#tears of the kingdom critical

[sophitia-of-hyrule]

I'm stuck between thinking Zelda's new dress is really pretty and thinking it kinda goes against her as a character.

You're telling me she'd be comfortable wearing something that looks VERY similar to her priestess dress? Her being forced into the priestess role for most of her life is the main source of her trauma. It was clear to me she wanted nothing to do with being a magical priestess, and that her researcher/scholar self was who she really was.

It's strange to me that 1. she appears to have zero trauma from what happened to her in BotW and that 2. she is embracing her role as a priestess/sacrifical lamb. She's never shown interacting with or showing interest in Zonai tech (I know it's mentionned on some tablet but that's lazy). She became what her father wanted her to be. Someone who obeys without question and has zero individuality.

#my post #rant #zelda #princess zelda #totk zelda #legend of zelda #loz #totk #tears of the kingdom critical #tears of the kingdom criticism #totk critical #totk criticism

[gongaga-twunk]

To my fellow totk haters (people who started off mildly annoyed with the game's flaws, who then progressed into full on rage as almost everybody else seemed to love it): What did you most dislike about the game? If you can't decide, what were the biggest problems you had? What changes would you like to make?

This can be anything from gentle constructive criticism to a full on rage induced rant; I want to hear your thoughts, whichever form they may take!

#totk critical #totk criticism #tears of the kingdom criticism #Tears of the kingdom critical #loz critical #loz criticism #absolutely METICULOUS about my tagging here to get to everybody's filters #Don't want to send a totk hate masterpost into people's searches lmao

[bixbiboom]

Finally confirming what we been knew since the teaser released.

#matt mercer #matthew mercer #critical role #the legend of zelda #tears of the kingdom #cr twitter

[jamesbranwen]

this is not me trying to defend nintendo's business practices or say that either of these games don't have flaws, but I think a lot of the comparisons people are making between breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom are a little unfair and don't really take into account that they are different games with different purposes.

"breath of the wild feels so empty compared to tears of the kingdom" ... yeah? with breath of the wild, one of the game's main themes was isolation. you wake up in the future far after the apocalypse you were trying to prevent has already settled. you have no memories, very little strength. just like hyrule, just like zelda, all you have is your will to continue. breath of the wild is the quiet moments, the secret spaces, the weight of the world that has continued to turn without you still resting on your shoulders.

tears of the kingdom is not like that. hyrule is no longer the wild. it is no longer quiet and lonely. there's community. every sidequest is intertwined. your friends fight alongside you. this isn't "fixing" breath of the wild, this is it's natural continuation. as time goes on the world continues to heal and rebuild. if breath of the wild was clawing hope, tears of the kingdom is direct action.

like yeah there are things tears is doing better and (imo) things breath of the wild did better. but i don't think either one is a replacement for the other.

#tloz #breath of the wild #botw #totk #tears of the kingdom #inspired by two posts #one saying tears should have been botw dlc #which i think must have come from someone who hasn't played tears (which is fine) #and the other saying botw shouldn't have existed and they should have just released totk #which i also don't think would be ideal #personally botw is still my favorite game #its really beautiful and emotional #i do understand and agree with a lot of the criticism against it #but i am fond of the slower‚ quieter pace it has #ive never played anything else quite like it #even totk

[chaoticace22]

don’t worry guys i have eurovision covered in here

#tumblr news update #elon musk #twitter #donald trump #e jean carroll #jenna ortega #beetlejuice 2 #marissa mayer #critical role #doctor who #good omens #the winchesters #lockwood and co #pandemic #tears of the kingdom

[vampire-wizard-solidarity]

a lot of people have already pointed out how totk has a lot of themes of imperialism and generally leans conservative ideologically, but what i think is interesting is how totk subtly redefines what a “researcher” is.

zelda wants to be a researcher in botw, and what this means in the context of botw is largely someone who works with sheikah technology. she wants to figure out ancient sheikah tech, she has an interest in botany and otherwise nature and biology (the whole silent princess and the frog thing), robbie and purah, the two characters who are the closest to us seeing what a researcher in the context of botw is are basically inventors. in totk, however, the main researchers who are presented to us are all historians.

this is an interesting pivot, because in botw zelda is not really interested in history. if anything, the one who’s deeply concerned with history is rhoam, wanting to preserve historical tradition and his uncritical reliance on said tradition and historical precedent is what leads them to their doom. in botw, zelda is narratively opposed to history, if anything, all the ancient tech backfires on them and traditions fail to awaken zelda’s power. zelda’s urge to be a researcher is in wanting to understand the world around her, not just blindly follow ancient plans but rather have agency within them.

totk, however, is obsessed with ancient plans. the only real moment where zelda gets to geek out in totk is her getting all giddy about finding out more about the divine origins of hyrule. all the researchers in the game are concerned with finding out more about the zonai. since all the mentions of ancient sheikah technology are scrubbed from the game purah and robbie read more as strange outliers, the sheikah slate is no longer, now it’s the purah pad, a product of purah rather than something larger. the whole game is literally about following an ancient plan, a plan most characters don’t fully understand as they sign up for it. totk’s main story is built on confusion, on the characters not knowing what’s fully going on but having faith in ancient sages telling them what to do. in botw, following ancient plans you don’t fully understand was the thing that doomed you. in totk, following ancient plans you don’t fully understand is the gimmick.

that juxtaposition between the two games has an ideological through line: botw posits that progress is necessary. mindlessly relying on tradition doesn’t work. prophecies are omens, not instructions. history must be learnt from, not repeated. the ancient sheikah aren’t a group to be emulated, but rather to be learnt from, considering their machinery backfired and the royal family betrayed them. totk, however, is obsessed with the mythical history of hyrule, a time where everything was idyllic until one bad man showed up, a time we must emulate in order to win. i already talked about how the past in totk is zelda’s life pre calamity but better here, but that also plays into the idolisation of that era and its royalty. in botw, even the myth of the first calamity preserves the fact that the yiga clan has origins in the royal’s family persecution of the sheikah, even the time when they successfully held back the calamity is tinged with mistakes that still affect the world ten thousand years later. in totk, ganondorf’s origins are nebulous. nobody provoked him, nobody did anything wrong, he’s just evil because he is.

a lot of right wing ideologies are hinged on preservation, but more than that: the belief in the nebulous mythical past in which everything was better. “make america great again”, the fascist’s idolisation of ancient rome which is represented largely inaccurately, look at any conservative rhetoric and you’ll see people complaining about how things nowadays are ruined or are being ruined, how in the past things were this way and they’re not anymore, which is bad. the belief in the fact that in some past period we were great and are not anymore, and the strive to emulate that past is a trait highly typical of right wing ideologies. and in totk the past as a great era is an idea presented completely uncritically, the narrative is entirely controlled by the game and doesn’t dwell on any of the inconsistencies in this idea.

now, obviously, not every story in which a great ancient era exists is fascist, right wing or conservative. but to me what’s interesting specifically in totk is this shift between the two games: botw is critical of the past. it’s critical of arrogantly repeating history, it’s critical of having blind faith in great relics of the past. totk isn’t. totk idolizes the past, totk tells legends and tells you to believe them without any doubts. botw believes researchers are those who seek to understand the world, innovate it and solve problems without relying on ancient ways. totk believes researchers are those who discover ancient instructions, ancient ways and relay them to great men in the present to be followed. the four mainline regional quests in botw are about discovering four ancient relics that are terrorising the land and fixing the mistakes of the past. the four mainline regional quests in totk are about discovering four ancient legends are true, and receiving instructions from an ancient sage on what to do.

totk is not simply neutral, it is ideologically conservative in stark contrast to botw, because of the things it chooses to leave uncriticised, notably the things botw was very poignant about examining critically. the way totk redefines what is a researcher is indicative of this, indicative of the way it chooses to idolize or present as an unexamined good that which was nuanced in botw. totk isn’t just conservative in the sense that it presents uncritically a “good king” and “evil conquerer”, it goes deeper, it’s notable because botw was starkly opposed to the thematic axioms totk presents.

i just think it’s very interesting that they made a sequel to botw, and completely redefined or otherwise ignored botw’s thematic core.

#totk critical #loz #botw #totk #legend of zelda #tears of the kingdom #breath of the wild #meta #analysis #my hot takes

[crispybaguette]

this is matthew mercer’s world and we’re just living in it

#he wasn’t in eurovision obvs but you get it #matthew mercer #critical role #tears of the kingdom #the ravening war #dimension 20 #loz #totk #d20 #cr #shut up becca

[quietsphere]

my uni forced me to make a comic about a creator, so I drew Matthew Mercer haunted by his own voices :')

#matthew mercer #critical role #overwatch #pillars of eternity #zelda tears of the kingdom #kaawro art #fanart #digital art #comic #kaawro comic

[mossy-rock-in-a-field]

he's got.... more. earrings

im going to be very very normal about this game

#link #legend of zelda tears of the kingdom #tears of the kingdom #totk #loz totk #breath of the wild #eiji aonuma really said link WILL be a snack and NO i dont take criticism

[renatogpadilla]

I'M SORRY. MATT MERCER, DID YOU LAND FUCKING GANONDORF?!?!?!

#Matt Mercer #Critical Role #cr #totk #zelda totk #loz #legend of zelda #Tears of the Kingdom #Ganondorf #Ganon #Zelda #Update: HE DID!!!!!!

[sophitia-of-hyrule]

Tears of the Kingdom is killing my love for Zelda

BotW promised a bright future, a change to the status quo, only for TotK to throw all of BotW's themes in the trash and go back to the "good old days" of absolute divine right monarchy and sexist writing. Not to mention Ganondorf having zero nuance. Despite his gorgeous design, he's by far the worst Ganondorf personality and motivation-wise. He's such a nothing character. What's the point of giving Ganon his humanoid form back if he barely has more personality than the evil cloud around Hyrule Castle.

Twilight Princess came out almost 20 years ago and it had more active and likable female characters. TotK makes TP look like peak feminism. Why is the latest game in the series so goddamn regressive? Why are we going backwards?

There's barely anything interesting about TotK. It's so shallow and again, incredibly regressive for a game that came out this year.

The more I read interviews and Nintendo statements, the more I realize they don't fucking care. They don't care about giving you a good story that makes sense, or an immersive world, or likable characters. TotK is what happens when you take "gameplay over anything else" to it's extreme.

Sure gameplay is important, but what's the point of playing a game if I'm not immersed into the world? TotK is a huge sandbox, it doesn't feel like a world, it feels like a tech demo. It has the same energy as Yandere Simulator leaving a bunch of weapons right in front of the school gate so the player can go wild. This world doesn't feel alive to me. It's like Nintendo saw people complain about BotW being "empty" and tried to solve that problem by throwing a bunch of shit everywhere with no rhyme or reason.

Sonic Frontiers has it's issues. It really does. It's extremely janky, has some bad level design and the story has a few holes. However, I could feel so much love in the dialogue and the character interactions. It was a love letter to the series and its characters. It felt like a fanfiction, but in a good way. Like a passion project. Sure the game is far, FAR from perfect, but I could tell the people who wrote for it really cared.

I didn't get that feeling playing TotK. It really felt like Nintendo just wanted to flex their new physics engine and stupid fucking building mechanic. They really gave us Zelda Nuts & Bolts and everyone clapped.

What's the point of building shit if the world feels fake and the characters are merely shadows of their former selves? What's the point of making a sequel if you're just going to ignore everything that happened in BotW to "not confuse new players"? What's the point?

I don't fucking care about the building mechanic. That's not why I play Zelda. The story is important to me. The characters are important to me. The worldbuilding is important to me. And Nintendo ignored all of those things.

In my opinion TotK's opening and ending (minus the true ending) are fantastic. But everything in between is a bitter disappointment. Nintendo confirmed the depths took very little time to make because they were auto-generated. Hyrule has barely changed except for the fact that Hateno has a bunch of ugly mushrooms everywhere now. Sky islands are few and far between, and are copy-pasted to an absurd degree. Why the fuck did this game take longer to develop than BotW? There's barely anything new. "BUT THE PHYSICS ENGINE IS INCREDIBLE" "BUT YOU CAN BUILD THINGS" Big fucking whoop. I don't care. I don't play Zelda for the fucking physics.

My boyfriend got mad at me when I said it felt like a cash grab but that's genuinely how I feel.

Edit: TotK confirms that Link bought the house in Hateno village, yet everyone in Hateno acts like they've never met him before?? Bolson doesn't even recognize him despite TotK confirming that not only did Link buy the Hateno house, they went to Hudson's wedding together. Bolson should know who Link is. Who wrote this. Who thought this was okay. Why are people praising this game.

#my post #rant #the legend of zelda #tloz #loz #zelda #tears of the kingdom #totk #tears of the kingdom critical #totk critical #tears of the kingdom criticism #totk criticism

[linktotheheart]

I feel like so many people misunderstand BOTW/TOTK Link especially (Zelda too, but that's another topic entirely)

His lack of expressiveness IS a personality trait. It's a direct result of the pressure on his soldiers to be a perfect soldier, hero, and savior. No, he's not Skyward Sword Link, and never will be, because his story is completely different.

"But [other Link] hugged Zelda when he got her back!" and this Link maintained a respectful distance as his princess's subordinate - but ALSO out of respect for Zelda as a person, because she spent her whole childhood having her agency denied and he wants to let her initiate even something as simple as platonic contact whenever possible. He's being kind!

(And yes, I know that primarily only the "he is a knight and she is a princess" part is directly supported in the actual game, but I'll remind the people making comparisons that the dynamic was COMPLETELY different in their favorite comparison game, Skyward Sword. But also... look at the gentleness with which Link interacts with Zelda, the tenderness that he shows so few other characters - Mipha probably being the closest example. Look at the way he looks to her first to see what to do in every scene they're in together, unless he's protecting her from an immediate threat to her life. Notice how outside of that, Zelda IS usually the one to initiate any physical contact)

I also personally hate it when people describe quiet, not very expressive people as "lacking personality" because... my partner IRL is like that. If she expressed herself at all around most people, it's in a very flat, reserved way. I've seen how it hurts her that people treat her like she doesn't have a personality, like she isn't even a full person - and I know that's real life and Zelda is fiction, but come on, do you think all the people that aren't highly expressive and extroverted don't hear that about very popular characters and internalize it?

Being reserved is a personality trait. Being cautious and not impulsive is a personality trait. In fact, I'd even say just because you as an expressive, extroverted person see Link as a blank slate to project your own personality onto, doesn't mean he actually is or was even intended that way.

(I also think this is a very US-centric point of view, honestly. There's plenty of cultures where even BOTW Link would be considered at least close to average - Finnish culture specifically comes to mind, even if he's still slightly exaggerated in that regard as, y'know, a character.)

Idk, this is as much a silly little vent post as anything, it's not that serious, etc, but whatever

(and don't get me started on "oh Zelda got no agency in TOTK and she learned the powers she was struggling overnight". No, it's called a time skip, and just because she learned her powers before the 13th hour this time - which yeah, she would get them easier this time with a mentor who could actually use the same powers, and having already learned to use her light powers - doesn't mean it just "happened overnight". And... she didn't express agency? She was actively influencing the entire flow of the timeline, changing the actions of her ancestors by convincing her ancestors to act, learning to control her powers and fighting Ganondorf, and finally expressing the ultimate form of autonomy in choosing to sacrifice herself to save the world. Some of the criticisms of TOTK didn't even seem to play the same game. Just because a heroine isn't a pop feminist badass who *gasp* wears pants and easily and perfectly kicks every villain's ass, doesn't mean she "has no agency" and is being sidelined. Like, a princess engaging in courtly politics is neither powerless nor "doing nothing")

#totk #botw #tears of the kingdom #breath of the wild #link #zelda #I'm a multishipper so I can see Zelda and Link as romantic or platonic tbh #vent post #I mean you can reblog but like #even if you disagree don't be an asshole about it #botw/totk haters tho just like. don't. criticism is fine but I'm not interested in debating w/ppl who don't bother to engage in good faith

[giriduck]

“We also don’t know anything about the Demon King other than the fact that he is bad news and super strong.”

#shame we didn’t learn more about him #legend of zelda #tears of the kingdom #ganondorf #totk ganondorf #totk spoilers #totk critical

[blackautmedia]

Orientalism, The Gerudo, and Legend of Zelda | SWANA Representation in Gaming

It took a while, but here's a video essay about the portrayal of the Gerudo and the ways they reinforce orientalist beliefs about SWANA people, the portrayal of the Gerudo, and the broader storytelling implications that come about because of it.

The land and society once owned by the gods must be restored and brought to its former glory as it is fated to be led by the divinely chosen Hylians, the chosen descendants tied to the gods. To that end, to defeat the evil and violent Middle Easterner who has defied the natural order of Hyrule, everyone must sacrifice themselves for Link to become the divine governor of power.

Sections in the Video:

What is Racial Coding? (The Deku and Cannibal Horror)

Orientalism

Ganondorf - The Wicked Man of the Desert

Sav'aaq: Colorism and the Othering of the Gerudo

The "Good" Arab and the Conditional Humanity of the Gerudo

The Vai Outfit - Harems, Veiled Women, and Belly Dancers

Staggeringly Neutral - Link and the Gerudo as Queer Expression (Why James Somerton is wrong about the Gerudo)

Swapping and Shopping: Japanese Media

Orientalism of the Mummy - Dehydrated Ganon

The Native Zonai - The Source of the Right Arm

The Myth of Native Extinction

The Brown Body and the White Mind

Link Can Make it - Community Vs Saviorism

Divine Right to Rule

Japanese History and Zelda (Shinto in Zelda Lore)

Gameplay First - Zelda and Storytelling

Closing Thoughts

#tears of the kingdom #totk critical #gerudos #legend of zelda #wind waker #tloz #oot #majora's mask #deku scrub #loz goron #princess zelda #ganon #loz ganon #totk ganondorf #dehydrated ganon #tw: racism #tw: cannibalism #tw: transphobia #orientalism #antiblackness #misogynoir #media analysis #representation in gaming #zonai #totk rauru #king rauru #tetra #nabooru #totk riju #urbosa

[definitely-not-a-dragon-hoard]

This has probably been done already

#totk #tears of the kingdom #matt mercer #critical role #Critical role spoilers #ludinus da'leth #ganondorf #ruidus #*shakes fist at moon all day every day *

[vandersprodigy18]

There must be so much pressure on Matt Mercer to perform well as Ganondorf. This is a character that fans have known for literal decades. So it’s important that he nails the characterisation and gets it right. One could say this is a really…critical role

#this is so fucking dumb i could not type this without breaking #cr #critical role #loz #zelda #totk #ganondorf #nintendo #loz tears of the kingdom #tears of the kingdom #1k #my stuff