oof i'm finished, tumblr tried to sabotage my propaganda montage on those last few pics but i prevailed(at the cost of having to cut the montage a bit more than expected :P)
anyway here is my propaganda submission for @linderosse's zeldas popularity poll, if you liked this or it made you sad at the ending please consider voting for Echo people it means a lot to me because i love her and silent very much <3
A primordial entity of nothingness locked beyond the boundaries of the world? That’s badass. And it was awesome learning that the whole world was created by the goddesses to seal him away.
Very Silmarillion-ish, honestly. Null gives me Morgoth vibes in a way that Demise never did. Perhaps that’s why I liked it so much.
Anyways, I have a few theories for this! Some hints of those theories have already been incorporated into Wisdomverse content, and I’ve seen at least one person mention it in passing— but really not a lot so far, and nothing I’ll confirm yet. We’ll see if my plans change at all!
In Echoes of Wisdom, we encounter the Triforce for the first time in a long time (in its usual state, anyway). But something that stood out to me (and a lot of people, I'm sure) was the title it went by: The Prime Energy. It's not something we've heard before, so we have to wonder: why? I obviously can't give a "canon" answer, but I do have some ideas.
Energy in Echoes of Wisdom
Throughout EoW, we collect little blue crystalline shapes called "energy." This replenishes the gauge that allows Zelda to use her swordfighter form. These crystals are found throughout the Still World and appear tied to Might Crystals, which also appear from the rifts (but only when they close). We use them to upgrade the sword and bow themselves.
There are two safe assumptions we can make about Energy:
Might Crystals are the "purified" form of energy or something close to it (its resemblance to bismuth "crystals" seems to hammer in this implication).
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"Energy" is the essence we see Null consume in Din's tale. It appears on its own even before land and sky are built around it. Because of this and the association to might and vitality, this essence must be that of life itself. (Perhaps Zelda's role as a Priestess is what allows her to use this energy in its raw form and gain that supernatural state, unlike Link?)
How may the Triforce relate to this idea of energy?
We know that Din, Nayru, and Farore go on to create the land of Hyrule (or what would become MANY Hyrules over time) to seal Null and prevent its destruction of all life. In A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, and Skyward Sword, we are told the Triforce is left behind in the wake of this world's creation (creation over the void, in the context of EoW).
The Triforce has the ability to judge those who use it (even going as far as to prevent deities from using it) and its essence speaks to Link in ALttP. Although it may not be "alive" in the same way most mortal characters are in the series, it has a will. This will knows not of good and evil, only of the traits each piece is meant to embody.
We also know that the Triforce has dominion over said world and beyond, being able to shape realms by its wish-granting and power-giving abilities. Hence, the idea of "prime." And, in Lorule of A Link Between Worlds, we can see just how much the rest of the world depends on the Triforce's existence for its energy to be sustained.
EDIT: Don't forget the Force Gems in FSA! They further emphasize the ideas above in the same way!
It's also worth noting that the Tris are tied to the idea of threes, and they are the idea of "existence" to Null's "nothingness." They reinforce the idea of the Triforce's embodiment of "being."
The "Prime Energy" is the Triforce's true name and original state - its intended title. "Then," You may ask, "Why have we called it the Triforce up until this point?"
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Why the Triforce?
It is after the three leave that Hylia is brought into existence with the sole purpose of protecting the Prime Energy. But there's an important detail many overlook:
Hylia doesn't know the purpose of the Triforce.
Not fully, anyway.
Yes, Hylia knows how it works - her whole plan to defeat Demise revolves around it - but she still has questions. Even with all of her memories restored, the first Zelda states that she doesn't know why the Triforce was left behind. She guesses that it was to give the people of the world Hope (perhaps even against world-destroying entities like Null, should he break free...). Even then, it's only a guess.
Doesn't it stand to reason, then, that she wasn't even given its name? After all, she was only created to understand and protect the golden power; perhaps even as an "extension" of its being, given her often implied powers over light and time magic (but that's just a personal headcanon). Perhaps "Triforce" is simply what she took to calling it, as she still could recognize that it was something beyond the nature of the mortal world. (Also, I see it reasonable that she could see Tris - she probably saw them patching rifts and drew a connection between them, which influenced the name).
And, in the thousands of years to follow, wars become waged over the Prime Energy as it is understood only as a relic: a relic meant to give ultimate power to the one who touches it.
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Conclusion
The Prime Energy is the true name of the Triforce, and it is the core to the many realms of Hyrule. Its nature has been misunderstood by many throughout its existence, but none of these ideas are truly false; it holds dominion over time and space while simultaneously keeping it together. It is an essence of the very concept of "life," and as such holds a sort of "will" of its own. It is the ultimate state of the Energy we see everywhere else in Echoes of Wisdom, and Hylia may not be far off - despite being a neutral force that begins and ends wars, it may just be personification of the idea that life will prevail. Although the worlds in this franchise may be scorched and healed, they are never meant to fade into nothingness like Lorule once verged. They are simply meant to be.
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to those who may have scrolled to the bottom because this is unnecessarily long, it's basically just what its name was supposed to be when the three created it but then they just sort of forgot to tell hylia that or anything else lol. also it may just be a personification of existence like the fittingly-named tris.
I love love love solving little Zelda lore puzzles, I may do this again. :) I just HAD to lore dump when a friend asked me about it
Link stared at the Nothing. It was the only remaining defiance Link could manage within the crystalline cage.
The Nothing stared back.
Why was it keeping him here? Because he didn't freeze in its world like the others? Because it wanted Zelda to find him? It all seemed senseless.
“They call me Null.” It said, in a voice of thousands of no-longer-things. If he focused, maybe he could've heard his own voice. Trapped in that thousand.
“You are right.” Null said, the voice narrowing into something more familiar. Still a monstrous combination of stolen things, but honed. Just enough to grind against his ears in its corrupted familiarity. Seemingly to flaunt what was taken.
It could read his thoughts?
“You creatures are all so loud.” It said, near a snarl of a sound, “It matters little where it comes from. The voice is simply the loudest part.”
Link huffed. So that's why it stole his voice first, out of all the options. Mere annoyance. Link slid down to sit in the crystalline cage. He had exhausted uselessly banging against walls hours ago. He might as well ignore the monster and take a nap until he could figure something out. Without Null right there to immediately halt his progress.
“I do have one question before you do that.” Null announced, leaning toward him.
He glanced up through his bangs, glaring at the creature of void.
“Why is existence so… important? Why fight for something most experience so little of?”
It was a strange question. Link settled uneasily in his awkward lounge. Why fight for life beyond to live? For friendships, family, for food and sleep and music and laughing and talking and just living. For everything. He could hardly imagine a reason not to fight.
He glared at it. Why create monsters to terrorize and spread fear? Why tear up everything?
The Nothing cracked open like an eerie, hungry smile, “It is delicious.” It formed clawed hands to grab the crystal he was encased in. Link scrambled to his feet. His back hit crystalline wall, instincts flaring to run-fight- He couldn't even scream as he was pulled closer to the maw of the void. It had his voice!
It cackled, “Chaos makes it all the sweeter.”
Link stared, wide-eyed and panting. They weren’t fighting a monster that wanted mere energy and power. That was a means to an end. This was a creature who would simply consume the world whole. …He needed to escape.
Null hummed and released his cage. “I suppose I never answered your first question.” Its voice returned to the thousand nothings, “I'm simply saving you, the princess, and the Goddesses for last. I aim to savor that taste.”
It tapped the crystal like a child tapping the glass of a fishbowl. Toying with him. Link forced himself not to flinch. He furrowed his brow. He crossed his arms, sitting back down. He would not be intimidated.
If nothing else, he knew Zelda was out there, out of its grasp. And that hope alone was plenty to fight for.
And: I understand why they chose the Link’s Awakening remake’s very cartoony art style now, cause yikes 😬
Spoilers under cut!
What the flip.
That is horrifying
Hey, do you know what would be even more horrifying? If Null's hands came out of the walls and sent mini copies of said hands at you!
-Nintendo probably
Second? phase time!
Also, did anyone else notice the shapes on the walls are probably Tris that Null has consumed? And the faces seemed to be screaming or have a horrified look on them?
Stop! You're giving Link (and me) TotK Gloom Hands trauma!
While Link faces the horrors (Tm), Zelda gets whisked away to chase after Null in an underwater sequence
No! Null's grabbing the Tris to use their power!
I’ll try to link in the second part if Tumblr will work, though considering my previous attempts, the chance isn’t very high
One thing that’s odd to me in Echoes of Wisdom is the inconsistency of the rift’s effects. Readmore for mild spoilers.
If you fall in a rift, you turn into a sort of statue and start dissolving. In spite of this, Link was able to somehow save a group of children from the Silent Realm. It’s unclear if he closed the rift somehow, or just dragged them out. But even weirder are the Gerudo dancer and the child in Kakariko who apparently also got out of a rift. We know Link being the Hero is why he can move in the Silent Realm, but it’s not clear if he also dragged these people out (and how did he get into Gerudo Town?), they got out on their own, they were just spat out, or the tris fixed the area before Null started capturing them. The child in Kakariko is especially notable because there’s no rifts in the village. If he fell in one, he either had to go decently far afield to do so, or else it was fixed.
Furthermore, Link falls into a rift as a child, and loses his voice. The other two known victims seem to have lost their spirit, only able to lie there catatonically and worry their friends and family. But we don’t see or hear of any other rift-cursed victims in Suthorn Village. Zelda, also, loses nothing that we see. It’s possible the fact she entered the rift via the power of Tri means that she’s more protected, but this isn’t clear—Tri just says she’s Special. And we know being Special doesn’t protect Link.
Making it even more baffling, when you rescue the tris and restore an area, people are returned with no damage at all—except Something has clearly shifted. Because they’re suddenly able to see Tri. But they haven’t lost their spirit or voice or anything else. The two catatonic victims of the rifts don’t go back to normal till after Null is slain, and Link also gets his voice back. Why do most people get fixed when you repair the specific rift they fell into, but Link and the other two remain in bad shape even after you’ve closed all the rifts in the area that could have been the ones they fell into initially??? If Null was personally involved in their curses and that’s why it had to be killed to help them, why would Null target the Kakariko kid or the Gerudo dancer??? After Null is killed can everyone who isn’t Link and Zelda still see Tris, or does it just not matter since the Tris all vanished anyway????
It’s a puzzler. There’s gotta be a rhyme or reason to it. And I’m gonna figure it out or dieheadcanon trying.
And that's that for Echoes of Wisdom! A pleasant, charming game to be sure!
There's good and bad to be had, but it's certainly an unusual game. I'll definitely be going back over it to collect those Echoes I'm missing, which luckily for me, is a scant ten, per the post-game break down. One of which, humorously enough, is the damn carrot Echo used to summon your horse. I did not actually bother to do the Horse Ranch quest until just after my fifth (or sixth, depending on how you're counting) dungeon. Just going to drop a break here though, because I want to talk a bit more freely about this game.
So, there are a couple of Echoes I've discovered fairly trivialize most combat encounters. The Wolfos echo, any of the Darknut series echoes (the Level 3 variant I actually used basically as a blender throughout the entire last act, in the Still Ancient Ruins), and the Chompfin echo for water.
This game does a fair job of combining the "play it your way" mentality of the recent Wild era titles with the more strict flow of classic dungeons' puzzles. While you have considerably more options in this game, they will typically amount to being a variation on the same sorts of themes. Use fire to light torches- whether that comes from a Brazier, a Torch Slug or an Ignizol is entirely up to you, for example.
Let's talk about the key feature that honestly probably amounts to one of the biggest draws of the charming little game: DUNGEONS (and their BOSSES).
Let's see, there's three main dungeons, followed by Hyrule Castle, then three more dungeons (plus the endgame). Which means we follow the Ocarina of Time dungeon structure, which actually means we follow the A Link to the Past dungeon structure, which is appropriate, all things considered.
Each dungeon requires the traversal of a short Still World segment, which will bring Pokémon Platinum fans immense joy, before pissing them off at the memory of the Distortion World's absence in BDSP, and Legends-Arceus. These segments are mostly platforming with little significant puzzle-solving. They are the reason the Old Bed echo appears at the front of my Most Used list. But the weird eldritch, distorted scenery is quite nice to appreciate. It really does a fine job of setting up the game's final boss too.
I'm a bit torn on if I have a favorite dungeon. I definitely have a least favorite, in the form of the Lanayru Temple. Oh sweet Demise, these ice puzzles pissed me off. I did, however, find that dungeon's boss (SCORCHILL) to be quite fun, so we've got serious points awarded. Eldin Temple is weirdly small, and kind of hallway-y, if you get my drift, but it has Volvagia which I absolutely refuse to complain about. Hated the Mogryph fight, though I expect that's because I made it significantly harder than it should have been. The Faron Temple is interesting in that it really tries to hide its linearity: the theme is Jungle Temple and it honestly captures that feeling pretty damn well: the miniboss is also immensely fun, at least in how it is presented to you, though it's not particularly challenging: Gohma is, well, Gohma, so I don't think we're winning any Boss points with it. Vocavor is a boss with an interesting design, but underwater fish bosses have never won any awards and they aren't starting to now (it did bring to mind a Bowser Junior fight in Mario Wonder, so there's that).
Huh.
Oh, right, Ganon. Eh, this is literally the exact same fight as in Link's Awakening and, if I remember correctly, A Link to the Past. Somehow, however, and I cannot for the like of me figure out how, Grezzo has completely thrown off the timing of this fight: for some reason, and I'm admitting this solely for opacity, the Dead Man's Volley sections are timed, and I literally cannot find a better word for it, wrong. Luckily, they are technically optional if you have the right Echo (which you will, as it's given to you in this very dungeon), but it brought me death and therefore annoyed me.
This game follows up with our recent (if you call Skyward Sword recent) trend of having a massive horde battle precede the final boss. Well, sort of a horde- Zelda's Echo casts Echoes of her own that should be a challenging horde, but alas! The Hylian Blender renders this fight significantly easier than any other.
I will have to look this up, bit did anyone on the dev team have any involvement with Kirby Star Allies? Everything related to Null reminds me of Void Termina, and I am struggling to believe this is simply a coincidence.
Speaking of Null, let's talk about Null!
This thing is one hundred and fifteen percent definitely my favorite thing this game presents us with. Null is an entity from the void, imprisoned within the world itself by the Goddesses of the Triforce (sorry, Prime Energy- this bothered ne immensely), imprisoned to prevent it from devouring all life that might appear within the void. A classic primordial horror, if I do say so, and if there's one thing I'm a sucker for, it's primordial entities who are world-bent on the annihilation of existence itself. When you see this thing's lair, Earthbound had better jump so far forward in your mind you are given extradimensional whiplash.
If I were a timeline fanatic, I imagine Null would screw it up so damn much.
So, where do I stand here. Where where where.
The ideas behind this game are quite odd, to say the least, and their execution is a bit short. I feel like if this map were larger, and if there were more Echoes and quests, I would have more thoughts on how it plays. I just finished the damn thing and I'm not quite sure how I feel about the actual experience of playing it, which is absurd, really.
This one does feel like a love letter to the franchise's highs and lows, a bite-sized sandbox just screaming "We love Zelda!"
