Do not site the botw zelda theories at me, I was there when they were written | Hi I like Zelda a normal amount They/Them, Ace and Queer | Call me Kip or Mudkip! | Main Tumblr is @sarcasticmudkip | AO3 is Sarcstic Mudkip | My Youtube channel is--you guessed it!--Sarcastic Mudkip |
any time i see a screenshot of botw a big wave os sadness washes over me, i used to love this game so much ... it was so important to me, came out when my life was at the lowest and did some things so right specifically for me, never had a game world feel more alive to me than this and to see it begging for something to grow on its groundwork and be paved over carelessly instead is something i will never forgive them for no matter how many times i get anons telling me to 'let it go' already
you cant detach these two games from each other, in the worst way, they make each other irreparably worse, people see them as a unit despite totk being made with what feels like pure disdain for botw
when people tell me to get over it or stop being obsessed with it (whatever that means) i wonder if they have ever loved and cared about a piece of media with all their heart and saw it butchered instead
BOTW's story works a lot better than TOTK's story because of the difference in their driving questions.
For BOTW, the main question you ask from the start is "Who am I?" and also "What happened to Hyrule?" You learn the answers to these questions over time as you journey across the land and remember things about your past. The answer to "who am I" is "I am the chosen hero," and the answer to "what happened" is "We failed to save everyone." When you learn that, the goal changes from "go and do the quests because the old lady said to" to "Do what you couldn't do back then and save everyone."
In TOTK, the question is "Where the heck is Zelda?" and it's not your question, it's everyone else's. All the NPCs want to know where she is and you're just kind of standing there while everyone discusses it. And then the game throws you an early game side quest where they tell you exactly what happened to Zelda, and then you just have to putter around for 99 years and watch everyone run blindly towards Fake Zelda while you just follow them without saying anything until the final hour.
And then they force you to listen to the exact same spiel about the Imprisoning War, 4 separate times, without changing a single word. Whereas in BOTW, you get to learn about the Champions and who they were and their relationship to you, and explain the Calamity to you in one cutscene.
Plus, they don't expand on anything from BOTW in TOTK. Link and Zelda are just living perfectly fine in society despite having basically been dead for a century. And instead of expanding on the Sheika mythos, they just try and pretend they never existed and put the Zonai in their place as the Ancient Precursor Race with all the Ancient Technology That's Been Lost To Time.
So yeah, I'm a little bit disappointed in the story of TOTK. BOTW had an interesting narrative that meshed well with the open world format and was executed perfectly. TOTK just had an excuse plot with no substance.
This is going to make me SO unpopular with my cats.
This did in fact get me in trouble with my cats. dinner was delayed. there was much screaming until I took a break and rectified my mistake.
but i have gnawed upon this as threatened; thank you for letting me play with it, @ghirahimbo!
The world lurches and sways.
For Revali, who has been drowning for so long he lost count of the days decades ago, this is nothing unusual. He can no longer remember the tug of the wind against his feathers; his lungs gave up fighting for breath an eternity ago. When the sword pierced him through, it was almost welcome.
An answer long overdue. Since Ganon's foul creature had seen fit to augment its strength with his own, at the very least he could claim it as a wish fulfilled.
...No. That was a thought born of desperation, when the drag of eternity wore his resolve thin and he could only scream for a release that never came. Now the howling of Ganon's monster falls silent around him and his lungs heave for a breath they haven't taken in too long, and he can only wonder—is this how Mipha felt before Vah Ruta fell silent, severed from the choking Malice? had she been left to fight the agonising moments of her death again, cut off from the connection that's been their torture and their single-thread lifeline for all these long years? The thought fills him with a fury... which passes like a squall, dead before it can raise much more than an agitated murmur.
If this is dying, he thinks, riding the squall's fading draughts to a moment of lucidity, surely it can hurry up a bit.
A patch of the world ls lit up gold. "I know," says an unfamiliar voice. "I can't—"
Then jostling motion, and a weightlessness that's nothing like the phantom memories of his Gale. He struggles against his heavy eyelids and gradually becomes aware of the mossy stone of Vah Medoh's back, swaying disconcertingly some distance away. The steadying whirr of its motors fills his auricles; it sends his balance reeling.
A gloved hand lands on Medoh's command panel. "Take us down," the voice says, and—
It's been too long since Medoh's low song hummed through him with such clarity of voice, their hard-won harmony poisoned by the Blight and cursing him with such discordance that at times he'd wished for everything to cease. Now that song hums through him again as if in answer to another master. Again the fury finds him; again he fights against the downwards drag of his overdue demise to raise hell one last time.
"Don't."
The order catches on the barb of his tongue and bursts, metallic and sour. He cannot breathe. In and out. In and out. His vision blurs; distantly, amidst the poisonous shades of the dying Blight, light catches on the edge of a metal breastplate he once knew intimately. Ah. So that's how it is. Distantly, he can only think that this is how it was always destined to be.
...Destiny? Such a detestable thing deserves only to be plucked of all meaning by whatever means necessary.
"Do not," he tries again. Another acrid bubble of iron bursts in his throat, but he cannot allow Medoh to be subverted from his will again. For too long has he heard it screaming. With every scrap of willpower he can muster, he fights to maintain his tenous grasp on the Divine Beast which had already been stolen from him once. Never again.
Caught between conflicting orders, Medoh groans. The world lurches again. He tips abruptly forward, a motion caught only by that gloved hand gripping at the terminal again. Blue. His vision is filled with blue as familiar as the scarf he'd once been so proud of, a blue simultanously static and set in fluttering motion. His left wing is caught in a vise-grip; a hand clamps around his thigh, just as tight. He struggles for breath; it comes only in a ragged heave which threatens to drag him back into the realm of the Malice's grip.
But as the voice re-issues its command—"Take us down!"—and Medoh pitches into an obedient descent, it occurs to him firstly that he is, by some inexplicable stroke of the goddess' vindictive mercy, not dead (—yet, his thoughts supply); and secondly, that he knows the swathe of blue filling his vision, which belongs to none other than...
Well.
"Pluck me for a fool," he chokes out. He hadn't entirely believed Link could actually beat it. "You really did."
Or perhaps this is a dying fever-dream.
The knight adjusts his grip again, jostling Revali into a brief, pained silence. "Stay alive," he orders curtly. "Won't forgive you otherwise."
And despite his weakness, despite the gravity of the situation, laughter attempts to claw its way up Revali's throat.
"Isn't it enough?" He can't bring himself to add the rest of that sentiment—You won. The thought shouldn't bring him such relief, but it does. One way or another, he'd wanted it to end. Had even directed that wooden-headed knight to put an end to him. Who would have thought there was a disobedient streak hidden behind that dour, emotionless mask?
Who would have thought...
Link's eyes are fixed firmly ahead. He must be following the trajectory of Medoh's descent. The village is still a long way away. A short distance, if one gives themselves over to freefall. An eternity ago, he might have suggested such to Link, if only to try to goad him into reacting. Now, he can't bring himself to. The motivation is no longer there. Even so, it should annoy him that Medoh responded to another's command so readily. Especially Link's. It's a surprise that it doesn't. Annoy him. But anything is better than seeing Medoh under the Calamity's thrall. Anything better than being held against their will. It's enough. It'll be enough.
"Wasn't a real fight."
Revali forces an eye open and finds a stubborn, mulish set to Link's jaw. "No?"
"Two against one. Doesn't count. You still owe me."
...If that's Link's idea of persuading someone to cling to life, it could do with some work. It probably says something about Revali that it's working.
breath of the wild was such a good game. its not its fault that it accidentally ruined the AAA gaming industry for awhile including its own sequel by tricking people into thinking that the Open World With Crafting element was the thing that made it good.
they really made a game where the fundamental appeal to it was the very physical way you were made to navigate and interact with the game's world as you discovered new places, where your ability to engage with the narrative hinged upon your ability to identify and seek out distinct landmarks of hyrule after a century of change. and then they were like. okay here's our sequel. remember all of that beautiful, breathtaking exploration you got to do? well no more of that. you're welcome! you can either crawl around in the dark between clusters of copypasted assets or drift aimlessly in the sky between clusters of copypasted assets. and you may say that sounds boring as fuck i don't want to have to walk between sets of copypasted assets. ohohoho... worry not my friend... you don't have to walk anywhere anymore. you can fornite drop out of the sky with a fan blade glued to a set of handlebars and never again have your ability to get from point A to point B impeded by any of that pesky """gameplay"". now get back to clipfarming korok torture devices
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