I’m going to talk about the Zelda voice memos in detail. Spoilers below
There is a voice memo about the Sheikah tech. It says, “It seems that when the Calamity was defeated, all of the ancient relics here at the Hateno Ancient Tech Lab turned to dust and disappeared. All that remains are replicas of the originals, and with those gone, these are even more valuable. They will doubtlessly help tell future generations of the history of Hyrule.”
So, I actually like this.
I feel like Tears of the Kingdom was gaslighting me the whole time. Like, “What Sheikah tech? What are you talking about? We have always been at war with Eastasia.” And since I personally loved the Sheikah tech so much and since Zelda loved the Sheikah tech so much, this really hurt. The game was ignoring what I liked about the last game and retconning one of my favorite characteristics of my favorite character. It seemed to show complete indifference to their own characters and indifference to me, the player. And, I think, I felt a bit like, “Well, if the developers don’t care, why should I?”
But this one sentence works for me. Where did the Sheikah tech go? It pooped away. Okay! Thanks for telling me!
And I feel like that’s a character moment for Zelda. How would she feel to have the Sheikah tech vanish? There was a moment of loss and subsequent growth implied here that we just didn’t see because of the time skip. She has clearly bounced back and is in a great place. This is less a jump in her character and more an arc that we didn’t get to see.
And I feel better about everyone’s pivot to Zonai tech. That had always bothered me, because Purah and Robbie dedicated their lives to Sheikah Tech and to come in in Tears of the Kingdom and they’ve had complete corer changes is wild. But “the Sheikah tech vanished,” means that research pivot was forced.
And then I’m thinking about the actual Sheikah tech. For it to vanish as soon as the Calamity was defeated, there must have been some Calamity sensing magic in the materials. Maybe it was infused with a bit of the Calamity’s essence. Maybe that’s why the Calamity could take over the Sheikah tech. Could they have made different tech infused with the essence of something else? Could there be a larger thematic element about something vanishing when its purpose is fulfilled???
So, yeah. That was literally all Nintendo needed to say for me to be cool with it.
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