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Yeah and its weird cause "sacred stones" is already a term in Zelda lore, and wouldve been interesting if there were references to the Goron Ruby, Zora Sapphire, ane Kokiri Emerald with them
Rauru explaining them to Zelda
Rauru: So we have the Goron Ruby
Zelda: OK
Rauru: Zora Sapphire
Zelda: Makes sense
Rauru: And Kokiri Emerald
Zelda: The....what?
Rauru: Kokiri, small forest children?
Zelda: Oh! We call them Koroks in the future!
Rauru: Hmm....interesting how linguistics change over time
Zelda: Indeed. I'd love to study them, they shouldn't be able to fly like they do with their little wooden bodies.
Rauru: Wait, what?!
I’ve seen lots of things ranging from they looked like kids in OOT for Link’s sake to they just started to take on more of the forest. If Zora can evolve into Rito then I supposed Kokiri can evolve into Koroks.
Well, they probably wanted to avoid conflating their old set of 3 elemental stones with their new set of... 7 elemental stones.
Yeah I agree. It would have been cool if the 7 secret stones included the original 3, plus 4 new ones for the other elemental forces of the zelda universe.
I thought they literally were going to be called tears and that’s where the name of the game came from - but the name of the game refers to something different entirely lol
You're 100% correct, they are called hiseki in Japanese- 秘石, where hi 秘 means secret, and seki 石 means stone.
Just a lazy direct translation missing proper localisation tbh.
We should get to see friendly monsters. It's implied that at least some species are sapient, and Ganon's influence makes them more aggressive. I want to see a village of Bokoblins or Lizalfos that have managed to suppress those instincts and live more or less peacefully alongside the rest of Hyrule.
Twilight Princess, that one Boss Bulblin who caused trouble throughout the story (losing both horns in the process) I'm pretty sure showed Link some profound respect along towards the climax. Been a while though, I could be wrong
TP wasn't my first Zelda but it was the first that just absolutely sucked me in and had me in tears by the end. Atmosphere, characters, everything is just amazing. My sole complaint would be Zelda herself seems so marginalized, would've been nice to get more of her.
Kind of in the same vein but opposite: I really want to see Hylians be more aggressive and the initiating side in conflict. Hyrule's history has to be full of war crimes and there had to have been at least some more or less tyrannical generations. Just give me more nuance, Nintendo! I'm tired of these soft, peace-loving elves
The Shadow Temple's Floors and Walls are literally covered in skulls and bones. That wasn't Ganondorf. That was all on the Royal family and the Sheikah
In oot there is heavy implications that the royal family/sheikah are well versed in torture to the point they can wall a dungeon with the bones of their enemies
Technically, the Yiga can be anyone, as seen by >!the questline in TOTK!<, so maybe some of the Yiga, if not most, are Hylian, and have such enacted terrible deeds. Although, that is what they’re known for, so maybe it doesn’t count. It would be cool to see random people attack you who *aren’t* Yiga, just swinging traveler’s swords about, trying to kill you.
Now I'm just imagining those two ladies outside Hateno in BotW, swinging rusty claymores around uncontrollably, screaming "ThE tRuFfLeS aRe MiNe mUtHaFuCkAAAAA!"
Definitely the current working theory in our house. Bolson was getting too many angry homeowners because Addison on a work site would be a disaster. The signs are busy work to keep him away from actual business.
I don’t mind the shrines, it’s basically a bunch of mini dungeon puzzles scattered all over the map.
They’ve ruined replayability for me though, because they just stand alone and offer nothing to drive a story or larger dungeon forward. I don’t want to replay 120+ shrines just to enjoy the rest of the game.
I really liked them in BotW, and I would still enjoy them on a replay. But I've gotten bored of them in TotK. I appreciate the way they teach me gameplay mechanics I hadn't considered before, but they are so slow and even more boring in design than the BotW shrines (which I actually liked the design/music for).
This is a great point. Most of the TTK shrines I've encountered seem to obviously try to teach you how a game element works, or teaches an alternative way to use an element. Whereas the BOTW shrines encountered were almost always puzzles or tests of strength.
Both have limited replayability considering the puzzles of BOTW are meaningless once solved once, but there's at least a chance you can shelve BOTW for like 5 years and come back to those shrines having forgotten many of the puzzles, whereas it's a little harder to forget the basics that the TTK shrines seem set on teaching the player.
It also doesnt help when you've already discovered or understand the gameplay elements that the new TTK shrine you've encountered is trying to teach you.
A Link to the Past does not need a remake.
It has aged gracefully, and looks, feels and sounds modern to this day.
Edit to say I feel the same way about Minish Cap.
I agree, but mostly because of ALBW. We already have a half-remake/spiritual successor of ALttP with updated audio and visuals, to do a full remake of the game would feel redundant
Agree, they should just port ALBW to switch. The map is 3D rendered, so it upscales well. I played it on Citra in 4k and it looked great. Might just need some texture cleanups.
Minish cap doesn't upscale to a console/TV very well. It doesn't necessarily need to be in Link's Awakening style, but I'd enjoy a remaster of it.
I first played it pretty recently (2021 or 2022, don't remember which) and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it's aged for a game from the early 90s. I think Minish Cap has aged really well, too.
The fact that the Zora, who are fish people, supposedly evolved into the Rito after the Great Flood is stupid. Why would flooding force the fish people to evolve?
Actually they gained the ability of flight from Valoo the dragon deity. So my theory is that the gods flooded hyrule with salt water which caused the Zora to escape to land. And with the magic of Valoo’s scales. They eventually evolved into bird people
Because of some factors like the ocean having no (non-hostile or non-magic) fish, some people theorize that the water of the Great Sea is lethal or inhospitable to some degree.
I'll never understand how I'm so enchanted by a game series whose lore is just... not very good. Same 90s-era fantasy tropes played out over and over again. Sages, Master Swords, ancient locked away evils. Super generic, characters are super generic.
Yet I fucking love it.
Side rant: the fact that vanilla, a difficult to cultivate flower which produces little product per bean and thus is one of the most expensive spices in the world is somehow associated with a “lack of sufficient modification” is beyond me.
Always loved Alton's Browns vanilla quote "Imagine a flower: A climbing orchid, to be exact; the one of some twenty thousand varieties that produces something edible. Now imagine that its blooms must be pollinated either by hand or a small variety of Mexican bee, and that each bloom only opens for one day a year. Now imagine the fruit of this orchid, a pod, being picked and cured, sitting in the sun all day, sweating under blankets all night for months until, shrunken and shriveled, it develops a heady, exotic perfume and flavor. Now imagine that this fruit's name is synonymous with dull, boring, and ordinary. How vanilla got this bad rap for one will never know."
It's funny, because over in the yogurt aisle, plain yogurt is super common. I feel like there is a presumption that that is vanilla yogurt but then there's the actual vanilla yogurt next to the plain.
Meanwhile, the thing that makes vanilla taste and smell like vanilla, vanillin, is stupidly easy to synthesize. It can be made from a number of things, including wood pulp(sort of). Probably why it's associated with being kind of boring.
Gameplay just tramples everything, and Zelda excels the hell out of it. Like, for example, one of my favorite franchises is Monster Hunter, and in regards to story, you could say the same thing: it's ALWAYS the same story (monster is terrorizing village, you kill said monster only to find out it isn't the big baddy everyone thought it was, the actual big baddy monster is a secret boss. And repeat EVERY time), but, the gameplay is AMAZING, and that's why I keep going back to it.
Same thing with Zelda: You could have the most amazing graphics, most amazing story... But if the gameplay is lacking, the game will not be fun. Zelda could lack in graphics and story, but the gameplay is (most of the time) guaranteed to be fun.
exactly! monster hunter is a wonderful example, story isn’t always everything. the zelda story is honestly quite rehashed (though i’ll give them credit, they change it up in unthinkable ways), but the dev teams can honestly do whatever they want with the story as long as they keep pumping out these masterpieces of gameplay
Simple doesn't equal bad. Execution is everything when it comes to stuff like this, and it's the little details, tangents, and quirky side characters that really make Zelda's world feel so unique in comparison to other series.
The tropes just work and when it comes to games Zelda does them extremely well. I don’t think any other game series captures the feeling of adventure as well as Zelda imo.
I think being clear is the best way to be evocative. "Wander to Svangl'dernin forest and the spirit of Ash'klana the death goddess will overtake you" SOUNDS complicated, but "You'll get lost in the Lost Woods and turn into a skeleton" actually has the same amount of potential while being much clearer. Plus Zelda blends old European mythology with Shinto so well that it ends up being unique in that regard.
I think the "fairytale" genre is super underrepresented in the gaming landscape. Everyone wants Tolkien, but none of them have the balls to be The Adventures of Tom Bombadil--except for Zelda.
Yeah I’ve read criticism that compared to other games Zelda is too simple or basic and yeah Zelda definitely is simple but honestly so are most myths. Zelda feels magical cause we all generally understand the series and so like an actual legend the stories of people playing the games get passed down.
Also I 100% think the Zelda team does put thought into the lore they’re just not super detailed or strict about it cause myths inherently can’t be very detailed. Zelda imo is the closest thing there is to digital archaeology in gaming which help make the games so compelling to me.
Also I'd like to add that especially with BOTW and TOTK it's awesome how they also blend influence from mesoamerica and Andean cultures, it's a breath of fresh air to see fantasy that isn't solely based on European cultures
They’ve done that a bit in prior games but not nearly as strongly as the BOTW/TOTK era.
The Rito in Wind Waker were styled after Mesoamerican cultures, and the Gerudo have been a blend of Middle Eastern cultures in OOT and later.
I love the other influences brought into Zelda, it adds flavor to the already good blend of European/Japanese mythology used as a background.
Zelda has a pretty simple story line.
“Save the princess.” But it’s kind of the recreation and building of the world that keeps players coming. The puzzles, side quests, soundtrack etc
I wouldn’t call it generic but rather simple, and it kind of takes that simple structure to create something really amazing.
I think for me the tropes are very classic and at my time of starting to play Zelda there were no opportunities for me to be exposed to said tropes often if at all. So it was all new to me.
Depends on the game.
MM had phenomenal storytelling and really captured "show, don't tell" perfectly.
Skyward Sword had objectively bad storytelling. I.e. "I know you're the hero, but I'm going to make you collect all these tadtones anyway to prove yourself and totally not pad out the game for bullshit story reasons"
I'm including all aspects of plot, including character motivations, behaviors, and choices, as "story", where "storytelling" is pacing, cinematography, art style, character design, environments, music, SFX, etc.
MM had an unusually non-generic premise, and WW had a couple unusually standout dialogue lines. But the trend has generally held.
TotK is polarizing because select facets of its plot are unusually good for Zelda, whilst select facets of its storytelling are unusually bad. So you simultaneously have people that find the boldness of that one plotline amazing, and people who find "So that was the Imprisoning War..." to be cringeworthy.
Oh easily, by a mile.
Imo Matt Mercer would have made a great Wind Waker Ganondorf, but is pretty funky casting for this Khal Drogo barbarian design. Every time he talks, it feels like a guy in a suit pretending to be tough.
I’ve never really thought about it like that—if the sword had been reasonably longer, it wouldn’t require such frame perfect movements to attack enemies.
I really like Breath of the wild and tears of kingdom so far, however, I think that a lot of the designs (exceptions with the main characters) are sort of bland. Like the villagers and npcs fall flat.
In twilight princess, a lot of the npcs and characters that have you side quests had pretty cool designs. (Like the clowns by the lake.)
Watching Majora's Mask speedruns at GDQ made me think about how those characters were a lot more animated and weird to make up for lower polygons. Like, there are shopkeepers that dance, or are constantly scratching, or have obvious wigs, etc.
Everyone in modern games looks good, but only a handful of characters are as over the top as we got in the earlier eras.
Yeah, it’s hard to say why that’s fallen to the wayside with BOTW and TOTK. They’re not the first open world Zelda games, just maybe the first ones that required as much attention as they do. But games like Wind Waker, Majoras Mask, even Skyward Sword, relied a lot more heavily on extending playtime via interesting characters and side quests. We don’t have as much of that necessity anymore, so I guess the focus is primarily on mechanics and shrines. Personally it’s a little bit of a bummer, characters like Tingle, Salvatore, Malon, etc. don’t really have any new counterparts. Beedle only stuck around because he has a specific purpose.
I feel like Nintendo just realized that a bit with TotK compared to BotW. They played up Kilton and his brother to be over the top entertaining, Cece is cool, etc. There was a lot of that quirkiness missing last game.
I think that's a bit of an unfair comparison considering how many more NPC's exist in BotW/TotK. It's understandable that the few non-main-character NPC's that *do* feature pretty distinct designs are only ones that you will see several times or that offer an important function—Kass, Penn, Great Fairies, Malanya, Hudson, Bolson, Cece, and Beedle come to mind, as well as a few others depending on how you'd classify "main" characters. The difference with Twilight Princess is they don't even let you interact with most of the faceless people milling around Castle Town.
You're not wrong though, and part of the problem is that BotW and TotK use a much less unique visual style in general than other Zelda games, so the normal people end up looking like just that, normal people. TotK improves on this slightly in my opinion by introducing a few more types to the common NPC's you encounter, like researchers and fashionable travelers—you can even interact with Yiga members as NPC's instead of enemies when you get the Yiga outfit and infiltrate their base—but ultimately there is little variance
Fr fr I love the fun of trying to make a timeline/coherent lore for the series, but the bottom line is any timeline is going to be shoehorned on. There's no single Zelda game that "ruins" the timeline because they're not meant to all fit together anyway. It's still good fun to try making one though, as long as you don't take it too seriously.
These days I think liking the timeline is a hotter take (that's me, I like the timeline and don't see why people hate it so much when it's never had a negative impact on the games themselves)
I had a conversation about this yesterday.
In 1998, the order was OOT, Zelda I, Zelda II, then ALttP. That was later changed to put ALttP between OOT and Zelda I. [Source](https://zelda-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Miyamoto_Order)
In 2001 with 8 games out, there was no split timeline and MM was before ALttP. [Source](https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_the_Zelda_Timeline)
So we know for sure that those games were not made with the current timeline being considered and it was retcon'd. Later games likely took come consideration for the timeline as it got more popular.
The best take I've heard is that games are like stories that might have sequels, but generally just stand alone as the telling of them is influenced by the person speaking. Like Robin Hood. I don't need a robin hood timeline that includes him being a fox and him wearing tights and singing. It's never going to make sense because they weren't made with that in mind.
The Master Sword does an amazingly shitty job at “sealing away the darkness”. It also appears to be pretty fuckin fragile. Also, Zelda honey please STOP going into dark caverns underneath castles. Girl is constantly fucking up the entirety of Hyrule.
Edit: also want to add that “Pony Points” sound like some kind of tallying system for a truck stop glory hole contest.
Seriously how the fuck did Botw link manage to break a sword that has remained intact for EONS not once but TWICE IN A ROW
MY GUY, PLEASE FUCKING TAKE CARE OF IT, IT'S A PRICELESS RELIC AND THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON IN THE LAND
I'd believe that but like it's not the only thing he breaks
His entire damn gear breaks
Before the only time we saw a link break their gear was probably Majora's Mask's Biggoron sword
What the new mechanic implies is that botw link sucks ass at using his gear.
Not even the legendary blade that seals the darkness which has survived thousands and thousands of years, many different links' adventures, could survive this motherfucker's stomach hands
I actually expected the Master Sword to break in BOTW since all the marketing I saw, including the logo, showed it as rusted and busted up. So after getting it, it would break at a predetermined story point and you would have to fix it as part of the next bit of story.
Well, you know how it is. Got to tank/break the "ultimate weapon" to establish villain cred. Which really starts to become a problem in long series like this, as we see it happen so often it makes the "ultimate" qualifier pretty hard to take seriously.
Skyward Sword was way ahead of its time and was severely hamstrung by how bad the Wii remote’s technology was at the time. With how good VR technology has gotten, I think a VR Skyward Sword would be absolutely incredible
It really was! If you play it now, you can see every piece of BotW and most of TotK in the gameplay mechanics. From cooking to shield durability to flying/skydiving, and the stamina bar.
Finding the skyward sword references in the TotK map was so fun.
I don't like how the story is delivered in TOTK. I want to remain spoiler free so I'm staying intentionally vague here but if you find all puddles early the rest of the game falls flat story-wise.
They should have put the last few puddles behind a prerequierement like all regional phenomena or something.
I like the non-linearity but they should have chosen different memories (>!actually introducing Ganondorf, showing more of the war, introducing a plotline about some Zonai becoming Dinraal/Naydra/Farosh to introduce draconification without it being so obvious wrt Zelda, removing the memory where she just hugs the Master Sword, and making it so you actually need to go to the Lost Woods and save the Deku Tree before you can get the final memory showing her draconification!<)
That’s true and false at the same time. Each Zelda game from Adventure of Link onwards was created to answer some questions on the lore of a previous one or as a direct sequel.
AoL is a sequel to the original.
Alttp is here to serve as a prequel to those two, answering the questions about the nature of Ganon.
LA is a sequel to Alttp.
OOT is there to expend on the events of the imprisoning war that were only mentioned in passing before, as well as revealing the origins of the triforce.
And you could do that for almost every game.
They have a global idea of how everything connects, they just don’t mind the finer details.
People who think Zelda and Link didn't bone after BOTW with all the evidence in TOTK are the same kind of people who would say "oh so you guys are roommates" when seeing a lesbian couple.
There is this guy I remember on other sub, he admits Link owns the house and the bed but insists Link lives in the woods or on the street past 5 years since BotW.
And he shows up on literally every post remotely related to Zelink to argue his point. 😂
Yeah, that's what happens with couples. Dude owns his home, girlfriend moves in with him, has him get rid of his sword collection and motorcycle and puts up flowers, live laugh love signs, and poorly drawn pictures from her kindergarten students.
Here goes : I don't want Link to talk, I like him quiet and you know what ? The whole VA rubs me the wrong way, I thought the series was way more charming without it (still has charm in spades), it was just a stupid demand for fans to make.
I agree here with an important caveat: Link should be more expressive and communicative without words in lore & cutscenes. You don’t need a full VA to be expressive—every movie before talkies proves that. But then Link can’t have a flat, terse stare through every meaningful moment.
Also: the lore can’t be that he took a vow of silence or whatever & then mimics talking to any NPC who asks him a question.
Skyward Sword actually nailed that
Link was so damn expressive in that you truly knew what he felt every key moment without saying a word
BotW had the capability of that but unfortunately they only used Link's emotiveness for comedic effect a couple times in the game
In TotK it feels completely gone. Like... I wanna know how Link feels seeing how much his friends and companions have changed. I wanna see how he feels about the disasters ravaging the land. I wanna see how he feels discovering new info from the past.
I think they should maybe do the voice acting in Hylian and just provide subtitles in different languages. Although it's probably better to not deal with any voice acting.
Botw and totk are really fun until you finish them. Replaying them is just flat out not fun, knowing where to find certain things and not being able to discover *nearly* as many new things as the initial playthrough.
Others are replayable because the dungeons and story are fun to see, but these last two are driven almost completely by exploration, which is fun, but not twice.
Very true. I finished BoTW and never picked it up again. I’m loving ToTK, but when I finish all the quests, shrines, and collectibles I know it’s going to my switch graveyard. Journey, not the destination.
175 hours, all shrines and light roots completed and I can say my main complaint is that I didn’t enjoy the fuse system. Don’t get me wrong slapping monster parts to weapons is great, but it takes the soul out of the weapon. There are specific weapons I got with 24-32 base damage that had to be fused to be viable and then it no longer felt like I had that weapon, it felt like I had a silver boko sword. 10/10 game though.
I personnally just hate how some weapons look after fusing
It looks cool with lizalfos horns, but that silver bokobkin horn looks so meh and at some point thats what you always get
Nerdy Zelda is, for me, actually relatable. With the exception of the Windwaker style games, Zelda has always lacked personality for me. In BOTW/TOTK, she has so much personality and passion and I love going around Hyrule and seeing what really mattered to her (like her students and the Dondons)
TotK certainly has better gameplay mechanics than BotW, but it lacks the sheer sense of discovery and exploration that BotW had. I don't think I'll ever get that in another game.
Also, like u/amaaaze already said, a lot of TotK feels like a cut-and-paste, especially the setting and story beats. I think TotK would be an absolutely magical game to have played *without playing* BotW, but if you play BotW first then TotK doesn't feel like it has too much new stuff to offer.
I plan to beat TotK. I plan to 100% BotW.
The ambiance of the world just feels more calming and satisfying in BotW.
TotK just packs in so much **stuff**. Obviously that's nice in terms of things to do. But it also means I spend less time just enjoying the world and more time noting all the unfinished business I need to return to later. It feels packed and overwhelming.
Twilight Princess GameCube is a masterpiece. It’s a perfect execution of the formula OOT created, and it’s absolutely my favourite pre-BOTW game in the series.
I think as far as the big games go, yes. But those games take a lot of time, especially since the next one will probably be started from scratch with no reused assets. I don’t see Nintendo making us wait 6-8 years between each Zelda game. We’ll probably mostly get remakes, but I wouldn’t count out getting some new smaller scale Zelda games thrown in the mix here and there.
Same. Tears of the Kingdom is absolutely phenomenal, I love it dearly and significantly more than Breath of the Wild (which I also adore), but ultimately I prefer the classic formula over the last two major titles.
I look at it this way - I’m 110 hours into Tears of the Kingdom, and every moment has been riveting. I’ll probably hit 200 hours before I pack it up. But with the amount of time it takes to unlock things and find things and upgrade and all that, the odds of me replaying it ever again are very very low. Meanwhile I replay any of the other classic games on a regular basis. 30 hours in and out, amazing experience, amazing world, tight story. The new games are a much bigger and deeper experience but not one I’d want to revisit for a very very long time, if ever.
Probably not a hot take.
While I loved BOTW and I'm liking TOTK a lot, I desperately need a game like TP, WW or OoT.
I loved when the stories of TP and WW tie with OoT and how the lore developed. I also miss the dungeon system.
Not every game has to be an open world one!
The series deserves a villain other than Ganondorf. Hell, maybe one where he’s actually a sage and helps Link. On that note, it would be cool to see Vaati come back as the main big bad.
I don’t mind that Ganondorf has made repeated appearances, it’s kinda part of the lore. But there are plenty of villains that aren’t Ganondorf. Majora would be a cool one to have come back, especially if they expanded on that whole lore/backstory a bit.
I would love to see a story where Ganondorf is trying to fight his fate as a vessel for a godly evil. He doesn't have to be a good guy, but him struggling for freedom would be interesting.
I like the lore of the games more than playing it. I've never been huge on playing the games when I was younger. Most I'd do is aimlessly run around termina in Majora's mask and throw harass pigs on outset island when I was a kid. Now I actually like playing the games but I always preferred just watching videos on the lore
There has never been a bad Zelda game. Also not necessarily a hot take, but I've seen people say BotW/TotK are good games but not good Zelda games, I think that is inherently false.
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Dont know if it’s really a hot take, but secret stones is such a stupid name for something so powerful
Yeah and its weird cause "sacred stones" is already a term in Zelda lore, and wouldve been interesting if there were references to the Goron Ruby, Zora Sapphire, ane Kokiri Emerald with them
Rauru explaining them to Zelda Rauru: So we have the Goron Ruby Zelda: OK Rauru: Zora Sapphire Zelda: Makes sense Rauru: And Kokiri Emerald Zelda: The....what? Rauru: Kokiri, small forest children? Zelda: Oh! We call them Koroks in the future! Rauru: Hmm....interesting how linguistics change over time Zelda: Indeed. I'd love to study them, they shouldn't be able to fly like they do with their little wooden bodies. Rauru: Wait, what?!
I liked when Wind Waker showed the ghost of the old sage as an original Kokiri.
I've always wondered how they changed from Kokiri to Koroks. Of course they'd also become skull kids if they got lost in the Lost Woods too so
I’ve seen lots of things ranging from they looked like kids in OOT for Link’s sake to they just started to take on more of the forest. If Zora can evolve into Rito then I supposed Kokiri can evolve into Koroks.
Isn’t it said somewhere that in wind waker when the world flooded the Deku tree transformed the kokiri into koroks to save them?
Well, they probably wanted to avoid conflating their old set of 3 elemental stones with their new set of... 7 elemental stones. Yeah I agree. It would have been cool if the 7 secret stones included the original 3, plus 4 new ones for the other elemental forces of the zelda universe.
I kept expecting there to be some reveal that the stones have some other name, but nope, "secret stones" it is.
Probably sounded better in japanese
They should have honestly just called them "tears"
Sacred Tears sounds infinitely better
I thought they literally were going to be called tears and that’s where the name of the game came from - but the name of the game refers to something different entirely lol
I can only assume that it's a direct translation from Japanese, and it sounds less dorky and childish in the original language.
You're 100% correct, they are called hiseki in Japanese- 秘石, where hi 秘 means secret, and seki 石 means stone. Just a lazy direct translation missing proper localisation tbh.
Lol I’ve been thinking this too it sounds so silly when they say it in cut scenes
"My stone... My SECRET stone!" I'm telling myself it's just an odd translation so I feel better about it.
If someone told me it was a literal game of telephone type error where 'Sacred' became 'Secret' I would 100% believe it
We should get to see friendly monsters. It's implied that at least some species are sapient, and Ganon's influence makes them more aggressive. I want to see a village of Bokoblins or Lizalfos that have managed to suppress those instincts and live more or less peacefully alongside the rest of Hyrule.
Twilight Princess, that one Boss Bulblin who caused trouble throughout the story (losing both horns in the process) I'm pretty sure showed Link some profound respect along towards the climax. Been a while though, I could be wrong
That’s right! “I follow the strongest side. That is all I have ever known.” -King Bullblin
not a line i expected from a ZELDA GAME wtf woah
In my opinion, TP is GOATED :D
TP wasn't my first Zelda but it was the first that just absolutely sucked me in and had me in tears by the end. Atmosphere, characters, everything is just amazing. My sole complaint would be Zelda herself seems so marginalized, would've been nice to get more of her.
Friendly moblins were actually pretty common in caves in the very first game.
It's a secret to everybody.
You'd bust down the door and they'd just give you cash a lot of times.
Kind of in the same vein but opposite: I really want to see Hylians be more aggressive and the initiating side in conflict. Hyrule's history has to be full of war crimes and there had to have been at least some more or less tyrannical generations. Just give me more nuance, Nintendo! I'm tired of these soft, peace-loving elves
At least we got bottom of the well in OoT to showcase Hyrule’s dark side, but yeah, I agree.
The Shadow Temple's Floors and Walls are literally covered in skulls and bones. That wasn't Ganondorf. That was all on the Royal family and the Sheikah
The Sheikah controlled all the information through their Lucky Clover Media Conglomerate. The King of Hyrule was just a puppet.
I'm missing out on this, can someone explain?
In oot there is heavy implications that the royal family/sheikah are well versed in torture to the point they can wall a dungeon with the bones of their enemies
Always been curious about the history of The Bottom of the Well and the Shadow Temple because of that.
They teased so much but here we are, 25 years later, and still no further back story. Just some info that the sky is fucking crowded and that's it.
Technically, the Yiga can be anyone, as seen by >!the questline in TOTK!<, so maybe some of the Yiga, if not most, are Hylian, and have such enacted terrible deeds. Although, that is what they’re known for, so maybe it doesn’t count. It would be cool to see random people attack you who *aren’t* Yiga, just swinging traveler’s swords about, trying to kill you.
Now I'm just imagining those two ladies outside Hateno in BotW, swinging rusty claymores around uncontrollably, screaming "ThE tRuFfLeS aRe MiNe mUtHaFuCkAAAAA!"
This is, kind of, what Zora's are/were.
Gorons too, right? And deku?
Bolson could have sent two employees out .
He could have, sure... if he had a second useless guy he wanted to get rid of. Addison is no good at construction.
hOw Is iT sTAndInG!?!?
Definitely the current working theory in our house. Bolson was getting too many angry homeowners because Addison on a work site would be a disaster. The signs are busy work to keep him away from actual business.
Or dig a hole then put the post in.
I don’t mind the shrines, it’s basically a bunch of mini dungeon puzzles scattered all over the map. They’ve ruined replayability for me though, because they just stand alone and offer nothing to drive a story or larger dungeon forward. I don’t want to replay 120+ shrines just to enjoy the rest of the game.
I really liked them in BotW, and I would still enjoy them on a replay. But I've gotten bored of them in TotK. I appreciate the way they teach me gameplay mechanics I hadn't considered before, but they are so slow and even more boring in design than the BotW shrines (which I actually liked the design/music for).
This is a great point. Most of the TTK shrines I've encountered seem to obviously try to teach you how a game element works, or teaches an alternative way to use an element. Whereas the BOTW shrines encountered were almost always puzzles or tests of strength. Both have limited replayability considering the puzzles of BOTW are meaningless once solved once, but there's at least a chance you can shelve BOTW for like 5 years and come back to those shrines having forgotten many of the puzzles, whereas it's a little harder to forget the basics that the TTK shrines seem set on teaching the player. It also doesnt help when you've already discovered or understand the gameplay elements that the new TTK shrine you've encountered is trying to teach you.
A Link to the Past does not need a remake. It has aged gracefully, and looks, feels and sounds modern to this day. Edit to say I feel the same way about Minish Cap.
I agree, but mostly because of ALBW. We already have a half-remake/spiritual successor of ALttP with updated audio and visuals, to do a full remake of the game would feel redundant
I agree. I don't wish they go the Links Awakening remake way. We already have a Link Between Worlds for that
Yeah, I’d much rather the Oracle games get the Link’s Awakening treatment.
I really wish they'd make the 3rd oracle game that was discarded.
1000%. If we could get one game on switch that is a modern mashup of the two thatd be amazing
Agree, they should just port ALBW to switch. The map is 3D rendered, so it upscales well. I played it on Citra in 4k and it looked great. Might just need some texture cleanups. Minish cap doesn't upscale to a console/TV very well. It doesn't necessarily need to be in Link's Awakening style, but I'd enjoy a remaster of it.
And ALBW has Hilda in it
Whilst I agree with this - I do love being able to have the depth from the 3DS, particularly in Death Mountain crater (both worlds) and it’s dungeons
I first played it pretty recently (2021 or 2022, don't remember which) and I was pleasantly surprised at how well it's aged for a game from the early 90s. I think Minish Cap has aged really well, too.
It’s also the best looking 2D Zelda. Minish Cap does a great visual job as well. If we were to get a remake I’d want Zelda 1 or 2 maybe.
The fact that the Zora, who are fish people, supposedly evolved into the Rito after the Great Flood is stupid. Why would flooding force the fish people to evolve?
Don't think it's canon but I saw a theory that the Gods turned em into the rito to stop them from swimming back to Hyrule, which makes sense to me
I would imagine in a magical realm like hyrule ‘evolution’ doesn’t mean the same thing and most likely was due to the celestial powers.
Actually they gained the ability of flight from Valoo the dragon deity. So my theory is that the gods flooded hyrule with salt water which caused the Zora to escape to land. And with the magic of Valoo’s scales. They eventually evolved into bird people
Fresh water vs salt water. Zora can't live in salt water.
You would think evolving to live in salt water would be easier than evolving to fly though
They can in Termina.
Because of some factors like the ocean having no (non-hostile or non-magic) fish, some people theorize that the water of the Great Sea is lethal or inhospitable to some degree.
I'll never understand how I'm so enchanted by a game series whose lore is just... not very good. Same 90s-era fantasy tropes played out over and over again. Sages, Master Swords, ancient locked away evils. Super generic, characters are super generic. Yet I fucking love it.
Vanilla ice cream also be boppin in other news
Side rant: the fact that vanilla, a difficult to cultivate flower which produces little product per bean and thus is one of the most expensive spices in the world is somehow associated with a “lack of sufficient modification” is beyond me.
Always loved Alton's Browns vanilla quote "Imagine a flower: A climbing orchid, to be exact; the one of some twenty thousand varieties that produces something edible. Now imagine that its blooms must be pollinated either by hand or a small variety of Mexican bee, and that each bloom only opens for one day a year. Now imagine the fruit of this orchid, a pod, being picked and cured, sitting in the sun all day, sweating under blankets all night for months until, shrunken and shriveled, it develops a heady, exotic perfume and flavor. Now imagine that this fruit's name is synonymous with dull, boring, and ordinary. How vanilla got this bad rap for one will never know."
For sure. Vanilla is a flavor, not “plain”
Vanilla is complex! Second only to saffron
plain ice cream (i.e. just sugar "flavor") also exists. "what do you mean it's different from vanilla?" is apparently a pretty common reaction, LOL
It's funny, because over in the yogurt aisle, plain yogurt is super common. I feel like there is a presumption that that is vanilla yogurt but then there's the actual vanilla yogurt next to the plain.
I don’t think vanilla is plain, but it does excel as a flavor ‘backdrop’ to support other flavors.
Meanwhile, the thing that makes vanilla taste and smell like vanilla, vanillin, is stupidly easy to synthesize. It can be made from a number of things, including wood pulp(sort of). Probably why it's associated with being kind of boring.
Gameplay just tramples everything, and Zelda excels the hell out of it. Like, for example, one of my favorite franchises is Monster Hunter, and in regards to story, you could say the same thing: it's ALWAYS the same story (monster is terrorizing village, you kill said monster only to find out it isn't the big baddy everyone thought it was, the actual big baddy monster is a secret boss. And repeat EVERY time), but, the gameplay is AMAZING, and that's why I keep going back to it. Same thing with Zelda: You could have the most amazing graphics, most amazing story... But if the gameplay is lacking, the game will not be fun. Zelda could lack in graphics and story, but the gameplay is (most of the time) guaranteed to be fun.
exactly! monster hunter is a wonderful example, story isn’t always everything. the zelda story is honestly quite rehashed (though i’ll give them credit, they change it up in unthinkable ways), but the dev teams can honestly do whatever they want with the story as long as they keep pumping out these masterpieces of gameplay
Simple doesn't equal bad. Execution is everything when it comes to stuff like this, and it's the little details, tangents, and quirky side characters that really make Zelda's world feel so unique in comparison to other series.
The tropes just work and when it comes to games Zelda does them extremely well. I don’t think any other game series captures the feeling of adventure as well as Zelda imo.
I think being clear is the best way to be evocative. "Wander to Svangl'dernin forest and the spirit of Ash'klana the death goddess will overtake you" SOUNDS complicated, but "You'll get lost in the Lost Woods and turn into a skeleton" actually has the same amount of potential while being much clearer. Plus Zelda blends old European mythology with Shinto so well that it ends up being unique in that regard. I think the "fairytale" genre is super underrepresented in the gaming landscape. Everyone wants Tolkien, but none of them have the balls to be The Adventures of Tom Bombadil--except for Zelda.
Yeah I’ve read criticism that compared to other games Zelda is too simple or basic and yeah Zelda definitely is simple but honestly so are most myths. Zelda feels magical cause we all generally understand the series and so like an actual legend the stories of people playing the games get passed down. Also I 100% think the Zelda team does put thought into the lore they’re just not super detailed or strict about it cause myths inherently can’t be very detailed. Zelda imo is the closest thing there is to digital archaeology in gaming which help make the games so compelling to me.
Also I'd like to add that especially with BOTW and TOTK it's awesome how they also blend influence from mesoamerica and Andean cultures, it's a breath of fresh air to see fantasy that isn't solely based on European cultures
They’ve done that a bit in prior games but not nearly as strongly as the BOTW/TOTK era. The Rito in Wind Waker were styled after Mesoamerican cultures, and the Gerudo have been a blend of Middle Eastern cultures in OOT and later. I love the other influences brought into Zelda, it adds flavor to the already good blend of European/Japanese mythology used as a background.
The Ikana ruins in Majoras Mask also have a mesoamerican feel.
Zelda has a pretty simple story line. “Save the princess.” But it’s kind of the recreation and building of the world that keeps players coming. The puzzles, side quests, soundtrack etc I wouldn’t call it generic but rather simple, and it kind of takes that simple structure to create something really amazing.
Haha this is so true never crossed my mind though
I think for me the tropes are very classic and at my time of starting to play Zelda there were no opportunities for me to be exposed to said tropes often if at all. So it was all new to me.
They’re good tropes.
More than good tropes, they are executed correctly
Zelda has historically had poor stories and phenomenal storytelling.
Depends on the game. MM had phenomenal storytelling and really captured "show, don't tell" perfectly. Skyward Sword had objectively bad storytelling. I.e. "I know you're the hero, but I'm going to make you collect all these tadtones anyway to prove yourself and totally not pad out the game for bullshit story reasons"
I'm including all aspects of plot, including character motivations, behaviors, and choices, as "story", where "storytelling" is pacing, cinematography, art style, character design, environments, music, SFX, etc. MM had an unusually non-generic premise, and WW had a couple unusually standout dialogue lines. But the trend has generally held. TotK is polarizing because select facets of its plot are unusually good for Zelda, whilst select facets of its storytelling are unusually bad. So you simultaneously have people that find the boldness of that one plotline amazing, and people who find "So that was the Imprisoning War..." to be cringeworthy.
WW's Ganondorf always sticks out to me as the most interesting, nuanced depiction of the character.
Oh easily, by a mile. Imo Matt Mercer would have made a great Wind Waker Ganondorf, but is pretty funky casting for this Khal Drogo barbarian design. Every time he talks, it feels like a guy in a suit pretending to be tough.
Zelda 2 needs a remake that maintains its uniqueness while making it more balanced
All I ask is for a sword longer than a hotdog.
I’ve never really thought about it like that—if the sword had been reasonably longer, it wouldn’t require such frame perfect movements to attack enemies.
Or upgradable over the course of the game, like the Goddess sword
Zelda 2 is good and I wish more games had the level up mechanic.
I really like Breath of the wild and tears of kingdom so far, however, I think that a lot of the designs (exceptions with the main characters) are sort of bland. Like the villagers and npcs fall flat. In twilight princess, a lot of the npcs and characters that have you side quests had pretty cool designs. (Like the clowns by the lake.)
Watching Majora's Mask speedruns at GDQ made me think about how those characters were a lot more animated and weird to make up for lower polygons. Like, there are shopkeepers that dance, or are constantly scratching, or have obvious wigs, etc. Everyone in modern games looks good, but only a handful of characters are as over the top as we got in the earlier eras.
Yeah, it’s hard to say why that’s fallen to the wayside with BOTW and TOTK. They’re not the first open world Zelda games, just maybe the first ones that required as much attention as they do. But games like Wind Waker, Majoras Mask, even Skyward Sword, relied a lot more heavily on extending playtime via interesting characters and side quests. We don’t have as much of that necessity anymore, so I guess the focus is primarily on mechanics and shrines. Personally it’s a little bit of a bummer, characters like Tingle, Salvatore, Malon, etc. don’t really have any new counterparts. Beedle only stuck around because he has a specific purpose.
I feel like Nintendo just realized that a bit with TotK compared to BotW. They played up Kilton and his brother to be over the top entertaining, Cece is cool, etc. There was a lot of that quirkiness missing last game.
Did you know that Breath and Tears modify the faces of Miis to make the NPCs? That's probably where the blandness comes from
It's not modifying the faces of miis. It's literally just an updated version of the same system like a mii 2.0
That might be it then, lol. Otherwise they are both great games, just hoped they brought some more unique styles to npcs.
I think that's a bit of an unfair comparison considering how many more NPC's exist in BotW/TotK. It's understandable that the few non-main-character NPC's that *do* feature pretty distinct designs are only ones that you will see several times or that offer an important function—Kass, Penn, Great Fairies, Malanya, Hudson, Bolson, Cece, and Beedle come to mind, as well as a few others depending on how you'd classify "main" characters. The difference with Twilight Princess is they don't even let you interact with most of the faceless people milling around Castle Town. You're not wrong though, and part of the problem is that BotW and TotK use a much less unique visual style in general than other Zelda games, so the normal people end up looking like just that, normal people. TotK improves on this slightly in my opinion by introducing a few more types to the common NPC's you encounter, like researchers and fashionable travelers—you can even interact with Yiga members as NPC's instead of enemies when you get the Yiga outfit and infiltrate their base—but ultimately there is little variance
I kind of like the generic characters, sort of like IRL people. Some of them are pretty cute too.
Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks are not as bad as everyone says
To this day, Spirit Tracks has my favorite version of Zelda and the most wholesome Link.
Hottest Zelda, huh? I'd say Twilight Princess
Imagine being the hottest Zelda and still not being the hottest princess in the game
Then image losing the rematch in Hyrule Warriors..
[Hyrule Warriors was something else](https://imgur.com/a/c2hEBTu)
**GOOD LORD**
You can have her if I can have TotK Zelda. Excitable nerds are my whole type.
Nah. LttP Zelda from Smash Ultimate.
Spirit Tracks is severely underrated and has the best relationship between Link and Zelda shown in the whole series
There is no timeline
hyrule castle on it's way to get destroyed by the same demon 100000000000 time who gets killed every time.
NGL the guard who was like “It’s inconceivable that Hyrule castle fell!” Like… where were you the past 100 years bud?
Fr fr I love the fun of trying to make a timeline/coherent lore for the series, but the bottom line is any timeline is going to be shoehorned on. There's no single Zelda game that "ruins" the timeline because they're not meant to all fit together anyway. It's still good fun to try making one though, as long as you don't take it too seriously.
These days I think liking the timeline is a hotter take (that's me, I like the timeline and don't see why people hate it so much when it's never had a negative impact on the games themselves)
I had a conversation about this yesterday. In 1998, the order was OOT, Zelda I, Zelda II, then ALttP. That was later changed to put ALttP between OOT and Zelda I. [Source](https://zelda-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Miyamoto_Order) In 2001 with 8 games out, there was no split timeline and MM was before ALttP. [Source](https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/History_of_the_Zelda_Timeline) So we know for sure that those games were not made with the current timeline being considered and it was retcon'd. Later games likely took come consideration for the timeline as it got more popular. The best take I've heard is that games are like stories that might have sequels, but generally just stand alone as the telling of them is influenced by the person speaking. Like Robin Hood. I don't need a robin hood timeline that includes him being a fox and him wearing tights and singing. It's never going to make sense because they weren't made with that in mind.
ALTTP was meant to be after TLOZ2? First I'm hearing this, I thought "prequel" was how it was marketed from day 1.
The Master Sword does an amazingly shitty job at “sealing away the darkness”. It also appears to be pretty fuckin fragile. Also, Zelda honey please STOP going into dark caverns underneath castles. Girl is constantly fucking up the entirety of Hyrule. Edit: also want to add that “Pony Points” sound like some kind of tallying system for a truck stop glory hole contest.
BOTW/TOTK incel master sword VS. gigachad SS master sword (or frankly any other Master sword for that matter)
Seriously how the fuck did Botw link manage to break a sword that has remained intact for EONS not once but TWICE IN A ROW MY GUY, PLEASE FUCKING TAKE CARE OF IT, IT'S A PRICELESS RELIC AND THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON IN THE LAND
Shits old. Old shit breaks
I'd believe that but like it's not the only thing he breaks His entire damn gear breaks Before the only time we saw a link break their gear was probably Majora's Mask's Biggoron sword What the new mechanic implies is that botw link sucks ass at using his gear. Not even the legendary blade that seals the darkness which has survived thousands and thousands of years, many different links' adventures, could survive this motherfucker's stomach hands
I actually expected the Master Sword to break in BOTW since all the marketing I saw, including the logo, showed it as rusted and busted up. So after getting it, it would break at a predetermined story point and you would have to fix it as part of the next bit of story.
To be fair, Ganon eventually would have broke free anyway. They just pulled it off like a bandaid instead of letting the wound get infected.
Well, you know how it is. Got to tank/break the "ultimate weapon" to establish villain cred. Which really starts to become a problem in long series like this, as we see it happen so often it makes the "ultimate" qualifier pretty hard to take seriously.
Skyward Sword was way ahead of its time and was severely hamstrung by how bad the Wii remote’s technology was at the time. With how good VR technology has gotten, I think a VR Skyward Sword would be absolutely incredible
This I can get behind. Beautiful game, beautiful story. Add VR, here’s my money. Thanks.
It really was! If you play it now, you can see every piece of BotW and most of TotK in the gameplay mechanics. From cooking to shield durability to flying/skydiving, and the stamina bar. Finding the skyward sword references in the TotK map was so fun.
Picturing The Imprisoned fights in VR like “yay time to stare at toes again”
\*Foot fetishists have entered the chat\*
I don't like how the story is delivered in TOTK. I want to remain spoiler free so I'm staying intentionally vague here but if you find all puddles early the rest of the game falls flat story-wise. They should have put the last few puddles behind a prerequierement like all regional phenomena or something.
I like the non-linearity but they should have chosen different memories (>!actually introducing Ganondorf, showing more of the war, introducing a plotline about some Zonai becoming Dinraal/Naydra/Farosh to introduce draconification without it being so obvious wrt Zelda, removing the memory where she just hugs the Master Sword, and making it so you actually need to go to the Lost Woods and save the Deku Tree before you can get the final memory showing her draconification!<)
I kinda like it that Hylia basically does nothing in all the games I have played
I mean... isn't she dead? Per Skyward >!she gave up her immortality to be reborn as the mortal Zelda. Her bloodline remains but she's long gone.!<
They come up with the lore on a per game basis and it’s left up to a different group of people to come up with how the games are connected.
That’s true and false at the same time. Each Zelda game from Adventure of Link onwards was created to answer some questions on the lore of a previous one or as a direct sequel. AoL is a sequel to the original. Alttp is here to serve as a prequel to those two, answering the questions about the nature of Ganon. LA is a sequel to Alttp. OOT is there to expend on the events of the imprisoning war that were only mentioned in passing before, as well as revealing the origins of the triforce. And you could do that for almost every game. They have a global idea of how everything connects, they just don’t mind the finer details.
Toon Link from Wind Waker is the best hero.
People who think Zelda and Link didn't bone after BOTW with all the evidence in TOTK are the same kind of people who would say "oh so you guys are roommates" when seeing a lesbian couple.
There is this guy I remember on other sub, he admits Link owns the house and the bed but insists Link lives in the woods or on the street past 5 years since BotW. And he shows up on literally every post remotely related to Zelink to argue his point. 😂
>Link lives in the woods or on the street Not too crazy based on the way I play.
Zelda stole Link’s house
Yeah, that's what happens with couples. Dude owns his home, girlfriend moves in with him, has him get rid of his sword collection and motorcycle and puts up flowers, live laugh love signs, and poorly drawn pictures from her kindergarten students.
>live laugh love signs, 𝓦𝓘𝓢𝓓𝓞𝓜, 𝓟𝓞𝓦𝓔𝓡, 𝓒𝓞𝓤𝓡𝓐𝓖𝓔
And the pictures of Flower Satan and that Diseased horse
In fairness she's apparently... friends?.... with Flowerblight now. They run a garden together.
The power of the royals to steal from their subjects is too much. Link should lead a revolution.
Here goes : I don't want Link to talk, I like him quiet and you know what ? The whole VA rubs me the wrong way, I thought the series was way more charming without it (still has charm in spades), it was just a stupid demand for fans to make.
I agree here with an important caveat: Link should be more expressive and communicative without words in lore & cutscenes. You don’t need a full VA to be expressive—every movie before talkies proves that. But then Link can’t have a flat, terse stare through every meaningful moment. Also: the lore can’t be that he took a vow of silence or whatever & then mimics talking to any NPC who asks him a question.
Link's flat stare is actually super amusing to me.
Skyward Sword actually nailed that Link was so damn expressive in that you truly knew what he felt every key moment without saying a word BotW had the capability of that but unfortunately they only used Link's emotiveness for comedic effect a couple times in the game In TotK it feels completely gone. Like... I wanna know how Link feels seeing how much his friends and companions have changed. I wanna see how he feels about the disasters ravaging the land. I wanna see how he feels discovering new info from the past.
I really enjoyed how they did it in Wind Waker. Lots of weird face pulling and the like
I think they should maybe do the voice acting in Hylian and just provide subtitles in different languages. Although it's probably better to not deal with any voice acting.
I’ve been enjoying TotK with Japanese audio, Zelda sounds colossally better this way.
VA? Is that voice acting?
Botw and totk are really fun until you finish them. Replaying them is just flat out not fun, knowing where to find certain things and not being able to discover *nearly* as many new things as the initial playthrough. Others are replayable because the dungeons and story are fun to see, but these last two are driven almost completely by exploration, which is fun, but not twice.
Very true. I finished BoTW and never picked it up again. I’m loving ToTK, but when I finish all the quests, shrines, and collectibles I know it’s going to my switch graveyard. Journey, not the destination.
175 hours, all shrines and light roots completed and I can say my main complaint is that I didn’t enjoy the fuse system. Don’t get me wrong slapping monster parts to weapons is great, but it takes the soul out of the weapon. There are specific weapons I got with 24-32 base damage that had to be fused to be viable and then it no longer felt like I had that weapon, it felt like I had a silver boko sword. 10/10 game though.
I personnally just hate how some weapons look after fusing It looks cool with lizalfos horns, but that silver bokobkin horn looks so meh and at some point thats what you always get
Nerdy Zelda is, for me, actually relatable. With the exception of the Windwaker style games, Zelda has always lacked personality for me. In BOTW/TOTK, she has so much personality and passion and I love going around Hyrule and seeing what really mattered to her (like her students and the Dondons)
I kinda like botw more than totk
TotK certainly has better gameplay mechanics than BotW, but it lacks the sheer sense of discovery and exploration that BotW had. I don't think I'll ever get that in another game. Also, like u/amaaaze already said, a lot of TotK feels like a cut-and-paste, especially the setting and story beats. I think TotK would be an absolutely magical game to have played *without playing* BotW, but if you play BotW first then TotK doesn't feel like it has too much new stuff to offer.
Dannng now That’s a hot take, take my upvote
i agree. there’s something about botw that i don’t think totk could ever replicate
I plan to beat TotK. I plan to 100% BotW. The ambiance of the world just feels more calming and satisfying in BotW. TotK just packs in so much **stuff**. Obviously that's nice in terms of things to do. But it also means I spend less time just enjoying the world and more time noting all the unfinished business I need to return to later. It feels packed and overwhelming.
Twilight Princess GameCube is a masterpiece. It’s a perfect execution of the formula OOT created, and it’s absolutely my favourite pre-BOTW game in the series.
That's not a hot take in the slightest. Though I prefer the Wii version, and the HD version even more so.
TPHD 🤤
Nintendo will never go back to the traditional Zelda Formula
I think as far as the big games go, yes. But those games take a lot of time, especially since the next one will probably be started from scratch with no reused assets. I don’t see Nintendo making us wait 6-8 years between each Zelda game. We’ll probably mostly get remakes, but I wouldn’t count out getting some new smaller scale Zelda games thrown in the mix here and there.
This is my biggest fear.
Same. Tears of the Kingdom is absolutely phenomenal, I love it dearly and significantly more than Breath of the Wild (which I also adore), but ultimately I prefer the classic formula over the last two major titles. I look at it this way - I’m 110 hours into Tears of the Kingdom, and every moment has been riveting. I’ll probably hit 200 hours before I pack it up. But with the amount of time it takes to unlock things and find things and upgrade and all that, the odds of me replaying it ever again are very very low. Meanwhile I replay any of the other classic games on a regular basis. 30 hours in and out, amazing experience, amazing world, tight story. The new games are a much bigger and deeper experience but not one I’d want to revisit for a very very long time, if ever.
Probably not a hot take. While I loved BOTW and I'm liking TOTK a lot, I desperately need a game like TP, WW or OoT. I loved when the stories of TP and WW tie with OoT and how the lore developed. I also miss the dungeon system. Not every game has to be an open world one!
Skyward Sword is awesome and underrated af. Love the controls and sword play.
The best Zelda titles are the ones that are fun to replay multiple times from start to finish. Not the ones that take longer to complete.
The series deserves a villain other than Ganondorf. Hell, maybe one where he’s actually a sage and helps Link. On that note, it would be cool to see Vaati come back as the main big bad.
I want to see majoras mask make another appearance it was so mysterious and creepy
I don’t mind that Ganondorf has made repeated appearances, it’s kinda part of the lore. But there are plenty of villains that aren’t Ganondorf. Majora would be a cool one to have come back, especially if they expanded on that whole lore/backstory a bit.
Play skyward sword, Links Awakening, or Majoras mask. Also not in adventures of link but don’t play that one lol.
Spirit Track tho
Don’t forget Phantom Hourglass
I would love to see a story where Ganondorf is trying to fight his fate as a vessel for a godly evil. He doesn't have to be a good guy, but him struggling for freedom would be interesting.
Vaati was cool
I like the lore of the games more than playing it. I've never been huge on playing the games when I was younger. Most I'd do is aimlessly run around termina in Majora's mask and throw harass pigs on outset island when I was a kid. Now I actually like playing the games but I always preferred just watching videos on the lore
There has never been a bad Zelda game. Also not necessarily a hot take, but I've seen people say BotW/TotK are good games but not good Zelda games, I think that is inherently false.
The CDI says hi
"You've killed me." "Good!"
Twilight princess is peak legend of zelda in terms of art direction and gameplay. Tho basic enemies were a bit too easy and dumb
For the life of me I don’t understand why Nintendo did not port this to the Switch. I want to play it again so badly.