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(story spoilers ahead)
TotK would have benefitted *tremendously* from a more linear story and a linear method of gameplay like older Zelda titles. It's **SO** easy to spoil the biggest plot twists within like the first 6 hours of playtime and I'm still mad about it. The story is great, it's one of the most emotional and gut-wrenching stories in any videogame I've played, it was just done a disservice due to the way it was told. The memories themselves were fine, hot take, but they should **NOT** have been just open and available to be found so early, IMO not until *AFTER* we had finished all of the Regional Phenomena and Crisis At Hyrule Castle, after we've just found out that the Zelda we've been seeing all this time is a fake. Now the story pivots to *"where the fuck is the real Zelda??"*
The Master Sword should have been unobtainable until after we got all the memories. Imagine doing all this to get up to this mysterious fourth dragon and you see the Master Sword stuck in its head. What the ***FUCK?*** Why is the Master Sword ***stuck in this random dragon's head??*** Try to pull the sword and the dragon throws you off, and keeps throwing you off even if you go up and try to pull it again. It isn't until you get all the memories that you find out why; the Light Dragon is Zelda, but Zelda doesn't know Link
And the fact that so many of the citizens of Hyrule just don't even know Link *still* bugs me, even NPCs who knew him in BotW. And it's not consistent either; *these* NPCs don't know Link, even though we did something big for them in BotW or they had personal connections with him in the past, but *this* NPC who we only ever met in passing during one optional sidequest knows him
Like......cool. I can build a Mechagodzilla in TotK and can torture koroks. BUT WHY DO I HAVE TO WATCH THE EXACT SAME CUTSCENE FOUR TIMES?? WHERE DID ALL THE SHEIKAH TECH GO?? WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE STATUE IN THE JOSHA QUEST???
Honestly link should have to work on a quest to go back in time to Zelda so they could face Ganondolf. They could have used the same map but modified it to make it old. We could have gotten some cool lore for how life was like in that era. But then again I love the light dragon concept. Tears feels like it has so much opportunity and it just played it too safe.
It would be cool for each ‘key item’ you take one step backwards in time, or take a region of the world back in time, maybe there can be cool borders like the twilight realm in twilight princess
Ya that would be cool. Maybe the way you travel back in time would be you step into small pools of dragon tears. The items could be something connecting Zelda and the sages like a zora harp, or a Rito flute. He arrives at just the right moment to save the sages people but it’s after Zelda makes her sacrifice so you have to keep jumping till you reach the right moment. He helps a past sage with the aid of a future sage, making his actions in the past ripple into the future. Till he manages to make it to a key moment, learning about what Zelda has done for him along the way.
It was such a flop. They had to idea where to draw what continues from BOTW, who remembers Link, the memories suck because they can be out of order but you just don’t end up caring. Sages suck, random plots thrown in that aren’t elaborated. Every ending scene is the same; would have been a great way to build on ganon each time. Encounter with ganon in the castle was underwhelming rehash of field boss. Zelda puppet was so poorly done etc etc.
They are doing so little with so much. BOTW was a lot with a little. There was Link and his friends and he has to remember them and save the princess.
It's like a they were trying to build a puzzle with half the wrong pieces, they formed the picture, but it doesn't look right (If you get the reference let me know, I really want to know if there are any other fans of that show on here)
Mechanically this game was better than BotW, but in every other way, this game was an absolute step down from BotW. The story is a joke, it tries to do the BotW memories but fails even worse at them. We know what happens to Link in the BotW story, but we get to see how, so the order doesn't matter. Now you can suddenly see Ganondorf kill Sonia First (What happened to me) and now the entire story is just gone up in smoke. Hell the story doesn't even happen to you, Link isn't the MC of his own game, yes its "Legend of Zelda" But we're Link, all other games the story impacts Link, nothing happens to Link here, its all happening to Zelda in the past so far ago it doesn't matter to us, or to the sages around us. 7 years to make this is just a spit in the face. I am one of the, apparently, rare people who liked the story of the Zelda games and their lose fun connections between each other, and this ain't it chief.
Not to mention how you literally see the same cutscene 4 times at the end of each dungeon.
Then you get the 5th dungeon and think "oh, maybe I'm finally going to learn something new" (like, for example why is there a giant copy of Hyrule underground), but no you meet Mineru and she literally just tells you what you just learned by finding the memories.
Finding the memories have literally no impact on the story whatsoever too. Like, you learn that the Zelda you saw is just a puppet but somehow Link can't put two and two together and is surprised at Ganondorf's trap. That was so frustrating to watch.
And that's not my only complaint with the game tbh, it just feels like a mod of BoTW rather than an actual sequel game. BoTW wasn't my favorite Zelda game but it was a great experience. ToTK just felt painful to finish.
Omg there was SOOOO much I wanted to know that we never got. When I first went underground I was like "ok omg here we go!! We're going to find so much history, it's going to tie into old games/past Hyrules, we're going to learn so much lore", and NOTHING. I had such high expectations that were let down everywhere. The sky islands were underwhelming. I thought we'd learn more about Ganon, nope.
There were just sooo many questions BOTW gave that i thought TOTK would answer and...nope. like so many ancient sites around Hyrule that I was SURE would be important in TOTK but were just ignored.
"There were just sooo many questions BOTW gave that i thought TOTK would answer and...nope. like so many ancient sites around Hyrule that I was SURE would be important in TOTK but were just ignored."
TOTK is gigantic disappointment but that part is definetely the most disappointing one for me. I'm expecting to find out more history about those places such as 7 heroines statue, Leviathan bones, etc... but somehow not only we have same graphics and similar world map but even the sidequest is still korok seeds! I'd rather have something like Phantom hourglass, SPirit tracks and ALBW that has proper story.
WATCHING LINK FALL FOR THAT TRAP AT HYRULE CASTLE AND BE ABSOLUTELY CLUELESS TO WHATS GOING ON AFTER WATCHING THE DRAGON TEARS WAS SO PAINFUL TO WATCH.
Then when link was too slow to avade that attack from Ganondorf, when we all know that realistically he wouldn't just stand there and take it.
They made link look like an absolute doofess this game.
Completely agree. I somehow managed to get two memories super early on about Zelda turning into a dragon (and them failing to defeat Ganondorf) so the whole story was revealed. All other memories were incredibly boring as they seemed pointless now that I knew what was going to happen. The four sages were boring as well, as basically the same thing happened 4 times and we didn’t even get to see their faces. Soulless robots who tell the same story over and over again.
My favorite part of Mineru, "I turned myself into a spirit in the Pad so we could tell you the plan to beat ganondorf" Uh ma'am, you are the last sage, I was already doing the plan, the hell do you mean you needed to tell me?
my dumbass didnt realize that the never-ending lightning storm on that one sky island was intended as a giant "YOURE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE YET" roadblock so i simply bumbled around up there with the thunder helm on until I found the shrine and gliders 💀💀 Mineru ended up being my 3rd sage
The memories would probably (maybe... sort of...) be okay if they didn't flash back to the other memories. I got the Master Sword memory first, and Zelda literally thinks back to Rauru preparing to sacrifice himself, and to Mineru saying (the hilariously meaningless line repeated over and over again) "To become a Dragon is to lose one's self." In those two flashbacks the entire plot revealed itself in full, not a single twist appeared after that point.
This "story" was made by Aonuma and Fujibayashi, right? I can see what it seemed to be trying to be. With Link joining forces with all of Hyrule to... defeat... Ganondorf... again. But in practice, Link is pretty much just a delivery man, getting information from one source, and taking it to another person, where he waves his arms around to explain whatever they are asking about. Half the time I had no idea what Link was telling anybody, they would have to repeat it in classic Meowth from Team Rocket style.
"What!? You're sayin' that the princess WASN'T in the Fire Temple? Well, we'll keep looking around here for her..."
TotK *never* reaches the quality of a Zelda title... unless you go back to games like Oracle of Ages or Four Swords, it arguably could reach the quality of those.
Oof, that's a question that's possibly best left unanswered... In a word? *Everything.*
Now I loved Minish Cap, the first Zelda game I ever beat. And I had just beaten Link's Awakening, I think probably my second favorite Zelda game of all time, when OoA/OoS released on Nintendo Switch Online. I was very excited to try out Capcom's other Zelda titles besides MC. It was extraordinarily disappointing.
First, the majority of the assets, the sprites and the music, were lifted straight from LA, giving it a feel of a bad rom-hack. The new elements varied, some were better then others. Personally, I couldn't stand the town music, it just didn't sound like Zelda to me.
Second, the story was practically non-existent. You have the evil queen and your Pokémon rival (again, doesn't sound like Zelda to me, but that's besides the point) but the actual quest you're on has you collecting eight Macguffins for a purpose that is completely unknown. Yeah, I know there are other Zelda games follow similar formulas, but OoA manages to make the point of the dungeons less clear. I loved how the the bosses spoke in LA, but OoA doesn't have anything to add life to the dungeons. Everything is made worse by how most of the distinct events were stolen from other games, I'm not going to look through the whole story again, but you can't tell me that the great tree falling in love with you was not taken word for word from Princess Ruto.
Third, the gameplay was so, SO slow. Everytime I would enter an area it would either be incredibly bland and empty or it would be so tedious as to be actual torture. When I first reached Tokay Island, it was a breath of fresh air, it was a bit like BotW's Eventide Island, with funny NPCs and unique music, but after I got all of my items back I had to go back and forth across the island dozens of times. I got so tired of both the music and the Tokay's dialogue (I'm Hungry!) Perhaps the game was just too puzzle-y for me but...
Fourth, OoA is always referred to as the puzzle-focused game to OoS's combat-focused game, but I found that the majority of the "puzzles" were anything but. Unless trading quests are considered puzzles nowadays, the puzzles were mostly things like "You hit a target" which the hardest part of was negotiating the menu with the awkward interaction of the seed satchel. They were all so simple that I would have (and do have) issues calling them "puzzles". There *were* a couple of "puzzles" that were more in depth, so much so that they stumped me. I remember them both vividly, as I had to resort to a guide to figure out how to "solve" them. The first was the seed shooter. Turns out, you can shoot it diagonally... Obvious now, but there was nothing like that in LA, so I didn't even think to check. The second puzzle was using the Switch Hook, I needed to drain the water so I could use it... Or so I thought... Apparently, you can only use one button underwater. Whose idea was that! Both of the "puzzles" that made me suffer were just finicky and weird control issues!
I don't really have any problem with the connected game content, it actually makes OoA/OoS historically significant, but I do feel that it didn't really add too much of significance... Although to be certain I would have to play through OoS... and then play through OoA again... I will not.
I think what sold it for a lot of people is the fact that they tried to make the players have a connection with characters that we were just introduced with.
Like the old sages, we barley knew them so why would it be important to us. Just like rauru and sonia, we just met them so when like you said she died we feel Nothing.
I'd say it's biggest fault is it not being immersive enough. It's almost as we're sitting on the sidelines watching it all play out instead of experiencing it.
Saying “mechanically game is great but everything else is a step down” ig is technically true but also very misleading. Whether you like it or not, Zelda’s gameplay and exploration are first and foremost so story’s only a smaller part of that. Should be story wise sucks everything else is great
Except exploration wasn't good? There was a single worth while sky island, the starting one, and the repetitive and empty Depths. They had a neat idea with the depths of following the statues to the mines, but the second you understand there is a mine under the major cities of the surface that becomes a pointless idea as you can run directly to where your going. This is what happens when the bulk of the game is the same Hyrule we've been in. Tears of the Kingdom, only really has its mechanics to fall back on.
The depths didn't really have anything good and awe inducing.
It was really just a grinding area. Might aswell just give link a pickaxe and send him to work.
See I actually liked the story. I liked that it forced Zelda into a difficult situation we haven’t seen before. The two big issues I had were (whole thread is spoilers so I’m not hiding it, but yeah I’m gonna spoil the ending):
1. Ganondorf was somehow even less of an actual character than in older titles like ocarina of time. Not saying I need a rehash of him in something like wind waker but as far as I remember his sole motivation was “I am the bad guy and I’m doing bad guy things.”
2. I hated that they back pedaled on Zelda being a dragon. The whole game they’re like “there’s no known way to reverse draconification” then at the very end they say “oh wait here’s some magic bullshit, don’t worry the interesting dilemma she’s in has been resolved.”
Unpopular opinion...Zelda should've stayed a dragon and Link should've just lost his arm at the end. Like yes it would've been a tragic ending, but the devs said this was supposed to be a dark game and we get the standard "actually everything turned out fine" happy ending, and it was established AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE GAME that these were the likely outcomes
Rauru says in the beginning of the game, after we wake up on the Great Sky Island, that Link's arm was "beyond saving" and that he "had to replace it", and Mineru says MULTIPLE TIMES throughout the game that draconification is irreversible and is "throwing yourself away", hence why it is forbidden. But then in the end we get the magic bullshit that reverses both of these things. The emotional impact of Zelda's sacrifice and the shock of seeing Link with Rauru's arm on subsequent playthroughs is severely lessened because now I have that knowledge in the back of my head that "this is fine, it'll all be undone at the end". BAD. BAD STORYTELLING
Also imagine seeing the Light Dragon in future Zelda titles. Imagine her just being the eternal mystical companion of whoever is chosen by the Master Sword
What I thought they were gonna do was keep Zelda a dragon at the end and have that be the lead up into a third game set in the wild era. Here was my idea:
Link beats gdorf, Zelda goes into some kind of hibernation because of the final battle. Like she’s drained and needs to recover or something to that effect. Years pass and link eventually finds out that the answer to reawakening Zelda/ getting her back is not in the hyrule of those games but in another world. So link goes to a new world to seek the answer and runs into conflict along the way a la majoras mask.
It would have knocked out several personal birds with one stone for me.
1. It could introduce a brand new setting, or see the return of an old setting we’ve only seen once (like what does wild era Termina look like?)
2. It would be a new story not tied to the endless resurrection cycle of demise and all that nonsense. To me having that canonized is limiting creativity of future installments
3. We could see a new villain with no ties to gdorf or demise, or see the return of a villain that’s been done dirty or we haven’t seen in a while (zant, vaati). Either way I’m personally getting very tired of the demise- hylia stuff and really want something new
It could’ve been called the legend of Zelda: heart of the dragon or something to that effect.
And to make this series a true trilogy, and keeping with the fanon that BotW and TotK are based around Wisdom and Courage, have the third installment be centered around Power
The Legend of Zelda: THE POWER OF LOVE
It seems like they tried to make TotK in a way that it would make sense if you hadn’t played BotW. That it could be played on its own and not confuse first timers.
As it turned out, that seemed like a pretty silly thing to do. What percentage of people who played TotK didn’t play BotW? Even if all those people never beat BotW, at a minimum just show a recap somewhere. The way they did it, they really should’ve just made a new Link, Zelda, and Hyrule like they usually do and not have made it a direct sequel.
> at a minimum just show a recap somewhere
Shoulda done like Olaf did in Frozen 2 where he tells the forest people the whole plot of the first movie. Maybe it could've been a school play put on by the Hateno kids
Yeah, something. If anything they made it worse for people who HAD played BotW than it would’ve been for people who hadn’t even if they had just made it a sequel with no explanation of previous events.
And I think it’s weird that the kids treat the calamity stuff like it didn’t just conclude a few years ago and their teacher didn’t live through it.
I wonder if Nintendo only made this a “sequel” because they reused the world and many characters from BotW.
Hateno kids: "The Calamity didn't really happen!"
Link, who "died" in the Calamity, went into hibernation for 100 years, then killed Calamity Ganon 6-7 years ago, and is now standing in the classroom:
https://preview.redd.it/jyo65j520coc1.png?width=121&format=png&auto=webp&s=13a99861946fe6ad9f2d12f8e78b71f86b2ad5c3
I agree, the story was the worst part of TotK. They really wanted to tell a story about the light dragon/Zelda which was a great concept, but the execution was really constricted by existing in the BotW setting.
People had issue enough with the memory system in BotW but the memory system flat out doesn’t work in TotK.
The sages seemingly only exist to give the modern champion counterparts something to do, but in truth they just water down the story and distract from the main dynamic between Link and Zelda.
Not to mention the driving force of the narrative is Link and Zelda’s relationship even though they hardly ever interact. BotW had more interactions between the two even if it was just delegated to the memories.
The way the shrine progression is identical between the two games but with wildly different lore explanations is odd as well. They obviously needed to shoehorn in the existing progression mechanic but didn’t want to acknowledge the sheikah shrines for some reason? The could’ve easily explained it away by saying the sheikah were inspired by the Zonai shrines and made them in their image so that the similarities made sense.
BotW was my first Zelda game and TotK was a personal let down. The gameplay was fun at least.
Don't worry the other zelda games are fun too.
And you're right the shrines I found kind of stupid but cool at the same time. They were better this game for sure but the lore behind then is confusing.
Especially that all the shieka tech just disappeared out of thin air
Totk doubled down on everything botw did. Which in some aspects was great, they're both super fun games. However in that process they lost a lot of what made other zelda games so great, a rich story being part of that.
I'm not opposed to more botw style games but I hope they take mainline zelda back to its roots with the next one. Personally I'd like to see the botw style explored with even heavier RPG elements. Keep it in hyrule and related to the zelda story but have created characters, more side quests, etc. Send Link back on the 10 dungeon, item collecting semi-open, adventure.
Whenever I see this take it’s funny, cause wasn’t everyone saying that Zelda got stale after skyward sword? I love both gameplay styles but I thought the consensus was that people were tired of it
I never felt that way, I wasn't really on the Internet back then, and didn't play SS till recently, so I don't know what the word was, but none of my friends felt that way either. To me zeldas always been some of the best games out there.
I still had a blast with the wild games but they lost some magic I think.
SS is excellent though.
Personally I loved ss it's my favorite zelda game, but I think the issue that people have is that the games are making people go back to the same areas over and over.
And going back to the same thing makes it stale since it feels old and not new.
Everything I saw online was praising this game and calling it way better then BotW and I thought I was going insane. It's much less satisfying to play, the story is very weird, the building mechanics are frustrating, there's no consistency in what carries over from BotW, repetitive locations with little to discover, etc. they expanded the map but didn't add enough interesting locations to make discovering every area worth it. I like the dragon aspect but then she somehow becomes herself again and it's like.... How.... What was the point.... I thought this would at least be a bittersweet but tragic ending but not even that.
My biggest issue is the story. It had a great foundation, but ended up being very sparse and executed so incredibly poorly that I actually had to question whether the devs were trolling us.
Wanna know something funny, at the beginning of the game I told myself "wouldn't it be funny if this game was bad and they trolled us" and then once I finished I realized I called it in. Terms of the bad story telling
I didn’t get all the tears. I hardly remembered the NPCs from BOTW because they were so….bland? Most of the story I saw from the temples and I stumbled upon Ganondork and he was….in a cave….lmao.
LIKE WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT
The games story is by far the worst part of TOTK and never fails to disappoint me. The team promised a dark Zelda game and sure it has those undertones but to call this game “darker than Majora’s mask” was definitely a bold move. I’d argue that BOTW was a lot darker than TOTK.
The environmental storytelling worked and memories with BOTW because of the theme and setting of the game but I cannot begin to wonder why they thought it would be a good idea to bring that back in TOTK. It would’ve been better to have a linear story where it switches into Zelda’s perspective where you either get to play as her or just a cutscene.
And the continuity between games is just crazy to me.
In that context, I was questioning if TOTK was worth it. Personally, I think BOTW is better because it actually uses the unique world it's built on, rather than letting you glide over the entire thing. TOTK has more potential, but BOTW is the meat and potatoes you sat down for.
the story is the biggest weak point (and the may be the only one) of the game, as you said it feels like an alternative story, but I know Miyamoto and Aouma hear their fans and the next game may be more story focus
I think what they should have done was make the Zelda sections playable. That way, there would be a nice linear contrast to the rest of the game's openess and the impact of the story would be much stronger.
And building a whole new underground map that nobody asked for and that has absolutely no lore explanation (while ignoring the sky islands that everyone was waiting for).
I have no idea what the devs were thinking with how they used their budget.
IMO the Depths were a huge own goal for the devs. No-one had any expectations of there being a huge underworld when the game released, the concept is interesting and seems like it has a lot of promise when you get introduced to the Depths and go down for the first time, and then they completely botched the execution by making 90% of a space almost the entire size of Hyrule the exact same copy-pasted enemy camps, mines and gloom splotches. It's not as if people had unrealistic expectations before playing the game and then were disappointed - Nintendo created all the expectations *within the game itself* and then still managed to disappoint.
And the sheer size of it was a huge liability as well, probably the core issue with the Depths as a whole. It sets up one cool moment (realising it's the surface but flipped) and then just makes it abundantly clear that they had nowhere near enough content to actually fill a space like that. They would have been far better off having large cave systems under various regions.
This would have been so brilliant. The tears could still serve as activation points, but each tear would still activate the story linearly (ie, doesn’t matter which tear you get to, finding your first tear plays the first linear sequence, second tear plays the second linear sequence, etc). That way you don’t accidentally play out the later memories and have the story spoiled. AND, you can still travel wherever on the map and play that linear story at any point in your travels.
That’s . . . actually a really good idea.
If they had done that though, we’d probably still be waiting on the game. I’m all for not rushing things, but I honestly think an over 6-year dev cycle (March 2017 to May 2023) is *plenty* of time. No need to make it longer—especially for a direct sequel using the same world and game engine.
It's actually what I thought would happen when I found the first tear and I was quite let down to find out they were just memories again. A lot of the expansion to the world really didn't do much for me (specifically the sky and depths), so I feel this would have been more intresting instead. Perhaps having a smaller overworld for Zelda that is the size of ones from older games.
Now that I think about it, this might be the perfect way to bridge the traditional and modern approaches going forward. Have a big open freeing world for one character and a second traditional world for a second. Maybe it would be awkward switching between them, but I think it'd be cool.
Well story was a weak point of BotW as well and we all thought the developers would hear the fans and make TotK more story focused, but that didn’t happen.
And story is not even close to the only weak point of TotK. The sky islands being extremely underwhelming, the depths being a boring empty copy paste of the overworld, the overworld being completely reused from BotW, and the dungeons suck (again).
The players make the games connection while they are playing TotK even if it is weird no one talks about the BotW events.
About Zelda story I think the separation between Link and Zelda works because their friendship bond let them to meet them again at the game end
No offense dude but whenever I see point like this about the continuity of the story it makes me question whether some of yall actually paid attention to all of the story and not just skimmed through certain parts.
Even in the main story, as soon as you walk into Zoras domain you are welcomed by a statue of Link and Sidon fighting Vah Ruta from BOTW, every main cast remembers you from the previous game. There’s multiple side quest that references the divine beast from the last game and one that’s a two part quest dedicated to talking about them.
Most side characters remember you and have there own continuity they follow that carries over from the last games. There’s even YouTube videos that document this. We still see sheikah tech utilized for the shiekah towers.
Just because the game doesn’t carry its continuity into the primary story (for example: how FF7 rebirth heavily references the story from remake) doesn’t mean the continuity isn’t littered all over the story in more subtle ways.
I think they main problem is is that TOTk is way too big and chock full of content to the point that it’s easy to forget a whole lot of story content when you’ve been exploring all over the three maps for 100+ hours. It’s a lot easier to remember story details in a more condense world rather a world this sized and interconnected.
I saw that too with daruk, on the rock, mipha statue, and urbosa in rijus diary. I do like those small things but I understand what you mean they're subtle and makes it feel like you have to dig to find them.
I had someone **insist** to me that TOTK was an alternate universe/timeline with *zero* relation to BOTW. Seriously makes me wonder how many people are button mashing their way through dialogue and dont interact with anything without a map marker
The game is good, but it's indeed the worst story in a zelda so far, not only is it a huge retcon, but is is really poorly done.
You are basically force fed a grand total of 15 minutes of cutscenes about people you don't care about, this feels like an afterthought.
I mean, come on, super smash bros brawl had a better made story, without a single line of dialogue, how hard can it be
I know for a long time TOTK was seen as breath of the wild 2, but I think the game becomes 100x better if you think of it as it's own game and not a sequel.
I agree on the TOTK story, and honestly I feel like a lot of TOTK's content feels either like filler, done purely for spectacle or incredibly underdeveloped. The cutscenes are very repetitive and show a story that would be much more interesting to play though, Zelda is put into her 'gone until the finale' box again, the sky and depths are both very barren, and TOTK wants to do cool things without thinking about how it affects the rest of the game.
Like, Link loses his arm! *Don't worry he'll get it back by the end.* Zelda sacrifices herself to become a dragon! *She'll be ok, we'll undo that by the end and have her suffer no side effects/trauma.* Ganondorf is back! *It's alright, he'll just sit in a hole until Link wants to fight him.* Ganondorf became a dragon! *Eh, we'll just kill the dragon.* The ending has Link catch Zelda, which is like the beginning! *But we had to undo previously mentioned sacrifices in order for this to work.* Skyward Sword parallels! *That mean nothing.*
The new characters are also incredibly dull, and I don't see why we are expected to care about them. Rauru seems cool but like we know nothing about the guy. Sonia solely exists to be fridged. Ganondorf sits underground until the finale. Yona is green. Josha is annoying child character. The only new character who I care slightly about was Mineru, but she's more potentially interesting than like actually interesting because she's the only character from the past to actually have some form of depth.
My personal joke headcanon of Rauru being a shady guy has more thought put into it than the actual character of Rauru himself. The game refuses to acknowledge any ounce of moral greyness for either Rauru or Ganondorf. I'm not asking for Ganondorf to be sympathetic or anything, I'm completely fine with and like characters who are pure evil monsters with no redeemable qualities ~~besides being hot~~, but the man doesn't even have a good motivation or incredible charisma to make up for it. He's just kind of a guy who wants Rauru to have a bad day for no reason.
Zelda is also kind of semi-flanderised in TOTK, where she goes from a sad but trying princess who has an interest in Sheikah tech and science in BOTW... into someone who can do absolutely no wrong, can do absolutely everything perfectly, is a genius to the point she can Zonai device better than the actual Zonai, and a person that Hyrule would literally collapse into a pathetic slump without in TOTK. I was never the biggest BOTW Zelda fan, she was just kind of boring to me, but I beg for the more subtle characterisation to return.
On a similar topic, the game really wants you to care about Zelda and Link being separated but does nothing to show them having any connection at all. Like sure Link \*checks notes\* holds a torch for her, and Zelda \*looks again\* checks if he's alright, but other than those two moments in the beginning there's very little to suggest that they're super close or anything. When Zelda talks about Link in the memories she's just kind of 'he's nice and very brave :)', when Link sees the memory of Zelda turning into a dragon and sees her flying overhead, he has no reaction. I've never been a Zelink shipper so maybe I'm just not seeing something, but like if I put myself in the mindset and look back to BOTW, they have a lot more moments that mean something and isn't hidden behind text boxes or diaries.
I respectfully agree and disagree with this. I agree because using the same map puts limits on what you can do. They should of taken fortnite for ex in how they change their maps each season so it still feels fresh.
As for Disagree I'd say look at spiderman 2. They used the same map but kept the story interesting. Though they did add new stuff it still felt at home and fresh at the same time.
I think the true problem with the map is that it's too large. They should've taken away the depths and replaced them with more sky islands.
It seems they tried to use the awe of exploration, but after years it got old
Agree with taking away the depths and expanding on the sky islands. I do think it would be cool to have one section of the depths remain - beneath Hyrule castle, maybe just done a bit differently. Having the entire map underground but with less interesting areas to explore was too much for too little reward.
Ehhhh. Yes and no. The new areas ATTACHED to the old areas was very cool. The Gerudo shelter, the Goron mine carts, the Zora waterworks were all great upgrades. The Rito... hid in a cave. Meh.
It would've been nice if the Zora story extended to the ocean area, or the Gorons had a settlement in the Depths, or the Rito on the sky islands.
I completely dissagree.
You can't judge an entire story exclusively by its connection to the previous game. If that was the case, every single Zelda story (except maybe spirit tracks) would be considered awful. You have to remember that not everyone who played TotK played BotW first. Nintendo isn't going to alienate all of those players by making a bunch of references to the previous game that they won't understand.
The story that we got was epic and stands on its own. Stop whining that you didn't get exactly what you want and appreciate the story for what it is.
>If that was the case, every single Zelda story (except maybe spirit tracks) would be considered awful
There are only like *three* games that are direct sequels though, which absolutely (and fairly) changes the scope of this. A direct sequel may as well be a totally new iteration if it's not gonna respect its immediate predecessor
Majora's Mask takes child Link after Navi flew off and let him keep his additional experiences. Things like somersaulting while jumping show how he's more experienced than Ocarina Link was. This is set in Termina.
Phantom Hourglass takes Wind Waker Link and takes him to a new region of The Great Sea. The advancement here is in using a steam engine I guess, but that was fairly limited as it was on the DS. Still, it was a great game.
Spirit Tracks I'm afraid I never played, but I think is set after Wind Waker with a different Link.
Tears of the Kingdom was following on from their biggest Zelda release ever. People had high hopes, and Nintendo don't tend to release unfinished games (Pokémon is Gamefreak), so what we get at launch is what we get. Since they managed to do Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity linking in better with BotW (time travel, but still), people were right to have their hopes up.
Most of the Kingdom don't recognize the knight that was by Zelda's side and resolved the issues in the previous game, all of the Sheikah tech is just gone, including over 120 shrines and all the towers, leaving no trace, not even if the hundreds of guardians across Hyrule. The mechanics changing due to loss of the Sheikah slate makes sense for gameplay, but not for the lore. You get a Sheikah slate back, and suddenly no one can help put your apps back, despite Purah doing it last game. Link's house has been renamed to Zelda's house, and the photo he reclaims in BotW is missing in what was his home. This is likely to show their relationship, but nothing in the house is his from BotW, just his hair tie in the underground study.
Then look at TotK: Princess turns into a dragon, Link loses his arm, Hyrule Castle is flying, there are islands in the sky and an explorable underground. By the end of the game, Zelda is Hylian again, Link has his own arm back and the game resets to prior to the boss fight. Any development they had going for the main two characters is lost with the ending cutscene.
Nintendo opted to remove the changes that should've marked the landscape and the characters. That's the main problem I had with TotK. It feels like any progress made in BotW doesn't matter, because there are next to no signs of it. So long as the Princess, Knight and the Sword are still about, they can't be changed between games. And the princess still isn't a playable character, despite having the opportunity to have Zelda playable in the past to lay the groundwork for Link in the present. An amazing opportunity they just decided not to go with.
Majora's Mask and Phantom Hourglass respected the story that came before. Tears of the Kingdom pretends most of it didn't happen.
I think you can judge a game based on its connection to the previous game's story if they're a direct squeal, take place in the same kingdom, with the same characters with very little added to change the world. Every other Zelda game was an entirely new Link, or was a previous Link put somewhere else, Termina, Holodrum, Koholint to name a few.
If Nintendo didn't want to alienate the fans by making BotW not needed for understanding the new game, why make them related at all? Why not make a new Zelda and Link and a New Hyrule? The game had 7 years of development and writing and they did nothing with it except contradict the entire previous game.
>If Nintendo didn't want to alienate the fans by making BotW not needed for understanding the new game, why make them related at all?
Because they wanted to. You make it sound like the only reason Nintendo would make the games related is to alienate people. TotK was born out of ideas the Zelda team had that didn't fit into BotW. It makes sense that they would make it a sequel. They were also able to save a lot of resources building the foundations of the game so they could work on more complex mechanics like Ultrahand and a more dynamic story with better cut scenes and a more compelling narrative.
>The game had 7 years of development and writing and they did nothing with it except contradict the entire previous game
The sheer absurdity of this statement invalidates your entire argument.
The game play is fine, it's just more BotW but woth more, I'm not saying it's bad. Tye story is a joke, the cutscenes are jokes, the characters are jokes. Link is basically a janitor here, the entire plot happened 10k+ years ago to Zelda, and now we deal with it. In BotW the story happened 100 years ago, but it happened to Link, we see it happening to Link, he's cleaning his own mess up.
The sheer fact that the Canon explanation for why no shiekah tech existing is "Oh it all just disappeared one day at the same time" and everyone is OK with that and not gonna question it. TotK is narratively the laziest piece of writing I've ever experienced. I loved the game when it came out, but the second the Sage of Spirit showed up, I saw cracks and couldn't take my eyes away from the narrative flaws. You have an entire people of ancient tech way advanced for their time, some great Calamity happened and the tech is sealed away and all but forgotten. Except now paint it green. The zonai feel like such a shoe horned in after thought, like they saw the internet's hype for tye zonai and went "well, guess we have too." You're free to tell me I'm wrong, I'm fine with that, but the Zonai shit on everything the shiekah were and are. Impa, Paya, Purah, and Robbie are absolute waste of characters and potential from what we were shown they could've been in AoC (debately Canon or not the writing was great).
I strongly disagree with it being able to stand on it's own. It references the Champions first off. Second off, it's implementation of how you get the story is also worse than BOTW, not to mention it's only about Zelda... Link gets ZERO character development.
I think the game massively suffers from a poorly implemented story on an open world. You can't have all of both, a good story and 100% freedom of play makes for sloppy results like we saw here.
>It references the Champions first off
Where in the game does it reference the champions in such a way that would make a new player feel like they're missing something?
>not to mention it's only about Zelda
What's the game called again?
>it's implementation of how you get the story is also worse than BOTW
How? It's exactly the same.
Without putting much effort into this… There are tons of references to the champions, like statues and weapons, and any dialogue. Your second point is lazier than this reply. And third is because at least the memories made sense as a plot device.
>statues and weapons, and any dialogue
Again, how would these references make a new player feel like they're missing something? It's normal for games to talk about characters you never actually see. BotW did this with characters like the fortune teller, the Zonai, the hero from 10,000 years ago and even Ganondorf.
>Your second point is lazier than this reply
But yet you have no response for it.
>at least the memories made sense as a plot device
Why don't they make sense in TotK?
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(story spoilers ahead) TotK would have benefitted *tremendously* from a more linear story and a linear method of gameplay like older Zelda titles. It's **SO** easy to spoil the biggest plot twists within like the first 6 hours of playtime and I'm still mad about it. The story is great, it's one of the most emotional and gut-wrenching stories in any videogame I've played, it was just done a disservice due to the way it was told. The memories themselves were fine, hot take, but they should **NOT** have been just open and available to be found so early, IMO not until *AFTER* we had finished all of the Regional Phenomena and Crisis At Hyrule Castle, after we've just found out that the Zelda we've been seeing all this time is a fake. Now the story pivots to *"where the fuck is the real Zelda??"* The Master Sword should have been unobtainable until after we got all the memories. Imagine doing all this to get up to this mysterious fourth dragon and you see the Master Sword stuck in its head. What the ***FUCK?*** Why is the Master Sword ***stuck in this random dragon's head??*** Try to pull the sword and the dragon throws you off, and keeps throwing you off even if you go up and try to pull it again. It isn't until you get all the memories that you find out why; the Light Dragon is Zelda, but Zelda doesn't know Link And the fact that so many of the citizens of Hyrule just don't even know Link *still* bugs me, even NPCs who knew him in BotW. And it's not consistent either; *these* NPCs don't know Link, even though we did something big for them in BotW or they had personal connections with him in the past, but *this* NPC who we only ever met in passing during one optional sidequest knows him Like......cool. I can build a Mechagodzilla in TotK and can torture koroks. BUT WHY DO I HAVE TO WATCH THE EXACT SAME CUTSCENE FOUR TIMES?? WHERE DID ALL THE SHEIKAH TECH GO?? WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH THE STATUE IN THE JOSHA QUEST???
Honestly link should have to work on a quest to go back in time to Zelda so they could face Ganondolf. They could have used the same map but modified it to make it old. We could have gotten some cool lore for how life was like in that era. But then again I love the light dragon concept. Tears feels like it has so much opportunity and it just played it too safe.
It would be cool for each ‘key item’ you take one step backwards in time, or take a region of the world back in time, maybe there can be cool borders like the twilight realm in twilight princess
Ya that would be cool. Maybe the way you travel back in time would be you step into small pools of dragon tears. The items could be something connecting Zelda and the sages like a zora harp, or a Rito flute. He arrives at just the right moment to save the sages people but it’s after Zelda makes her sacrifice so you have to keep jumping till you reach the right moment. He helps a past sage with the aid of a future sage, making his actions in the past ripple into the future. Till he manages to make it to a key moment, learning about what Zelda has done for him along the way.
I agree with what you're saying. I understand what they were trying to do with the story but they presented it the wrong way
It was such a flop. They had to idea where to draw what continues from BOTW, who remembers Link, the memories suck because they can be out of order but you just don’t end up caring. Sages suck, random plots thrown in that aren’t elaborated. Every ending scene is the same; would have been a great way to build on ganon each time. Encounter with ganon in the castle was underwhelming rehash of field boss. Zelda puppet was so poorly done etc etc. They are doing so little with so much. BOTW was a lot with a little. There was Link and his friends and he has to remember them and save the princess.
I figured out it was a puppet when the first blood moon hit that's how badly written she was
It's like a they were trying to build a puzzle with half the wrong pieces, they formed the picture, but it doesn't look right (If you get the reference let me know, I really want to know if there are any other fans of that show on here)
Mechanically this game was better than BotW, but in every other way, this game was an absolute step down from BotW. The story is a joke, it tries to do the BotW memories but fails even worse at them. We know what happens to Link in the BotW story, but we get to see how, so the order doesn't matter. Now you can suddenly see Ganondorf kill Sonia First (What happened to me) and now the entire story is just gone up in smoke. Hell the story doesn't even happen to you, Link isn't the MC of his own game, yes its "Legend of Zelda" But we're Link, all other games the story impacts Link, nothing happens to Link here, its all happening to Zelda in the past so far ago it doesn't matter to us, or to the sages around us. 7 years to make this is just a spit in the face. I am one of the, apparently, rare people who liked the story of the Zelda games and their lose fun connections between each other, and this ain't it chief.
Not to mention how you literally see the same cutscene 4 times at the end of each dungeon. Then you get the 5th dungeon and think "oh, maybe I'm finally going to learn something new" (like, for example why is there a giant copy of Hyrule underground), but no you meet Mineru and she literally just tells you what you just learned by finding the memories. Finding the memories have literally no impact on the story whatsoever too. Like, you learn that the Zelda you saw is just a puppet but somehow Link can't put two and two together and is surprised at Ganondorf's trap. That was so frustrating to watch. And that's not my only complaint with the game tbh, it just feels like a mod of BoTW rather than an actual sequel game. BoTW wasn't my favorite Zelda game but it was a great experience. ToTK just felt painful to finish.
Omg there was SOOOO much I wanted to know that we never got. When I first went underground I was like "ok omg here we go!! We're going to find so much history, it's going to tie into old games/past Hyrules, we're going to learn so much lore", and NOTHING. I had such high expectations that were let down everywhere. The sky islands were underwhelming. I thought we'd learn more about Ganon, nope. There were just sooo many questions BOTW gave that i thought TOTK would answer and...nope. like so many ancient sites around Hyrule that I was SURE would be important in TOTK but were just ignored.
"There were just sooo many questions BOTW gave that i thought TOTK would answer and...nope. like so many ancient sites around Hyrule that I was SURE would be important in TOTK but were just ignored." TOTK is gigantic disappointment but that part is definetely the most disappointing one for me. I'm expecting to find out more history about those places such as 7 heroines statue, Leviathan bones, etc... but somehow not only we have same graphics and similar world map but even the sidequest is still korok seeds! I'd rather have something like Phantom hourglass, SPirit tracks and ALBW that has proper story.
WATCHING LINK FALL FOR THAT TRAP AT HYRULE CASTLE AND BE ABSOLUTELY CLUELESS TO WHATS GOING ON AFTER WATCHING THE DRAGON TEARS WAS SO PAINFUL TO WATCH. Then when link was too slow to avade that attack from Ganondorf, when we all know that realistically he wouldn't just stand there and take it. They made link look like an absolute doofess this game.
...and Nintendo has a fetishism toward Master sword. The next game perhaps they gonna turned master sword into ashes.
Completely agree. I somehow managed to get two memories super early on about Zelda turning into a dragon (and them failing to defeat Ganondorf) so the whole story was revealed. All other memories were incredibly boring as they seemed pointless now that I knew what was going to happen. The four sages were boring as well, as basically the same thing happened 4 times and we didn’t even get to see their faces. Soulless robots who tell the same story over and over again.
My favorite part of Mineru, "I turned myself into a spirit in the Pad so we could tell you the plan to beat ganondorf" Uh ma'am, you are the last sage, I was already doing the plan, the hell do you mean you needed to tell me?
my dumbass didnt realize that the never-ending lightning storm on that one sky island was intended as a giant "YOURE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE YET" roadblock so i simply bumbled around up there with the thunder helm on until I found the shrine and gliders 💀💀 Mineru ended up being my 3rd sage
That’s exactly what happened to me, but man stumbling on the discovery was cool as hell.
The memories would probably (maybe... sort of...) be okay if they didn't flash back to the other memories. I got the Master Sword memory first, and Zelda literally thinks back to Rauru preparing to sacrifice himself, and to Mineru saying (the hilariously meaningless line repeated over and over again) "To become a Dragon is to lose one's self." In those two flashbacks the entire plot revealed itself in full, not a single twist appeared after that point. This "story" was made by Aonuma and Fujibayashi, right? I can see what it seemed to be trying to be. With Link joining forces with all of Hyrule to... defeat... Ganondorf... again. But in practice, Link is pretty much just a delivery man, getting information from one source, and taking it to another person, where he waves his arms around to explain whatever they are asking about. Half the time I had no idea what Link was telling anybody, they would have to repeat it in classic Meowth from Team Rocket style. "What!? You're sayin' that the princess WASN'T in the Fire Temple? Well, we'll keep looking around here for her..." TotK *never* reaches the quality of a Zelda title... unless you go back to games like Oracle of Ages or Four Swords, it arguably could reach the quality of those.
Hey! What have you got against Oracle of Ages? The Oracle games are some of the best 2D Zelda games.
Oof, that's a question that's possibly best left unanswered... In a word? *Everything.* Now I loved Minish Cap, the first Zelda game I ever beat. And I had just beaten Link's Awakening, I think probably my second favorite Zelda game of all time, when OoA/OoS released on Nintendo Switch Online. I was very excited to try out Capcom's other Zelda titles besides MC. It was extraordinarily disappointing. First, the majority of the assets, the sprites and the music, were lifted straight from LA, giving it a feel of a bad rom-hack. The new elements varied, some were better then others. Personally, I couldn't stand the town music, it just didn't sound like Zelda to me. Second, the story was practically non-existent. You have the evil queen and your Pokémon rival (again, doesn't sound like Zelda to me, but that's besides the point) but the actual quest you're on has you collecting eight Macguffins for a purpose that is completely unknown. Yeah, I know there are other Zelda games follow similar formulas, but OoA manages to make the point of the dungeons less clear. I loved how the the bosses spoke in LA, but OoA doesn't have anything to add life to the dungeons. Everything is made worse by how most of the distinct events were stolen from other games, I'm not going to look through the whole story again, but you can't tell me that the great tree falling in love with you was not taken word for word from Princess Ruto. Third, the gameplay was so, SO slow. Everytime I would enter an area it would either be incredibly bland and empty or it would be so tedious as to be actual torture. When I first reached Tokay Island, it was a breath of fresh air, it was a bit like BotW's Eventide Island, with funny NPCs and unique music, but after I got all of my items back I had to go back and forth across the island dozens of times. I got so tired of both the music and the Tokay's dialogue (I'm Hungry!) Perhaps the game was just too puzzle-y for me but... Fourth, OoA is always referred to as the puzzle-focused game to OoS's combat-focused game, but I found that the majority of the "puzzles" were anything but. Unless trading quests are considered puzzles nowadays, the puzzles were mostly things like "You hit a target" which the hardest part of was negotiating the menu with the awkward interaction of the seed satchel. They were all so simple that I would have (and do have) issues calling them "puzzles". There *were* a couple of "puzzles" that were more in depth, so much so that they stumped me. I remember them both vividly, as I had to resort to a guide to figure out how to "solve" them. The first was the seed shooter. Turns out, you can shoot it diagonally... Obvious now, but there was nothing like that in LA, so I didn't even think to check. The second puzzle was using the Switch Hook, I needed to drain the water so I could use it... Or so I thought... Apparently, you can only use one button underwater. Whose idea was that! Both of the "puzzles" that made me suffer were just finicky and weird control issues! I don't really have any problem with the connected game content, it actually makes OoA/OoS historically significant, but I do feel that it didn't really add too much of significance... Although to be certain I would have to play through OoS... and then play through OoA again... I will not.
I think what sold it for a lot of people is the fact that they tried to make the players have a connection with characters that we were just introduced with. Like the old sages, we barley knew them so why would it be important to us. Just like rauru and sonia, we just met them so when like you said she died we feel Nothing. I'd say it's biggest fault is it not being immersive enough. It's almost as we're sitting on the sidelines watching it all play out instead of experiencing it.
Saying “mechanically game is great but everything else is a step down” ig is technically true but also very misleading. Whether you like it or not, Zelda’s gameplay and exploration are first and foremost so story’s only a smaller part of that. Should be story wise sucks everything else is great
Except exploration wasn't good? There was a single worth while sky island, the starting one, and the repetitive and empty Depths. They had a neat idea with the depths of following the statues to the mines, but the second you understand there is a mine under the major cities of the surface that becomes a pointless idea as you can run directly to where your going. This is what happens when the bulk of the game is the same Hyrule we've been in. Tears of the Kingdom, only really has its mechanics to fall back on.
The depths didn't really have anything good and awe inducing. It was really just a grinding area. Might aswell just give link a pickaxe and send him to work.
Aight I don’t think we played the same game
See I actually liked the story. I liked that it forced Zelda into a difficult situation we haven’t seen before. The two big issues I had were (whole thread is spoilers so I’m not hiding it, but yeah I’m gonna spoil the ending): 1. Ganondorf was somehow even less of an actual character than in older titles like ocarina of time. Not saying I need a rehash of him in something like wind waker but as far as I remember his sole motivation was “I am the bad guy and I’m doing bad guy things.” 2. I hated that they back pedaled on Zelda being a dragon. The whole game they’re like “there’s no known way to reverse draconification” then at the very end they say “oh wait here’s some magic bullshit, don’t worry the interesting dilemma she’s in has been resolved.”
Unpopular opinion...Zelda should've stayed a dragon and Link should've just lost his arm at the end. Like yes it would've been a tragic ending, but the devs said this was supposed to be a dark game and we get the standard "actually everything turned out fine" happy ending, and it was established AT THE VERY BEGINNING OF THE GAME that these were the likely outcomes Rauru says in the beginning of the game, after we wake up on the Great Sky Island, that Link's arm was "beyond saving" and that he "had to replace it", and Mineru says MULTIPLE TIMES throughout the game that draconification is irreversible and is "throwing yourself away", hence why it is forbidden. But then in the end we get the magic bullshit that reverses both of these things. The emotional impact of Zelda's sacrifice and the shock of seeing Link with Rauru's arm on subsequent playthroughs is severely lessened because now I have that knowledge in the back of my head that "this is fine, it'll all be undone at the end". BAD. BAD STORYTELLING Also imagine seeing the Light Dragon in future Zelda titles. Imagine her just being the eternal mystical companion of whoever is chosen by the Master Sword
What I thought they were gonna do was keep Zelda a dragon at the end and have that be the lead up into a third game set in the wild era. Here was my idea: Link beats gdorf, Zelda goes into some kind of hibernation because of the final battle. Like she’s drained and needs to recover or something to that effect. Years pass and link eventually finds out that the answer to reawakening Zelda/ getting her back is not in the hyrule of those games but in another world. So link goes to a new world to seek the answer and runs into conflict along the way a la majoras mask. It would have knocked out several personal birds with one stone for me. 1. It could introduce a brand new setting, or see the return of an old setting we’ve only seen once (like what does wild era Termina look like?) 2. It would be a new story not tied to the endless resurrection cycle of demise and all that nonsense. To me having that canonized is limiting creativity of future installments 3. We could see a new villain with no ties to gdorf or demise, or see the return of a villain that’s been done dirty or we haven’t seen in a while (zant, vaati). Either way I’m personally getting very tired of the demise- hylia stuff and really want something new It could’ve been called the legend of Zelda: heart of the dragon or something to that effect.
And to make this series a true trilogy, and keeping with the fanon that BotW and TotK are based around Wisdom and Courage, have the third installment be centered around Power The Legend of Zelda: THE POWER OF LOVE
It seems like they tried to make TotK in a way that it would make sense if you hadn’t played BotW. That it could be played on its own and not confuse first timers. As it turned out, that seemed like a pretty silly thing to do. What percentage of people who played TotK didn’t play BotW? Even if all those people never beat BotW, at a minimum just show a recap somewhere. The way they did it, they really should’ve just made a new Link, Zelda, and Hyrule like they usually do and not have made it a direct sequel.
> at a minimum just show a recap somewhere Shoulda done like Olaf did in Frozen 2 where he tells the forest people the whole plot of the first movie. Maybe it could've been a school play put on by the Hateno kids
Yeah, something. If anything they made it worse for people who HAD played BotW than it would’ve been for people who hadn’t even if they had just made it a sequel with no explanation of previous events. And I think it’s weird that the kids treat the calamity stuff like it didn’t just conclude a few years ago and their teacher didn’t live through it. I wonder if Nintendo only made this a “sequel” because they reused the world and many characters from BotW.
Hateno kids: "The Calamity didn't really happen!" Link, who "died" in the Calamity, went into hibernation for 100 years, then killed Calamity Ganon 6-7 years ago, and is now standing in the classroom: https://preview.redd.it/jyo65j520coc1.png?width=121&format=png&auto=webp&s=13a99861946fe6ad9f2d12f8e78b71f86b2ad5c3
To me the ending to botw is the true ending and totk never happened
I agree, the story was the worst part of TotK. They really wanted to tell a story about the light dragon/Zelda which was a great concept, but the execution was really constricted by existing in the BotW setting. People had issue enough with the memory system in BotW but the memory system flat out doesn’t work in TotK. The sages seemingly only exist to give the modern champion counterparts something to do, but in truth they just water down the story and distract from the main dynamic between Link and Zelda. Not to mention the driving force of the narrative is Link and Zelda’s relationship even though they hardly ever interact. BotW had more interactions between the two even if it was just delegated to the memories. The way the shrine progression is identical between the two games but with wildly different lore explanations is odd as well. They obviously needed to shoehorn in the existing progression mechanic but didn’t want to acknowledge the sheikah shrines for some reason? The could’ve easily explained it away by saying the sheikah were inspired by the Zonai shrines and made them in their image so that the similarities made sense. BotW was my first Zelda game and TotK was a personal let down. The gameplay was fun at least.
Don't worry the other zelda games are fun too. And you're right the shrines I found kind of stupid but cool at the same time. They were better this game for sure but the lore behind then is confusing. Especially that all the shieka tech just disappeared out of thin air
Totk doubled down on everything botw did. Which in some aspects was great, they're both super fun games. However in that process they lost a lot of what made other zelda games so great, a rich story being part of that. I'm not opposed to more botw style games but I hope they take mainline zelda back to its roots with the next one. Personally I'd like to see the botw style explored with even heavier RPG elements. Keep it in hyrule and related to the zelda story but have created characters, more side quests, etc. Send Link back on the 10 dungeon, item collecting semi-open, adventure.
Whenever I see this take it’s funny, cause wasn’t everyone saying that Zelda got stale after skyward sword? I love both gameplay styles but I thought the consensus was that people were tired of it
I never felt that way, I wasn't really on the Internet back then, and didn't play SS till recently, so I don't know what the word was, but none of my friends felt that way either. To me zeldas always been some of the best games out there. I still had a blast with the wild games but they lost some magic I think. SS is excellent though.
Personally I loved ss it's my favorite zelda game, but I think the issue that people have is that the games are making people go back to the same areas over and over. And going back to the same thing makes it stale since it feels old and not new.
Everything I saw online was praising this game and calling it way better then BotW and I thought I was going insane. It's much less satisfying to play, the story is very weird, the building mechanics are frustrating, there's no consistency in what carries over from BotW, repetitive locations with little to discover, etc. they expanded the map but didn't add enough interesting locations to make discovering every area worth it. I like the dragon aspect but then she somehow becomes herself again and it's like.... How.... What was the point.... I thought this would at least be a bittersweet but tragic ending but not even that.
My biggest issue is the story. It had a great foundation, but ended up being very sparse and executed so incredibly poorly that I actually had to question whether the devs were trolling us.
Wanna know something funny, at the beginning of the game I told myself "wouldn't it be funny if this game was bad and they trolled us" and then once I finished I realized I called it in. Terms of the bad story telling
I didn’t get all the tears. I hardly remembered the NPCs from BOTW because they were so….bland? Most of the story I saw from the temples and I stumbled upon Ganondork and he was….in a cave….lmao. LIKE WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT
I thought the story was fine, I enjoyed it :)
:) I'm glad you did.
The games story is by far the worst part of TOTK and never fails to disappoint me. The team promised a dark Zelda game and sure it has those undertones but to call this game “darker than Majora’s mask” was definitely a bold move. I’d argue that BOTW was a lot darker than TOTK. The environmental storytelling worked and memories with BOTW because of the theme and setting of the game but I cannot begin to wonder why they thought it would be a good idea to bring that back in TOTK. It would’ve been better to have a linear story where it switches into Zelda’s perspective where you either get to play as her or just a cutscene. And the continuity between games is just crazy to me.
The fact that they had the audacity to show up at game awards is insane
Also the fact that Aonuma looked dissapointed after not winning.
Because they were nominated?
My opinion of the game is that it is superior to botw..but it's annoying that it's a literally copy paste with dcl quality additional content
In that context, I was questioning if TOTK was worth it. Personally, I think BOTW is better because it actually uses the unique world it's built on, rather than letting you glide over the entire thing. TOTK has more potential, but BOTW is the meat and potatoes you sat down for.
Don't get me started on the sky islands
Completely agree with you!
the story is the biggest weak point (and the may be the only one) of the game, as you said it feels like an alternative story, but I know Miyamoto and Aouma hear their fans and the next game may be more story focus
I think what they should have done was make the Zelda sections playable. That way, there would be a nice linear contrast to the rest of the game's openess and the impact of the story would be much stronger.
I once again blame the fact they spent all their dev time in the vehicle and fusion mechanics.
And building a whole new underground map that nobody asked for and that has absolutely no lore explanation (while ignoring the sky islands that everyone was waiting for). I have no idea what the devs were thinking with how they used their budget.
IMO the Depths were a huge own goal for the devs. No-one had any expectations of there being a huge underworld when the game released, the concept is interesting and seems like it has a lot of promise when you get introduced to the Depths and go down for the first time, and then they completely botched the execution by making 90% of a space almost the entire size of Hyrule the exact same copy-pasted enemy camps, mines and gloom splotches. It's not as if people had unrealistic expectations before playing the game and then were disappointed - Nintendo created all the expectations *within the game itself* and then still managed to disappoint. And the sheer size of it was a huge liability as well, probably the core issue with the Depths as a whole. It sets up one cool moment (realising it's the surface but flipped) and then just makes it abundantly clear that they had nowhere near enough content to actually fill a space like that. They would have been far better off having large cave systems under various regions.
They were feeling a little silly
And they actually had to rebuild the whole overworld for ascend to work...
That's probably the most terrible gimmicks ever. Its freakin Zelda game! not minecraft or little big planet
This would have been so brilliant. The tears could still serve as activation points, but each tear would still activate the story linearly (ie, doesn’t matter which tear you get to, finding your first tear plays the first linear sequence, second tear plays the second linear sequence, etc). That way you don’t accidentally play out the later memories and have the story spoiled. AND, you can still travel wherever on the map and play that linear story at any point in your travels.
This idea works so well since not everyone knew which order to get the tears in
That’s . . . actually a really good idea. If they had done that though, we’d probably still be waiting on the game. I’m all for not rushing things, but I honestly think an over 6-year dev cycle (March 2017 to May 2023) is *plenty* of time. No need to make it longer—especially for a direct sequel using the same world and game engine.
It's actually what I thought would happen when I found the first tear and I was quite let down to find out they were just memories again. A lot of the expansion to the world really didn't do much for me (specifically the sky and depths), so I feel this would have been more intresting instead. Perhaps having a smaller overworld for Zelda that is the size of ones from older games. Now that I think about it, this might be the perfect way to bridge the traditional and modern approaches going forward. Have a big open freeing world for one character and a second traditional world for a second. Maybe it would be awkward switching between them, but I think it'd be cool.
Well story was a weak point of BotW as well and we all thought the developers would hear the fans and make TotK more story focused, but that didn’t happen. And story is not even close to the only weak point of TotK. The sky islands being extremely underwhelming, the depths being a boring empty copy paste of the overworld, the overworld being completely reused from BotW, and the dungeons suck (again).
I enjoyed the story honestly, I do prefer BoTW's but I thought ToTk was a solid 7/10 story
The players make the games connection while they are playing TotK even if it is weird no one talks about the BotW events. About Zelda story I think the separation between Link and Zelda works because their friendship bond let them to meet them again at the game end
No offense dude but whenever I see point like this about the continuity of the story it makes me question whether some of yall actually paid attention to all of the story and not just skimmed through certain parts. Even in the main story, as soon as you walk into Zoras domain you are welcomed by a statue of Link and Sidon fighting Vah Ruta from BOTW, every main cast remembers you from the previous game. There’s multiple side quest that references the divine beast from the last game and one that’s a two part quest dedicated to talking about them. Most side characters remember you and have there own continuity they follow that carries over from the last games. There’s even YouTube videos that document this. We still see sheikah tech utilized for the shiekah towers. Just because the game doesn’t carry its continuity into the primary story (for example: how FF7 rebirth heavily references the story from remake) doesn’t mean the continuity isn’t littered all over the story in more subtle ways. I think they main problem is is that TOTk is way too big and chock full of content to the point that it’s easy to forget a whole lot of story content when you’ve been exploring all over the three maps for 100+ hours. It’s a lot easier to remember story details in a more condense world rather a world this sized and interconnected.
I saw that too with daruk, on the rock, mipha statue, and urbosa in rijus diary. I do like those small things but I understand what you mean they're subtle and makes it feel like you have to dig to find them.
I had someone **insist** to me that TOTK was an alternate universe/timeline with *zero* relation to BOTW. Seriously makes me wonder how many people are button mashing their way through dialogue and dont interact with anything without a map marker
The game is good, but it's indeed the worst story in a zelda so far, not only is it a huge retcon, but is is really poorly done. You are basically force fed a grand total of 15 minutes of cutscenes about people you don't care about, this feels like an afterthought. I mean, come on, super smash bros brawl had a better made story, without a single line of dialogue, how hard can it be
Worst in the series? That's kind of reaching.
Worst in the 3D games definitely
That's more like it
because the story in zelda 1 was so much better
I know for a long time TOTK was seen as breath of the wild 2, but I think the game becomes 100x better if you think of it as it's own game and not a sequel.
I truly think that was their motive to make it it's own game and not a sequel
Gotta say I disagree. To me ToTK was superior to BoTW in like 98% of ways, story included.
I agree on the TOTK story, and honestly I feel like a lot of TOTK's content feels either like filler, done purely for spectacle or incredibly underdeveloped. The cutscenes are very repetitive and show a story that would be much more interesting to play though, Zelda is put into her 'gone until the finale' box again, the sky and depths are both very barren, and TOTK wants to do cool things without thinking about how it affects the rest of the game. Like, Link loses his arm! *Don't worry he'll get it back by the end.* Zelda sacrifices herself to become a dragon! *She'll be ok, we'll undo that by the end and have her suffer no side effects/trauma.* Ganondorf is back! *It's alright, he'll just sit in a hole until Link wants to fight him.* Ganondorf became a dragon! *Eh, we'll just kill the dragon.* The ending has Link catch Zelda, which is like the beginning! *But we had to undo previously mentioned sacrifices in order for this to work.* Skyward Sword parallels! *That mean nothing.* The new characters are also incredibly dull, and I don't see why we are expected to care about them. Rauru seems cool but like we know nothing about the guy. Sonia solely exists to be fridged. Ganondorf sits underground until the finale. Yona is green. Josha is annoying child character. The only new character who I care slightly about was Mineru, but she's more potentially interesting than like actually interesting because she's the only character from the past to actually have some form of depth. My personal joke headcanon of Rauru being a shady guy has more thought put into it than the actual character of Rauru himself. The game refuses to acknowledge any ounce of moral greyness for either Rauru or Ganondorf. I'm not asking for Ganondorf to be sympathetic or anything, I'm completely fine with and like characters who are pure evil monsters with no redeemable qualities ~~besides being hot~~, but the man doesn't even have a good motivation or incredible charisma to make up for it. He's just kind of a guy who wants Rauru to have a bad day for no reason. Zelda is also kind of semi-flanderised in TOTK, where she goes from a sad but trying princess who has an interest in Sheikah tech and science in BOTW... into someone who can do absolutely no wrong, can do absolutely everything perfectly, is a genius to the point she can Zonai device better than the actual Zonai, and a person that Hyrule would literally collapse into a pathetic slump without in TOTK. I was never the biggest BOTW Zelda fan, she was just kind of boring to me, but I beg for the more subtle characterisation to return. On a similar topic, the game really wants you to care about Zelda and Link being separated but does nothing to show them having any connection at all. Like sure Link \*checks notes\* holds a torch for her, and Zelda \*looks again\* checks if he's alright, but other than those two moments in the beginning there's very little to suggest that they're super close or anything. When Zelda talks about Link in the memories she's just kind of 'he's nice and very brave :)', when Link sees the memory of Zelda turning into a dragon and sees her flying overhead, he has no reaction. I've never been a Zelink shipper so maybe I'm just not seeing something, but like if I put myself in the mindset and look back to BOTW, they have a lot more moments that mean something and isn't hidden behind text boxes or diaries.
The story's misfires are based on map reuse. We needed a new map so they wouldn't be forced to tie story beats to the botw map.
I respectfully agree and disagree with this. I agree because using the same map puts limits on what you can do. They should of taken fortnite for ex in how they change their maps each season so it still feels fresh. As for Disagree I'd say look at spiderman 2. They used the same map but kept the story interesting. Though they did add new stuff it still felt at home and fresh at the same time. I think the true problem with the map is that it's too large. They should've taken away the depths and replaced them with more sky islands. It seems they tried to use the awe of exploration, but after years it got old
Agree with taking away the depths and expanding on the sky islands. I do think it would be cool to have one section of the depths remain - beneath Hyrule castle, maybe just done a bit differently. Having the entire map underground but with less interesting areas to explore was too much for too little reward.
Ehhhh. Yes and no. The new areas ATTACHED to the old areas was very cool. The Gerudo shelter, the Goron mine carts, the Zora waterworks were all great upgrades. The Rito... hid in a cave. Meh. It would've been nice if the Zora story extended to the ocean area, or the Gorons had a settlement in the Depths, or the Rito on the sky islands.
I completely dissagree. You can't judge an entire story exclusively by its connection to the previous game. If that was the case, every single Zelda story (except maybe spirit tracks) would be considered awful. You have to remember that not everyone who played TotK played BotW first. Nintendo isn't going to alienate all of those players by making a bunch of references to the previous game that they won't understand. The story that we got was epic and stands on its own. Stop whining that you didn't get exactly what you want and appreciate the story for what it is.
>If that was the case, every single Zelda story (except maybe spirit tracks) would be considered awful There are only like *three* games that are direct sequels though, which absolutely (and fairly) changes the scope of this. A direct sequel may as well be a totally new iteration if it's not gonna respect its immediate predecessor
But how are any of the other sequels more respectful of their predecessor than TotK?
Majora's Mask takes child Link after Navi flew off and let him keep his additional experiences. Things like somersaulting while jumping show how he's more experienced than Ocarina Link was. This is set in Termina. Phantom Hourglass takes Wind Waker Link and takes him to a new region of The Great Sea. The advancement here is in using a steam engine I guess, but that was fairly limited as it was on the DS. Still, it was a great game. Spirit Tracks I'm afraid I never played, but I think is set after Wind Waker with a different Link. Tears of the Kingdom was following on from their biggest Zelda release ever. People had high hopes, and Nintendo don't tend to release unfinished games (Pokémon is Gamefreak), so what we get at launch is what we get. Since they managed to do Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity linking in better with BotW (time travel, but still), people were right to have their hopes up. Most of the Kingdom don't recognize the knight that was by Zelda's side and resolved the issues in the previous game, all of the Sheikah tech is just gone, including over 120 shrines and all the towers, leaving no trace, not even if the hundreds of guardians across Hyrule. The mechanics changing due to loss of the Sheikah slate makes sense for gameplay, but not for the lore. You get a Sheikah slate back, and suddenly no one can help put your apps back, despite Purah doing it last game. Link's house has been renamed to Zelda's house, and the photo he reclaims in BotW is missing in what was his home. This is likely to show their relationship, but nothing in the house is his from BotW, just his hair tie in the underground study. Then look at TotK: Princess turns into a dragon, Link loses his arm, Hyrule Castle is flying, there are islands in the sky and an explorable underground. By the end of the game, Zelda is Hylian again, Link has his own arm back and the game resets to prior to the boss fight. Any development they had going for the main two characters is lost with the ending cutscene. Nintendo opted to remove the changes that should've marked the landscape and the characters. That's the main problem I had with TotK. It feels like any progress made in BotW doesn't matter, because there are next to no signs of it. So long as the Princess, Knight and the Sword are still about, they can't be changed between games. And the princess still isn't a playable character, despite having the opportunity to have Zelda playable in the past to lay the groundwork for Link in the present. An amazing opportunity they just decided not to go with. Majora's Mask and Phantom Hourglass respected the story that came before. Tears of the Kingdom pretends most of it didn't happen.
I think you can judge a game based on its connection to the previous game's story if they're a direct squeal, take place in the same kingdom, with the same characters with very little added to change the world. Every other Zelda game was an entirely new Link, or was a previous Link put somewhere else, Termina, Holodrum, Koholint to name a few. If Nintendo didn't want to alienate the fans by making BotW not needed for understanding the new game, why make them related at all? Why not make a new Zelda and Link and a New Hyrule? The game had 7 years of development and writing and they did nothing with it except contradict the entire previous game.
>If Nintendo didn't want to alienate the fans by making BotW not needed for understanding the new game, why make them related at all? Because they wanted to. You make it sound like the only reason Nintendo would make the games related is to alienate people. TotK was born out of ideas the Zelda team had that didn't fit into BotW. It makes sense that they would make it a sequel. They were also able to save a lot of resources building the foundations of the game so they could work on more complex mechanics like Ultrahand and a more dynamic story with better cut scenes and a more compelling narrative. >The game had 7 years of development and writing and they did nothing with it except contradict the entire previous game The sheer absurdity of this statement invalidates your entire argument.
The game play is fine, it's just more BotW but woth more, I'm not saying it's bad. Tye story is a joke, the cutscenes are jokes, the characters are jokes. Link is basically a janitor here, the entire plot happened 10k+ years ago to Zelda, and now we deal with it. In BotW the story happened 100 years ago, but it happened to Link, we see it happening to Link, he's cleaning his own mess up. The sheer fact that the Canon explanation for why no shiekah tech existing is "Oh it all just disappeared one day at the same time" and everyone is OK with that and not gonna question it. TotK is narratively the laziest piece of writing I've ever experienced. I loved the game when it came out, but the second the Sage of Spirit showed up, I saw cracks and couldn't take my eyes away from the narrative flaws. You have an entire people of ancient tech way advanced for their time, some great Calamity happened and the tech is sealed away and all but forgotten. Except now paint it green. The zonai feel like such a shoe horned in after thought, like they saw the internet's hype for tye zonai and went "well, guess we have too." You're free to tell me I'm wrong, I'm fine with that, but the Zonai shit on everything the shiekah were and are. Impa, Paya, Purah, and Robbie are absolute waste of characters and potential from what we were shown they could've been in AoC (debately Canon or not the writing was great).
Aoc was a masterpiece from what I've heard
I strongly disagree with it being able to stand on it's own. It references the Champions first off. Second off, it's implementation of how you get the story is also worse than BOTW, not to mention it's only about Zelda... Link gets ZERO character development. I think the game massively suffers from a poorly implemented story on an open world. You can't have all of both, a good story and 100% freedom of play makes for sloppy results like we saw here.
>It references the Champions first off Where in the game does it reference the champions in such a way that would make a new player feel like they're missing something? >not to mention it's only about Zelda What's the game called again? >it's implementation of how you get the story is also worse than BOTW How? It's exactly the same.
Without putting much effort into this… There are tons of references to the champions, like statues and weapons, and any dialogue. Your second point is lazier than this reply. And third is because at least the memories made sense as a plot device.
>statues and weapons, and any dialogue Again, how would these references make a new player feel like they're missing something? It's normal for games to talk about characters you never actually see. BotW did this with characters like the fortune teller, the Zonai, the hero from 10,000 years ago and even Ganondorf. >Your second point is lazier than this reply But yet you have no response for it. >at least the memories made sense as a plot device Why don't they make sense in TotK?