rather sheltered child, but i too thought that he probably wasnt as bad as we were told and wondered why we were just believing everything we were told by the boat (windwaker beign my first zelda game ... set myself up for disappointment from the start huh xD), ganondorf was my favorite character in the entire game and in the end im pretty sure i cried running away from him bc i didnt want to hurt him- which probably stemmed more from the fact i am not neurotypical and hated my questions of "why" being ignored/not explained and villains like him being often 'othered', just like i felt 'other' from everyone else- which is yet another problem point in how villains are often depicted while also 'working as intentend'- but you see, i was an annoying sjw child who cant take a simple fairytale as it is!!!!)

i didnt mention the whole harem thing bc i didnt plan on going on about this stupid comment as much, but yeah, thats another thing (i dont think that person was aware that makes it worse)- as someone who wasnt aware of all the subtle and not so subtle ways of how demonized middle eastern people are and have been for a long time its pretty scary to realize just how normalized it is, even in the little ways (there is no shame in growing and admitting you were living in ignorance for a good portion of your life btw)

i really love when people get worked up about 'wanting hyrule to be SECTRETLY evil' bc ...... they are? not secretely so? the text just justifies it with 'these people are good, so anythign they do is either fine or not important' like its honeslty fascinating how dissmissed it all is, like the shiekah persecution thing is just outright said to you but it doesnt matter? its mentioned just like and offhand comment of no importance, and the yiga are just irredeemable villains or treated as a joke? huh?? like you dont even have to read into it, they just tell and it doesnt matter- do they need zelda to turn to the camera and say "this action my family did was bad" for it to be considered 'bad' ?? do they think we just want the roles reversed? with gan being the unquestioned by the text good guy and hyrule that goes 'harr harr im evil obsessed tm'?? which would be kinda boring again if it wasnt the other way around so many tiems that even that would be refreshing :U

in the end i just wonder why people get so offended when you criticize it, you can still like it? demanding better is a benefit to everyone really? and better doesnt mean more 'pure' or 'non problematic', just like, better written or nuanced characters?? interesting stories?? theres so much interesting stuff you could do (in part bc it IS the way it is) with tloz that it hurts to see it not being capitalized on and people defending it anyway just as much

(anyway, you could talk about everything for so long but i want to do other things as well xD good addition, thank you!)

got this reblog on one of my posts were i talked about being anxious about the future of the zelda series after totk and-

i even went back and unblocked them just to check my own post and check twice what they meant exactly- but i still dont know how they got to these conclusions

i never said i 'want a good uwu ganondorf' (bc that would mean hes aligned with hyrule bc thats how goodness works!!!!11!1!!!), i also dont think of any of the zeldas as 'whores' (seriously, where did that come from?? neither me nor the addition of someone agreeing with me said anything like that??? did they think bc the addition called tloz misogynistic means we think zelda is a whore????? huh???)

its also funny how they say they want zelda to stay a simple fairytale rather than have 'people like me' bc .. one point i talked about in the og post was how the evil arab thing VS good white people media likes to do so much is so normalized here that its simply seen as a simple harmless fairytale trope instead of a big underlying issue in general media and the writers might not even realize it (which is worse) bc the most 'generic' appeal is to people who dont think of it as a problem in the first place, because it is so normalized

(huh, i wonder about what kind of person that part was about .. hmmmm)

(ALSO funny they mention princess hilda as nuanced villain ... like ... wow they are so nuanced about purple haired people!!- like guess why we want a nuanced/less badly/less flat written ganondorf and what he, in particular, has not in common with other villains! its not his hair color! .... or was that point supposed to mean .. look we have one female character that is a villain, its not misogynistic! idk honestly)

(and the classic, "you just call it this/dont like it bc its not what you wanted !!!!!!!2!"1!112!!")

also funny how its 'never gonna be progressive enough' like asking for the franchise to maybe put a little more thought and nuance into their white divine right vs evil desert man simulator instead of making it worse is already asking too much

(i dont know what the last point has to do with anything??)

(also yes totk is racist, like most if not all of the franchise and a alot of other media as well, shocker- you can still like it though, i and plenty of other people are still fans of it, we just wish they did a little more with their stuff and maybe not make the racism problem WORSE)

(also yes the hyrule monarchy is also evil :))) )

(and also not so secretly so either :)) )

[ganondoodle]

more thoughts!!

-- it strikes me as strange that all the powers of the sages are elemental and then theres .... time? since when is time and element akin to fire and such? i get that its a fun mechanic but it really falls out of order, espeically since there have been all of those sages before, tho i havent played OOT myself, shouldnt there be a sage of shadow instead of time? since we also got a sage of light? (i guess spirit also isnt an element in that sense but at least that one has been there before) or is that time thing supposed to be like .. since it was Ocarina of Time that link fills that eightth spot somehow and thats why time is a sage thing in tok? is that to be understood as it being about the eight statue of the gerudo? since the shadow one has been dismissed? i guess?? even then shadow is missing so the only thing to assume is that ganondorf is the sage of shadow, but none of it ever gets adressed additionally, i just found out that in english dragon-zelda is called light dragon and dragon-ganondorf is called demon dragon (which works fine but), they are called Weißdrache and Schwarzdrache in german (white- and black dragon) which imo (!!) plays even more into the sage stuff

--the fact that bascially everything that happened in botw is kinda .. ignored? drives me absolutely nuts, not just the sheikah stuff but also everythign about calamty ganon wouldnt it have been mention-worthy that clam gan presumably was just a puppet of ganondorf trying to break free or soemthing? wouldnt gan himslef say anthing about it? why is it all miasma suddendly and malice isnt even mentioned once?

--in general i cant help but feel more and more like totk is just trying to replace botw essentially, not a sequel, but a replacement, all sheikah tech is sonau tech now, the titans are the mystery stone, clam gan is demon gan now, zelda holding him back for 100 years is zelda being dragon for the master sword (but super duper long now), the sheikah stone abilities is raurus arm abilities etc. (and i dont want to sound like im bashing totk or anything, its such a fun game, but the weird dismissiveness of botw feels so weird ..)

-im now almost done with the underground and beneath where the shrine of life used to be (rip for unknown reasons) is a hot spring called secret spring of life and im .... idk it just feels like even another slap in the face

-zelda in botw had a really intersting thing going on character wise, with her being pressured so much she keeps making herself sick trying to adhere to her fathers orders, and really wouldnt it have been a better conclusion to her arc there that yeah she dont have the sealing powers everyone wants her to have but she isntead is so smart to work with sheikah tech she can make something that helps against clam gan; i guess her unlocking her powers, she had them after all whoo, its meant to read as uwu power of love or something but in that situation wouldnt it have been more like ... yeah she literally lost nigh everyone she cares about now and feels responsible for it all and link now dying too is as much pressure as you can put on someone, idk if my reading comprehension is just that bad but couldnt that be read as ... the problem of her not unlocking her powers was she wasnt pressured .. enough? (its probably been done like that bc its more tragic, but anyway, thats not quite my point-)

at the end of botw zelda even talks about one of the titans having stopped working, and her wanting to inspect that, which ngl, made it sound like she still cares about it even if its purpose is gone now (but in totk that doesnt matter anymore and also all of it is gone?) and wants to keep working with sheikah tech .. and now in totk its never even mentioned aside from symin and impa giving a super summed up version of the story of botw, literally the only guardian parts are on top of purahs ex-laboratory, given how everything else sheikah was wiped off the map it feels almost like an oversight

now my point is that all of it is completely dismissed in totk, suddendly its all abotu sonau sonau sonau, which somwhat makes sense as in zeldas interest in history, and well ... we wouldnt even know if she cares about sheikah tech still sicne she gets taken into the past so fast- it feels like such a disservice to her character, i really liked zelda with her intersting in science and history, but it all is overwritten by her being pressured yet again to sacrifice everything (and it being undone as if nothing happenend in the end anyway) .. and it kinda being both in botw and totk bc shes being ignored really, in botw its her father not listening to her and just punishing her more and more for not having sealing powers (prayers sure seemed to work well huh lets do more of that lol, and i know he gives up on it in his diary then but if he started doing it when she was 6 and now shes 17??? thats a lil late bro) and in totk its rauru going yeah no if we cant defeat gan well idk actually, im sure you are here for a purpose tho go figure it out yourself lol its not like i know gan better than you possibly could lmao in botw you got to at least see her ... more naturally? more of her character? idk how to put it but in totk it feels like shes even less there even tho it technically the opposite, and all the lil text things you can find cant do all the heavy lifting, oh she apparently rode around on some construct beast like its nothing thats never shown or mentioned again and i guess she actually spent more time in the past as a human than dragon but how would we know all we see is her being shoved around again having to do a big sacrifice in the end again (that turns out to be a non problem after all)

-in all the dragon tears we barely get to see anything of all those new characters, its basically always about gan but for it being so much about him we dont know shit about him actually (like yuno even says we dont know who he even is except that hes very strong and very evil, but that gets dismissed too) and it all makes it so hard to care

--what hapened to yuno inhereting daruks protection but it being gone in totk? does inheretited magical power disappear when the ghost of your granpa dies? (does the whole inhereting stuff even work with gororns they jsut come out of stone after all??)

--quite a few of access points to the underground are exactly where sheikah shrines used to be, them being gone would be interesting if it was gans access to the world, like him infecting the power pipeline of whatever ancient energy was (rip to that too i guess) and thus cracking open the earth itself but theres isnt anything of the shrines remaining in the udnerground anyway and most srhine are just GONE without even leaving a scarring on the earth except for less grass in its spot so its .. ??? how do we not even see any remaining stuff of the big pillars that housed the guardians? all sheikah tech stuff came from the ground so ... wouldnt that have been the perfect opportunity to have it be all in the underground? like mabye the ancient sheikah where there and built it all in the udnerground so it can go up to the surface when its needed

--miasma veins/roots spreading all over the udnerground and it concentrating where hes ... chilling in his lil cave .. does it imply hes bascially sucking the life out of the land to reinvigorate himself? why not have bigger parts of the land then die and whither around miasma? anyway its both cool and kidna disgusting watching those veins pumping ... something through them in a heartbeat kinda way (cool theme but not really worked with nay more than that?)

--im a lil surprised gan doesnt care about ANY of the tech, back in botw it was like THE thing he tried to work with (assuming clam gan was something to do with him which .... hopefully ? otherwise whats the point even) and the sonau having similar tech too woudlnt it imply he should do somethign with it? (and again whats with the mosnter underground endlelly mining sonanium ... but for whom???)

--(whats up with the sorcercers statues that are built like mechs and can talk through statues of hylia?????)

--(also WHAT are the dark fossils?? they are as big as the dragons and three in each region?? is it a reference im not getting??)

it makes little more sense if you view from a DLC kind of point of view, at least mechanically, like the sonau shrines wouldnt be needed in botw since you already got your way to retrieve hearts and stamina .. but thats really it then isnt it? idk making it a sequel but then dismissing or even ignoring/removing so much that was SO important to the first game is so strange

again i am not trying to make this game seem bad, even if it might sound like that, and its so fun and so well made in most parts but some things just dont add up at all and its confusing the hell out of me, theres so much groundwork, so much awesome stuff to work with but the story does ntohing with it or the most boring option possible and it just makes me sad zelda has been a franchise were it gets most interestign when you look at the details and interpret it yourself, but given how modern these games are now, and how innovative and darign they have been reinventing the zelda playstyle completely, turning it bassically upsaide down but then the story is still found lacking, and contrasted with the stellar gameplay, music, world and (most) design aspects (looking at you gerudo) it just feels that much worse

sorry for this long ass rant, i just need to get my thoughts out .. even if some dont make sense or are dumb in hindsight, so pls remember this is just a big ol ramble with not perfectely articulated ideas

so i sort of half accidentally did the end of totk on monday, i had over 130 hours and slightly over 50% of the game done and did the second to last fight with 3 hearts left and no way to heal but fairies after i gave up multiple times thinking the game might be trying to force me to fight a certain way xD

so im still playing it and am aiming for the 100% but i dont think theres gonna be much more to discover story wise the game is really fun and has a lot of detail and love put into it that you can really see, the music is fantastic as well, some of the characters get more love which is great but the story is … well disappointing but not surprising, especially in its treatment of ganondorf, who still feels incredibly flat as a character, which was to be expected but also … you cant fault people (including me) for faintly hoping theyd do something more interesting tho i will say the end fight is really well done and i cant think of a way to top that in terms of epicness xD

anyway, some unfiltered thoughts and opinions in no particular order (keep in mind i know its viddy game logic uwu but still some things can really destroy the immersion; and also i like to think too hard about the stuff i care about so take this with a grain of salt, i never expected the story to be world changing but i want to remind you that i am criticizing it bc i love this franchise)

--what the hell happened to all the sheikah tech?? botws story gets mentioned a few times but never is it mentioned what happened to all the tons of tech lying around everywhere? if they dismantled the towers for purah to build her new ones around i guess thats fine, but all the srhines? the titans ??? THE SHRINE OF LIFE??? its all gone, esepcially the shrine of life irks me bc the cave is still there and its still called by its bame but its nothing but a cave in a vague shape of how the buidling was it absolutely drives me crazy bc its so dumb?? even if it all stopped working for some reason why would you dismantled it all and even then where did the material go?? why would you dismanlted an neitre building like that anyway?? if you want to have a cave there just have it be half collapsed, if all sheikah tech has gotten useless just leave it there but overgrown?? and why is all of purahs tech still working then? zelda doesnt seem to care about it anymore either even tho shes been so obsessed with it for so long? the titans how would you even MOVE them?? you CANNOT tell me that all this tech that survived tens of thousands of years just went poof within a few years; and sometimes it even feels .. insulting? like you know how much robelo cared for cherry and now shes tiny and just serves as a way to buy fotos for your collection? the fact that the shrine of life is fully gone but the cave is vaguely shaped like its interior and where the bed used to be is a healing pool of water too? like idk if im just insane but it feels like 'haha lol remember what used to be here? get it? the water heals you like the bed in the shrine of life and lol there was the stairs HAHA remember? its gone now for no reason.lmao.' to be clear i like having some mysteries and all but that is just …. so weird? when i discovered the shrine of life i was so taken aback i didnt know what to do, it really broke my immersion, by alot even, it just makes it feel even more like all sheikah tech was replaced by much cooler (tm) sonau tech

--what happend to the sonau people? we only know that rauru and mineru are the last two remaining ones back then but … what made them die out like that? this is by far not as important to me as the issue with the sheikah tech but still feels like a point that could have been mentioned

--as much as i like the open world and how free you are to do things your own way but, regardign the dragon tears i think they should have been locked more behind story progression, i got all of them rather early on and it made it a lil frustrating to play through the other story parts bc you know the truth but you cant tell anyone and everyone around you is acting like a dumbass running after fake zelda while the real one is floating around above you, and i know thats partly my fault for getting them all so early but it still felt like some could have been more well hidden or locked or something since theres no hint to when it would fit to do which one; i expecpted impa to travel to each one but it seemed like she appeared on only a few here and there- additionally i fully expected her to be more important, that she would have an actual involment trying to help zelda undragonfy but that turned out to be very wrong lmao

--why are the enemies in the underground mining sonanium? ganondorf didnt seem itnerested at all in any of their tech, only in the mystery stones (only one too, he didnt seem to want any more of them either) they dont use it for anything? at least the ones on the surface collected stuff they could eat or use for fighting?

--did mineru really build herself a robot body just to fight ganondorf for a bit and then leave? as the last of the sonau, even tho long dead too, why wouldnt she tell their history and knowledge or something and instead if just helping a lil in the fight and then go poof (i half expected purah to be a surprise sage since the spirit one would have fit her i think)

--the zelda being the white dragon plot point lost alot of weight to me when it was just .. resolved like that in the end, i know she spent thousands of years like that and all but it seemed like a much heavier decision that later on felt a little less flat after fidning mineru even tho i felt like i didnt care at all at first bc of the way i found out ,and i half expected there to be an extra mission to try and find her soul again since that apparently gets lost when you do the whole dragon thing, but in the end that wasnt a problem at all, two ghosts and link (somehow naked again) blasting her with some magic(tm) and boom shes back and well and fine woohoo it was a non problem after all i didnt expect her to stay dragon since that would mean the end of the legend of zelda basically, but still it took away alot of the weight of her decision to me? like i get undragonfying her before the end would be difficult since you can get material off of her but still i hoped for something other than boom it resolved itself and i thoguht and worried about it for nothing honestly a post game or even another title where the main focus wouldnt be desstroying yet anyother one note evilest guy of them all and isntead the goal is to bring zeldas soul back and undragon her or something would have been a cool idea tbh tho i know its unrealistic

--did ganondorf think turning himself into a dragon would end the world somehow? did he mean the lil evil goo clouds he spit at you in the last fight to end the world? and how come that he was vunerable to fight? none of the other dragons could be hurt and for an 'immortal' dragon he sure went down fast also how did the stone get back on his forehead? you need to eat it to dragonfy yourself and zelda doesnt have her stone out either (i know viddy games logic but still) (on another note, gan shoving half his arm in his own mouth felt really cursed to watch)

--into WHAT exactly wanted gan to reshape the world into?? only destroying it is such a non reason if you want to rule it? theres nothing left to rule if you kill everything in it?? he just gonna play cards with some bokblins or what -i really wanted to fight ganondorf on the surface, not in his lil miasma incubation cave again :(

--so …. why he evil? are we really doing the and WHOOP suddendnly theres the eviliest guy of the world and he hates your guts for some reason thing again? no tension with the gerudo that seemed to follow him in the lil cutscene we see and the ones that went on raurus side? no actual origin? does he have ANYONE to talk to normally or did he just surround himself by monsters all the time or abadon everyone that once followed him once he got his power up?? you can make any design or fight as good as it can possibly be but in the end its still gonna feel hollow if the character has no character besides evil even the fake zelda wasnt actually him and just a lil puppet made of miasma so even him fucking with people is a little less interesting when he was actually just marinading in his lil goop cave, and the lil hand wink he gives you at phase two can only do so much lmao

--ganondorf is cool and all, but tbh he feels more like the evil miasma goop guy than anything else --why are the old sonau ruins in hyrule so different from the rest? like we know now that they arent actually a civilization from the sky alone but were even in the underground too, and all of their ruins have that blocky white style to it, the supposedly sonau ruins in phirone for example, albeit they share the dragon theme the style on the outside is very much different? and the ancient ruins from the other races dont match it either --are the sheikah descendants of the mixing of sonau and hylians? the white hair and third eye theme would fit to the only alive sonaus we see having white hair (fur?), the literal third eye and their affinity to techonology similar to the sheikah, and zelda having both light and time powers would make sense if its yet another descendant thing, but that would mean zelda was at least part sheikah .. (ngl white haired zelda might look pretty neat actually) but also … it didnt seem like sonia and rauru have been together all that long and no mention or even hint to them having children … which given that both of them die would be an important thing to mention no?

--why cant you do anything with the dongos but feed them????????? i wanna ride them :(

--where is kashiwa????????????????? they talk about him like hes a lost legend

--putting in all the amiibo stuff is cool and annoying at the same time, i spent 5 hours fighting my way throguh the underground to follow treasure maps and found 3 nigh identcal link hats from past games in a row, then two other parts of similar, then two aiimbo weapons and then jsut yesterday another one from a bigger quest that i expected more of; getting the armor sets of past games is cool if you want them but if i did i would have just gotten the amiibos back in botw, my inevntory already feels super bloated with all the new and old armor sets and now the amiibo stuff as well even tho i have like .. half of it all atm (and dont go and argue 'oh so complaining about more content for free???' yes. yes i am.)

--whats with this game and making link almost naked? rauru saving you from death? naked. (annoying) survival shrines? naked. weird teleport to alternate ghost dimension to blast zelda with magic power tm to solve all problems? naked.

--(added in edit) im glad dorephan didnt die!! i fully expected him to have died offscreen or something to make way for everyones favorite fish

--(added in edit) so are definitely other lands besides hyrule if yona came from there, also lol

--the story feels, espeically once you see the last cutscene, very …. uncomfortable to me if dare to think about it more than just taking everythign as its said to you, like … the oh so perfect descednants of the gods(what) marry a normal hylian lady and sourround themselves with perfetly obedient faceless servants of the other races so the perfect and good kingdom tm is born and oh suddendly theres an evil brown man (makign him grey doesnt change the implications, if anything, it makes it worse bc they wont even stand for it and instead are trying to hide it behind uuuuh no no its fine hes blue actally kinda way) from the desert that attacks the perfect good kingdom and king, then he swears alliance to them only to betray and murder da queen right away to get his hands on a super power the perfect and good king held and would have never never used it in a bad way nono and now they need to defend it by all means and at the end woohoo zelda has now again the perfect kingdom with no opposition except the yiga who are (as much as i love them) mostly played for laughs or .. well, evil(tm) as epic and cool the dragon fight was, zelda being the slim tiny white/gold/blue dragon and ganondorf being the evil spiky big black and red dragon and them literally being called white/black dragon feels like wow they arent even trying to hide the black and white storytelling huh (i know its a design trope to the bad be black(color) and the good anything else and spiky vs round and soft blah blah but that doesnt make it any better .. maybe even worse? idk)

the way nintendy was keeping stuff a secret and hinting around so much made me feel like it would finally be a little more nuanced and then it turned out to be even flatter than before and all that secrecy(?) was only to keep dragon zelda plotpoint a secret, something that was resolved no problem in the end anyway (i didnt need zelda to stay dragon but .. it all just lost so much weight the way it was done at the end)

-- (added in edit) master koga is the best character and no one can beat him, the most joy i felt was seeing him again and i am not joking, i wish i could talk to him normally tho without him being able to see through my yiga disguise :( im so glad he didnt die tho bc if he actually went to gan he would 100% be dead within seconds

--(added in edit2) i forgot to mention but was just reminded that link getting his arm back felt super weird too, so really everything that meant major changes got reversed basically ... coool ...back to status quo i guess, couldnt he if he wasnt missing it at least have it be discolored somehow? or scarred? any reminder? zelda too even, could she also have some sort of scar or similar due to her transformation ??

--(added in edit2) so where did the mystery stones even come from? gans and zeldas are gone after dragonfying i guess so ...what?

so in summary, im not eloquent enough to properly analyse all the problematic/questionable stuff and put it into the right words, but these are my random thoughts just spilled out, theres gonna be things i missed, forgot, or gonna think about later, maybe ill add it maybe not

again take it with a grain of salt, the game is still one of the most fun games i have ever played, my problems with it lie majorly in the story, its still very much worth playing!