#and similarly to the light dragon breaking the cloud barrier it breaks areas of the depths open

[heliianth]

actually bc im never gonna shut up abt it while im still on this im gonna ramble abt botw and totk and maybe how i wouldve written a sequel . & i will pay u money to listen i promise

my favoritest of totks ideas are what it expands from botw. botws whole atmosphere is drowned in quiet mourning. something bad has happened but it was a long time ago. it still hurts but theres nothing to be done now but move forward. something is still missing but all you can do is find something else. nobody has resources to rebuild and you can hear deafening echoes of better times but the alternative is giving up. you are in this frozen state of not quite moving on and not quite in despair. like the numbness stage of grief. and the pivotal element of all of that is that link is alone. like, oppressively alone. its the primary vehicle of conveying this mood. and its interesting because this can be read not only as what link is experiencing through the player but what zelda is feeling as she holds back ganon. its an interesting contrast to have zelda mature faster than link in the flashbacks, only for link to pull her the rest of the way by growing himself

and the reason why i so strongly adore the light dragon aspect of the plot is because it shows how attached to everything zelda has gotten. arguably, zelda held back ganon in botw because she loved link. in totk, she becomes the light dragon because she loves hyrule, which had previously been so unimaginably cruel to her. the crux of her character is learning that attachment is good. loving is good. you deserve to leave an imprint on the world in a shape of Your choosing instead of being another factory print on a paper. on a surface level, shes making the same choice, but the motivation and growth behind it is really powerful

i could waffle for literally ever about all that and the point is that totk takes these ideas and implements them really well through in-game worldbuilding and specifically zelda turning into the light dragon. i would occasionally get extremely emotional just seeing how things have expanded because it feels like the world is finally moving on. theres a catharsis in seeing hyrule finally heal after knowing its desolation so intimately, especially because the state of the land itself is such a strong parallel to the arcs of the two main characters, so you get the sense that not only can people move on, link and zelda specifically have started to as well. thats my favorite part

thats why i think its an odd choice that they decided on a time travel plot. if zelda HAS to be the one getting saved, if she cant be a companion in some way either via sheikah facetime or spirit tracks shenanigans or whatever, there are lots of ways to do this without her being magic fruit snacked ten bajillion years into the past. why spend all this effort intertwining her and link with the land, only to remove her from the equation and have no further growth? in botw its understandable that hyrule is stagnant and only changes when link does because zelda is stagnant and link is doing the one changing during the game. in totk its the opposite. there are lots of ways to do this with out Having to play as zelda (though honestly that would be the way id go about it)

also a lot of my own ideas have to do with the wasted potential of a place like the depths???? what the hell do you mean theres this mind bogglingly big cavern underneath the entirety of hyrule which mysterious people used to live in and it has almost no story relevance beside being a cool setpiece???????? I FEEL INSANE?!?!??!?!? there are so many good ideas in totk that never get expanded dude FUCK

i think no matter how much i speculate and draft my own preferences of how i wouldve liked totk to elaborate on the things it introduces i cant ever bring myself to present them like they couldve realistically happened and gotten thru the nintendo writing room simply bc of the games format. if it were up to me doing certain story missions would radically change the open world as events happened in real time and thats not the MO of the game's design philosophy. honestly totk's biggest enemy is the memory system and i need to kill it with fire

#for all im talking abt it i dont actually know how i would implement the light dragon twist in my own version of the story #in a way that would preserve that surge of emotion u get upon realizing who she is and get rid of the needlessly convoluted time travel #my first thought is that it happens in the depths and the connection is disguised by red herrings #and similarly to the light dragon breaking the cloud barrier it breaks areas of the depths open #so theres prophecies and literature about the light dragon or whatever down there that leads the player to believe that shes just- #-like farosh naydra and dinraal. that the depths is just where she hangs out #and she doesnt have a unique name like them because of a language barrier #heliichats #tloz