Totk's biggest problem is that it tries too hard to be botw. Like how the overall structure of the games are the same (beginning tutorial areas slowly introducing you to your new abilities, depending on a past civilization's technology/magic as the core mechanics, collecting the most important story scenes through memories) and so on. Honestly what would have been far more interesting is if both Link and Zelda were sent to the past. If they both were sent back we wouldn't be stuck with the same boring ruins, we'd have a magical kingdom to explore! An old but new Hyrule before many of its geological features missing! It makes me so excited at the thought. We could progress with Zelda through the past as we try and heal Link's injuries and watch alongside Zelda as the tragedies take place and give us the drive to take down Ganondorf! Imagine Link is still too weak and with a broken master sword, Rauru keeps him from the final battle. After Rauru seals Ganondorf away, Zelda is able to send Link back to the future while she stays in the past to heal the master sword. In the future Link helps deal with the regional issues, gathers the new sages and face down Ganondorf! We the players would be far more invested in taking him down then "I'm the hero and I have to." What if Link starts some of the trends for the other tribes. Like how he tends to get the zora princesses to fall in love with him. Maybe he needed the Zora tunic to help them with a problem and that's why the princesses make their husband's armor out of their scales. Anyway, totk tries too hard to be botw and because of this it doesn't have its own identity and that's very disappointing. I'm still going to do at least 10 play throughs. But I will miss what it could've been.
Game was such a missed opportunity lore and story wise. Thought it was going to be the tie to older works like OOT with time travel and get to see the big bad in all his glory. But no. He hid in a hole the whole game
While I understand what you're saying at the end, I don't think the critique of Zelda-tubers is that people are salty that they got it wrong. It's more about the size of the expectations for what questions would be answered. People were speculating that TotK would give us big lore developments on Hylia, the timeline, the origin of the races, the sacred realm, etc. When in reality, Zelda has always barely touched on those, and not always very cohesively either. People's rampant speculation made it so everyone expected *something* big from TotK's lore, but instead it was pretty on par with previous titles and that left people underwhelmed.
As a kid trying to memorize the way the water went up and down paired with 0 navigational skills 😂 and I'm going to be completely honest I have never finished the game. I got someone to do the shadow temple and the last temple. I did ganons castle. But yeah 😂
im still confused about the zonai architecture, because at the time of hyrules founding rauru and mineru were the only zonai left. Can someone explain it to me?
11:12 Your translation is wrong. Upscale the images. This doesn't say "Temple of Light", this says "God of Light". It refers to Rauru. And yes, I'm being serious. Your translation here is wrong. It legitimately says "Remains of God of Light", on the right, and "God of Light" on the left. You can translate each Kanji character by yourself. To clarify more. The Schema Diagram mentioned was what Ganondorf (unknowingly) casted, which is what rose the castle into the air. This directly implies that the way the islands are floating are due to Schema diagrams. In which case, the "Castle" was built intentionally for this purpose. Let's also provide my notes on this: Top left: "Notice! The Wind is just a Schema Diagram" (Notice how yours is very far off) Top Right: "It rises in the deep upper reaches of the back air". "Purple is the flow of miasma" (You added a lot here) "It is rising due to the blow-up of the after air" (Referring to the schema diagram) Middle right: "Ruins of God of Light (Ganondorf's mummy is stationed here)" (You can actually translate each Kanji character and notice that the 'short hand' is not even remotely the same as Temple, but it's the same as Kami, minus the box & line, which is very faint. Upscaling the image with AI helped translate this better). "Floor is collapsed" "Ganondorf Fell into This Place" Important part on the left: "At least the Castle > Miasma Root > God of Light are connected by a straight line" The implication is specifically that Hyrule Castle was built to siphon magic from the God of Light through the Miasma Root into the Castle. When the Seal on The God of Light is broken, the Schema Diagram would collapse the Floor & Raise the Castle. That's why it's called "Secret File", because it implies the Sheikah intentionally set this up during the creation of this Hyrule Castle. And yes, we already knew (since 2017 mind you) that the Ocarina of Time, and all other Castles, were built "on" The Great Plateau. That's why there is literal ruins of that castle town, and castle, in that vicinity. I'm positive even you put a theory video out explaining how it's nearly a replica of it, well, not entirely but enough to where you can draw that conclusion.
You also incorrectly translated the "easy to translate" bottom portion, probably to fit a narrative for your video. Here's what it actually says: "A memorandum drawn to share among staff members about the structure and role of Hyrule Castle's underground. The location of the sealed Ganondorf and the castle, the cave (wall paintings), that Zelda and Link walked through in the opening scene, and the fact that Hyrule Castle and the huge pillars extending from the castle are devices for purifying healing energy., detailed settings are depicted". Effectively insinuating that the Sheikah technology added to the castle were designed intentionally for taking the purifying "light magic" away from Rauru. It legitimately insinuates that the Sheikah were stealing Ganondorf's magic. And the above Schema would retract these devices and propel Hyrule castle skyward, as the floor shatters.
The ironic part is before that statement, you were so close to getting the actual translation and thinking critically here. But you didn't, you jumped to "Temple of Light" while not realizing "Maybe this is a mistranslation" -- Because it is. This entire "secret file" legitimately insinuates that the Sheikah built Hyrule Castle with the Kingdom of Hyrule intentionally to destroy the seal on Ganondorf, which is the exact opposite from the plaque at the bottom of the castle. Even in the one translation, it states it's "Forbidden" to go down there, even for the Royal Family. Do you even think, you know, maybe the intention behind them putting this in there is to throw a major twist at the players? You had it so close too. 11:46, like you legitimately understand that Sheikah piece is called a Purification Unit, which the actual file is telling you what it does. "At least the Castle > Miasma Root > God of Light are connected by a straight line" Translation in normal terms, not jotted notes: Hyrule Castle is connected to a Miasma Root, which houses a Purification Unit. This Purification Unit takes The God of Light (Rauru)'s Healing Energy, and uses it for Sheikah technology. Once the seal is broken, the Schema Diagram launches the Castle upward and destroys the floor where Ganondorf the Rauru are sealed" (Trapping both in the Twilight Realm). Maybe this all my speculation, but from the direct translation it seems pretty apparent what they're setting up here for is a major twist that is dark in nature, which sets properly to why they said this game had a dark undertone to it.
its possible they dabbled with the idea of hylians being furry technically hybrids with the zonai and normal round ear humans, the zonai genes in the hybrids make the link furry hero, but eventually it dillutes like neanderthal genes did with us when we went into the caves to invent arrows and camped out the literal orcs that nearly exterminated us-- so the result is a furry hybrid with the only proof of pointy ears but they didnt want to make hylians furry bait or be considered anthromorphs like all the other races so i bet it was just a toss up idea for only that drawing to "Feel" it out its concept art so lots of things small or big will be tried
Not sure how it's going to fix the lore, the games already... done basically. Short of more retconning I suppose. I mean would it have killed them to just leave the sheikah tech in the game but have it covered in moss or something.
thank you for this video - it's nice to know other dedicated fans were also feeling a bit let down on the story front with totk. the gameplay was absolutely amazing and it's a shame the story didn't reach those same highs. I always expect a certain amount of vagueness with loz but totk wasn't just vague parts of the story/world building felt empty. even Ganondorf felt less developed when compared to other games which is a huge shame as he is such an iconic villain - it would've been nice to know about about his motives/bg/history.
The book definitely can’t fix everything. DLC and new content absolutely could have TOTK suffers from most of its story elements or locations are there because gameplay demanded it. Not because it made sense in the world Also, I feel that Ninty used a lot of old terms and characters such as “Ganondorf”, “Rauru”, “imprisoning war”, and so on that do not fit into the existing world or story. That for me was the biggest disappointment with Totk. Every other Ganondorf appearance was the same guy who had reasons for the reappearances, primarily the timeline splits. But it was always HIM and he had different personalities and motivations each time Wheras this Ganondorf is seemingly completely unrelated, and fell flat as a character outside of an incredible visual design. The entire story and world building for this game could be summarized as “all style, no substance” *with Zelda’s character growth and arc being the exception. She is phenomenal*
i literally just started the video cause i love ur content, but the xenoblade 3 music in the beginning threw me for a loop cause ive been replaying it recently 💀💀
This was my 2nd Favorite temple, lol. I love the vibes but also after my 3rd playthrough of it I realized as long as I remembered the bottom floor's 2 torches on the west side was the one that lead to the ruto room, I stopped getting lost. First time took me like 3 hours as a kid but these days its like a 30-40 min run. I wont defend the long boot switching though
I, for one, am greatly looking forward to "Autobuilding a Hoverbike" next year. With regards to the lack of lore about the imprisoning war, maybe I'm too cynical but it felt like a deliberate choice to carve out room for Hyrule Warriors: The Imprisoning War, given that Age of Calamity wasn't planned initially and ran up against the explicit world building of Breath of the Wild. Since Tears of the Kingdom doesn't really constrain anything in that era, whatever a Hyrule Warriors game does with it will most likely be fine as canon.
I agree, story and lore wise Tears of the Kingdom was really disappointing for me. Gameplay was incredible, but the more I progressed in the story, the less fun it all became for me. The best the game had aside from gameplay were the villages and how more lively and unique they became. I still believe this game could have been the best if lore was either more coherent with Breath of the Wild, or they made a new Hyrule map instead of basing it in Breath of the Wild's.
This video by dj peach cobbler did a very good job at explaining the issues of totk world building as he also approaches it as a history guy ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FgQ3tKJMA34.htmlsi=TmxP4LUloU22uBF8
Quick question because this seems like the best place to get an answer - are the only differences between the japanese and english BOTW Master Works the additional picture of Link's family? I was having a hard time finding an answer.
I don't remember who originally said it but I heard a theory that Majora is the original imp in the legends that the old lady in the Stock Pot Inn tells you about. Not Skull Kid because it happened so long ago. Majora felt betrayed and abandoned so he expected his wrath upon the world, only to be told off by his friends, the Giants. Majora felt it was the victim despite hurting people.
Truth be told, Im not sure if there actually IS a way to fix Tears' lore. It's so fundamentally alien to all previously established lore (including that of BOTW) that I feel that the only way to fix it is to put it in its own parallel timeline branch or just have it be entirely separate from all the previous games.
As much as I loved TotK's gameplay and creative physics mechanics, its lore was something Nintendo screwed the pooch on. And I don't think any amount of explaning it away will ever fix what I would call a rushed plot and badly edited dialogue. The voice recordings are done and dusted so we're stuck with the terrible copy-pasted sage speeches. Perhaps Nintendo can offer a more in-depth explanation to why the Sheikah tech disappeared and their shrines were subsequently replaced by Zonai shrines all of a sudden but I won't hold my breath.
do they get into all the Satanic Freemason symbolism they shoved into the game? Shrines? The Goat god Rauru (satan) that brings the "light" to the world, the all-seeing eye everywhere,
i just watched 3 videos from zelda youtubers and it had me feeling insane thinking i was the only one who loved tears period, through and through.. then i look up the critic and fan scores and tears has 10s across the board with its lowest rating being a NINETY SIX... id never just disregard soemones opinions but its weird seeing the zelda youtube scene be this sort of alternate reality where tears of the kingdom was a let down and needs its lore fixed but then i go anywhere else on the internet and its an all time game (which i agree with).. not saying anyone is wrong just is weird to me and i heavily disagree.
