TLoZ: Tears of the Kingdom Spoiler Thread!

[uneven hazel]

it's quite close so I assume it's not a draw distance thing

[sly shadow]

I'll be perfectly honest that bit of water looked the exact same for me when I looked at it ngl

but the rest of the game looks fine

so

very much cherrypicking

this just in: twitter person angry at game after 1 second of playtime

[lone junco]

||How far into the past did Zelda go? we know that the over 1000 years in the past was some kind of Cyberpunk 2077 style civilization, and that takes place an indeterminate (but long) amount of time after one of the three timelines but she went all the way to the founding of Hyrule.||

[sly shadow]

||10,000+ surely, cause it's definitely before The Great Calamity||

||honestly the fact that there's sheikah tech in the temples and outside the shrines and stuff makes it super confusing how/when everything transpires.
fairly sure the masks the sages wear are similar to the divine beasts too so i literally have no idea||

[still atlas]

Yeah it must be

||before 12000 years ago, for sure||

[sly shadow]

spoilers for one of the later memories here:
||zelda uses the purah pad's teleport in one of the memories so maybe sheikah tech still existed back when the zonai were a thing
so maybe it's like 1000 years but that doesn't seem like far enough considering in botw they knew about the sheikah tech but had no idea about the zonai. the opening especially makes me think the zonai are older than the sheikah, not to mention that obviously the sheikah people still exist in present day when even during the memories there seem to only be two zonai people left.
are the zonai the dog people or the robots? idk
it's super unclear and I hate it :))||

[still atlas]

||Dog people!||

[sly shadow]

||but then the zonai weapons/shields are incredibly similar to sheikah tech (small thing turns into bigger thing with glowy parts), so are they based off each other? did one inspire the other? seems like too much of a coincidence for people that existed thousands of years apart, unless they existed pretty closley||

[still atlas]

||how dare you generalize mystic magic tech like that||

[sly shadow]

I mean

||they're basically identical||

||in terms of concept||

||hence why I said the other day that zonai weapons feel like repurposed sheikah weapon concept art LMAO||

||at least I'd think that considering most of the zonai feel more magic than tech that their weapons would reflect that but ig not
but their weapons just seem like laser/energy stuff
I have no idea||

sorry I'll shut up now LMAO

[uneven hazel]

||I assumed it was far back but still a long time after the other games||

||because you can't just found Hyrule without needing it to be forgotten first||

||and it can' be before the other timelines bc... God||

[sly shadow]

||botw/totk don't exist in the "timeline" and you can't convince me otherwise||

||botw was a functionally a reboot||

[uneven hazel]

valid

||I like the idea that it takes place so far after the other games that the timelines have functionally merged||

[sly shadow]

yeah I mean that's kinda how they categorised botw

makes the most sense

[uneven hazel]

It must be one of them bc ||Zelda has no idea who Ganondorf is|| which, given she's literally Princess Zelda, you'd think she would

[sly shadow]

honestly not even sure that ganondorf is the same ganondorf
kinda just another "wow another person that happens to wear green and be called link and wield the master sword" situation
not the ganondorf, just a ganondorf

[uneven hazel]

oh for sure

I mean more the name rather than the character

[sly shadow]

which from like a "meta" perspective is how I like it

oh yeah

that too

[uneven hazel]

like if you live in a Kingdom that's known to be under constant threat from people called Ganondorf, and you meet someone called Ganondorf

[sly shadow]

||also ngl kinda weird how she didn't clock the "Ganon" part of the name LMAO||

[uneven hazel]

yea

[sly shadow]

||like if you ran into someone called Dave and he was super evil and then you met Davedorf I think you'd have a more intense reaction||

idk anyway

[uneven hazel]

lmao

[mild oasis]

the obvious solution to me for this is that the sheikah based their tech off of the zonai's

[sly shadow]

maybe

that's probably most likely tbh

considering the sheikah tech was like 10,000 years old itself

I also think from a worldbuilding point of view it sucks but that's kinda a different point

[south mural]

||the Purah pad is the same one from the present lmao, it went back in time with Zelda||

[sly shadow]

||yeah but where is she teleporting to
the purah pad requires a teleport point to teleport to, but assumedly the Sheikah don't exist yet, so there are no teleport points||

[south mural]

||zonai shrines?||

||they’re implied to have been uncovered during the upheaval and given that Sonia’s grave is in the forgotten temple I assume they teleported to the shrine in there||

[sly shadow]

||but even all the zonai places have sheikah tech integrated into them which, considering zelda travelled to when the first king of hyrule was alive (rauru, afaik??) then sheikah tech couldn't have existed then||

[south mural]

||shiekah tech how?||

||everythibg uses the funny hand||

[sly shadow]

||Purah Pad is basically just the Sheikah tablet
Teleporting requires teleport points like towers/shrines in botw - visually the same, so Sheikah tech
Sheikah tech doesn't exist in the past Zelda's in
How does she teleport using the Purah Pad?||

||if the purah pad could use zonai teleport points then fine but even in the dungeons it's clearly Sheikah tech||

[south mural]

Uhhhh

Game design

Wait hear me out

||the pad was implemented at some point to interact with zonai things in the past, which is why it can still fast travel in the present||

[sly shadow]

||but the pad doesn't interact with zonai things, the hand does
it's the pad that lets link teleport
and even if it could interact with zonai things, it's not, because the teleport points are sheikah tech
which also begs the question of why is sheikah tech in the temples but oh well||

||i mean maybe the sheikah found the zonai stuff and decided to put some stuff there but that still doesn't explain how zelda can teleport in the past
oh well it doesn't even matter that much lol||

[south mural]

||my explanation makes more sense||

[sturdy flint]

It's literally impossible for this to not be THE Ganondorf

The Gerudo in BotW have stated they've never birthed a male kid. That entire thing was broken for thousands of years.

[south mural]

He dies in all the timelines anyways right

[sturdy flint]

Pretty much LOL

He's not living the best life

[sturdy flint]

This is just me responding to this though I didn't read any of the discussion lmao

[sly shadow]

oh i didn't know they mentioned that in botw

still doesn't mean totk ganondorf is THE ganondorf tho

[sturdy flint]

I mean there's only ever been one

So unless Nintendo is doing something screwed up and having a new male child born to the Gerudo but not showing that or saying anything about it in any game

That's messed up if that's true.

The best part about Ganondorf is that it's the same guy

So I think this does have to be the very same otherwise what the heck they doing.

[sly shadow]

||ngl this ganondorf just kinda seems like an evil guy||

[south mural]

Yeah I highly doubt this is the same ganondorf

[sturdy flint]

Aren't they all 🙂

[south mural]

Literally

[sturdy flint]

Idk why I clicked that

Risky.

[south mural]

The plot of OoT

[sly shadow]

no but I mean like

literally

no connection

[sturdy flint]

Impossible to not be the same lol

[sly shadow]

no hint at previous events

[sturdy flint]

Unless you guys are hiding something big that I haven't seen.

[sly shadow]

Isn't anything to hide tbh

[sturdy flint]

I will be stunned if I get to the end of TotK and find out this isn't him.

[sly shadow]

he's just a guy

[south mural]

I thought you finished the game?

[sturdy flint]

Hell naw

[south mural]

Haha

That’s all I’m gonna say

No one is bold enough to say it

But ganondorfs motivations/actions is basically OoT

[sturdy flint]

I'd be bold enough lol

In OoT Ganondorf is legit just an evil guy

There's no real development if that's what we're saying

He legit kills the whole world just because he wants to

Pretty fricked up

[sly shadow]

I've seen all the memories and ||he's barely in them
so hopefully there's more in the main quest
but based on the memories he's just a guy

also impossible to be the same considering he exists in the first hyrule, as established in the opening||

[sturdy flint]

In Wind Waker there aren't even any Gerudo

This dude kills his own race off

What a bastard

[south mural]

I’m calling it a reincarnation

||he’s the most demise looking ganondorf since demise himself so far||

[sly shadow]

that's not really any different to him being a completely different person tbf

[junior pilot]

I was one pinecone away from Rito Village.
But then I started the newspaper quest with Launchpad McQuack and now I'm running all over Hyrule again.

[junior pilot]

sheikah tech is based on zonai tech so the teleport points in botw were basically an updated version of the zonai teleport points we see in totk. the purahpad is backwards compatible with the older teleports.

[still atlas]

LAUNCHPAD

[south mural]

I wish there was a way to fuse arrows with the environment

The amount of times I see a bomb barrel and think “man I wish I could just shoot it at that hinox”

[uneven hazel]

I don't know what y'all mean by this one being ||The Ganondorf||

like the original?

the first?

When I was first exploring the depths

before I knew how the terrain was mapped out

I had a horrible horrible prediction that they would be the maps of previous Zelda games

[sly shadow]

yeah but the teleport points outside shrines and in dungeons are identical to sheikah teleport points
zonai stuff is green (hand buttons, arm, the robots, shrines) but they're blue, they look the same, and link teleporting to them looks the same too
I understand the idea of the Purah Pad still being able to interact with Zonai teleport points, but they aren't Zonai, they're Sheikah, which is, you know, impossible
So like wtf are they doing there lmao

[uneven hazel]

when Zelda got sent back in time I think they mentioned they updated the pad to work for zonai stuff

yeah in Memory 5

so they update it in the past

and then Link gets it in the future

[sly shadow]

ie the same ganondorf from oot/wind waker/tp

[uneven hazel]

oh

that's a stretch imo

given that he appears and no one's heard of him

both in this game and OoT

[sly shadow]

yeah

just some guy

[placid flume]

https://vxtwitter.com/STARGAMES_blog/status/1663042985288781824?t=LWbylm2P_shftRgqBlsbpg&s=19

[sturdy flint]

I don't mean to be this guy but Ganondorf is absolutely known in OoT and he's not just some guy

When you meet Zelda as young Link she introduces you to Ganondorf who presents himself mimicking fealty to the king of Hyrule. This was a ploy to get close to the Temple of Time, Sacred Realm, and thus the Triforce.

Everyone knew who Ganondorf was. Zelda sends Link on his mission because she doesn't trust the king of the desert

Dialogue from the Gerudo also mention "great Ganondorf, King of the Gerudo Thieves" and Nabooru is second-in-command to Ganondorf actually.

[sly shadow]

See that's kinda difficult

just because they knew who Ganondorf was then doesn't mean they knew who he was before he starting doing his evil stuff

it's not really clear whether he was like famous or anything

[sturdy flint]

He wasn't evil yet lol

He was the King of the Gerudo they just knew him

He hadn't done anything evil yet except be shifty

If we was evil the King of Hyrule would have never given him an audience.

[azure needle]

i have beaten the main story After that bug last time, everything went well this time

[sly shadow]

oh right sorry I misunderstood what you said then

still don't think he's the same ganondorf tho
once you've seen all the memories you'll probably understand
I mean there is an argument for him being the same but imo it takes a lot of headcanon

and not like "filling in the gaps" headcanon, like "making stuff up" headcanon

[sturdy flint]

Yeah I need the memories

[sly shadow]

I wouldn't rush to get them btw cause it answers the whole "what's up with zelda" mystery

[uneven hazel]

yeah that's what I mean Deemo

like in both games he's just a guy called Ganondorf

which you would assume can't happen if he's the same person

like you can only do the whole 'wait a minute, this guy is actually evil!' thing once

bc the second time you just

know he's evil

also the 'what's up with Zelda thing' is not a mystery

if you think you might know what's happening you know what's happening

it's not a stretch of the imagination

[sly shadow]

I was more referring to the ghost/phantom/apparitions

tho tbf that's not much of a mystery either

[uneven hazel]

no no that's what I mean lmao

[sly shadow]

ohh

well

yeah

the game treats it like a mystery so

[sturdy flint]

Definitely isn't actually Zelda

But I do want to keep that mystery alive through all four temples

[uneven hazel]

shock horror as someone we know has been ejected from this place ||and time|| turns out to not be in this place ||and time||

[sturdy flint]

My favorite part so far was when an entire group of soldiers stripped to their underpants because they heard "Zelda" tell them that's what they should do.

I'm a pretty big fan of TotK's world so far.

This feels MUCH more fully fleshed out compared to BotW

[uneven hazel]

it's another one of those things which I think would've benefited from dynamic cutscene changing

[mild oasis]

this is reasonable

everybody would do that

[uneven hazel]

I wish they'd do it for me

[sturdy flint]

Characters interact with characters. Different stables have actual family units taking place and side quests correlate to other side quests.

[uneven hazel]

yeah the whole world feels much more alive in this game

[sturdy flint]

Including those roaming bands of monster hunters that you can join with also helps make the world feel a lot more full. There's still tons of empty room, but the place is so alive with activity.

Every single character has a reaction and idfferent dialogue for rain, storms

Some character swon't even talk to you in the rain

Some you have to wait until night.

It's fantastic

[uneven hazel]

feels like you're sort of in the middle of the recovery efforts

Deemo I have a very important question

I think my sanity might depend on it

[sturdy flint]

Sure!

[uneven hazel]

has

has your nickname always been Demo with one e

or is that new

[sturdy flint]

I changed my name to Demo but you can pronounce it with the EE sound if you'd like. Rayark has come out with some nasty practices that I cannot condone and would like not to be associated with.

[uneven hazel]

ah ok

I got incredibly concerned for a moment

[sturdy flint]

I.E. taking it upon themselves to be the champions of the "new era of video gaming" by using AI generated content.

[uneven hazel]

that I'd mispelled it for literal years

[sturdy flint]

There were also allegations from "ex-employees" that claim Rayark fired artists to replace them with AI art.

[uneven hazel]

I saw that

[sturdy flint]

It's not a great situation and I don't care for Rayark fully embracing that. So I'm Demo now.

[uneven hazel]

sad bc their games were really fun

[mild oasis]

perfect gaslight opportunity missed wtf

handed on a silver platter

[sly shadow]

I do like how there's just more stuff going on

little music tropes and survey groups

sidequests that take place beyond the immediate local area

the stables all being in a network, the tabloid

it's super cool

I think don't necessarily think it's better than BotW, because the whole point of that game was that it was kinda post-apocalyptic and you couldn't really go anywhere without a group of monsters or a giant death machine chasing you down, but it's still nice

Also
I really really like the caves
One of the big things I wanted before TotK came out was caves and stuff, so having them here is so cool

just adds that little bit extra without doubling the map size or anything

kinda surprising BotW didn't have any bar a few enclaves considering the first thing you do in the first zelda ever is go into a cave lmao

[uneven hazel]

If he'd turned round and said it was always Demo I would literally have thrown myself off a cliff

[sturdy flint]

I thought of that but turns out I'd rather people comprehend the name change rather than meme about it lol

[uneven hazel]

I think it would've been really cool if ||Zelda had actually been Naydra||

like imagine going back to BotW and seeing that after playing this

[placid flume]

https://vxtwitter.com/aquatic_ambi/status/1663248150172430338?s=20

[sly shadow]

https://tenor.com/view/dmc-devil-may-cry-dante-what-the-hell-is-this-wtf-gif-18707536

[sturdy flint]

Well I finished the ||Fire Temple||

Eldin Region story bit finished

I...

To be a little negative that dungeon sucked lol

[sly shadow]

what did you think of the boss

[uneven hazel]

man everyone hated that dungeon and I loved it lmao

[sly shadow]

I think it was pretty good

actually had to think multiple times :O

zora was pretty good too but dragged down by a bad story and boss

also

https://fxtwitter.com/MintBlais/status/1663142904070586369?t=Iq87q3XDr1R8e_3Pc6W1ag&s=19

yo totk has a warthog run???

[south mural]

Fire temple was fun 😭😭

I love minecarts

[uneven hazel]

wait people used the mincarts?

[south mural]

yeah because minecarts are cool

But also cheesed a few

I really liked the boss tbh

Best non-final boss fight

Appaarently you have to ||dive into the weak points|| of the rito boss??

I always just shot fire arrows at it

[sly shadow]

or bomb arrows

[uneven hazel]

yeah regular arrows work

[lone junco]

I just realized how much the Link of 10'000 years ago looked like many depictions of Thor.

mythology Thor, not Marvel Thor.

[sturdy flint]

I think my issue with the Fire Temple is that the mechanics they want you to use are janky and miserable. I hate to say it but ||Yunobo's ability is just trash.|| It doesn't work, it interacts with terrain weirdly. You have to make a ramp to hit a gong at one point and if there is ANY slight imperfection in that ramp ||Yunobo will hit it and bounce off|| in random directions every time.

||Yunobo minecart|| vision obstruction is extremely annoying.

The minecart tracks were fine, but some of the puzzles involving them were a pure waste of time (like the broken track that led to a single chest with an Amber in it wtf game)

It was neat ideas executed in messy ways for little, to no, pay-off. The boss was fine and I loved the ||Gohma reference.|| That makes this feel a lot more like a Zelda game since ||boss names are important to the franchise.||

Ultimately I don't think I can say I had fun in the Fire Temple. And honestly I completed the dungeon without interacting with their designed mechanics unless I had to because they were a burden to use.

[sturdy flint]

Once more coming out of the dungeon I feel like the actual Temple itself plays second fiddle to the true virtuoso of this game so far: The side quests/adventures. Completing the Temple now gives me access to even more to do in Goron City and I did a couple quests already that are just more fun and more engaging than the Temple was.

With two dungeons/regions left my hopes are not high that the remaining dungeons will provide equal or better engagement than side quests/adventures or even shrines. I don't think this hurts my overall opinion of the game, it's still a masterpiece, but it is a shame to know the team behind the game has an accolades shelf of terrific dungeon designs only to slap two of the most meh dungeons into this one. I'm not a fan of making comparisons, but if my own wife is saying she liked the BotW dungeons better you have some stuff to figure out.

[sly shadow]

I'll be honest once I finished each dungeon I just got out of there lmao
was sick of the place xd

[lone junco]

I still love the game and it is always possible that the game will get better later on but I am going to be honest. As it stands currently I don't think that this game will even make it into my top 10 favorite Zelda games.

saying that has made me realize just how many Zelda games there have been, where you can do a top 10 and still not scratch the surface.

[sturdy flint]

You're not wrong. But I can comfortably say this is top 10 for me for sure. It's WAY too much fun to ignore. This game is some of the most fun I've had in a Zelda game in a really long time. Moments of cackling glee as a contraption works, moments of whooping excitement when a combat strategy plays out, I've taken so many video captures I probably have 10 full minutes of video footage.

Dungeon design is only one facet of a Zelda game, although it does feel like it should be important and prioritized. Wind Waker holds a special place in my own favorite Zeldas but all of the reasons I love it have nothing to do with its dungeons... because they are boring. And uninteresting. And simple. TotK is likely going to finish the same way. But we shall see! Two left to go.

[mild oasis]

fire was my favorite because I didn't get stuck looking for a goddamn entrance for 20 minutes like wind

I just used my three stamina wheels to beeline it to the next goal lmao

[sly shadow]

unrelated, kinda odd how the Master Sword ||only requires you to have done at least 20 shrines (all into stamina) and got all the memories, while BotW required 40 shrines (all into health). Don't think interacting with like 10 puddles around the map quite makes up for it LOL||
not a big deal just kinda funny

[mild oasis]

master sword didn't require ||all memories||

I got it w/o

I had ||most of them but not all of them by then||

[sly shadow]

||ok well all but one
the light dragon only appears once you've seen all the geoglyphs||

[mild oasis]

||either my memory or your facts are mistaken then (I can probably guess which)||

[sly shadow]

||:))||

[still atlas]

||I got it without all memories and all geoglyphs||

[sly shadow]

i

what

how do you do that then??

||is the light dragon just always there and I never saw it?||

[still atlas]

||I think an alternate requirement for the light dragon descending might be great deku tree saying he senses it||

[sly shadow]

||ohhh see I found the great deku tree but didn't know what to do for him lmao||

||if you get all the geoglyphs it specifically appears near the beach spiral thing||

[still atlas]

||I found the hole and went down||

[sly shadow]

||yeah same I just don't know what to do down there :((||

[still atlas]

||I found the Light Dragon around Mt Lanayru||

[sly shadow]

||yeah it does a big circuit around the whole map usually||

||it's just if you do all the geoglyphs it specifically appears in akkala cause that's where the last memory is ig||

[still atlas]

||I think it's no coincidence, considering that's where the spring of wisdom is||

[sly shadow]

||oh that's cool||

[still atlas]

||also I think this does show I don't have all the memories(?)||

[sly shadow]

||yeah you're missing at least three based on that pic||

[mild oasis]

hey looks like it was your facts

[sly shadow]

what a surprise

||how did I completely miss the chasm inside the deku tree >:((||

||AH
THE MEMORY THAT PLAYS AFTERWARDS
why can't I have more of that 😭

also hestu's here so I can finally trade in my 52 korok seeds||

I HAVE TO DO THEM ONE AT A TIME
NOOOOOOOOO

it takes like ten seconds to upgrade a stash once...

[sly shadow]

today I did all three of the mazes

[mild oasis]

they're pretty neat

don't much care for the reward tho

but it's probably pretty cool if you do

[sly shadow]

yeah they were decent

[mild oasis]

has anyone else completed all shrines

I found the reward to be interesting

[sly shadow]

no

how many are there

i might be close

I think I have about 75-80

[sturdy flint]

DW has I believe. But I have not seen him around lately.

[mild oasis]

||152||

[sly shadow]

https://tenor.com/view/tails-oof-gif-22028855

[mild oasis]

definitely feels like a lot more of them are blessing shrines though

[sly shadow]

https://fxtwitter.com/i_piston/status/1663703906533408768?t=z_liWvHHQXn6Nz5aEJUdCw&s=19

WHAT

[lone junco]

||https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4A7obPbFpg||

Don't know if anyone is interested in this or not, but I will post it here anyway.

[sly shadow]

https://fxtwitter.com/PeanutButterGmr/status/1664016225163431936?s=20

[sly shadow]

so apparently if you wear ||the full Evil Spirit armour, enemies just don't notice you?||

||I walked up to a blue bokoblin with it on and he didn't even turn around and inspect me||

[south mural]

Yeah lol

[uneven hazel]

The Light Dragon is always in the sky

Also @ Deemo and @ jet sidequests are fun but I've found 2 that are actively painful

with strong hints at a third

one of which requires you to stand around for 8 minutes twice

so much fun

[sly shadow]

yo nice i love doing nothing for a prolonged amount of time

[junior pilot]

me irl

[lone junco]

Now that I finally beat Ghostwire Tokyo I can finally sit down and focus on TOTK and spend most of the game with only four hearts and cheap unupgraded armor.

JUST LIKE BOTW!

[naive imp]

Ayo why Kohga got that ||Mr. Electric|| drip

[sly shadow]

started encountering silver enemies recently

sometimes this game is weird

blessing shrines where you wouldn't expect them, vice versa
blessing shrines kinda give out random rewards

i think enemies scale cause I haven't seen a single red bokoblin in ages. I don't know if I've seen a single one tbh

i wish there were more zonai themed bosses

flux constructs are cool but its the only one

and even then once you've seen one you've seen them all

also kinda have one surefire strategy like every other boss

[south mural]

But uou can go nuts with defeating flux constructs

Like just any way to remove those blocks from it

Fusing, ultrahand etc

And recall when it starts flying in the air

[vernal oracle]

if it's anything like BOTW, there's probably a hidden leveling system. after you get enough EXP. the enemies get 1-2 color grades higher.

[sturdy flint]

Sorry guys

I’m dropping Tears of the Kingdom for the real Game of the Year

Everybody 1-2 Switch

[south mural]

https://youtu.be/LKTBNDaSg9U

[naive imp]

This is gonna sound dumb but uh

Why can't I damage a talus

I've even tried bomb arrows

[sturdy flint]

They have one weak point, an ore deposit sticking out of the main body.

[naive imp]

Well I keep getting hit

I'll try again later

[south mural]

Pip it’s been 6 years since Botw plz tell me you know how to fight a talus

[naive imp]

Uhhhh

No comment

Anyways does anyone know how to get to the lightroot under dueling peaks

[sturdy flint]

I think @mild oasis asked this question?

[mild oasis]

this is correct, game was found to have this as a mechanic

also goes for loot apparently

[mild oasis]

I don't recall wondering about dueling peaks but

if there's a shrine there, the lightroot is directly underneath it

and waterways on the surface represent floor to ceiling walls in the depths

knowing those two facts should make finding it easier

[sly shadow]

||oh my god the gerudo boss SUUUCCCKS||

[mild oasis]

https://twitter.com/yukino_san_14/status/1664646215168843777?s=20

ゆきのさん (@yukino_san_14)

ホールインワン #TearsOfTheKingdom #Zelda

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Twitter · Jun 2, 2023, 2:52 PM

[placid flume]

https://vxtwitter.com/RinHara5aki/status/1664271833036619776?t=oguNN0ZQOv4YWICXGJb6fA&s=19

[compact bear]

Kay so I just beat the game but I need someone to explain a couple things that bothered me that never got explained (or I missed lol). I'll spoiler tag everything just to be sure
||What happend to the divine beasts? Or even the guardians, was it ever explained?||
||Is there any link between Ganondorf and Calamity Ganon?||
||Were there ever nods to the Champions of Botw? Except maybe Sidon mentioning Mipha/his sister?||

[vernal oracle]

some answers || kind of explained in the Hateno Village school, but al we know is that they existed, so nothign really. i may be missing some dialog somewhere.
I dunno to question 2
Yes! the rock face in goron city changed to include Daruk, and the mipha statue in zora's domain was moves to plymoth peak and got it's own new area name. i don't think the gerudo or the rito mention them at all sadly. however, the school in hateno village also mentions them as a breif nod.||

[compact bear]

||I noticed the little nods about the champions yeah, didn't see the mentioned in the school, should check that out||

||I've been wondering this entire time: Is Ganondorf the creator of Calamity Ganon||

[naive imp]

I know but when I got to the area there was nothing there and no caves where it could have been otherwise

Didn't look like a ledge was above the area either

[mild oasis]

I've seen a couple chasms in caves

[vague path]

dsalluiralghuyvgfrwai EXCUSE ME!? (underground dungeon spoilers)

|| Is this a full fledge hidden dungeon!?!? ||

[mild oasis]

||lol lmao||

[vague path]

hmm there doesn't seem to be anything I can do here atm

I guess it's story locked?

(don't answer that)

I got all excited too lol

[placid flume]

||The guardians are just ruins now

My theory tho is that they were destroyed for the towers, which is prolly why you get grabbed by mechanical hands when you meet the towers for the first time||

[mild oasis]

it has been years since BOTW so disassembly of them is not impossible

if it was up to me? you'd find all that shit in the depths

[lone junco]

||I assume Link destroyed them all before facing Ganon and the rest were likely taken apart and given too Purah and Robbie||

[lone junco]

https://media.istockphoto.com/id/154924136/photo/group-of-female-hands-reaching-towards-the-sky.webp?s=2048x2048&w=is&k=20&c=qYKM0bmxWztiNS9TG2Win7DTgvU61MJmsFpbxeqBebA=

POV: you are about too die.

I could have gotten it without the watermarks but I think it works better with them.

[sly shadow]

so uhm
||i entered the final boss
but with six hearts
and the rest of my hearts having been broken
and no way of repairing those hearts
and it won't let me teleport out....

guess im reloading an autosave||

[sly shadow]

I have now finished the main story

[junior pilot]

I have now finished the wind temple

[sly shadow]

woo good job!

did you enjoy it?

[junior pilot]

the dungeon itself was a bit smaller than i expected but overall this was a fun quest

[naive imp]

best dungeon boss tbh

[sly shadow]

imo it's the best one

[junior pilot]

it certainly was a unique way of defeating a boss, and fighting in the air is always fun, but it should've been harder. i think i only got hit by a single icicle during the entire fight.

[naive imp]

try doing it in ||the dark||

:)

[still atlas]

||the dark version is 100x better!||

[still atlas]

||You can ascend right through them or rewind their rock throws!||

[naive imp]

[lone junco]

I don't even feel the need to invest in HP, not a single fight has been all that hard.

[naive imp]

By any chance have you done the Gerudo quest yet

[lone junco]

I haven't really done that much in the desert in general.

[naive imp]

Oh.

You're in for a treat.

[south mural]

Gerudo chapter sucks, there’s no “attack on vah naboris” theme this time

Gerudo chapter sucks, there’s no “Attack on Vah Naboris” theme this time

[vague path]

I just finished my 150th shrine.

Apparently there are still more

Running out of places to look lmao

[vague path]

wooooooooo

Just beat the last shrine

[mild oasis]

the reward is interesting

[vague path]

hmm

just saw it

Not super impressed

I thought it would be another || hero outfit || like how you got them in BOTW

[mild oasis]

||but it is lmao||

||besides all the green hero outfits are obtainable in game anyways||

[vague path]

no?

[sturdy flint]

Oh hey DW

[vague path]

it's the || fabric || right?

[sturdy flint]

Good to see you around again bud

[vague path]

Yo Demo

[sturdy flint]

Hopefully everything is alright with you and yours ❤️

You vanished for almost a whole week

[vague path]

I guess you could say I took a sort of break but I'm all good 👍

[vague path]

unless... they meant the other temple?

[mild oasis]

||did you go to the temple of time?||

[vague path]

I went to the one in the sky

[mild oasis]

||the outfit?||

||did you get it?||

[vague path]

Just checked the one on the ground and no

The one in the sky gave me a quest

I did the quest and got a ||fabric||

[mild oasis]

||if you did all the shrines then there's a reward waiting for you in a chest in the sky temple of time||

[vague path]

This?

[mild oasis]

yep

[vague path]

Nice

I went to the top because there was a glowing green light

Thought it was that lol

WOAH

Just like in the BOTW || murals || huh

That's pretty cool

[uneven hazel]

yeah they just dropped almost everything from BotW's story which kinda sucks

[sly shadow]

yup

[uneven hazel]

to the point where, despite them looking almost identical, ||Gloom is never referred to as malice||

like fine I can get that the Divine Beasts are history and whatever

but like

[sly shadow]

TotK rehashes a lot of what BotW did, just with a new coat of paint

[uneven hazel]

if Hyrule Castle begins floating and a substance that looks 99% like Malice appears literally everywhere

you wouldn't just

not mention malice at all

that would be like having another pandemic in a few years time that causes fevers, coughs, and a loss of taste, and not once mentioning covid ever

also the Rito as a race have one song and it's Dragon Roost Island

that's it

that's all they're getting

ever

[sly shadow]

||I remember in the Colgera fight the Dragon Roost part came in and I was like "woah that sounds really epic that's such a cool--oh."||

[sturdy flint]

What a banger though as if having the one is an issue. They should consider themselves lucky.

[uneven hazel]

it wasn't a complaint

it will be if it happens again

[vague path]

Just beat the || Spirit Temple ||

I think I'm getting right to the end of the game now huh

They give you a || mech || and all I could think about was Xenoblade X lmao

Apparently it can't ||fly tho so|| not nearly as cool

[sly shadow]

||put a rocket on its back||

[vague path]

Also the ||controls for it are pretty clunky||

[sly shadow]

also ||Spirit """Temple"""||

[vague path]

The ||rocket just makes it jump lol||

[vague path]

||Construct Factory feat. Spirit Temple theme lmao ||

[sly shadow]

||I mean yeah but still
content wise everything from the Ring Ruins to the end of Spirit Temple is about the same as the regional quests but it would have been nice if it maybe did a little more with it||

[vague path]

What did you have in mind?

[sly shadow]

||idk like a whole temple where you had to use the mech for solving puzzles and travelling
yeah Construct Factory is kinda a temple but it's honestly more just four shrines you have to beat.
then you walk a bit and fight one of the game's easiest bosses||

[vague path]

True

I can certainly see that critisism

I don't think it's worse than the other dungeons tho

even with that concession

[sly shadow]

oh it's still pretty good

unique concept too

and the reward itself is cool

||felt like this game's version of the bike||

[vague path]

That's what I was thinking too

[sly shadow]

also a while back i saw someone mention smth about a ||shadow temple?
...where is that?||

[vague path]

There isn't one I don't think?

Unless it's post game

[mild oasis]

cant say that exists

[vague path]

I've explored the whole map so

unless it appears from a quest or smth

[sly shadow]

oi

[vague path]

it doesn't exist

He probably mixed it up with the || Lighting Temple ||

(Gerudo)

[mild oasis]

i would think the other one

[sly shadow]

ALSO

I can now confirm

that

||the TUTORIAL ISLAND has more small keys than EVERY DUNGEON IN THE GAME COMBINED||

[vague path]

Wow... what an ending...

I beat "The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom".
Playtime: 175+ hours

[vague path]

|| 152 || shrines (all of them)

|| 120 || lightroots (all of them)

118 Korok seeds

no guide

Pretty happy with that

[south mural]

Tfw the remaining 40% of the game is the korok seeds

(And locations)

[sturdy flint]

Almost 200 hours and only 60%

Weak gamer

[vague path]

Lmao

[maiden creek]

So my sister and I have both been playing
I just beat the fire temple today and now we are both very confused/curious
||I got different dialogue for Yunobo in the cutscene back in Goron City? My sister remembers the dialogue having Yunobo getting confused about Zelda being both in the present and the past during her playthrough, but just now the version we saw had him very decisive about the present "Zelda" being an impostor||

Anyone have any idea what triggers the difference?
In terms of progress: ||I've only seen the first 3 dragon tears, no Master Sword, this was my 3rd temple||

My sister ||has seen more memories (but not all), no Master Sword, and she did the fire temple second||
We're wondering if it might be related to what order we did the regional phenomena in but ||Sidon's dialogue was the same for her doing the water temple third and me doing it second||

[south mural]

https://youtu.be/Mm3QKm_9Rfk

[primal yacht]

I beat the game very recently, loved it a ton. The story absolutely shines through

But I have a hot take and I wanted to put it here to see what the reaction is

I think TotK has not mastered its gameplay as much as BotW did. BotW knew what it set out to do and it polished it to absolute perfection. I feel like TotK was vastly more ambitious, and as a result wasn't able to achieve the same level of polish. And I'm not even talking just about glitches, those are inevitable. But througout the game, there were several times when I felt like the intended cool solution that used zonai devices and ultrahand and stuffs was way longer and more tedious than the boring option of just... walking. Or hitting it.

I know this is subjective, and I also might have just been stupid and couldn't figure out the simple way to do things, but I'm curious if anyone else experienced the same thing

Also, to clarify, I think BotW's gameplay is 10/10 and TotK is like 9/10. This is just a lil nitpicky thing I noticed that bugged me sometimes.

[cyan copper]

https://youtu.be/EtsSzhut0qo

Batteryless flying machine

[uneven hazel]

yeah Shadow Temple Spirit Temple they're all the same to me

[sly shadow]

I definitely get the tedious thing
honestly if Autobuild wasn't in the game I wouldn't have bothered using zonai devices half as much as I ended up
a lot of the times i used zonai stuff it was just pulling out whatever I needed then autobuilding it
I mostly just used fans, rockets, wings+carts and sometimes springs. the rest went entirely unused because unless the game put those parts in front of me (for example with koroks) then it just wasn't worth the effort trying to figure out a good use for them
I think the one time I actually built something to help fight enemies (five cannons attached to a cart that I held up), it was less effective than just smacking them

also I'll be honest as dumb as it sounds, the fact that at any point I could just build myself a car kinda harmed the whole "immersion/suspension of disbelief" thing

especially since Link seems like the only person in the whole of Hyrule who has any interest in the things

[uneven hazel]

tbf he's the only one who can actually use them

[sly shadow]

that's true

I meant like, as far as I saw, there wasn't really anyone who was even like "wow look at that weird fan"
nobody cared lmao

I think there was one person near Tarrey Town who was looking at one of the dispensers

[primal yacht]

I think there's implication that they have been used at other times, like the fans at ||Yunobo Co|| being used to drive minecarts

So I think people do use them? Somehow? We just don't see them do it that much

[naive imp]

Also the ||Yiga Clan hideouts||

[primal yacht]

Oh yeah that for sure. I haven't explored that part of the game much

[naive imp]

You'll see it a lot down there

[sly shadow]

oh that's true

||honestly I'm super glad the yiga clan were more prominent in this game, even if it was just a side adventure
they're not just the one hideout and some random encounters anymore||

[sly shadow]

https://fxtwitter.com/zelda_kouryaku/status/1665701503145762819?t=IdQ8Hm2KPGbV9NtP90JyiQ&s=19

[primal yacht]

"uough"

[junior pilot]

okay so
under hyrule castle
where you go through ||the area of the start of the game||
and in the end you ||fight this huge army of monsters||
is there anything down there or did i just ||accidentally stumble into the final boss?||

[mild oasis]

yeah I'd turn around

if I were you

[sly shadow]

||yeah the final boss is right after that
definitely turn around||

[junior pilot]

lmao okay thanks

||guess i'll come back in 100 hours||

[sly shadow]

currently watching a streamer who's trying to do this section with eight hearts

[junior pilot]

i did it with less than that because i already took so much damage on the way there and had no healing items for the broken hearts.

they're just regular enemies which are really easy if you use your items effectively.

[uneven hazel]

love that we all found the ||final boss|| before we were ready lmao

[mild oasis]

I got as far as the part where it says ||the power of a sage cannot reach you|| and I took the hint

[uneven hazel]

I got to the ||cutscene|| and was like

hmm

[viral ingot]

oh right i can enter here now

(beat the game yesterday)

[mild oasis]

I often went down there to beat the shit out of the lynel

but usually no further

[uneven hazel]

congratulations holly

what do you think

[viral ingot]

i think damn the ending was good

and then i think damn i have to do 50 more shrines

[uneven hazel]

you don't have to

[primal yacht]

I went down right away from the beginning, but I couldn't find my way through and the enemies were strong enought that I was like "I think I'll come back later." Plus I figured that was where ||ganondorf|| was, so I wasn't too worried about waiting

[uneven hazel]

it's a shame it's such an obvious place

like everyone will go there

bc you give them a game with the tag 'you can go anywhere' and 99% of people will respond 'anywhere?' and then push your buttons

[primal yacht]

I don't mind it too much, because actually getting through all that is hella difficult if you try to go too early

[uneven hazel]

I will admit

not scared to

I used an Ancient Arrow on the Lynel

[primal yacht]

lol

[uneven hazel]

I did not expect it to work the same as in BotW

[primal yacht]

it did?

[uneven hazel]

I was like 'they stripped everything from the previous game so I am certain this won't work'

and brought in like 50 thousand meals and weapons

and then just

one shot it

[primal yacht]

Which is something I think this game does really well, Breath of the Wild was okay, but you could avoid a lot of the danger if you were quick. And the bosses weren't too bad if you were skilled. But in this game the sheer numbers become overwhelming really quick if you go in unprepared

[primal yacht]

pfft

[uneven hazel]

aye Hyrule Castle in BotW was fine if you were fast

which I think is where TotK really shines

in all dungeons actually

[sly shadow]

not me
I did it when i was told to 😎
(I assumed that chasm just led to more depths so I didn't go down)

[naive imp]

....I just got the most ominous message ever

WAIT

....I GOTTA TURN BACK

NOPE. NOPE. NOPE. NOPE.

Well that's relevant to the conversation above.

[mild oasis]

ah I see you followed my thought process

albeit more panicked than I was

[primal yacht]

lmaooooo

[vernal oracle]

i too, jumped into the chasm with like 6 hearts

i fought ||Colgera|| and died becuase i had NO IDEA what to do

[naive imp]

Did you also think it was the entrance to the ||Spirit Temple||

[mild oasis]

no

[south mural]

https://youtube.com/shorts/kAR6hdB6vrM?feature=share

[junior pilot]

"hey let's check out that weird cloud"
||*gets a huge quest that takes several hours, a boss fight and one of the stones*||
the surprises in this game are insane i love it so much.
now i have ||a robot friend|| :)

[south mural]

Oh my god I’ve finally done 100 shrines

[placid flume]

How many korok seeds yall found?

[uneven hazel]

3

at least

[lone junco]

I don't remember, I find most of mine by accident because I have a habit of picking up random rocks.

there isn't even a reason for it since I do it in other games as well.

[uneven hazel]

"that's 100% a Korok"

thoughts which precede finding a korok

[lone junco]

My thought process usually goes something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmvLexamrmk

[azure needle]

Like..

10 or so

[placid flume]

I like found all of the ones from Great Sky Island

And then proceeded to find any of the Koroks i could easily find around Hyrule

[naive imp]

Yahaha!

[south mural]

50 seeds 😭

[vernal oracle]

i have 37 on me rn

dunno how much i spent honestly

[south mural]

anyone know how to get this shrine here on the great plateau?

(The red marker)

[still atlas]

That might be a cave one

Edge of the great plateau to there, maybe

[wary pumice]

That top part of the Great Plateau's the snow area, right?

There's definitely a cave shrine there, I believe

[naive imp]

Oh, i had to look that one up too

It's a cave behind Addison

[prisma musk]

I am really annoyed with something that happened to me today and I hope someone can help me with it. If not, then I guess I will solve it sometime in the next couple of months anyway.

Can I talk about items in the game freely here? Without spoiler tagging? Or should I do it, just in case?

I will spoilertag, just in case

So I went to the 4 isles on the eastern part of the Zora domain, Tingel, Ankel, Knuckel and Davdi, and on Tingel I've found ||a small hidden chasm which has led me to the depths. Following the only available path and destroying some breakable walls, I have reached the furthest island to the South, Davdi, which has a chest and the Cap of the Wind in it. Everything cool so far. Now when I pick it up, Gloom hands appeared and different to other times when I would run for my life, I decided to fight them and fight Phantom Ganon as well, in the sword form. It has actually been way easier than expected (my number of hearts, level or armor and weapons are much better than last time I tried it, like 60 hours ago lol) and once all of them are defeated, there's a cutscene of a Yiga door opening somewhere. WHERE THE HELL IS IT??? I couldn't find it around any of the 4 islands depths and I am struggling so much with that. It might be somewhere else but I don't want to teleport anywhere with the fear it will reset and I will have to come back to fight again, which would not be a problem for the fight itself, but for having to return here. I am actually placing a Travel Medallion next to the open chest just in case, but I hope someone can point me to that Yiga door so I can move on from this little excursion and continue exploring the depths somewhere else.||

Sorry for the long text, just trying to explain my issue with detail so that someone can help me with it.

Feel free to ping me if you know how to help me with this (it might be a totally silly thing, but I need to get it out of my way)

[mild oasis]

I don't know where it is based on description, but if it was like a magic sigil over a door that disappeared, those do not respawn to my knowledge

so the door will remain unlocked

[prisma musk]

figured as much, then I guess I will find it one day, but I must admit that knowing I have opened one door and I don't know if I will ever find it is annoying my inner self big time

[vague path]

I never bothered fighting that hand

I just got the cap and left lol

[prisma musk]

I wanted to test myself and get the weapons it drops

I didn't expect a Yiga door would open somewhere but would not be within the 4 islands chasm

[uneven hazel]

it's that mysterious door in ||The Dannagh Desert||

(spoiler free btw)

[vague path]

[prisma musk]

haha so funny

[uneven hazel]

some day a mod is going to just get sick of my shit and boot me from the server

[sly shadow]

||I made it up to the really high-up lotus island
then realised the thing wasn't there
and that it was on the ground
in lookout landing
where I'd seen it
70 hours ago.........||

[vernal oracle]

||LOL THE SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME||

[south mural]

Man I feel like there’s never enough food inventory slots

More than 1/3 of my food are all hearty meals

[south mural]

I think the problem is that there’s a lot more hearts than Botw but also you can only restore max 15-20 hearts from one meal

That isn’t a hearty meal

[uneven hazel]

||https://twitter.com/verlibird/status/1667278008145809414?s=20||

spoilers

[mild oasis]

to be more specific, spoilers for all the memories

[lone junco]

I can't believe I have only just now gotten into the hebra mountains/Rito village they were always my favorite locations in BOTW.

||Good thing I found the warm pants from the beginning of the game otherwise I would be in a bad way ATM.||

[sly shadow]

https://fxtwitter.com/bran8bit/status/1667539615413334017?t=fBN3Iq9GKs1Hq7a4jwCupA&s=19

[south mural]

Important tip: make sure you take a picture of a blupee asap when you have the compendium + unlocked

Wild blupees will always lead you to undiscovered caves

Can be extremely useful in searching for underground shrines or caves in general

That way when you need to find a cave in the area you can just track a blupee

[mild oasis]

sure but doesnt the shrine tracker follow that same logic

lmao

[vernal oracle]

blupee is a lot more accurate for undergound shrines, as you could be on top of a mountain and have no idea where the cave enterance is. with scanning blupees, you can visabbly see them and navigate closer to the actual entrence

[south mural]

^^

Shrine trackers will just say “it’s below you” but you’ll have no idea how to get to that shrine

There’s this one shrine underground

It’s near the zora sky view tower

My thing would ping every time I went to that tower and it drove me nuts not being able to find that shrine

With the blupees i found like 3 caves before finally finding the shrine (there’s a lot of caves in that area)

[south mural]

Took me longer than it should to have all the ‘race’ armour

ie armour sets that you can buy at each major civilisation

[sly shadow]

https://fxtwitter.com/ekudy/status/1667624932166209536?s=20

[lone junco]

||Four hearts, one and a half bars of stamina, warm cloths, only 9 weapon slots, and I am in the middle of a swirling mass of clouds time to activate my pro gamer powers||

[south mural]

Finally have a legacy armour set

Twilight armour set

[naive imp]

That's the hardest one to get

I want it but I looked up the locations and ||I DON'T WANNA FIGHT A GLEEOK||

[mild oasis]

they're not that bad

bring some keese eyes and you're fine

[prisma musk]

And maybe a few rockets to attach to your shields

[sly shadow]

I still can't do gleeoks

they do too much damage

and the gusts feel unfair

and their stun period is so short

honestly a lot of the hard enemies in this game aren't hard because they're tricky, they just deal absurd damage and have tons of health

not really enjoyable

most enemies (even bosses) only have two or three attacks, if that

[mild oasis]

i enjoyed thunder and flame gleeok

didn't enjoy ice gleeok

[mild oasis]

when I upgraded my armor no enemy ever gave me the too much damage problem

and you really gotta soulsborne a gleeok

it's got a pretty avoidable and predictable attack pattern but

you're gonna die a couple times learning it

[uneven hazel]

There's a certain headset that trivialises lightning gleeoks

Well their passive problem anyway

[mild oasis]

elixir also did the trick

i mean obviously it would

I took down a flame gleeok way before I was appropriately ready in-game just cuz I memorized the couple of attacks it's got and used the terrain

[prisma musk]

As with pretty much any boss, you can play hide and seek and lower their health bar until they are dead and eat tons of food to recover yours, provided they do not one-shot kill you first.

[south mural]

I like the detail that link’s official TOTK design has the hylian hood down

Cool funny cape

[still atlas]

Ice Gleeok was the easiest for me

Although none of them were too much of a challenge

Probably due to when I choose to fight them all (after all the temples)

A bunch of eyes and a bunch of wings

The fire one was the hardest for me of the three, but mostly because of the location I chose to square off with it(the bridge)

Not much room to move around

Oh and ||Gleeok den triple threat was really really fun ||

[south mural]

Who would win?
A menacing 3 headed dragon that will ruthlessly take you down with elemental attacks

Or

An eyeball

No they’re ungodly easy when you cheese with keese eyes

Bomb jump with a shield after they recover from stun to get another bullet time and shoot them again

[placid flume]

I beat ||a fire gleeok||

[south mural]

I finally finished the newspaper side adventure

Gonna say it

Penn > Kass

Kass had an accordion but he didn’t have a catch phrase didn’t he

[south mural]

This feels illegal

Oh my god I love this game

So there’s that whole side quest with the Yiga clan

||basically infiltrate it and you become a member of the clan||

||by becoming a blade master through this and another quest you actually gain recognition for being a blade master||

||there’s a dude in the Yiga clan that will sell you a vehicle for 999 but discounts it to 500 rupees for being a blademadter||

Honestly in terms of major side content this is the best part of the game Imo

Fleshing out the Yiga clan like this

What the fuck I’ve beaten exactly 50% of the game

95 hours

Honestly surprised I’ve done that much

Stats as of rn

[vague path]

Major TOTK Plot spoilers discussion:

|| So like if Zelda transformed into the Light Dragon and was in that form for thousands of years, there should have been a Light Dragon somewhere at the time of BOTW ||

||I guess they could explain it as "well you just never see her" ||

but eh kinda weird

[uneven hazel]

||Presumably she was up with all the other islands||

because they can't be seen either

[vague path]

Eh I guess

[sly shadow]

||the islands only rose up once the upheaval happened right||

||i guess she was just elsewhere during that time||

[uneven hazel]

d-didn't the islands come from the sky

I still think it would've been cooler if she'd been ||Naydra|| instead

[vague path]

||No, the upheaval only made the Castle go up. The islands were already up there apparently as the Zonai were from there. ||

[uneven hazel]

yeah

They were above the ||cloud barrier||

[vague path]

Well it also did some other stuff but

in the context of things rising yeah

[sly shadow]

oh ok

ig that makes sense since there's trees and water and stuff

[vague path]

||Mind you, there's no explanation for why the upheaval revealed the Islands tho ||

||Unless if you count the Light Dragon being the one to reveal them ||

[uneven hazel]

I think I worked that out like 3 seconds ago

[sly shadow]

||fairly sure it's just "they will appear when the hero is needed"||

[uneven hazel]

I think the ||activation of the Temple of Time/discovery of the Light Dragon|| is what causes the cloud barrier to disappear

[vague path]

That does seem to be the most likely explaination

[uneven hazel]

So it's not the upheaval itself, per say, but the meeting of ||Link and Rauru||

[sly shadow]

||why would it be the light dragon||

[vague path]

We see the || Light Dragon || breaking the clouds when you leave || Great Sky Island ||

That is what allows you to leave

[uneven hazel]

Yeah that's what dispells the clouds in the first place

granted you can kind of see below them before this

but perhaps it's a one-way thing

[vague path]

Yeah you can

[sly shadow]

oh i didnt notice that

i thought they just kinda parted

[vague path]

It's ofc never explicitly explained

but context seems to point to that

[sly shadow]

oh wait yeah there's an entire cutscene for that lmao

maybe i skipped it

or was just looking away

idk

[vague path]

Kind of like how the game almost just pretends the shiekah tech never existed lol

[sly shadow]

idk

there's no continuity at all

i hate it

[uneven hazel]

god don't

[vague path]

I still think it could be (and is) a direct sequel to BOTW, but there are some things that are just not explained or left to the imagination

[uneven hazel]

The more I think about the game's story the more I dislike it lmao

I saw like

one thing in my playthrough

that stops it from being set in an alternate timeline

[vague path]

Which is

[uneven hazel]

Off the top of my head I can't remember

[vague path]

rip

[uneven hazel]

Probably the ||Calamity|| sidequest in Hateno

[sly shadow]

||I like the climax and the final boss but they also feel really hollow cause there's no good groundwork it sits on
so it's good in the moment and then it's just like "ok wow nice"||

[vague path]

||Yeah tbh if I didn't play BOTW the ending wouldn't have felt nearly as emotionally powerful - since we barely get to see Zelda at all in this game vs the last game where she was developed way more.||

[sly shadow]

||basically the only reasons it was good for me was cause the ganondorf fight is pretty hard, then dragon fight looks cool and the explosion is cool too
the dragon fight is basically just Dark Beast Ganon again tho, and the ganondorf fight is only really hard cause this game's idea of hard is "do little damage, receive a lot"||

[uneven hazel]

I would argue that ||Ganon at least expands on the combat system by forcing you to either double flurry or parry, something which the Calamity didn't do||

you could beat the Calamity w/o using any of the game's unique combat options

[vague path]

esp since || Ganondorf || was basically just there at the start and end of the game again.

The Memories did little to flesh this version of him out for me

[uneven hazel]

I'll be honest I'm disappointed in almost everything about ||Ganondorf||

except for his... physique

[vague path]

||He didn't even have any connection to the Triforce or reference to Demise in this game ||

[sly shadow]

||Most characters are extremely flat||

[vague path]

He was just kinda... there

[uneven hazel]

I mean phsyically he is most certainly not

[sly shadow]

||ganondorf's potential was entirely wasted and it sucks||

[uneven hazel]

sorry sorry getting carried away on main again

[sly shadow]

||you'd think zelda would have gone "hey wait ganondorf??" but no||

yeah ill stop now lol

[uneven hazel]

This is why I'm convinced that this isn't ||OoT Ganondrof||

||bc no matter where you place it in the timeline, he'd have heard of Link in either this game or that game||

I know Jet you think that these games are separate

[vague path]

I thought that was obvious from the get go tbh

since this game is so far into the future

[uneven hazel]

It was to me until Deemo pointed out that ||every Ganondorf before now has been the same one||

[vague path]

or maybe an alterate universe entirely

[sly shadow]

it's not even "in the future" really

[vague path]

honestly I subscribe to the latter now

[uneven hazel]

but don't forget that people believe ||Zelda is sent back to... the actual start of the timeline||

[sly shadow]

the zelda timeline does not exist in any meaningful way and this game proves it lol

it's very funny that they made a timeline after fans kept asking for it and then immediately discarded it

[uneven hazel]

I like to believe the timeline

gives the game's more of a link

😉

plus it provides more for me to think about

I love thinking

I do it almost once a week

[sly shadow]

I mean I can see why people like it

but to me it just feels very vapid

[uneven hazel]

that's fair

[vague path]

I used to think BOTW was an inevitability in each timeline after enough time passed. Like each timeline experiences it's own TP / WW eventually with Demise's curse. But now after TOTK It's clear to me that the devs care little for the established rules made my the lore of the series (triforce, demise).

So while I do like the timeline, I do not consider BOTW/TOTK to be part of it anymore. Rather, I see it as a separate canon/universe where anything goes.

[uneven hazel]

In my head

it reunites the timelines

but is also very very much after them

to the point where there's literally no link between these games and the rest of the series

[sly shadow]

it's weird cause botw has direct links to the other games too

like in zora's domain there's something talking about ruto from oot

[vague path]

It even had a link directly from another game 😉

Wolf Link

which they took out of TOTK

for some reason

I wonder why they did

[uneven hazel]

all the Divine Beasts are references

I more mean there's nothing phsyical linking these games to the others

just legends

tribute clothing

Crossing my fingers that no one brings up the Mirror of Twilight

although that's not canon to this Hyrule bc it's just gone in BotW

[vague path]

...I remember that quest lmao

[uneven hazel]

like to an extent my theory means they might as well not exist in the same timeline

but like at the same time that means they might as well too

[vague path]

Also like

Why the heck did they invent a new term for gloom

I don't see why it's not just Malice

with a somewhat more powerful effect

[sly shadow]

nono

[uneven hazel]

goD

[sly shadow]

see

malice is pink and black

and gloom is

red and black

[uneven hazel]

black and pink

it's not even that

I've done this argument hang on

[sly shadow]

also gloom drains your health and makes it harder to walk

while malice makes it harder to walk and drains your health

[vague path]

Malice makes it harder to walk and takes your health too

[uneven hazel]

here you go save me the bother

[vague path]

just... not semi permanantly

[sly shadow]

nobody's even like "hey these are surprisingly similar i wonder if there's a connection"

[vague path]

Just read that Euan pretty much my thoughts lol

[uneven hazel]

It's like

I get it

I know where they're coming from

They announce a sequel that's in the same world and art style as BotW

and they're so desparate to avoid just being fancy DLC

that they steer well clear of anything to do with BotW

[vague path]

lol

[sly shadow]

tbh tho sometimes it does just feel like a 'Nuts & Bolts' expansion pack

it's like two in one
Physics/vehicle stuff, and an alright story

[vague path]

It's weird

[sly shadow]

and it's weird cause they feel so separate too

[vague path]

In some ways the feels new and fresh, like with the new fuse mechanics

[sly shadow]

it's not like the story is focused around building things or smth
a society which used magic vehicles, idk

no it's just something you happen to do

[vague path]

In others it's super super similar

[sly shadow]

fuse is great honestly

the biggest thing i missed when i went back to botw for a bit was fuse

[vague path]

To the point that at times I felt like I was playing a remake but not lmao, like the feeling you get of seeing the same areas again in a new way

[sly shadow]

yeah

it's not really a sequel

at least it doesn't feel like it

i get that some people play it entirely different to botw but
in my experience (starting botw on master mode, then doing totk, then playing a bit more botw) the two are pretty similar

[vague path]

I personally feel like it did enough to be a full sequel with the new story, new sky and underground, and remixed overworld

but like

I wouldn't say it's a completely new entry in the Zelda series

like how I feel on Majora's Mask

That game feels different enough despite the reused assets that I have no issue calling it a new entry

it's weird

New game but not completely new Zelda game

sounds dumb but

lol

[sly shadow]

see for me the sky islands felt way too copy/paste and few to feel that meaningful
and the depths are cool in concept but in execution feel incredibly sparse. not helped by how it's just an inverted overworld, and there's nothing too substantial you can get down there (bonus gear, schematics, lots of zonaite...)

i like the new stuff on the overworld but i wouldn't personally call it remixed

the most "remixed" thing they did was take away death mountain's one unique feature lmao

(not trying to be a contrarian for the sake of it or anything btw)

[vague path]

I definitely get the thing about the sky and underground. The sky especially left me disappointed since that was such a focus pre-release. There's just not enough of them and so many are mostly copy/paste. It almost feels like a late development add on even though we've known about it for two years before release.

[mild oasis]

jet did you enjoy TOTK all that much because I can't think of an aspect of it you haven't heavily criticized

[vague path]

I do feel like Hyrule was changed a lot though, though in more subtle ways. I actually didn't recognize it at first.

I think Jet enjoyed the fuse mechanic a lot at least

[sly shadow]

I mean

it was the only thing I played for two weeks and I put 60+ hours into it

so yeah I liked it

[uneven hazel]

It's possible to enjoy a game and have problems with it

See: Splatoon 3

[mild oasis]

I figured

but

[sly shadow]

I just wish so much of it that I liked wasn't also exactly what I liked about botw

[mild oasis]

you do not give that impression lol

[sly shadow]

probably not

no i did like it tho

[vague path]

Personally I enjoyed TOTK a lot, but even so I was disappointed by it in many ways too.

I spent 175 hours with it so lol

I don't think it's just DLC or BOTW 1.5 but it's definitely a BOTW 2 and the most similar to any other previous 3D Zelda game for better and for worse.

[sly shadow]

i shall list things I liked:

• qol improvements are great
• final boss is good
• sky islands are fun despite the above criticism. I like the feeling of being so high up
• skydiving is just fun as a thing to do
• korok missions are cute
• new bosses are fun
• fuse is great
• ascend is fun
• ultrahand is cool
• putting zonai devices together is interesting
• i like building planes
• master kohga quest is super fun
• i like how black and silver enemies are much more common
• I love the caves. They're literally the thing I felt was most missing from botw

there's probably more

but like, they're all little things

and all the issues I have are about bigger things

so that's why I don't mention the things I like really

[vague path]

Oh I forgot to roast TOTK for not letting you cook mutiple things at once

You still have to go in the menu every time lmao

but w/e

[sly shadow]

also as boring as the depths are for me, their aesthetic is great and I like jumping between lightroots to almost build up this network and fill out the map

[vague path]

Basically TOTK is better than I was afraid of leading up to launch (BOTW just with sky island DLC), but does fall short of what I really really wanted from it esp after 6+ years and $70 price tag.

[sly shadow]

I think generally I'm just a little sour about totk cause the one thing I wanted it to improve on over botw is the story and at least for me totk's story fell completely flat

[uneven hazel]

wild to think that at least one person, somewhere, is working on the next mainline 3D Zelda game

[sly shadow]

maybe a lot sour actually

[vague path]

Yeah the story thing was either the most or second most disappointing thing to me

That said I do think it had more flavor than BOTW's

[uneven hazel]

Controversial take perhaps

[vague path]

Not that that was a huge bar to clear, though

[uneven hazel]

I preferred BotW's story

Or perhaps more accurately

[sly shadow]

I enjoyed BotW's story more

[uneven hazel]

I preferred its presentation

[sly shadow]

felt better realised

[uneven hazel]

Maybe because the world was the story

not just the memories

Like you don't need all the memories to know what impact the calamity had

you're literally seeing it everywhere

[sly shadow]

this is gonna sound weird to say but the emotional core of botw is a lot stronger for me too
like the atmosphere of the world and stuff, and totk doesn't replace it with anything that matches that

[vague path]

You just do more stuff in the story of TOTK than you do in BOTW, and I actually came to sort of respect || Yunobo|| so that's a plus lmao

in terms of an active storyline

I do agree that BOTW had perhaps a more emotional story with the development of Link and Zelda

But TOTK just had a bit more interesting things to me in terms of what you're doing in the active story ig

[sly shadow]

I agree with that

at least in terms of like, going places and actively doing things, totk is better

[vague path]

And while it's kind of stealing from BOTW

I do think knowing what Link and Zelda went through changes how I saw the memories

And to a degree I credit TOTK for introducing those scenarios

like || how Zelda essentially died to help Link's sword ||

[mild oasis]

botw hyping tf up out of the champions for them to just do nothing and die immediately

[vague path]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[mild oasis]

that alone has me favoring totk's story

[vague path]

I cared absolutely nothing for some of them LMAO

[mild oasis]

now

[uneven hazel]

The things I would let Urbosa do to me

[mild oasis]

I like most of the champions as characters more than I do the sages

but at least the sages do something

[sly shadow]

they dont do much tho

can't stand tulin omg

[vague path]

Just being side by side with Link in the present is enough for me to care more for them idk

[uneven hazel]

I love Tulin

if anything happened to him I'd kill everyone etc etc

[mild oasis]

the bar is in hell here

they go with you to do stuff. champions went "look at me" then crawled into their robot and died

[sly shadow]

yeah and they touched hell's ceiling with the tips of their fingers

[uneven hazel]

are you saying the champions didn't do anything lmao

[vague path]

I am indifferent to Tulin idk
Just kinda came from nowhere? didn't dislike tho.

[uneven hazel]

oh right you mean as characters

[mild oasis]

what'd they do story wise

tell me

[uneven hazel]

no no fair

they do get a bit of expansion in the DLC but not much

[mild oasis]

they're fun characters but fuck are they pointless

[vague path]

sell amiibos

[uneven hazel]

I have a Revali amiibo

[mild oasis]

I didn't really realize this until I played totk

[sly shadow]

I think my issue with totk is more of a fundamental one ig
in that I like character-driven stories and totk is very plot-driven which is fine ig

[mild oasis]

I'm like "boy we sure moved on from the champions fast considering they uh.. they did uh.. I see"

[sly shadow]

i mean plot-driven stories still need good characters...

yeah champions are never mentioned

sheikah tech gone

[mild oasis]

like I like sidon the most out of any of them but I prefer all the champions to the remaining three sages

[sly shadow]

nobody mentions ganon/ganondorf connection

[uneven hazel]

The things I would let Sidon do to me

[sly shadow]

malice never mentioned

[mild oasis]

but that is purely personal preference

[sly shadow]

sidon is almost as bad as tulin

almost

[uneven hazel]

and when did your adversity to lovable characters begin?

[sly shadow]

he's saved by not being a child soldier at least

[vague path]

Sidon is probably my favorite champion/decendant of all of them

He's just like your best friend lol

[mild oasis]

the sages ||actually go with you to help defeat ganondorf|| (end game spoilers)

sidon IS your best friend

[uneven hazel]

The problem is if I had a best friend like sidon irl I would literally not be able to stop thinking abou them lmao

[mild oasis]

remember what yona said

[mild oasis]

that's called a crush

[vague path]

oh yeah... yona

[mild oasis]

you are attracted

[uneven hazel]

yes I'm well aware

[vague path]

I legit forgot she existed...

[uneven hazel]

It's a running issue

convenient DW forgetting about the handsome Shark Prince's fiance

[sly shadow]

this is the problem with sidon

[mild oasis]

idk it's just so funny to me how """"important"""" the champions are

[uneven hazel]

ok the champions are unimportant

but

they themselves are miles better than the uh

[mild oasis]

they're better characters than most of the sages

[uneven hazel]

what are they called

[mild oasis]

yes I know

[uneven hazel]

original sages

who uh

let me just check

don't get names

[mild oasis]

well those ones aren't supposed to be characters

[uneven hazel]

don't get faces

[sly shadow]

the sages are like anti-characters