#without botw context shes just THERE like🧍‍♂️

[sipping-ambrosia-wine]

ten people looked at this so i wanted to explain:

1) this moment

after this moment mineru's poe seems to enter the purah pad. mineru was with us all along from the moment we get it back in the tutorial period. zelda's words imply that mineru plays a key part, presumably in guiding link. theres no reason she shouldnt have.

2) the totk tutorial echoes the botw tutorial you just have the context of what happened to link before he got there. the great sky island= the great plateau. youre introduced to the game mechanics, the korok puzzles, theres a mysterious ghost dude who turns out to be a dead king from an age long past. i actually like the parallels BUT its like they took every complaint about the great plateau being confusing and long made it. actually tedious. but anyway by making mineru present from the start we know we're breaking away from botw's laurels and getting a return to classic zelda form.

3) again with the struggle between beloved zelda formulas and being the sequel to botw is the dungeon quests. the zonai lore is really really irrelevant and unconnected between regions and it sucks bc it also couldve been super interesting. mineru's perspective as a zonai, as the LAST zonai in hyrule, and especially as a HISTORIAN SAGE LADY really couldve given us way more lore on this and couldve linked hyrule and the zonai influence on it more gracefully.

4) this game needs a guide. they try to keep the freedom and messing around in botw while making the stakes more urgent but with the open world and without a guide it makes everything else feel superfluous and unimportant. after the regional quests i AVOIDED lookout landing because i like to mess around more thoroughly before facing bosses. i figured after gathering the other sages that there were only four and that i wanted to explore more before facing midpoint boss Fake Zelda. i explored the thunderhead isles and the spirit temple largely oblivious and halfway on accident.

5) mineru passing on shouldve been a way bigger deal to the player. once i finished mineru's construct she just hangs out as mineru's vow until you fight ganon. when she passes on in the post game cutscene i... felt nothing. the game is called tears of the dragon. you hunt down the dragon tears that zelda shed to gather the memories that lead up to her draconification. when you finally reunite with zelda and she wakes up she doesnt weep with joy, which is enough of a missed opportunity imo. it wouldve fit, shes been through a lot of grief but now when she cries its because she's happy. yeah. but she cries when mineru passes on- mineru, who the players barely know. when zelda cries PLAYERS should be crying. we should be touched, but i felt more when the sages pledged loyalty to her than when mineru left. if she was your guide companion from the start then we would have that emotional foundation we got when navi or midna left and it would actually deliver the gut punch of losing them.

TLDR: mineru deserves to be way more important and present than she got to be. it wouldve served the story and the lore, streamlined player experience, AND been a franchise callback that actually does something.

i feel like... in totk they SHOULDVE given link a companion from the start and it shouldve been mineru