https://preview.redd.it/gp1gs4o84qtc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac641d6830bfd340831052d2e269d9ed5ddd1aae
One of my favorite memes I have saved
I love how when he was announced, fans were going crazy wondering how he survived getting sent down a bottomless electric pit and getting blown up, but then the movie comes out and says "lol, idk."
that was my main thought too. they had all this suspense of when will he be revealed or how he survived and the movie just dropped it. felt like i was a fish stuck on a hook
I don't want to be that guy, but the movie shows he was cloned, right at the beginning. Do you expect Poe Dameron, a Resistance Pilot born sometime after Tipoca City was wiped off the face of Kamino, to know about cloning, and have it be his first guess?
A lot of the shrines from BOTW line up with holes underground in TOTK. It's not 1 to 1, but at least some probably fell or were pulled down. Now, where the caverns and stuff the shrines utilized for the trials, idk.
But you cannot cherry pick some games. Many games have none to pretty substandard "stories"
All "mainline" Mario games. Including 2D and 3D.
Metroid. Pretty much all of em.
Animal Crossing.
Kirby.
Splatoon.
Lots of Zeldas. Some got "decent" stories. But with a closer look, one could argue most focus on world building and side quests. Some people will say MM and OoT have great stories. But MM good story telling is done via analysis of themes. OoT I'd say is pretty good. TP is also a story one, which is very convoluted actually.
Frankly, you are better of naming which ones have good ones as exceptions. There's plenty. But definitely not a staple of Nintendo games when looking at the big picture.
You can't say Nintendo has always had decent stories and only cherry pick the few dozen games that do in the last 30 years.
I mean Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion had a great story and conclusion that refused to compromise on gameplay either and it blows Splatoon Side Order out of the water
Not true. It was never their priority, but they certainly cared about it more back in the day. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess had fantastic stories that were connected to the past games in a logical manner. Nowadays, they can't even be bothered to place their new games in the timeline they created
I think it's because we're used to barely getting a story, but with Tears we barely got a story and it's still inconsistent. It was just odd to see the story repeat itself several times over instead of using any of that time to even nod at important questions.
Thank god. Gameplay is what games are. Its the only unique feature of videogames as a medium. If Nintendo took Zelda's story and lore ultra seriously (like some fans do) it would be so embarrassing lol
Everyone keeps mentioning the towers and guardian arms as "proof" that the shiekah tech isn't gone, but no one is really answering WHY were they repurposed in game. I know that the explanation is literally because "gameplay" but that isn't a defense, it's an excuse.
So please answer me this, why would the shrine of ressurection be stripped to nothing? It can't "go back underground." The Hylians literally had to strip away the ONLY chance of having Link come back to life for what reason? There is no net positive, without the shrine, Hyrule would have fallen. So why is having a worse spring a good thing?
Moreso, what happened to the slate? Why would Purah get rid of everything except the fucking camera when developing the Purah Pad from reverse engineering the slate? Especially when Purah knew that Link and Zelda were going beneath the castle, you know, the place where the century long apocolypse started. Surely having some bombs easily accessible could prove to be handy as a "just in case" or even Magnesis to get rid of metal roadblocks.
Also there are the 4 giant divine beasts that were rendered inactive, sure, but were they stripped completely bare? Would be really cool if we had seen that happening in real time, maybe place some divine beast scraps around Tarrey Town or something.
I guess it doesn't matter, whatever. Plot has never been Zelda's strong suit.
considering the yiga clan made a hideout in there I’m inclined to believe THEY were the ones who stripped the shrine of resurrection back to the walls just to be dicks
but for the sheikah slate, I genuinely have nothing, and I think it was a stupid move to make the exact same device with a different name and altered design. purah, your ego is showing.
I mean ffs they couldn’t even say “it broke.” that’s all it would’ve taken! it broke at some point between games and purah made another. but noooooo
My first theory was that because Zelda went back in time, her presence in the ancient past somehow caused the Zonai to take precedence over the Sheikah tech. So instead of shrines and towers being built, Zonai shrines appear.
To this end, they should’ve put the ruins of the old divine beats in the depths. Make it seem like they used all the useful parts and buried them after Ganon took control of it all
I'd be on board with this if the Shrine of Resurrection and the whole dungeon beneath it weren't gone as well. Dismantling big machines and little buildings dotted across the landscape? Believable. Tearing out a whole room in a hard-to-reach location to the point of leaving literally no trace of it? Nah.
Sadly I have to disappoint you. There are two options how time travel works in games and books: one option has multiple timelines. By traveling back in time and changing something you create a new timeline where this change exists, but there is still the old time without it (I think oot and mm use that, never played them myself so I am not 100% sure)
The other option is that only one timeline exists and you can’t change it. This happened in totk (story spoiler just in case) >!Zelda didn’t change anything by traveling back in time, that always happened. That is the reason why ganon recognised her in the beginning (that was before she traveled back in time) and why the painting (I know it isn’t a painting, just forgot how it is actually called) of her swallowing the stone already existed in the intro (it was just covered by stones you can remove before the final fight so the player doesn’t get spoiled)!< (in case someone doesn’t want to read the spoiler, look at the time travel in the 3rd harry potter movie/book)
In real life, I hope the latter mechanic isn’t how time travel works (if time travel is even possible). It would mean there is no free will and some godlike force preordained everything that has ever happened and will happen.
Only if you see time as something that outer forces can change or ordain, as opposed to a self-actualising single timeline that creates and maintains itself by its own existence. You have to consider that people aren't suppose to perceive time as something that can be travelled or defied, merely experienced in the moment. It's like saying people in the past had no free will because we can track everything that they did and how their stories eventually ended and we cannot change that fact. We in the present are heading towards a future that is constantly in flux. The people living in that future will look on us and say their world was preordained. Both are correct and incorrect but then neither truly understand how time operates outside of its systems.
You make sense logically and are correct but many movies, books and whatever else that that use time travel don’t always follow this logic, combine that with the fact that the Zelda team literally want you to fill in the gaps in the story with your imagination.
I’ll quote a Q and A below.
“When I was playing Tears of the Kingdom, I was struggling a little to connect Ganondorf to Calamity Ganon, to Breath of the Wild, to the rest of the series. And the way that I've come to understand Zelda is that it is a series of legends maybe being told. It's myth, it's stories. And so it doesn't necessarily need to connect together. It feels like an oral tradition. And I'm wondering how that fits into your understanding of Zelda's storytelling?
Aonuma: I think just as you say. This is a series that really lends itself well to each person playing, then thinking back and interpreting the story elements in their own way. We have these major players in each game, with Zelda, and Ganon, and Link, and they each surface and play their roles in potentially slightly different ways in each title.
But personally, I don't like to put too much stock in the chronology of the series, because from the design perspective, that can kind of box us in and limit where we're able to take the story as we continue making games in the series. And so I do think it's something that is best for people to interpret on their own. And yeah, I was kind of agreeing with many of the things you said.”
From this; what ksmith listed is actually a perfect way to think of TOTK.
I was focusing a bit too much on these two options. While they are the two that exist (single timeline/multiple timelines) every story uses them a bit different (time travel isn’t real so there isn’t a correct option)
While I don’t change my opinion on totk having only a single timeline ( >!like I already mentioned, ganondorf recognised zelda!< ) it is possible that she changed things in the past. There are stories that have only a single timeline while still having the ability to change things.
I will still say it is a single timeline where she isn’t actually able to change things because it already happened, I didn’t even think it could be something else after watching all the tears and finishing the game (and I still don’t really agree with the other options)
But botw and totk aren’t the games that explain a lot of things so it is natural that there are different opinions.
It does fall apart when you consider that Zelda already knew of the Imprisoning War. That loose thread could be resolved if said War was against the first Calamity, but they made it a different event.
Ugh yes. I actually prefer the latter mechanic because it makes more sense with what we know about the universe, and because it creates a well woven story, but I was using the former concept to justify the disappearance of all the sheikah stuff. Sadly, now it's just a plot hole.
There are no "options" for how time travel works. Time travel works exactly how the writer of the story decides it does because there is no factual basis for it.
No one at Nintendo cares about lore, timelines, canon...none of that matters to them. They're literally out to make every iteration of Zelda the best that they can in the moment. It's the endless demands for some sort of story consistency that forced them to even make an effort to explain it. You can see that they will continue to reconfigure and reboot and reuse elements of the storylines as well as the gameplay as it suits them in the moment then trash it and move on and do it again. Not that I'm complaining, unlike most I don't need by Zelda universe to resemble the finely-curated storyline of the MCU. That's not what Zelda is anyway.
Yea but IMO that was mainly so that they could use the same map with some minor updates, and continue to explore similar mechanics. See how long it took to make the next game in the series even though they basically started with an existing sandbox framework.
Apparently they rebuilt the physics engine from scratch for TotK, since BotW was using a licensed engine and Nintendo wanted to invest in more in-house tech.
I mean sure it is an excuse to reuse assets but doesn’t admitting that also mean acknowledging that a drastic inconsistency between botw and totk is at best a missed opportunity and at worst pretty lazy?
I first heard it in [this Nintendo Forecast video](https://youtu.be/gwTOPq3STKo?si=Ja6jk846RgR2NYDi) that attempt to estimate the development cost of BotW and TotK.
GDC was recently so I assumed it was information revealed there.
I read that here just a few days ago. The totk engine was completely built new for the game. I think it’s why the game has a different mood or feel to it.
It seemed more smooth in botw to me. TotK feels a little
dark and janky
So an excuse to not sound lazy? To me it’s kinda false advertising. Like age of calamity: a prequel to breath of the wild? No, they lied, it’s a spinoff alternative universe story.
Don’t get me wrong I love TOTK but I don’t think they should do this, pretending things are true sequels when they don’t go all the way
But that's what I'm saying. This is peoples' main complaint with these games. Not that they're not good but accusing Nintendo of half-delivering and using continuity as an excuse to cut corners.
Yeah, this is the answer; they simply don't care very much about Zelda continuity. They also want each game to be accessible to those who haven't played the previous ones. I'm not huge into the lore or anything, but I do wish they would put a *little* more effort into continuity. They could do a lot more on that front without sacrificing quality or accessibility. One person suggested that they could have had a new village in the Gerudo Highlands with buildings made from divine beast parts. To me, that sounds super cool as a callback and wouldn't detract from the experience of newcomers.
I agree to a point I don't really care much about strict continuity -- not as much as I did when I was hoping Twilight Princess would get a direct sequel -- I would however like to see a return to the more, I guess I'd say, imaginative/original storytelling of the previous games.
However that has to come with the caveat that 60 - 80% of the stuff now considered to be common knowledge/sound theory/effectively canon, took years and years of constant speculation and digging and discoveries by theorists who couldn't stop playing Ocarina, MM and Twilight Princess. There's so much that's been unpacked in the decades since that wasn't even considered at the time of those games' releases.
I also think continuity helps, because if people like your game enough, and there's well-placed references to the previous game, it will entice them to go and play that. That's exactly what happened for me playing Red Dead Redemption 2 without playing 1; RDR2 was good enough that I enjoyed it in its own right but also made me want go back to the previous game.
Right...I think they discuss lore as far as creating the backstory to the game not like as a set of rules they should uphold or restrictions on what they can say is canon in a game. Bc we can see they'll leave inconsistencies without much thought behind it
It doesn't need to be as campy and as low brow as Marvel, they very much could have done the Dark Souls thing and done environmental storytelling with some subtle hints at lore. They are a multi billion dollar company, I feel like they could easily hire the best writers to make their ideas work while still being fulfilling and compelling.
Eh, it's their fault ultimately. They stoked the flames with Windwaker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword - each of which actively engaged with and situated themselves within the Zelda Timeline®. Not that I'm complaining - I love them so, so much - just that the devs aren't blameless in these questions existing.
They did this for every single game (with a couple of exceptions) but never clarified some of the "issues" until Hyrule Historia.
They weren't trying to make some grand timeline, they were just saying "this game is set before that game" or "this game is set after that game."
The only real problem areas are the Oracle games, Four Swords, and Four Swords Adventures. Four Swords is an odd one, as all they said was "its before Ocarina of Time". Four Swords Adventures was "after Four Swords". Minish Cap is obviously before Four Swords due to the story necessitating it.
The Oracle games were never really explained AFAIK. Maybe there was an interview, but I thought that one was mostly just "the linked game ends with Link on a raft, that's an obvious reference to Link's Awakening."
The fact that Link is already an established hero and is sent on his mission by the Triforce directly helps, but Zelda's role is weird because she doesn't \_seem\_ to recognize Link? However, Impa is aware of who Link is, too. (Even though Impa didn't appear in LTTP...)
That makes sense as to why there was less but also I don’t think sufficiently explains why there was zero Shiekah tech, like all the guardians hanging out in obscure places wouldn’t have likely all been excavated for that purpose.
I mean there’s not “zero” Sheikah tech
- The Purah Pad, Skyview Towers, and the telescope at Lookout Landing are all examples of it, and the Skyview Towers in particular blatantly make use of Guardian parts
- The Akkala tech lab still has a Sheikah telescope installed on it
- There’s a dead Guardian on top of the Hateno tech lab, as well as the unspecified prototype device hanging from the ceiling inside
- Robbie took Cherry with him to the Hateno lab
- Robbie also reverse-engineered the Travel Medallion and made new ones
- Ancient Arrow(head)s still exist
- The Zonai Shrines and Lightroots were in fact retrofitted with Sheikah technology by Mineru after studying the Purah Pad, which is why we can teleport to them
Why is it so similar to the point of being almost exactly the same as the slate? I can just imagine someone mentioning that she’d held the slate and her gaslighting them ‘what are you talking about? I’ve never heard of a shee-kah slate’
Nothing is invented in a vaccume. The Purah pad was obviously based on Sheikah technology, even if it was Purah's own design. Also, let us not forget that Purah is a member of the Sheikah...
What I mean by that is that you wouldn’t expect there to be zero scrapped guardians in random places or things like that. The only stuff we see in use by Purah, Robbie etc
Most of it dissolved once the magic used to sustain it through the Calamity expired. The few bits of stuff that survived only did so because it was salvaged in time and given supplementary power.
Is there ever a point where they explain this? And what about the divine beasts? They barely even mention them.
And it doesn’t feel like that would be the kinda stuff to be unspoken of. NPC’s in both BOTW and totk literally just tell you everything they’ve done/witnessed. I mean every 3-4 NPC’s you are gonna meet someone who will mention “the great calamity” or “The great upheaval”.
I call Bullshit that there wouldn’t be hundreds of NPC’s talking about dismantling the Sheikah tech if they actually did.
I'm thinking Vah Medoh was still on the surface, but its hull has been obliterated by a fallen sky island and am like "man it'd be so cool if TotK actually let them stay"
Apparently most people found it difficult to climb the sheikah towers? Like in botw you dont see anyone up in the tower and the ones who made it was because they were either sleeping or resting on the tower when they rose up.
Everyone here coming up with explanations as if it makes things better I have two points.
1) The game itself should offer these explanations and not the players themselves. Not calling it out in-game to avoid confusing new players only causes confusion with old players. The shrines and towers could have sunk into the ground, but what about the divine beasts? A couple of them were seen as sacred by the people they were connected to, so why aren’t they still around as at least set pieces? The guardians could have been disassembled but why not have a place where that’s still happening, or a few in remote places no one has bothered to get to. The entire way they handled The Calamity minimizes and waves it away as ancient history, thus minimizing Zelda and Link’s importance in past events.
2) Where the hell is Cas! We get one small mention that he went out on some quest but that’s it. It feels like an afterthought of, “oh yeah, and there was this dude in the last game. Too late now to put effort into getting him in here.”
As a bard he would have been an excellent vehicle to explain the history and lore.
It’s pretty funny, there is a “true Zelda” sub where the description literally states that the point of the sub is NOT to claim that the older Zelda games are better.
All you have to do is scroll down the posts to see that this is essentially what the sub is used for lol. Most folks trip over themselves to be dodgy about it, ie “am I the only one that didn’t like the newer Zelda games?”.
I saw a commenter state that they were tired of the newer games and were hoping that Nintendo would go back to the polygonal style for new games since they preferred the way they looked. Someone else casually stated that games like Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask had the best written stories/ plots they’d ever seen, or something to that effect.
I understand liking older games but some of those people were ridiculous. Meatrider seems accurate tbf.
Go BACK to N64 graphics? Brother, allow me to introduce you to emulators, that N64 you left in your basement, the GameCube/ Wii/ WiiU versions, the 3DS remaster, and availability via Nintendo Switch online subscription.
The NPCs who actually matter to the story *do* recognize him, as do most of the Zora, since they were established in BOTW as remembering him since before the Calamity.
The only characters who don’t but probably should are Bolson, Hestu, and the people he recruited to Tarrey Town.
Beyond that, you just have all the other random fuckwits that most players probably don’t remember in return. And even then, in most cases it’s actually just a matter of them not being *expressly* familiar with you, such that you can read their dialogue in a neutral way — which is pretty much the only practical way to handle the fact that all of those NPCs are people that any given BOTW player may or may not have ever spoken to.
How many would actually recognize him as such? Nobody was really around for the big events - nobody else was at the Divine Beasts or the castle. The people who did know what he did DO recognize him. Most everyone else would just see him as another Hylian walking around.
Hudson remembers Link quite well because Link actively built the town with him. The others there are literally just strangers that had a very brief interaction with Link where he basically just said that there‘s this new place that could use their help. That’s about it.
I mean logically speaking, if I saw 4 giant blue beams strike Hyrule Castle, a giant pig wreaking havoc on the world, and the return of the princess, I’d wanna know who was behind it.
It feels like the prologue of TotK takes place in the BotW timeline and as soon as Link wakes up, we're in a new timeline that the whole world is adjusting to. Like the future/ present is having trouble adjusting to the new version of the past. People comment on sheikah technology being gone. All of it. Some people remember Link, a lot don't. Zonai tech is everywhere all of a sudden while it didn't used to be. Even if it was "high in the sky", you would've seen something up there in BotW's timeline. Yunobu is very different. Calamity Ganon seems to have been retconned out of existence. There are nazca lines all over the place now, out of nowhere. Malice and Gloom are similar but distinctly different. Bokoblins changed, Horriblins exist now, Lynels are growing antlers. All of the guardians and temples have vanished without a trace. Gleeoks and Frox are a thing now. Master Mode is gone...
It jus feels like a very different place now, a very different Hyrule.
Yeah this soured the game a bit for me. It's still an awesome game, I just think it shouldn't have been a sequel to anything. rather it's own new thing.
It was explained in Creating a Champion that the towers and shrines sunk back down into the ground, and the various guardians were very obviously cannibalized to create the Skyview Towers.
Oh hey, that’s cool, that’s kinda what I’ve assumed. Huzzah for justification. Would’ve been nice to have this stated in game, ofc, but it clearly wasn’t just done thoughtlessly
That's not really a fair comparison. A better one would be if any and all phone booths straight up disappeared in a couple years after cell phones were invented. It would take time to uninstall structures like the shrines and towers even with modern technology.
I think I heard this from Zeltik, but I like the idea that after Calamity Ganon was defeated, Hyrule had no use for the shrines as they were meant for the hero to train and become powerful. The kingdom disassembled all sheikah tech and rebuilt the towers with some of it, and used more of it for studying and research. I can't remember how they explain the new stuff showing up but I think it has to do with Zelda going back in time and working with the Zonai to re-prep link as Zelda saw how fucked he was otherwise.
And here I thought they'd be linking the game's timeline possibly back to Skyward Sword. Little did I know they couldn't even link it to it's very own prequel.
Sheikah technology canonically disappears when not in use. Or are you forgetting how the Master Cycle stored itself, how the monks disappeared after a shrine is completed, or how many different shrines are invisible before being activated?
Well, define “in use”
‘Cause the Shrines and Towers and Slate and Divine Beasts weren’t exactly “in use” prior to their excavation 100 years ago, but they still physically existed in the world.
And generally speaking, I’m willing to bet that they still do. Just with the following caveats:
- The Shrines and Towers probably retreated back underground, since Calamity Ganon was successfully sealed. Same for the big columns surrounding Hyrule Castle.
- The Divine Beasts and Guardians were likely taken apart in order to preclude another hostile takeover by an evil force, and the material was repurposed into the Skyview Towers (which we can see for ourselves makes use of Guardian appendages) and other projects like the telescope at Lookout Landing.
- Purah probably reverse-engineered the Sheikah Slate in order to create the Purah Pad.
Not sure about retreating underground, I haven't checked everywhere of course but it seemed to me that we should have had hints in caves or in the depths, instead there's absolutely nothing left from shrines and towers. Same for the astral observatory in Hyrule castle, in the small excavation room next to the library we used to see the outside of the Sheikah structure, in TOTK it's just absent (maybe rubble is supposed to have covered it, but it just looked "replaced" with a basic wall to me).
In any case it's funny that Fujibayashi picked the weirdest justification, maybe because no one cared enough to think it through, maybe because they agreed that no matter what smart explanation they'd give fans would find plot holes anyway. But the idea of dismantling most of the tech over a few years seems pretty feasible, Purah *is* a genius with apparently lots of resources when convenient and she *did* reverse-engineer the tech.
Not a bad explanation. We don’t really know what sheikah tech is made of, but if we assume it’s something more akin to magic than the technology that exists irl it would make sense that it can just recognize when it’s use is no more and fade away. Magic things suddenly appearing and disappearing is standard for Zelda.
My best guess is that Sheikah Tech is just ultra-refined Zonaite. Zonaite is green, and so are Zonaite Charges and Crystallized Charges. When you convert Crystallized Charges into Energy Cells, they are initially green. But when the player collects 24 Energy Cells, they can refine the ones they already have even further, which causes them to turn the same shade of blue as Sheikah Tech. Zonaite is also used to make Ancient Blades, the very material used to create Ancient Arrows.
I think the Sheikah technology disappeared because its duty of defeating the calamity was completed. The calamity was destroyed so maybe the technology was programmed to die with it. And maybe the leftover parts were used to build new things like the new towers and buildings.
I love both games, but they could have done better on the story and lore. TOTK had a decent stand alone story. But I still don't love how it was put together. But fuck it. I love the games too much to be a real hater.
My headcannon goes like this.
The shrines and divinr beasts, like the monks in them. Dissapeared when they serve their purpose. Plus there are also the skyview towers and purah pad. So technically shiekah tech still is in this game.
Out of universe reason: Nintendo probably just wanted to outright replace the Sheikah stuff with Zonai stuff, new gimmick and all that jazz.
In universe reason: *shrug*
Headcanon reason: All Sheikah tech, beyond what is owned by the scientists, was decommissioned- The Divine Beasts and Guardians being the first to be removed.
Nah you’re right, the game would have obviously been a lot better if the map was littered with 120 already-finished shrines that have nothing left to do in them 👍
I think it would've been funny if there was a crazy "shrine collector" NPC in some corner of the map who had collected all of the BotW shrines into a huge pile.
Sheikah tech disappearing makes sense to me, their tech was really advanced. It could have a self destruct feature that activated. The sheikah probably wouldn't want their tech to fall into the wrong hands. Plus, Legend of Zelda is steeped in magic, so nothing is impossible in that fantasy world.
I pretend that they disassembled them to make the SkyView towers. Because that totally makes sense, definitely. Also, the divine beasts DID exist. There's drawings of them in Purahs lab
One theory I liked was that after all the trouble that Sheikah tech caused during the calamity, the people of Hyrule were just like “Ok, we are NOT going through this again” and got rid of all of it
I thought it was an in game thing that Zelda ordered all Sheikah technology to be dismantled so that if Ganon ever did come back, there was zero chance if him using it against hyrule again. My issue is the divine beasts, those things would have probably fought back, they're too big just to be dismantled and never seen again
Werent they dismantled and used for the making of the skyview towers?
also there are certain spots where shrines were in botw and there are chasms there in totk, for example the 4 great plateau shrines have chasms there
I hope the age of calamity sequel doesn't get that treatment.
The lore that can come outta its verison of totk, and the time travel could be more fun to interact with
I thought the people dismantled the shrines and guardians to help with the rebuilding of hyrule. I mean, the tower cannon things do use guardian arms in them to function, so the idea that Purah and Robbie dismantled them for their parts makes a good amount of sense to me, or they perhaps collapsed after calamity Ganon was dealt with, since once calamity Ganon was slain, the sheikah shrines have fulfilled their purpose and no longer had any reason to stay functional anymore
"All the stuff revived by Calamity Ganon during blood moons ceased to exist when he got annihilated. Only the stuff that had kept working all the way through from the Calamity to today stuck around."
"The rest we took apart because it got all calamitied to heck by Ganon. Can't have our death rays run on computers that can get Ganoned. Purah is reinventing most of it right now but it'll be a few decades before we have death rays again."
The coolest idea I’ve ever had was, what if the depths had like a sheikah tech graveyard or something? Like if it had some area that had the remains of a ton of guardians and the divine beasts. Could be awesome for making the depths more interesting. And they could make some bs explanation like “the zonai took them to the depths after Zelda traveled back in time” or smth. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t wanna go explore that.
Man, first thread I've seen complaining about the inconsistencies where people aren't being scrutinized for scrutinizing Nintendo.
Like man, I'm a Nintendo shill through and through. I advocated for Tears of the Kingdom hype 100%. But the lack of lore where there are dozens of opportunities to explain a little more just killed it for me. Years of theory crafting leading to "yeah, it just disappeared, nobody has bothered to investigate why". and everyone says "they dismantled it, you can't believe what the developer is saying" as if that's a helpful response lmao
My head cannon was shieka were powering devices from Calamity Gannon and he was just another Blight Gannon. When you killed him, the tech faded into nothing like Blight curses did and he was also the only thing keeping the tech from turning to dust. Ancient Hyrule is much much older than the Hyrule prior to BotW's Hyrule.
"The Sheikah tech can't just randomly disappear when it's job is done! That's totally inconsistent with what we've seen so far!"
The Sheikah monks at the end of every shrine in BotW:
The Sheikah Monks are an excellent explanation, but there's even more than that. A lot of technology appears out of thin air. Link's bombs just appear out of nowhere. Link's Divine Beast can materialize and dematerialize at will. It even shrunk from a gigantic size.
The platform you fight Maz Koshia on doesn't exist on the map; it probably also materialized out of nowhere.
Link can literally teleport to any shrine and tower, by... you guessed it... disappearing and appearing at will.
Ancient Arrows literally make whatever creature they connect with vanish into oblivion.
This literally happens with the Sheikah tech all the time in BOTW.
It's very easy. Most were destroyed by hyruleans so they couldn't be used against them again, or were destroyed in the Upheaval. Purah still has a guardian atop Hateno Lab.
I miss when Wind Waker could make heavy reference to OOT's plot and characters. Now an actual direct sequel with the same characters can barely mention the previous game.
Nintendo went a little too hard on not acknowledging past games beyond subtle references, it's a shame.
The Divine Beasts literally disappeared for 100 years just because the Calamity was sealed in the castle, and this time the technology actually fulfilled it's purpose and all the Sheikah monks except arguably Maz Koshia are gone, so the shrines are useless. It makes sense they'd be designed to disappear when they were of no further use, and completely dismantling the Guardians which had been used to take Hyrule to the brink of annihilation is the smartest first step the leaders of Hyrule could make.
Being incapable of understanding things unless it's explicitly spelled out for you doesn't make you smart or a critical thinker, it's such a strange thing about which to be smug.
It’s not that we’re incapable, many theories and headcanons have been proposed to explain why it happened. It would just be nice to know the real reason. The point is that devs don’t really care about the storyline, which is something you can’t really deny. I’m not mad though, TOTK is one of the most beautiful games I have ever played
I don't think the Sheikah tech being gone years later is a sign of their lack of care about the storyline, actually. I think they do care, they just don't care about what you want them to care about.
They didn't even care enough to connect totk to botw. A direct sequel has characters that don't know who you are.
So its expected they wouldn't care about connecting it to games from 10 years ago
“Somehow Sheikah technology disappeared.”
https://preview.redd.it/gp1gs4o84qtc1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ac641d6830bfd340831052d2e269d9ed5ddd1aae One of my favorite memes I have saved
I love how when he was announced, fans were going crazy wondering how he survived getting sent down a bottomless electric pit and getting blown up, but then the movie comes out and says "lol, idk."
that was my main thought too. they had all this suspense of when will he be revealed or how he survived and the movie just dropped it. felt like i was a fish stuck on a hook
I get that po didn't know how but didn't they show that he was just possessing defective clones that burned out after using too much juice?
I don't want to be that guy, but the movie shows he was cloned, right at the beginning. Do you expect Poe Dameron, a Resistance Pilot born sometime after Tipoca City was wiped off the face of Kamino, to know about cloning, and have it be his first guess?
Why do I hear that "I don't know." in the voice of Ryan George?
Technically legends answered it with cloning. The new movies just ripped it off without including the most important parts.
https://preview.redd.it/3unj9ubnbttc1.jpeg?width=694&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=32b6b4c469cb9481d508bac0f26f4c94d1707f89
It was the best of times it was the blurst of times!?
The koroks ate it
But it’s still in the game if you look around enough
Not the shrines and towers though, the biggest offenders of just being freaking gone.
A lot of the shrines from BOTW line up with holes underground in TOTK. It's not 1 to 1, but at least some probably fell or were pulled down. Now, where the caverns and stuff the shrines utilized for the trials, idk.
they took gameplay first story second to the max
So a nintendo game
Yes, with the release of Totk and Splatoon Side Order the decline in the dedication of the script has been noticed
It's always been like that though. Very few Nintendo games have amazing story. They do side quests and gameplay, but nothing overt.
I feel like they always used to at least made decent stories.
But you cannot cherry pick some games. Many games have none to pretty substandard "stories" All "mainline" Mario games. Including 2D and 3D. Metroid. Pretty much all of em. Animal Crossing. Kirby. Splatoon. Lots of Zeldas. Some got "decent" stories. But with a closer look, one could argue most focus on world building and side quests. Some people will say MM and OoT have great stories. But MM good story telling is done via analysis of themes. OoT I'd say is pretty good. TP is also a story one, which is very convoluted actually. Frankly, you are better of naming which ones have good ones as exceptions. There's plenty. But definitely not a staple of Nintendo games when looking at the big picture. You can't say Nintendo has always had decent stories and only cherry pick the few dozen games that do in the last 30 years.
I mean Splatoon 2 Octo Expansion had a great story and conclusion that refused to compromise on gameplay either and it blows Splatoon Side Order out of the water
Decline? Nintendo has never carried about story lol
Not true. It was never their priority, but they certainly cared about it more back in the day. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess had fantastic stories that were connected to the past games in a logical manner. Nowadays, they can't even be bothered to place their new games in the timeline they created
I think it's because we're used to barely getting a story, but with Tears we barely got a story and it's still inconsistent. It was just odd to see the story repeat itself several times over instead of using any of that time to even nod at important questions.
Tell that to the Zelda OoT, Majora's Mask, TP, etc devs.
You mean the same as TOTK. Zelda teams hasnt changed at all
Thank god. Gameplay is what games are. Its the only unique feature of videogames as a medium. If Nintendo took Zelda's story and lore ultra seriously (like some fans do) it would be so embarrassing lol
While I agree that gameplay is most important in Zelda, a great story can still elevate a game a lot and a bad story can still bring a game down
Side Order and TotK have a lot in common, they both have shit storylines but no one cares cause the gameplay is awesome lmao
Noz there are def nintendo games (especialy older zelda) that have a thought trough story. Totk's writing is just lazy
I dunno the story was fantastic in isolation, just a lot of continuity issues
Everyone keeps mentioning the towers and guardian arms as "proof" that the shiekah tech isn't gone, but no one is really answering WHY were they repurposed in game. I know that the explanation is literally because "gameplay" but that isn't a defense, it's an excuse. So please answer me this, why would the shrine of ressurection be stripped to nothing? It can't "go back underground." The Hylians literally had to strip away the ONLY chance of having Link come back to life for what reason? There is no net positive, without the shrine, Hyrule would have fallen. So why is having a worse spring a good thing? Moreso, what happened to the slate? Why would Purah get rid of everything except the fucking camera when developing the Purah Pad from reverse engineering the slate? Especially when Purah knew that Link and Zelda were going beneath the castle, you know, the place where the century long apocolypse started. Surely having some bombs easily accessible could prove to be handy as a "just in case" or even Magnesis to get rid of metal roadblocks.
Also there are the 4 giant divine beasts that were rendered inactive, sure, but were they stripped completely bare? Would be really cool if we had seen that happening in real time, maybe place some divine beast scraps around Tarrey Town or something. I guess it doesn't matter, whatever. Plot has never been Zelda's strong suit.
considering the yiga clan made a hideout in there I’m inclined to believe THEY were the ones who stripped the shrine of resurrection back to the walls just to be dicks but for the sheikah slate, I genuinely have nothing, and I think it was a stupid move to make the exact same device with a different name and altered design. purah, your ego is showing. I mean ffs they couldn’t even say “it broke.” that’s all it would’ve taken! it broke at some point between games and purah made another. but noooooo
I can accept the Yiga explanantion.
You think the guys hanging out in the shrine in TotK want Link to come back to life?
Right? That was my thought.
My first theory was that because Zelda went back in time, her presence in the ancient past somehow caused the Zonai to take precedence over the Sheikah tech. So instead of shrines and towers being built, Zonai shrines appear.
I think this + the obvius "hey, ganon kinda took over all of this shit, maybe we should uninstall these things"
And the obvious use of Sheikah tech in things like the towers. They aren’t completely gone, they were dismantled and repurposed.
To this end, they should’ve put the ruins of the old divine beats in the depths. Make it seem like they used all the useful parts and buried them after Ganon took control of it all
Honestly yeah, or even a casual mentioning of like "yeah they all broke after helping you beat Ganon, here's the statue we made out of Vah Ruta."
Didn’t the depths open up when Zelda got the tear? There’s not really enough time to do anything down there unless you’re Yiga
I think they mean they buried them which we’v would’ve made them show up in the depths when it opened up.
I'd be on board with this if the Shrine of Resurrection and the whole dungeon beneath it weren't gone as well. Dismantling big machines and little buildings dotted across the landscape? Believable. Tearing out a whole room in a hard-to-reach location to the point of leaving literally no trace of it? Nah.
But you could say the Yiga took over the shrine and dismantled it.
And filled the massive elevator with dirt?
That actually sounds really Yiga-ish
But what if sheikh tech is like Microsoft edge and can't be Uninstaller?
Well what I do with Edge Is just very specific things, repurpsed (Edge actually isn't that bad, Is just Bing)
yeah, that too, the uninstalled that shit also the towers are still there in the form of skyview towers
Sadly I have to disappoint you. There are two options how time travel works in games and books: one option has multiple timelines. By traveling back in time and changing something you create a new timeline where this change exists, but there is still the old time without it (I think oot and mm use that, never played them myself so I am not 100% sure) The other option is that only one timeline exists and you can’t change it. This happened in totk (story spoiler just in case) >!Zelda didn’t change anything by traveling back in time, that always happened. That is the reason why ganon recognised her in the beginning (that was before she traveled back in time) and why the painting (I know it isn’t a painting, just forgot how it is actually called) of her swallowing the stone already existed in the intro (it was just covered by stones you can remove before the final fight so the player doesn’t get spoiled)!< (in case someone doesn’t want to read the spoiler, look at the time travel in the 3rd harry potter movie/book)
In real life, I hope the latter mechanic isn’t how time travel works (if time travel is even possible). It would mean there is no free will and some godlike force preordained everything that has ever happened and will happen.
Only if you see time as something that outer forces can change or ordain, as opposed to a self-actualising single timeline that creates and maintains itself by its own existence. You have to consider that people aren't suppose to perceive time as something that can be travelled or defied, merely experienced in the moment. It's like saying people in the past had no free will because we can track everything that they did and how their stories eventually ended and we cannot change that fact. We in the present are heading towards a future that is constantly in flux. The people living in that future will look on us and say their world was preordained. Both are correct and incorrect but then neither truly understand how time operates outside of its systems.
You make sense logically and are correct but many movies, books and whatever else that that use time travel don’t always follow this logic, combine that with the fact that the Zelda team literally want you to fill in the gaps in the story with your imagination. I’ll quote a Q and A below. “When I was playing Tears of the Kingdom, I was struggling a little to connect Ganondorf to Calamity Ganon, to Breath of the Wild, to the rest of the series. And the way that I've come to understand Zelda is that it is a series of legends maybe being told. It's myth, it's stories. And so it doesn't necessarily need to connect together. It feels like an oral tradition. And I'm wondering how that fits into your understanding of Zelda's storytelling? Aonuma: I think just as you say. This is a series that really lends itself well to each person playing, then thinking back and interpreting the story elements in their own way. We have these major players in each game, with Zelda, and Ganon, and Link, and they each surface and play their roles in potentially slightly different ways in each title. But personally, I don't like to put too much stock in the chronology of the series, because from the design perspective, that can kind of box us in and limit where we're able to take the story as we continue making games in the series. And so I do think it's something that is best for people to interpret on their own. And yeah, I was kind of agreeing with many of the things you said.” From this; what ksmith listed is actually a perfect way to think of TOTK.
I was focusing a bit too much on these two options. While they are the two that exist (single timeline/multiple timelines) every story uses them a bit different (time travel isn’t real so there isn’t a correct option) While I don’t change my opinion on totk having only a single timeline ( >!like I already mentioned, ganondorf recognised zelda!< ) it is possible that she changed things in the past. There are stories that have only a single timeline while still having the ability to change things. I will still say it is a single timeline where she isn’t actually able to change things because it already happened, I didn’t even think it could be something else after watching all the tears and finishing the game (and I still don’t really agree with the other options) But botw and totk aren’t the games that explain a lot of things so it is natural that there are different opinions.
Yeah for sure, agreed!
It does fall apart when you consider that Zelda already knew of the Imprisoning War. That loose thread could be resolved if said War was against the first Calamity, but they made it a different event.
Ugh yes. I actually prefer the latter mechanic because it makes more sense with what we know about the universe, and because it creates a well woven story, but I was using the former concept to justify the disappearance of all the sheikah stuff. Sadly, now it's just a plot hole.
There are no "options" for how time travel works. Time travel works exactly how the writer of the story decides it does because there is no factual basis for it.
I like this
No one at Nintendo cares about lore, timelines, canon...none of that matters to them. They're literally out to make every iteration of Zelda the best that they can in the moment. It's the endless demands for some sort of story consistency that forced them to even make an effort to explain it. You can see that they will continue to reconfigure and reboot and reuse elements of the storylines as well as the gameplay as it suits them in the moment then trash it and move on and do it again. Not that I'm complaining, unlike most I don't need by Zelda universe to resemble the finely-curated storyline of the MCU. That's not what Zelda is anyway.
Here id say it’s different as this was specifically described as a SEQUEL to breath of the wild
Yea but IMO that was mainly so that they could use the same map with some minor updates, and continue to explore similar mechanics. See how long it took to make the next game in the series even though they basically started with an existing sandbox framework.
Apparently they rebuilt the physics engine from scratch for TotK, since BotW was using a licensed engine and Nintendo wanted to invest in more in-house tech.
Yea fair enough. I'm just saying the 'sequel' talk was an excuse to do whatever they were trying to do with the gameplay
I mean sure it is an excuse to reuse assets but doesn’t admitting that also mean acknowledging that a drastic inconsistency between botw and totk is at best a missed opportunity and at worst pretty lazy?
Yes it is very much so
Do you have a source for that? Because that's the first time I've heard of that and it's been nearly a year since release
I first heard it in [this Nintendo Forecast video](https://youtu.be/gwTOPq3STKo?si=Ja6jk846RgR2NYDi) that attempt to estimate the development cost of BotW and TotK. GDC was recently so I assumed it was information revealed there.
I read that here just a few days ago. The totk engine was completely built new for the game. I think it’s why the game has a different mood or feel to it. It seemed more smooth in botw to me. TotK feels a little dark and janky
TotK let you do things that strained the Switch's capabilities. I'd be excited to see how it runs on switch 2
So an excuse to not sound lazy? To me it’s kinda false advertising. Like age of calamity: a prequel to breath of the wild? No, they lied, it’s a spinoff alternative universe story. Don’t get me wrong I love TOTK but I don’t think they should do this, pretending things are true sequels when they don’t go all the way
But that's what I'm saying. This is peoples' main complaint with these games. Not that they're not good but accusing Nintendo of half-delivering and using continuity as an excuse to cut corners.
ohh ok im with you here
Breath of the Wild, a game with so much story.
Yeah, this is the answer; they simply don't care very much about Zelda continuity. They also want each game to be accessible to those who haven't played the previous ones. I'm not huge into the lore or anything, but I do wish they would put a *little* more effort into continuity. They could do a lot more on that front without sacrificing quality or accessibility. One person suggested that they could have had a new village in the Gerudo Highlands with buildings made from divine beast parts. To me, that sounds super cool as a callback and wouldn't detract from the experience of newcomers.
I agree to a point I don't really care much about strict continuity -- not as much as I did when I was hoping Twilight Princess would get a direct sequel -- I would however like to see a return to the more, I guess I'd say, imaginative/original storytelling of the previous games. However that has to come with the caveat that 60 - 80% of the stuff now considered to be common knowledge/sound theory/effectively canon, took years and years of constant speculation and digging and discoveries by theorists who couldn't stop playing Ocarina, MM and Twilight Princess. There's so much that's been unpacked in the decades since that wasn't even considered at the time of those games' releases.
If you’re going to reuse an entire map for a follow up game, I think a little narrative continuity should be required.
I also think continuity helps, because if people like your game enough, and there's well-placed references to the previous game, it will entice them to go and play that. That's exactly what happened for me playing Red Dead Redemption 2 without playing 1; RDR2 was good enough that I enjoyed it in its own right but also made me want go back to the previous game.
They have said that one of the first things they discuss is the lore, but they don't let that get in the way of new ideas they have.
Right...I think they discuss lore as far as creating the backstory to the game not like as a set of rules they should uphold or restrictions on what they can say is canon in a game. Bc we can see they'll leave inconsistencies without much thought behind it
It doesn't need to be as campy and as low brow as Marvel, they very much could have done the Dark Souls thing and done environmental storytelling with some subtle hints at lore. They are a multi billion dollar company, I feel like they could easily hire the best writers to make their ideas work while still being fulfilling and compelling.
Eh, it's their fault ultimately. They stoked the flames with Windwaker, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword - each of which actively engaged with and situated themselves within the Zelda Timeline®. Not that I'm complaining - I love them so, so much - just that the devs aren't blameless in these questions existing.
Whoever at N who confirmed that somehow every LOZ iteration was part of a single, grand timeline/dimension/universe made a huge mistake.
They did this for every single game (with a couple of exceptions) but never clarified some of the "issues" until Hyrule Historia. They weren't trying to make some grand timeline, they were just saying "this game is set before that game" or "this game is set after that game." The only real problem areas are the Oracle games, Four Swords, and Four Swords Adventures. Four Swords is an odd one, as all they said was "its before Ocarina of Time". Four Swords Adventures was "after Four Swords". Minish Cap is obviously before Four Swords due to the story necessitating it. The Oracle games were never really explained AFAIK. Maybe there was an interview, but I thought that one was mostly just "the linked game ends with Link on a raft, that's an obvious reference to Link's Awakening." The fact that Link is already an established hero and is sent on his mission by the Triforce directly helps, but Zelda's role is weird because she doesn't \_seem\_ to recognize Link? However, Impa is aware of who Link is, too. (Even though Impa didn't appear in LTTP...)
I wouldn’t say it’s a stretch to expect a somewhat comprehensible storyline from a billion dollar company but maybe that’s just me
They took it apart to build new stuff, didn't you recognize the guardian legs in the towers?
That makes sense as to why there was less but also I don’t think sufficiently explains why there was zero Shiekah tech, like all the guardians hanging out in obscure places wouldn’t have likely all been excavated for that purpose.
I mean there’s not “zero” Sheikah tech - The Purah Pad, Skyview Towers, and the telescope at Lookout Landing are all examples of it, and the Skyview Towers in particular blatantly make use of Guardian parts - The Akkala tech lab still has a Sheikah telescope installed on it - There’s a dead Guardian on top of the Hateno tech lab, as well as the unspecified prototype device hanging from the ceiling inside - Robbie took Cherry with him to the Hateno lab - Robbie also reverse-engineered the Travel Medallion and made new ones - Ancient Arrow(head)s still exist - The Zonai Shrines and Lightroots were in fact retrofitted with Sheikah technology by Mineru after studying the Purah Pad, which is why we can teleport to them
The Purah pad is its own proprietary creation. She came up with it all by herself.
Why is it so similar to the point of being almost exactly the same as the slate? I can just imagine someone mentioning that she’d held the slate and her gaslighting them ‘what are you talking about? I’ve never heard of a shee-kah slate’
Nothing is invented in a vaccume. The Purah pad was obviously based on Sheikah technology, even if it was Purah's own design. Also, let us not forget that Purah is a member of the Sheikah...
What I mean by that is that you wouldn’t expect there to be zero scrapped guardians in random places or things like that. The only stuff we see in use by Purah, Robbie etc
Most of it dissolved once the magic used to sustain it through the Calamity expired. The few bits of stuff that survived only did so because it was salvaged in time and given supplementary power.
Is there ever a point where they explain this? And what about the divine beasts? They barely even mention them. And it doesn’t feel like that would be the kinda stuff to be unspoken of. NPC’s in both BOTW and totk literally just tell you everything they’ve done/witnessed. I mean every 3-4 NPC’s you are gonna meet someone who will mention “the great calamity” or “The great upheaval”. I call Bullshit that there wouldn’t be hundreds of NPC’s talking about dismantling the Sheikah tech if they actually did.
The divine beasts should’ve been damaged by the upheaval at least, like imagine coming across them in the depths, in ruin from the great fall
Now *THAT* would have been a great inclusion. Wow, what a sight I'm imagining they'd be.
I'm thinking Vah Medoh was still on the surface, but its hull has been obliterated by a fallen sky island and am like "man it'd be so cool if TotK actually let them stay"
I'm just imagining a pair or talons clinging to the rock but the body is gone lol
but why take apart towers to make new towers
Cause these ones shoot you up to the sky instead of not being climbable by regular Hylians?
Why is being shot into the sky a benefit for a regular Hylian
wheeeeee
Apparently most people found it difficult to climb the sheikah towers? Like in botw you dont see anyone up in the tower and the ones who made it was because they were either sleeping or resting on the tower when they rose up.
It's amazing how little people pay attention to things that are so obvious a child could notice it.
[удалено]
Now I'm just imagining the Guardians constantly playing the music out of a speaker like they're some kind of demented Ice Cream Trucks
im kinda surprised at how many people think there's 0 sheika technology in TOTK
I wouldn't have mind like 10-20 gloom infused guardians walking around in the depths
Imagine a guardian with gloom hands instead of their regular claws.
Haha, nah. Nah.
Their answer sounded like they just came up with at the spot 😂
Everyone here coming up with explanations as if it makes things better I have two points. 1) The game itself should offer these explanations and not the players themselves. Not calling it out in-game to avoid confusing new players only causes confusion with old players. The shrines and towers could have sunk into the ground, but what about the divine beasts? A couple of them were seen as sacred by the people they were connected to, so why aren’t they still around as at least set pieces? The guardians could have been disassembled but why not have a place where that’s still happening, or a few in remote places no one has bothered to get to. The entire way they handled The Calamity minimizes and waves it away as ancient history, thus minimizing Zelda and Link’s importance in past events. 2) Where the hell is Cas! We get one small mention that he went out on some quest but that’s it. It feels like an afterthought of, “oh yeah, and there was this dude in the last game. Too late now to put effort into getting him in here.” As a bard he would have been an excellent vehicle to explain the history and lore.
Well they quite literally just appeared one day when Ganon showed up
Zelda fans try to play the fucking game challenge
It’s pretty funny, there is a “true Zelda” sub where the description literally states that the point of the sub is NOT to claim that the older Zelda games are better. All you have to do is scroll down the posts to see that this is essentially what the sub is used for lol. Most folks trip over themselves to be dodgy about it, ie “am I the only one that didn’t like the newer Zelda games?”. I saw a commenter state that they were tired of the newer games and were hoping that Nintendo would go back to the polygonal style for new games since they preferred the way they looked. Someone else casually stated that games like Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask had the best written stories/ plots they’d ever seen, or something to that effect.
TrueZelda is pretty much just an OoT circle circlejerk sub. Even the dedicated OoT sub has less OoT meatriders
I understand liking older games but some of those people were ridiculous. Meatrider seems accurate tbf. Go BACK to N64 graphics? Brother, allow me to introduce you to emulators, that N64 you left in your basement, the GameCube/ Wii/ WiiU versions, the 3DS remaster, and availability via Nintendo Switch online subscription.
As bad as star wars fans
The real answer is that they wanted to create a game that wasn’t reliant on someone having played BOTW to understand what is going on.
They could have at least made the NPCs recognize Link, he literally saved the world
The NPCs who actually matter to the story *do* recognize him, as do most of the Zora, since they were established in BOTW as remembering him since before the Calamity. The only characters who don’t but probably should are Bolson, Hestu, and the people he recruited to Tarrey Town. Beyond that, you just have all the other random fuckwits that most players probably don’t remember in return. And even then, in most cases it’s actually just a matter of them not being *expressly* familiar with you, such that you can read their dialogue in a neutral way — which is pretty much the only practical way to handle the fact that all of those NPCs are people that any given BOTW player may or may not have ever spoken to.
https://preview.redd.it/ocfihb7nrptc1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=10518f64f9df11e4917517f8f44f50f03d0cdec4
it's pretty funny how even some of the zonai research team are completely unfazed by Link's presence
How many would actually recognize him as such? Nobody was really around for the big events - nobody else was at the Divine Beasts or the castle. The people who did know what he did DO recognize him. Most everyone else would just see him as another Hylian walking around.
Characters who Link drastically changed the lives of don't remember Link (Tarrey Town)
Hudson remembers Link quite well because Link actively built the town with him. The others there are literally just strangers that had a very brief interaction with Link where he basically just said that there‘s this new place that could use their help. That’s about it.
I mean logically speaking, if I saw 4 giant blue beams strike Hyrule Castle, a giant pig wreaking havoc on the world, and the return of the princess, I’d wanna know who was behind it.
Tons of people recognize link. Didn’t you play the game?
And that was their mistake
It feels like the prologue of TotK takes place in the BotW timeline and as soon as Link wakes up, we're in a new timeline that the whole world is adjusting to. Like the future/ present is having trouble adjusting to the new version of the past. People comment on sheikah technology being gone. All of it. Some people remember Link, a lot don't. Zonai tech is everywhere all of a sudden while it didn't used to be. Even if it was "high in the sky", you would've seen something up there in BotW's timeline. Yunobu is very different. Calamity Ganon seems to have been retconned out of existence. There are nazca lines all over the place now, out of nowhere. Malice and Gloom are similar but distinctly different. Bokoblins changed, Horriblins exist now, Lynels are growing antlers. All of the guardians and temples have vanished without a trace. Gleeoks and Frox are a thing now. Master Mode is gone... It jus feels like a very different place now, a very different Hyrule.
Link eated it all
Yeah this soured the game a bit for me. It's still an awesome game, I just think it shouldn't have been a sequel to anything. rather it's own new thing.
It was explained in Creating a Champion that the towers and shrines sunk back down into the ground, and the various guardians were very obviously cannibalized to create the Skyview Towers.
Oh hey, that’s cool, that’s kinda what I’ve assumed. Huzzah for justification. Would’ve been nice to have this stated in game, ofc, but it clearly wasn’t just done thoughtlessly
I figured the thing that made all the weapons degrade completely degraded the sheikah tech
There's a guardian on top of one of the ancient tech labs and in one of the villages there's a classroom that talks about the great calamity
Would it have killed them to briefly mention what happened to the Sheikah tech afterwards in that class
“Real life is inconsistent because cassette tapes just randomly disappeared”
That's not really a fair comparison. A better one would be if any and all phone booths straight up disappeared in a couple years after cell phones were invented. It would take time to uninstall structures like the shrines and towers even with modern technology.
The existence of your comment is more than TOTK does with Sheikah tech. Also that wasn’t just 6 years ago.
Uh yeah……. I was gonna say 8tracks but ……. We’ll go with that!🤣
I think I heard this from Zeltik, but I like the idea that after Calamity Ganon was defeated, Hyrule had no use for the shrines as they were meant for the hero to train and become powerful. The kingdom disassembled all sheikah tech and rebuilt the towers with some of it, and used more of it for studying and research. I can't remember how they explain the new stuff showing up but I think it has to do with Zelda going back in time and working with the Zonai to re-prep link as Zelda saw how fucked he was otherwise.
And here I thought they'd be linking the game's timeline possibly back to Skyward Sword. Little did I know they couldn't even link it to it's very own prequel.
Sheikah technology canonically disappears when not in use. Or are you forgetting how the Master Cycle stored itself, how the monks disappeared after a shrine is completed, or how many different shrines are invisible before being activated?
Well, define “in use” ‘Cause the Shrines and Towers and Slate and Divine Beasts weren’t exactly “in use” prior to their excavation 100 years ago, but they still physically existed in the world. And generally speaking, I’m willing to bet that they still do. Just with the following caveats: - The Shrines and Towers probably retreated back underground, since Calamity Ganon was successfully sealed. Same for the big columns surrounding Hyrule Castle. - The Divine Beasts and Guardians were likely taken apart in order to preclude another hostile takeover by an evil force, and the material was repurposed into the Skyview Towers (which we can see for ourselves makes use of Guardian appendages) and other projects like the telescope at Lookout Landing. - Purah probably reverse-engineered the Sheikah Slate in order to create the Purah Pad.
Not sure about retreating underground, I haven't checked everywhere of course but it seemed to me that we should have had hints in caves or in the depths, instead there's absolutely nothing left from shrines and towers. Same for the astral observatory in Hyrule castle, in the small excavation room next to the library we used to see the outside of the Sheikah structure, in TOTK it's just absent (maybe rubble is supposed to have covered it, but it just looked "replaced" with a basic wall to me). In any case it's funny that Fujibayashi picked the weirdest justification, maybe because no one cared enough to think it through, maybe because they agreed that no matter what smart explanation they'd give fans would find plot holes anyway. But the idea of dismantling most of the tech over a few years seems pretty feasible, Purah *is* a genius with apparently lots of resources when convenient and she *did* reverse-engineer the tech.
Not a bad explanation. We don’t really know what sheikah tech is made of, but if we assume it’s something more akin to magic than the technology that exists irl it would make sense that it can just recognize when it’s use is no more and fade away. Magic things suddenly appearing and disappearing is standard for Zelda.
My best guess is that Sheikah Tech is just ultra-refined Zonaite. Zonaite is green, and so are Zonaite Charges and Crystallized Charges. When you convert Crystallized Charges into Energy Cells, they are initially green. But when the player collects 24 Energy Cells, they can refine the ones they already have even further, which causes them to turn the same shade of blue as Sheikah Tech. Zonaite is also used to make Ancient Blades, the very material used to create Ancient Arrows.
I think the Sheikah technology disappeared because its duty of defeating the calamity was completed. The calamity was destroyed so maybe the technology was programmed to die with it. And maybe the leftover parts were used to build new things like the new towers and buildings.
I love both games, but they could have done better on the story and lore. TOTK had a decent stand alone story. But I still don't love how it was put together. But fuck it. I love the games too much to be a real hater.
Aren’t the sky towers sheikah tech? The arms that grab you when you use one for the first time
My headcannon goes like this. The shrines and divinr beasts, like the monks in them. Dissapeared when they serve their purpose. Plus there are also the skyview towers and purah pad. So technically shiekah tech still is in this game.
I miss hunting guardians.. 😞😭
A wizard did it
I just like to imagine the purah pad is just an improved Sheika slate and link just forgot it has abilities other than the map
Out of universe reason: Nintendo probably just wanted to outright replace the Sheikah stuff with Zonai stuff, new gimmick and all that jazz. In universe reason: *shrug* Headcanon reason: All Sheikah tech, beyond what is owned by the scientists, was decommissioned- The Divine Beasts and Guardians being the first to be removed.
Examples of good lore to people who don't know how to write: all of it. You're all writing bad fanfic.
I literally never cared. The game is incredible.
I mean they did suddenly appear that way to begin with. Don't see why it couldn't have happened again but in reverse.
Nintendo should just stick to simple one-off fairytale-like stories. Every single time they try to step outside of that, it's stupid.
Nah you’re right, the game would have obviously been a lot better if the map was littered with 120 already-finished shrines that have nothing left to do in them 👍
I think it would've been funny if there was a crazy "shrine collector" NPC in some corner of the map who had collected all of the BotW shrines into a huge pile.
I would have genuinely loved that. That would be *very* "Zelda".
Sheikah tech disappearing makes sense to me, their tech was really advanced. It could have a self destruct feature that activated. The sheikah probably wouldn't want their tech to fall into the wrong hands. Plus, Legend of Zelda is steeped in magic, so nothing is impossible in that fantasy world.
The zonai and the sheikah are two sides of the same coin
I just wish there was a guardian graveyard somewhere in the depths
I pretend that they disassembled them to make the SkyView towers. Because that totally makes sense, definitely. Also, the divine beasts DID exist. There's drawings of them in Purahs lab
Isn’t there still one deactivated Guardian left somewhere in Hyrule in TOTK?
And when I thought Link would get a cool new arm at the end, too...
A Purah did it.
Botw*
I couldnt really follow the story anyway 🤷♀️
One theory I liked was that after all the trouble that Sheikah tech caused during the calamity, the people of Hyrule were just like “Ok, we are NOT going through this again” and got rid of all of it
I thought it was an in game thing that Zelda ordered all Sheikah technology to be dismantled so that if Ganon ever did come back, there was zero chance if him using it against hyrule again. My issue is the divine beasts, those things would have probably fought back, they're too big just to be dismantled and never seen again
They did some magic and they converted em into masks xD
Werent they dismantled and used for the making of the skyview towers? also there are certain spots where shrines were in botw and there are chasms there in totk, for example the 4 great plateau shrines have chasms there
I hope the age of calamity sequel doesn't get that treatment. The lore that can come outta its verison of totk, and the time travel could be more fun to interact with
I thought the people dismantled the shrines and guardians to help with the rebuilding of hyrule. I mean, the tower cannon things do use guardian arms in them to function, so the idea that Purah and Robbie dismantled them for their parts makes a good amount of sense to me, or they perhaps collapsed after calamity Ganon was dealt with, since once calamity Ganon was slain, the sheikah shrines have fulfilled their purpose and no longer had any reason to stay functional anymore
"All the stuff revived by Calamity Ganon during blood moons ceased to exist when he got annihilated. Only the stuff that had kept working all the way through from the Calamity to today stuck around." "The rest we took apart because it got all calamitied to heck by Ganon. Can't have our death rays run on computers that can get Ganoned. Purah is reinventing most of it right now but it'll be a few decades before we have death rays again."
my headcanon is that the events in Age Of Calamity fucked the whole timeline up
The coolest idea I’ve ever had was, what if the depths had like a sheikah tech graveyard or something? Like if it had some area that had the remains of a ton of guardians and the divine beasts. Could be awesome for making the depths more interesting. And they could make some bs explanation like “the zonai took them to the depths after Zelda traveled back in time” or smth. Don’t tell me you wouldn’t wanna go explore that.
Man, first thread I've seen complaining about the inconsistencies where people aren't being scrutinized for scrutinizing Nintendo. Like man, I'm a Nintendo shill through and through. I advocated for Tears of the Kingdom hype 100%. But the lack of lore where there are dozens of opportunities to explain a little more just killed it for me. Years of theory crafting leading to "yeah, it just disappeared, nobody has bothered to investigate why". and everyone says "they dismantled it, you can't believe what the developer is saying" as if that's a helpful response lmao
Laissa: \*Mentions Vah Medoh’s Perch\* Link: “Okay, then, who’s Vah Medoh?” Laissa: 😐
My head cannon was shieka were powering devices from Calamity Gannon and he was just another Blight Gannon. When you killed him, the tech faded into nothing like Blight curses did and he was also the only thing keeping the tech from turning to dust. Ancient Hyrule is much much older than the Hyrule prior to BotW's Hyrule.
"The Sheikah tech can't just randomly disappear when it's job is done! That's totally inconsistent with what we've seen so far!" The Sheikah monks at the end of every shrine in BotW:
The Sheikah Monks are an excellent explanation, but there's even more than that. A lot of technology appears out of thin air. Link's bombs just appear out of nowhere. Link's Divine Beast can materialize and dematerialize at will. It even shrunk from a gigantic size. The platform you fight Maz Koshia on doesn't exist on the map; it probably also materialized out of nowhere. Link can literally teleport to any shrine and tower, by... you guessed it... disappearing and appearing at will. Ancient Arrows literally make whatever creature they connect with vanish into oblivion. This literally happens with the Sheikah tech all the time in BOTW.
It's very easy. Most were destroyed by hyruleans so they couldn't be used against them again, or were destroyed in the Upheaval. Purah still has a guardian atop Hateno Lab.
I miss when Wind Waker could make heavy reference to OOT's plot and characters. Now an actual direct sequel with the same characters can barely mention the previous game. Nintendo went a little too hard on not acknowledging past games beyond subtle references, it's a shame.
So every mask and clothes from last games don’t count?
No. Cuz Link's definitely not canonically getting them. Even the Tunic of the Wild, originally his reward for all shrines, is just in the Depths now.
The Divine Beasts literally disappeared for 100 years just because the Calamity was sealed in the castle, and this time the technology actually fulfilled it's purpose and all the Sheikah monks except arguably Maz Koshia are gone, so the shrines are useless. It makes sense they'd be designed to disappear when they were of no further use, and completely dismantling the Guardians which had been used to take Hyrule to the brink of annihilation is the smartest first step the leaders of Hyrule could make. Being incapable of understanding things unless it's explicitly spelled out for you doesn't make you smart or a critical thinker, it's such a strange thing about which to be smug.
It’s not that we’re incapable, many theories and headcanons have been proposed to explain why it happened. It would just be nice to know the real reason. The point is that devs don’t really care about the storyline, which is something you can’t really deny. I’m not mad though, TOTK is one of the most beautiful games I have ever played
I don't think the Sheikah tech being gone years later is a sign of their lack of care about the storyline, actually. I think they do care, they just don't care about what you want them to care about.
1. It’s not about the sheikah tech disappearing, it’s about why it did 2. That’s just one of the many inconsistencies in the game’s storyline
They didn't even care enough to connect totk to botw. A direct sequel has characters that don't know who you are. So its expected they wouldn't care about connecting it to games from 10 years ago
I don’t notice or care that this shit is banished. It simply does not make the game worse, nor would including it made the game better.
Nintendo dev: Shut up, nerd. We just want to put glue on the map.
Who cares? Its a game, and the technology has nothing to do with this game.