#totk critical

[ganondoodle]

sorry i keep coming back to totk rants, but something that utterly baffles me from a game design perspective especially is

who, in their right mind, would think to put similar objectives with the same characters in the EXACT same place as its previous game when already reusing the same exact map (no, single rocks springkled around isnt a meaningful change, fight me)

like from a purely logical point of view its just ... not logical?? and TWICE so when most players will have played the previous game, so now that the exploration, which was the main driving point of it, isnt as satisfying simply bc you know most locations and what is what, the thing you need to do is subvert it as in you go to that location and theres something else now or something that leads to a new reveal, but not NOTHING either, bc you likely cared about what youd find- the satori mountain was such a cool mysterious place, so now you head to it to see what is now and its nothing but maybe an obvious treasure chest? thats both lazy (i realy use that since its way overused by people missusing it) and just ... it might be meant as a lil nod so that there isnt nothing at all but to me it feels even more condescending as if there were literally nothing instead

satori isnt here anymore? thats weird if its always been there, so you go find a cause, maybe theres a fissure somewhere you can enter a large cave system, an hidden entrance to the underground that reveals there is something corrupting the place somwhere nearby but not exactly in the same spot- make it into a bossfight at which end satori gets cleansed- maybe it got captured and taken somewhere else, to a place that was kinda neat but didint serve a big fucntion in botw like maybe it was dragged somwhere into the big tabantha canyon, or to the forgotten temple

you try to visit rito village but the snow and cold there got so bad that you cant even reach it without special gear, and when you do reach it its utterly frozen in thick ice and not a single soul is there, the perch of vah medoh is knocked over building a bridge as a subtle hint as to in what direction perhaps, its intriguing bc clearly they have to be SOMEWHERE, maybe they tried to use vah medoh to evacuate but bc its losing power and doesnt have a skilled pilot they crash land it into the mountains, now trapped there and due to the storm not able to send anyone out to get help, maybe some did but they didnt make it and you can find them on your way and rescue them, and bc of the storm being so bad no one can get out and no one can get in (except for our special boi linky ofc) and even after the storm has weakened they dont immediately go back and act like everythings normal, maybe theres an extra mission afterwards helping them rebuild the village but not exactly the same as it was but fortified, different to account for things like this happening again, establishing the crashsite of vah medoh as a second outpost, or a temple, to thank it for bringing them out of immedaite danger but couldnt go all the way

theres so many places that are so clearly modeled around botw that are entirely unused now bc they had to remove all things shiekah for no reason, the holes they left jsut being holes where somethings clearly missing or some chest with a gem in it while the new shrine thing is within view distance a few meters away, might as well have put them in the exact same place bc it really doesnt make a difference

(like alot of those ideas im using for the rewrite which changes many things but you get the point right??)

and its even worse imo with the building stuff, bc now you dont even have to journey there you can fly glide and literally drive there instantly like a giant skip button so you cant even appreaciate the way to it, you skip to one important part to the next

and then points of interest are REPEATED AGAIN, like with shrines and lightroots and settlements and big mines- that is the opposite of satisfying gameplay, you dont have to explore shit bc its all in the same place which is probably why they only did tiny changes to those few spots and nothing else bc they knew most people would run right to those so it gives the illusion of changes (which are half reversable or barely a change at all) and even those are STILL meaningless

its right up there with having even MORE grind with less substance to it than in botw, the shrines and krogs got a lil old but at least the environment, its subtle storytelling etc were something- and totk just bloated everything with more little meaningless collectables while not changing anything meaningfully (and instead pretends that some things where never there and those new boring things were always there)

more shriens with shorter puzzles or none at all, more krogs with the same reward system, over a hundred tiny caves that all blend together bc they are all so similar and you really only do them for yet another colelctable for old gear and ONE cool new one with a bad effect after which the things collected become uselessreally, souls to collect to buy you a single armor set, rewards being largley reused old stuff from botw (imo you should have a chest in your house, yes YOUR house, that got most of the standard versions of botws armor in it so you dont have to buy it all again??? but you gotta think of going home first and dont have to use it- make new versions of them alternatively so you can choose if you want the old one or new one and also LEAVE ONE AT YOUR HOUSE WITHOUT HAVING TO SELL IT SO YOUT INVENTORY ISNT AS ENDLESSLY SCROLLING AS YOUR STUPID ARROW BAR)

theres new effects from food and armor thats largely useless (like the attack when hot?? why wouldnt you you jsut combine an armor and a potion- put on hot armor and drink an attack potion? its way more efficient no?? idk i found it to be yet another effect thing to bloat my inventory especially when NPCs keep giving you shitty effect food)

the whole sonanium (zonaite?) collecting with multiple ways to convert it into yet another currency??? huh???? AND have it be the thing for you to autobuild with?? when you need it upgrade your battery which takes an insane amount of those stones?? wells, while finally an actual well are NOW ALSO LIKE A COLLECTABLE and im gonna take a wild guess that the reward is utterly disappointing too

the fairies are all blocked by much more annoying means than in botw (like i wouldnt want to carry those NPCs three meters away in their little cart antoehr time please) and the amount of material AND MONEY NOW you need is so much higher for no reason (if its their attempt to make the game harder its the lamest way to do it)-

all while instead of expanding on the foundation of botw they ripped it out to build a new one while pretending they are both there (im so so slaty about this .... a sequel like this should expand upon the stuff of the first game, both in theme, narrative, mechanics and more and not ... replace it with slightly different versions of it while abandoning everything established before and really only using it as a way to skip having to make you care about some characters bc you might still care about them from the other game)

i could go on, as always lol, anyway, i really really dont get why this got into the final game ..

#ganondoodles talks #zelda #ganondoodles rants #totk critical #*cracks knuckles* time to rewrite and design #no but literally #putting the same objectives into the same places with the same characters ........ and then repeating important places AGAIN in the- #-undergound is just so ........... thats the opposite of what you should do wtf #like im only an aspiring gamedev but ............... right???? #like theres so many things #make the zora not be able totalk bc they are all poisoned by the goo so you have to understand them via weak fignerpointing #also have the champs be around the actual dungeon already so you can literally find the dugneon yourself AND do it right away #without having to go to the town- ask where is- get told where is- get little fight- get little puzzle- get dungeon that is often worse- #-defeat way to easy boss thats also found in depths- gets SAME CUTSCENE EVERY TIME- all problems go away- town normal again #there is quite literally no permanent change to anyone

[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

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Always a bit puzzled by people saying that anyone who wanted long-term consequences for TotK Zelda's sacrifice are "edgy".

I'm not even particularly in the camp that she should have remained a dragon forever (I think this should have been Ganondorf's fate, it would have been sooo much more impactful than to explode him and move on but anyway). To be honest, I wish the rules for turning back would have been 1) clear 2) active gameplay on the player so that it feels like it's something we have earned, and 3) not make her have amnesia about it and/or at least having her gain some crucial insight because of the experience.

(also: doesn't she crave knowledge? isn't that insanely mean to have her watch over every civilization and every bit of history ever and then take it away from her? kind of dislike how totk privileges the comfort of the player's feelings over what the characters would actually want or need tbh)

To be perfectly honest, I fully expected us needing to turn her back before engaging Ganondorf so we would fight him together, especially since Zelda as a compagnon exists in the game code already (though in a very subdued state). It feels very very strange to me that all of this mechanic of Sages following us existing and yet we never have the very climactic cool Zelda-staple moment of facing Ganondorf or Ganon together (OoT, WW, TP, ST and probably more that I'm forgetting all did this in some way --even BotW had Zelda more involved than in TotK). I'm not sure Mineru was a compagnon that was needed over Zelda honestly, especially given the kind of non-insight she gives us on the zonai (even if the idea of the mecha is cool, it really could have been Zelda using her zonai + sheikah knowledge to pilot one for us or something).

But anyway: yeah, even if this isn't what I would have wanted personally, I think wanting Zelda to remain a dragon is kind of arguably more respectful of her relationship to Link, in a way, that what the game ended up doing. When she enacted this sacrifice, Zelda decided to trust him to such a extent that she lost herself, reciprocated his trust in her and his devotion to her, and now the future of Hyrule exists beyond her and beyond what Hyrule once was, but she trusts them to follow through and be happy and she will watch over them from the stars moving on. It's fine if we manage to save her from that fate, but even if we don't, honestly this sounds like a beautiful story/tragic romance to me, if you want to read it that way. Tragedy doesn't necesserily involve edginess. Fictional pain isn't always mean, or out to get you.

#totk #totk critical #zelda #link #when will my brain return from the imprisoning war... #take it from me: a professional edgelord #but genuinely I was quite disappointed when I realized I wouldn't get to fight alongside Zelda at all #I thought for sure the first descent was a setup for the final descent when we would be reunited #and then confront Ganondorf together #I don't know to me that would have just made sense #she's the one with the most beef with that man Link is honestly just here so she doesn't have to call an über afterward #link doesn't have half as much reasons to want ganondorf dead as zelda does #which didn't help the feeling that I had as much emotional investment in the situation than the friend you call when you get in trouble #ganondorf isn't even directly responsible for zelda returning to the past NOR turning into a dragon! the guy has no idea what's going on! #anyway. this game's plot is very weird.

[blue-likethebird]

Reusing the memory system from botw for the tears of the dragon storyline in totk was such a terrible decision on so many different levels that it’s honestly kind of impressive.

While the botw memory system had flaws of its own, there was one small but significant thing that worked in its favour: botw’s memories were largely separate from the main plot in the past, and have absolutely no bearing on the story being told in the present. Aside from a few specific instances (ie the calamity striking, the ceremony, Link and Zelda becoming closer) the memories are all self-contained moments that emphasize character development over driving the story. Because there’s no major narrative throughline between them, it gives players more freedom to discover in any order regardless of how much they’ve progressed through the main quest without running the risk of stumbling across a memory that ruins something else later on in the game.

(This got long so the rest of my analysis is going under the cut.)

The biggest change between the memories from botw and the dragon’s tears from totk is definitely what kind of information these cutscenes relay to you as the player. Botw’s memories are primarily snapshots of small interpersonal moments that hold very little significance to the greater narrative taking place in the past. Totk’s memories are the greater narrative. With only one major exception -that I’ll touch on in a sec-, every cutscene in the dragon’s tears shows a crucial moment of story development with no time left to explore the characters driving that story forwards. There’s no organic moment revealing, say, a quirk of Rauru’s that Mineru finds annoying, or Sonia’s sense of humour, or any of our literal Main Villain Ganondorf’s motivations for going to war with Hyrule. If there’s any moments of character focus they only happen in ways that advance the plot (meaning the only real character focus is on the characters totk wants the entire universe to orbit around, namely Rauru and Zelda), and as such it’s harder to bring myself to care about what happens to anyone.

To illustrate the point I’m trying to make here, compare the memories of the champions Link regains during the divine beast quests to the conversations with the ancient sages at the end of each temple. The memories make passing mentions of the ongoing preparations for the calamity, but the real purpose of those scenes is to showcase who the champions were as people before their deaths and give us a reason to mourn them, even though we know at the start of our journey that they’re all long gone. In contrast, the conversations with the ancient sages are all about the events of the imprisoning war and their promise to Zelda that their descendants will come to Link’s aid in the future, very obviously copy pasted for each of the five times that cutscene is brought up (which is a particularly egregious moment of bad quest design but that’s a rant for another time) in such a way that none of the 5 incarnations of that cutscene reveal anything new about the ancient sages as characters, to the point where none of them even show their faces. I care about Daruk because the game shows me that he cares deeply about the wellbeing of his fellow champions and brings out the best in others. So why should I care about the nameless, faceless sage of water? What’s there to move me about their struggles if my only interactions with the sages are a series of exposition dumps? If the game can’t give me a reason to sincerely care about its main characters, the whole rest of the story is meaningless.

(As an aside, I get the feeling someone on the dev team caught on to the issue I’m describing here, because the tea party memory sticks out like a sore thumb from the rest of the dragon tear cutscenes. It’s such a jarring change of pace to have the otherwise plot-heavy dragon’s tears come screeching to a halt for a scene where Sonia sits down with Zelda to have a cute little tea party and talk about absolutely nothing of significance that the whole thing almost seems like it was hastily tacked on to the story later. Given that the next (chronological) memory sees Sonia fall victim to an unceremonious death by chiropractor, it feels like someone realized that Sonia really doesn’t do or say much in the scenes before she dies and threw together the tea party scene so players would have at least one moment to look back on fondly when she’s fridged. But I digress)

The story told in the dragon’s tears is a highly linear one. But the open-ended nature of botw’s memory system remains, meaning that these tears can be found and viewed in any order. At first this doesn’t seem so bad, since the first two tears you’re likely to find if you follow the game’s intended path are also the chronological first and second of the memories you can discover through these geoglyph tears. But after those first two, the game kinda gives up on guiding you towards these tears in a way that flows well with the story they wrote: the closest tear geographically to the two the game initially guides you towards correlates to one of the penultimate scenes of that entire storyline, while the next scene chronologically is found almost halfway across the map. As such, it’s all but guaranteed that you’ll spoil yourself in some way without using either a guide or the (somewhat unintuitive and never fully explained by the game) little map in the forgotten temple. Finding memories in order didn’t matter so much in botw because the scenes you could find still worked well as standalone scenes before you discovered every memory and pieced together the full picture, and the game is never trying to surprise me about the characters’ fates at the end of this storyline: hell the first memory you’re guided to shows the calamity striking. But in contrast, viewing a dragon’s tear at the wrong time can completely ruin the story they’re trying to tell in those cutscenes. During my playthrough, for example, the first tear I found after the game stopped guiding me to them showed Ganondorf removing Sonia’s stone from her dead body. At this point I had known Sonia existed for all of like an hour, so every subsequent appearance she made was ruined for me by the fact that I already knew she was nothing but cannon fodder to be killed off for the sake of another character’s pain (Rauru and Zelda a-fucking-gain). I expected to be pissed that it was so easy to spoil myself, or maybe sad in passing that a character with her potential was so underutilized, but instead I just felt… tired. I wasn’t even halfway to the first settlement and already I was completely numb to the story the game was trying to tell.

But the worst was yet to come. And oh boy was it ever a low point for storytelling in the Zelda series. Remember how I said up above that the memories in botw had no connection to the story in the present? Let’s just say the same cannot be said for the dragon’s tears.

It’s May 2023. I’ve just finished the sage of wind questline. I still have hope that the story the game is trying to tell will be good. Deciding that I’ll go to Goron city next, I head towards the Thyplo skyview tower to expand my map, catch a glimpse of a nearby geoglyph from the air, and glide over to check it out. This geoglyph shows me a memory that not only recaps the entire dragon tear storyline, but also ends on a bit of foreshadowing about Zelda’s fate that’s about as subtle as a brick to the fucking face. By exploring -the thing the game claims it prioritized above all else in the design of its world and quests- I’d once again been hit with spoilers for a major story detail.

My main objective in this game is to find Zelda. It’s the only driving factor behind my journey towards all these different regions. The current big mystery I’m supposed to solve is why Zelda’s causing so much hell for the people of Hyrule. I now knew exactly where she was and what the deal with her appearances in other parts of Hyrule was, and I’d found it completely by accident by doing something the game says over and over again that it wants me to do. Unlike with Sonia’s death, this time I was a mess of emotions. I was pissed the fuck off that this open-world game had punished me twice already for trying to explore. More than that, I was disappointed that a game I had been so excited to play, from a series I had so many fond memories of, had let me down like this. With every subsequent quest where the sages and I chased a Zelda I knew was fake to our next objective, and every NPC wondering where she was that I couldn’t tell the truth to, that disappointment grew. The entire rest of the main story was ruined for me before I had progressed past 1/4th of the regional quests and a third of the dragon’s tears. There was no more sense of anticipation or mystery. I finished the rest of the game with a bitter taste in my mouth and haven’t touched it again since.

Do I think this story could have been good? Honestly, I don’t know, and by now I don’t really care either (that’s a lie. I care so so much and that’s probably why I hate totk as much as I do). But it’s all irrelevant, because like Cinderella’s stepsister cutting off her own heel so she can cram her foot into a glass slipper that’s never going to fit, totk is sabotaged by the devs’ insistence that everything fit itself into a world they custom-made for botw. This isn’t a new formula that the series is following, it’s Nintendo slapping a new coat of paint on an existing skeleton, and I’m not optimistic to see what this particular approach has in store for the Zelda series. Especially not at the price they’re charging for it.

#bluebird.txt #salt of the kingdom #totk critical #long post #totk salt #totk spoilers #apologies to my followers for the long-ass whatever this is #I do think about things that aren’t how much I hate this game I’m just in a mood lmao #negative #it’s fine if you disagree I just had to put my thoughts in words

[gloriousmonsters]

seriously just. nothing gets me fuming about the sheer... uninventive cowardice of ToTK's storyline than thinking about how despite their flaws, the OoT/TP/WW trio were all about complicating Ganondorf in an interesting way. OoT was like ok, this guy is fucked up but he's cool, he's a hero to a lot of his people and oh yeah, the band of thieves you've heard of is actually a tribe of people, his people, and if you look you can see how a world like this made a man like him. WW was like and maybe he's more human than you thought. maybe he was a little in love with the land he conquered. maybe if he lived longer, he'd be capable of regret, of some amount of self-reflection, of showing mercy to the enemies he swore to destroy in the past. TP was like and what if stopping him before he conquered Hyrule wasn't the happy ending? what if it made everything worse? what if we've done bad things, and Ganondorf's return is part of our actions coming back to haunt us, his execution wound impossible to ignore, the sword he wields the one meant to kill a monster, one that failed when the gods seemingly signaled they weren't totally on our side? and, both of them agree on, his death isn't a joyful triumph. It's sobering, unnerving, tragic.

then totk's like. well what if he was... an evil guy. just a VERY evil guy. because he's evil. and mean. what if we retold OoT but worse and more simplistic and also the power Ganondorf takes isn't divine so we dodge all those awkward questions about if he's really Basically The Devil or if he has a more complicated part in the whole. and, hear us out, what if he was evil and wanted to bring... DARKNESS. because he's bad

#'and what if in this retold version of OoT zelda got to do literally nothing' #'and we added a queen just to look pretty be nice and get killed' #but i need to like. cut myself off #and think about something positive instead of just descending into the salt mines lol #totk critical #ganondorf #it's an old song and we're gonna sing it again

[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

[legends-on-legends]

the "classic" villain

some ppl try to defend totk ganondorf’s one-dimensional characterization by arguing that he’s meant to be a “pure evil”, “classic” villain. now, personally, i’m not entirely opposed to having ganondorf just be an unhinged evil guy – in my opinion, part of what makes him great is the fact that he can do it all, he can be the tragic fallen hero, the sympathetic anti-villain, the remorseful old man who can’t give up the ghost of his ambitions, and also the magnificent bastard who enjoys terrorizing hyrule bc they kinda had it coming, let’s be real here. pure evil villains are fun, that’s why i love sukuna from jujutsu kaisen, he’s just an absolute unapologetic menace.

but the thing about “pure evil” or “classic” villains is that they still have to make sense. take, for instance, big jack horner from puss in boots: the last wish, a character who some have smugly pointed to as an example of a “real villain” that’s supposedly rare nowadays. the main point of jack horner is that he’s an asshole, a real piece of shit who’s uninterested in redemption or helping others, despite the best efforts of his jiminy-cricket inspired companion. jack horner is fun and adds some variety to a film that also has a sympathetic antagonist who experiences growth (goldilocks) and a force-of-nature antagonist who absolutely steals the show (death). but jack horner still makes sense; he’s an over-privileged man-child who wanted for nothing and therefore feels entitled to everything, and he’s also spiteful bc pinocchio upstaged him that one time. plus, jack horner is funny, so that’s a bonus.

same goes for every other classic villain that people like, whether it’s the old-school disney villains or the bad guys from classic cartoons. pure evil villains still have to be coherent and understandable in some way. that doesn’t mean their reasons have to be good – in fact, i think pure evil villains are basically defined by NOT having good reasons to justify their actions. but they still need to have reasons.

but totk ganondorf? this dude makes no damn sense. why does the king of the gerudo, out of all people, become king of demons? it might as well have been the king of gorons or zora or rito who turned evil. why did the gerudo support his conquest of hyrule only to turn against him once he transformed into the demon king? where did he get his powers from? how and why did ganondorf, of all people, reach the conclusion that hyrule must be bathed in eternal darkness, and why is he so dedicated to this goal that he’s willing to sacrifice his own mind and body to achieve it? what, exactly, is driving this man? you can’t call him selfish because again, he’s willing to permanently damage himself to attain his goals, that shows he’s bound to a higher cause. but there’s no explanation for why he, of all people, has chosen this particular cause.

and sure, the fandom can speculate and try to use the lore to fill in the gaps, but the fact that there are such big gaps in the first place is totk’s biggest failure, in my opinion. if people have to look at lore guides to make sense of your villain, then you’ve failed as a storyteller.

totk ganondorf might have made more sense as just a monster that spawned from the Depths rather than a man who was born among the gerudo. maybe the zonai dug around too deep and activated the Depths’ defense mechanism, and boom, ganon emerges, furious at the surface world that has dared to intrude upon his domain, and determined to return the favor by covering the land of light with darkness. he’s still a monster who must be defeated but at least there would have been some logic to his actions.

#ganondorf #totk critical #ganondorf meta

[gongaga-twunk]

A lot of my problems with totk arise from how obvious the hand of the creators is. A lot of the things in this game feel very contrived; we start off strong with the game forcing you to get a heart container. Which. Yeah, sure, alright. I can handwave that, it's fine. Then we get to the skyview towers, which are... very similar to the Sheikah towers (which were still functioning just fine when we found them in botw). The challenges from the Sheikah towers came from how old they were. They were still functioning fine; the world around them changed. With the skyview towers, they're glitched, they're broken... something that by all means just feels like a reason not to give you the map. The Sheikah towers are tricky because after all that time, they should be. The skyview towers are tricky because the game needs them to be.

And there's so many things like that in the game; things that can be dismissed as flawed on their own, but stack up and become extremely irritating. I can't remember who exactly pointed this out, but since you don't technically even need the master sword to beat Ganondorf, Zelda turning into a dragon is completely and utterly pointless. She could have just put the sword in some other holy place, this is just an excuse to metaphorically put her in a crystal again. For a process that is supposedly irreversable and forbidden, it's stupid that she went and did so anyway. Again, it serves the needs of the game, without really justifying itself.

There's just a ton of things like that. I'm very tired and frustrated writing this so it might not make a lot of sense, but it's just. Aughh I wanted to like this game SO BAD

#totk critical #totk criticism #Legend of Zelda stop fridging/martyring/sexualizing/etc the women in your games #I promise you don't have to do it Nintendo people will be happier if you oh I don't know #Let us talk to Zelda for more than five minutes #Let Paya have a personality beyond her implied love interests #OH YEAH. AND STOP SEXUALIZING RIJU HOLY SHIT

[waywardsalt]

god i hate how the gerudo in totk are practically framed as though they constantly require hylian intervention to succeed… the way riju’s introduction stands out as the only one where she struggles to use her power until link comes along… the way link is chosen to decide how they should station the gerudo troops when fighting off the gibdos… the fact that one npc mentions how when zelda had visited she had somehow taught them new ways to fight in their own terrain, which should hopefully be obviously fucked up… the way the eighth heroine was revealed to have been a male hylian who came along and told the other gerudo heroines how to fight against their enemy… ugh ugh ugh

#salty talks #loz #legend of zelda #totk #the riju one can be brushed aside as introducing how her power works in gameplay but like with everything else? #plus shes the only sage mentioned to have not figured their power up and like. anyone with a bow can help link aint special #i. hate how the gerudo are both portrayed as strong warrior women but also helpless without this specific kind of outside help #totk critical #god i fucking hate what was done with the gerudo in totk amazing how nintendo has not improved since fucking 1998 #thers prob more but UGH #bitching abt totk

[vampire-wizard-solidarity]

i think the way totk references skyward sword only highlights the problems with totk and gets a little insulting at times.

this is mostly about ganondorf’s demon king form being highly reminiscent of demise. i get that it makes sense, since ganon’s power most likely comes from demise’s curse, so when it’s amplified it visually references that. that’s neat, and not an inherently bad idea, even a good one in some aspects.

however, all it does for me is highlight just how much of a non character ganondorf is. demise is, to an extent, also a non character: he isn’t deep nor extensively fleshed out, but the thing is, not all characters have to be. and him, he works. most of the game is spent with ghirahim, his much more expressive and motivated sidekick. he’s fun, intimidating when he has to be, and balances being silly and being an actual threat well. demise is the kicker, the final punch, when ghirahim spent the entire game building him up, we finally get to see him, he’s intimidating, he’s serious in contrast to ghirahim, he immediately shuts the villain we spent most of the game fighting up, and reduces him to an object to be used to fulfil his own goals. his boss fight is cool, and so is he.

demise is a god of destruction, he doesn’t have a motivation beyond the fact that he is a representation and wields power over evil. and that’s the point. skyward sword’s themes largely center humanity vs inhumanity, link spends a large portion of the game running around fulfilling a plan he doesn’t fully understand, being roped into this ordeal before he even finds out about it, not really comprehending what’s happening or why for a long time. so, it’s only natural the final force he has to face is an equally incomprehensible threat, and he defeats it not because he comprehends it more now, or understands the ancient conflict between gods or any of that. he does it because he wants to protect someone he loves, he does it because he forms a genuine bond with the robotic, originally emotionless guide who was made only for the purpose of aiding him in this godly plan. humanity triumphs over godhood. humanity triumphs over inhumanity.

in totk, however? there really isn’t much difference between ganondorf before and after he becomes the demon king. he has no particular motivation before or after, he is a king who wants to rule over hyrule with evil, and then he becomes a more powerful king who wants to rule over hyrule with evil. he looks more like the god of destruction now, but that signifies nothing other than he is more powerful now. ganon has always been associated with power, and the way power corrupts has always been a fitting theme for him. he could’ve had development throughout the game, and him becoming more like the literal godly representation of evil could’ve signified that development. maybe he was a king with an actual motivation, an actual in story reason to oppose hyrule, we could’ve been shown his human side, what he actually cares for and why he does the things he does, and then we could’ve seen that side of him dissolve as he taps more into his power, becomes more like a being of destruction that destroys simply because that’s what it has power over. him taking visual cues from demise could’ve actually meant something, could’ve been a visual representation of the way his power corrupts him. instead, we get nothing. there was no reason to bring ganondorf back, because he still acts like a motivationless monster, who is evil simply because he is. all talk of this being “his game” was a lie, considering he could easily be replaced by a generically evil monster and nothing would’ve changed.

ultimately, i still wouldn’t have been happy with this story because it would still lean heavily on the orientalist narratives still alive and present in zelda, but this would’ve been at least something. the way it is, the fact that he takes visual cues from demise pisses me off because it highlights just how one dimensional his character is, it makes me feel only cynicism because it makes it clear that ganondorf was only brought back because he’s a popular and iconic character and not because he had any purpose in the story or because the writers had anything interesting to do with him.

#loz #legend of zelda #totk #tears of the kingdom #totk critical #totk criticism #skyward sword #sksw #ganondorf #demise #analysis #my hot takes #meta

[rawliverandgoronspice]

Oh my fucking god??? I *knew* there was something fishy with no writers/quest designers being credited. Also: outsourcing is not an excuse not to credit the gamedevs doing hard and deserving work.

This is genuinely contemptful towards everyone involved, gamedevs and players alike.

#totk #totk critical #when will my brain return from the imprisoning war... #yeah no Fuck TotK #we have taken a hard turn towards fuck TotK #gameplay is cute but you don't get to disrespect my profession and my fellow gamedevs like that #nor one of my favorite game series #this is... so fucking revealing #still on the conspiracy board of “they had another story planned and it didn't work out and everyone parted in bad terms” #and this is how they fixed it #wow wow wow #best zelda story my entire ass #and the lack of honesty!!! #I'm so furious hahaha like what the hell

[blue-likethebird]

The explanation for why totk’s story is so Not Great and how disconnected from its predecessor it feels being that the devs didn’t want to alienate new players who didn’t know anything about botw’s story just falls apart the more I think about it. Nothing from this stupid half a plot works unless the player is familiar with specific details from the better games that came before it.

The believability of Link and Zelda’s connection to each other hinges on you knowing about the nuance of their relationship in botw. The ancient sages fighting with the champions’ arms and divine beast helms will only be impactful to botw/aoc players because totk doesn’t bother to explain the significance of that callback at all. Fi’s cameo is meaningless unless you either got every memory in botw or finished the master trial dlc (and know about her from skyward sword). You’ll only get the full context of Teba being sidelined in favour of a 12-year old if you played a specific chapter of Age of Calamity’s second DLC. Like sorry but I think Nintendo just made a bad story tbh

#bluebird.txt #salt of the kingdom #totk critical #yes i do think aoc is better than totk and I’m tired of pretending it isn’t #and In what universe is tarrey town common knowledge among non-fans while the divine beasts are a complete mystery #the mcu-ification of Zelda #also the champions’ weapons and sages’ helmets can’t believe I forgot about those! #if you’d never encountered anything from botw and wanted to know who Revali was after seeing the great eagle bow description #or you wanted to know why the Zora sage wore a helmet shaped like an elephant #you’d be shit outta luck unless you googled that information bc totk sure won’t tell you

[cynical-cy]

actually now that i think about it it pisses me off SO much that nintendo was hyping TotK as "incredibly dark" story-wise, and then having an ending that erases all of that built up tension by (SPOILER) restoring zelda and giving link his own arm back (even tho rauru said he had to REPLACE IT LIKE???)

i think a better way to end it would've been having zelda unable to transform back, HOWEVER, they were able to restore her sense of self and ability to speak-- she could no longer live among mortals but at least everyone could find closure through it

if not that, then turn her back but not all the way, have her keep draconic traits that will never let her be identified as just hylian ever again, they could even give her minor amnesia and set up an implied post-game link-taking-care-of-her/restoring-her-memory thing

and link's arm should've at the very least been scarred to hell if it HAD to be "restored" i still think he should've kept rauru's arm tbh

anyway, back on topic, TotK NEVER gave me an emotional heartstring jerk the same way Midna's Lament, the credits scenes of MM, or Byrne's sacrifice all made me feel. and these moments are all in different games, spirit tracks arguably being the most lighthearted in the series

there were PLENTY of moments of AWE in TotK-- the leadup to the Wind Temple and Colgera, Rauru's sacrifice, Ganondorf's fight-- but not one single moment made me actively sad outside of dragon tear 13-- before i knew zelda would be fine

"but Cy, Midna was fine in TP so it's the same as zelda in TotK" yeah, but at the end of the game she still ends up sacrificing her connection to the light for the sake of protecting everyone she'd come to care about, plus the emotional weight of Midna's Lament was so much stronger because it was happening IN THE PRESENT. in my first playthrough, i assumed that segment was timed in some fashion which added to my stress and worry for midna, making the scene leagues more impactful

at the end of the day, there isn't one single thing that happened in TotK that was sad AND lasting. lurelin falls, but nobody's harmed and you can restore it. the four regions have mini calamities on their hands, but beating the temples reverses ALL their effects. you can argue that there is lasting effects on hyrule-- namely being chunks of sky rock plunged into the surface-- but that's not sad, it's just unfortunate

nothing in TotK REMAINS dark, and that's what bothers me the most about nintendo saying it's "the darkest in the series" because it's a bold-faced fucking lie

#cyspeaks #totk critical #totk spoilers #totk genuinely deserves the praise it gets on a near-daily basis #but im not gonna sit here and pretend the story isn't hot garbage outside of the beginning end and some tiny bits at each temple #“darkest in the series” my left nut

[sage-nebula]

@sharpidiot — making a new post since the other one is super long, but yeah, considering the position of the Sheikah at this point in Hyrule's history, and how they got there and the existence of the Yiga Clan? It's a big problem.

It's not mentioned in BotW itself, but the entire reason why the Yiga Clan exist is because 10,100 years ago, after the Sheikah helped save Hyrule from the Calamity by building the Divine Beasts and Guardians, the King of Hyrule felt threatened by them and basically attempted a genocide on the Sheikah. All Sheikah tech was ordered to be destroyed, Sheikah were forced out of the main parts of Hyrule, and Sheikah were banned from doing anything more with science on punishment of imprisonment at the least. The Sheikah who survived all this dealt with it in one of two ways: they either went on to found Kakariko Village and live in secret, or they formed the Yiga Clan and swore revenge on the royals (and more importantly the goddesses) that betrayed them.

All of this is in the Creating a Champion book, scattered throughout the history section and in detail on page 368. It casts the Yiga Clan in an entirely new light. While they can't exactly be excused for wanting to kill those that had nothing to do with the paranoid king's decision and destroy the world, we also can't say they're just bonkers or that they formed for no reason. The Sheikah were sworn to the goddesses (and Hylia in specific) to protect the royal family of Hyrule (Hylia's descendents). This was their divine duty. And then they were punished for it, exiled and had their culture destroyed and were oppressed and imprisoned. Their goddesses did nothing to help them. The king and people they had protected were the ones doing this to them. Can we blame them for turning the way they did? I can't.

But now, a huge chunk of that just seems . . . gone, from TotK. If the Sheikah tech didn't exist, then the king from 10,100 years ago wouldn't have done what he did to the Sheikah. And if he didn't do that, the Yiga Clan wouldn't exist. It makes zero sense. What's worse is there are parts of the Zonai things that are very reminiscent of Sheikah things, such as the orbs in the shrines. We could say perhaps the Sheikah inherited those things from the Zonai, but . . . that's plot putty to try to spackle the holes.

I'm still early in the game (I have only finished the Rito portion) so I do not want any spoilers for anything that comes later. Maybe this will be fixed. I hope it is. But if it isn't, then I will probably consider TotK to be yet another video game fanfic, a la Age of Calamity (albeit one that is higher quality at least).

#loz totk spoilers #totk spoilers #totk critical #sheikah #yiga clan #oh and not to mention how on the in-game bios they list the Sheikah as Hylians? #when they are not Hylians. the Sheikah are a distinct people #just like the Gerudo are #it makes me very hhhhhhhhhhh

[lightningbreath]

I HATE ganlink and ganzel, but, mostly, I HATE Ganondorf.

I swear, how can there be people who ship a demon who always seeks to FUCK WITH THE LIVES OF THE KINGDOM AND THE PROTAGONISTS and say that "" oh, but he's a victim "", "" oh, it's Hylia's fault""" , "" ain, but look carefully """.

Look, nothing!!! I swear, every time I see fanarts or fanfics or the number of people who support this with the shitty excuse of """ oh, Link/Zelda will show what's good about him"" (that's when it's not a romanticization of rape or abusive relationship). And you know what's the worst, it's the fact that Nintendo's shit makes him ""physically attractive"" since it seems like if you're physically attractive you can do whatever the fuck you want and people not only will forgive you, as he will glorify you.

My God, Ganondorf isn't even a gray villain, with layers, NO!!! He's just the typical shit villain who wants to dominate and kill just because he likes (and no, neither do I). come with Ganondorf from WW, because that was ridiculous, "" oh, I just wanted a better place, I just wanted the wind"" and then he tries to invade a Kingdom that isn't his and condemns the gerudo and Hyrule, he he's just a selfish spoiled brat who tried to play the victim).

And I'm not even going to talk about Ghirahim's ship with Link here because it's ridiculous and disgusting, ""haha, let's ship Link with the guys who screwed up his life for active and passive because GAY SEX, haha""". I hate sidlink and malink, but at least the stories and fanarts are cute, the relationships are healthy and, most importantly, MALON AND SÍDON NEVER TRIED TO FUCK LINK'S LIFE!!!!

I like fanarts that place Ganondorf, Zelda and Link as "unlikely friends" or with Zelda and Link destroying or mocking Ganondorf but that's it, if you want to do a story where he finds the Light, do it. BUT DON'T INVOLVE LINK AND ZELDA IN THIS, THEY HAVE NO RESPONSIBILITY OR DUTY IN """RESCUING GANONDORF"""!!!

All games say that Ganondorf is only king because he is the ''''chosen one''''. If there's anyone who enjoys the '''divine monarchy''' it's this son of a bitch. Another thing, seriously, just because there is a conflict in Gaza (it seems to ignore what Hamas does to its own people) and because he is dark-skinned, he cannot be a villain? Please, it would be a problem if all Gerudos were portrayed as villains.

It makes me sick to see how a part of the fandom always wants to find a way to make Ganondorf a '''gray villain''' when they aren't crying and kicking because Nintendo doesn't justify all his actions as a '''poor thing and as Hyrule is the great hidden evil'''.

And the stupidest thing is why these people ask this, since it seems like they can't ask for more '''complexity''' from Ganondorf without talking about his shitty race, I'll bet my house that if Ganondorf were a white man, clearly heterosexual, no one would say anything about him being a cartoonish villain.

The mistakes of the royal family of Hyrule have never been hidden, some even come to light (the history of the Yiga, the Civil War in Oot), but it seems that these people would only keep quiet if Ganondorf decimated all the Hylians. , because Hylians are evil and how dare you insinuate that a dark-skinned man from the Middle East is a shitty person and a tyrant who uses his people as instruments and blah, blah, blah.

''''Ain, but Ganondorf from Wind Waker'''', the truth is that little happened to him. That little speech of his is the same one in which Hitler told the Jews in the concentration camps that ''''Germany was destroyed by the First War and the Treaty of Versailles was destroying his people and that he only had the noble reason to empower the Germans. and that he only wanted the good of his people.'

Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Well, that's basically Ganondorf's speech.

And finally: Zelda has imperialist propaganda. Well, what's the problem? It's incredible how foreigners deify the Republic because of course, the only shit is the monarchy.

The monarchy in Latin countries was going well, with its ups and downs like every system of government and then BOOM, France, USA and England start to interfere in the politics of other countries to plunge them into wars and make it '''' democratic republics'''' completely dependent on them, a great plan, and now, the Latinos want to exchange American imperialism for Chinese, remaining slaves but changing owners. I would love imperialism like Zelda's, the races have a lot of autonomy of their own and even in the cruelest moment of the Hylian monarchy, they still managed to be self-sustainable. Ganondorf has always been a tyrant, who put his people in misery to use them as justification for his actions.

You complain about Rauru and the Hylian monarchy, but Ganondorf never wanted what was best for the Gerudo, he never wanted to live in peace with other races, he wanted to INVADE lands that weren't his (it was always implied that Hylians existed before). the Gerudo) if you have someone who is an imperialist who takes advantage of the "divine right of monarchy" that being is Ganondorf. I am very happy when I see the Gerudo prosper without the thorn in the side that is Ganondorf, I am completely in favor of that the '''gerudo men''' no longer exist and they are the incredible Amazonian tribe that they always were.

That's it, I've had this installed in my heart since I joined this fandom and finally, I'm at peace.

#tears of the kingdom #the legend of zelda #zelda #tloz tears of the kingdom #legend of zelda #loz #ganondorf #loz ganon #loz link #botw link #zelda botw #botw 2 #link #calamity ganon #totk ganon #wind waker #oot #ocarina of time #I think this could be considered a “”hate post“” or something similar #tloz #totk #demise #tloz ww #exaggerated outburst #It's my shitty opinion #okay? #but you can comment whatever you want #outburst of fury caused mainly by a twitter post #zelda totk #totk critical