Eventually when the devs are done with the interviews I want to return. I don't really like information changing mid-scripting or editing...it happened twice while writing about the Temple of Time...thats when I tried the Mysteries & Easter Eggs...so I will return just not for a little bit. In addition, I depend on RUclips for my livelihood. Viewership went down for all Zeldatubers and I felt like that was a major indication Zelda content is in trouble for the short term...Hope you understand homies.
they missed a good opportunity with the depths, a call back to the original Legend of Zelda the dungeons in that game were called the underworld, when they revealed the depths I was expecting more dungeons, maybe call backs to the original dungeons
Definitely feeling this. TotK is a pure masterpiece gameplay wise, and the story notes that were there were wonderful, but having put the game down for a couple months now, it's become evident to me that the plot didn't just take a backseat here, it was pretty much sidelined and became very unimportant as a development priority in a way that harmed the overall experience. The balance between these elements was so much better in the past and all I can hope is that we get back toward that in the future. The main thing I haven't gotten over is hearing the same sage story 5 times in a row. It just makes me remember how, when you rescued the maidens in ALttP, you were told something unique and equally important by each one.
I wouldn't call it a masterpiece gameplay-wise. They did nothing to alter the gameplay loop of Breath of the Wild: they only added to it (which does not necessarily make it better). I don't find durability or rain climbing to be an issue, but I do have an issue with the nature of the shrines, the copy paste enemies, the lack of music, and the infinite recovery mechanic to name a few. I don't think that they should have made a sequel without fixing the things that were genuinely repairable about the prequel. It was forgivable with BOTW, but a seven-year-later sequel? Also the slow equip options and lag are absolutely horrible.
@@artemis_studios6555 Well I based that statement only on the total amount of fun I had with it, which was off the charts. I do agree there are things that could be better here and there throughout the game.
Also then still reading some comments people would rather die than stop defending Nintendo. Like holy fck they are my childhood too but the things they get away with literally any other developer would get boycotted for is craaaaaaazy to me
ppl simp so hard for Zelda man. And I get it like~ i LOVE Zelda...its just frustrating to watch them throw away all the mysterious stuff that makes Zelda, well Zelda... its really hard to put into words and half the reason this video seems so stale is because i was so nervous about blatantly stating my opinion. thanks for saying whats up homie
I feel a very similar empty feeling. No game has hurt my interest more in Zelda lore than this game. The fact that we need to have the developers come out and give us clarifications multiple times, proves they just arent good at story telling. ToTK is a suped up but less thematically consistent BoTW, and while I had a blast playing it, I have no desire to revisit it anytime soon. It had some innovative gameplay but didnt really deliver on the improvements it sorely needed. ToTK was like a student that was getting an A in science and a D in English and that student goes on to discover a new renewable energy, its like ok thats great but you're still getting a D in English.
I miss Skyward Sword’s storytelling dude. Having such an open world isn’t worth losing out on stories that I can care about. Totk’s story seemed like it would be so much more intriguing than what we got.
I know right! I thought they would answer some long resonating questions about the Twili (yes the twili) while presenting some deeper questions about the Zonai. Its so depressing
I couldn’t watch enough Zelda lore before the ToTK release, I adored all the theories. This is the first Zelda video I’ve seen since, it all just feels a hollow and like the devs don’t care about any cohesive lore whatsoever Especially when the lore videos had more interesting stories than what was revealed in the game. We were so excited about answers to our questions and we were all let down so hars
My issue is this: While I cared about the story in each game, I didnt care much about the overall legend. That is untill Skyward sword and Breath of the Wild. SS explained the origins, why these characters keep reincarnating, why it keeps boiling down to Link, Zelda, and Ganon. BOTW felt like the end of the timeline. The cycles repeated so many times that the people of hyrule made preparations. Ganon's been reduced to a mindless force of nature, suggesting Demise's curse is hitting its limits. Sure it was just my interpretation but i thought it was leading to the curse finally breaking, opening up possibilities for entirely new stories. Instead... it just retreads old ground. Ganon's seal has broken, gather sages, save Zelda. Ganondorf has zero complexity, and is even flatter than Demise. Calamity Ganon. This great evil Zelda held in a stalemate for 100 years, that all of hyrule united against in another timeline. Yeah its basically a Phantom Ganon. It doesn't progress the story, in fact it lessens BOTW and AOCs.
I still think the fanfiction and fanarts of Ganon splitting into his evil of Demise and 'king forced into his evil from the curse' and coming back as a helpful ghost, or going back in the past to save a Ganon who was a beloved friend to a past link and Zelda and that the figure in the tapestry was Ganon sacrificing himself to seal his own evil self was all so much more interesting than what we got. Hell, keep Ganon evil, just make him more interesting for the love of God.
@@LadyAhro Exactly! Why establish a curse? Why show a bit of humanity in Wind Waker? Why suggest more complexity to this character just to toss it all aside? The others are allowed depth. You have Zelda. The 1 incarnation who struggles with her power, who grows into a leader. You have Link. Shown to keep a stoic attitude to deal with the pressure he's under, and has a deeper relationship to the Zora. Not much, but more than usual for him. Then you have Ganondorf. He wants to conquer Hyrule because... he wants power, light bad, darkness good? His fight is genuinely fantastic, and the actor makes the most of what he's given, but he comes off as a generic villain a small child would come up with.
I LOVED totk, got 70~ hours in. Then, I paused to finish my run of OoT that i had started prior to its release. That game had completely won my heart. The atmosphere, the dungeons, ect. Now im playing through MM for the first time, and its really hard picturing myself going back after really experiencing the charm of the older games and the quirks of their worlds. Botw is very close to my heart, but I really miss the atmosphere present in the previous main line entries. Im still impressed with the gameplay of totk, but i knew the main story would fall flat very early in. There are sidequest stories that i enjoyed, especially seeing everyone’s growth after 5~ years had passed (ignoring the few NPCs that straight up FORGOT us??? Wtf???). I found Tracy’s development from a traveling journalist to an outright news outlet owner to be a particularly fun continuity that reminded me of details found in earlier games. I just feel like they didn’t think to focus on the story aspects at all, and it was very sad to see.
the totk gameplay is so fun but you are right the story falls on its face. I am angry about the NPC's not remembering us, and I dont think I touched on that as much as I should have.
The thing that gets me is that they didn’t even change the normal town music. Like they did when they were under attack but after you saved them it returned to their botw town theme. When kakariko has PERMANENT DAMAGE and a new leader why hasn’t the town theme changed? Same with goron village. They wanna build a theme park why isn’t the theme different? It’s things like this where it feels like something happened during development to not fix the music or the dog petting or letting Zelda be an NPC in the over world. As much fun as I had with the game I was hoping for bigger changes. Ok big rant over.
I shit you not, before totk, you could say i lived and breathed zelda. Ive played every game and memorized all of the lore from the books. I feel like a crazy person when i hear people saying that the timeline is incoherent or that the games arent connected, despite most of the games referencing each other in the story. I expected totk to be this grand story that would be the climax of what had started in ocarina of time. Even all of the vagueness and calamity ganon in botw just built up more hype. But now.... its seems like all those people were right, the devs don't give a shit and im the idiot for caring so much. I felt like my favorite piece of fiction has lied to me and left me behind. I straight up despise the zonai. They are representative of everything that killed the story. Rauru is a hack who stole a better character's name. Sonia is nothing. And ganondorf is asleep the whole game, this is the least active he's ever been in a zelda game. We've literally sacrificed everything for visual spectacle.
but hey~ MEAT ARROW & CHEESE HOE *"devs don't give a shit and im the idiot for caring so much."* this part hit hard.. homie... i feel that pain to the core of my being...
@moxiewatts like who do I blame for this? Surely not aonuma, right? Maybe fujibayashi? But it couldn't be, I love what he did in skyward sword. Maybe the devs decided to do the opposite of skyward sword due to backlash. But probably not because they started botw right after finishing skyward sword, and in that time frame the reviews were stellar.
I’m personally so confounded how they managed to create such an emotionally powerful game with great gameplay with what felt like no story and no lore. I’m having a similar experience of having no desire to play it again after playing through once. I felt like there’s just nothing really to be discovered.
it’s so weird bc i was so excited after finally deciding to do the last fight and then after like 30 minutes of running around i was just… bored out of my mind :(
Oh man this hit me when I first tried playing. I was so immediately heartbroken, i had to to put it aside and not play for a long time and ranting with friends, it made me feel better but it took some time. It really sucked since at the beggining everyone else was so happy and I wasn't but as people started playing more and where like oh wow this actually isn't as great I felt better 😂. Like it's beautiful but how much stuff they stuffed in story wise but it was still somehow less story, especially compared to botw. All I wanted really besides lore and story, was to be able to dive and PET FUCKING ANIMALS. ALL I WANTED WAS TO PET THE GOOD BOIS AND THEY COULDNT EVEN DO THAT 😭
I think they should have cut out most of or even all of the depths and spent their time on actual dungeons or story and better developing the sky. We also didn't need quite that many caves. It's a case of biting off more than they could chew. Creating and developing new landscape takes a lot of time they could have spent elsewhere. Exploration was the cool new thing with BotW and they wanted to double down on it in TotK, but to go that route they should have done a new map, not reused BotW. I do think they were correct that there was potential in reusing the BotW map but that should have given them a headstart and allowed them to develop things that BotW was weaker on, like the lore, characters, and story line. Some elements, like koroks, should have been changed up more instead of just making new puzzle types.
Hard agree, the Depths are such a nothing-burger and caves are even worse. I didn’t find any reason to explore either as there was nothing to discover in either, just the same Horoblins, mines and Bubbulfrogs.
I don’t even know why the Zelda team bothered making a concrete timeline with all these complicated and interesting lore implications in the first place if they were just immediately gonna drop the ball with it in the next two mainline titles and basically go back on all of it. Zelda has always been a sort of disconnected franchise, so I just can’t understand why they’d go and try to frame it like one big overarching story, especially taking into account that most of these games just weren’t made with that goal in mind. They got the fans hopes up with a new premise in SS that recontextualized older titles and had sooo much potential for interesting themes and storytelling for future ones. Botw comes along with a janky timeline placement but still some cool and interesting lore connections to other games that lean into this new interconnected direction, with the early trailers for the sequel promising even more of that with the reveal of Ganondorf and the use of islands in the sky. Then Tears actually comes along and basically tells these lore scholars and people just- here for the storytelling and characters in general that have been strung along to go f themselves. Fuckin stings man.
Reading my mind. I'm going into new games from now on assuming connections to older games and franchise lore are merely shallow window dressing. We can't even trust Ninty to connect the lore from one game to its direct sequel in a satisfying manner. So, if they want to reuse assets in the future, I hope they make more disconnected worlds/stories like Majora's Mask rather than direct sequels like TotK.
I couldnt even get through one playthrough before quitting after finding out the whole story was just memories again, what they called zelda dugeons werent zelda dugeons and the final boss of 2 put of 4 dugeons were a fire version of Ocarinas first boss and an octorok Seriously, what happened to scary zelda bosses in dugeons and more than one kind of monster in said dugeon? Man, I miss the Super Nintendo, 64 and Gamecube era Zeldas 😢. Alttp was my first Zelda.
Yeah man, I think we yearn for that because back then, they only had one chance to make the story and make it good and memorable. They did it with their characterization and the worldbuilding. It sucks that I felt it was the Walmart version of Hyrule
So many comments have already touched on my biggest gripes (story nonexistent, zonai boring, no incentive to do anything, mechanics gimmicky, dungeons for the sake of dungeons, etc) and I feel incredibly vindicated by it, but I would like to bring up one more thing that’s been eating away at me: this is Ganondorf’s first appearance since Twilight Princess, and THIS is the best Nintendo wants to do with him? They got Matt Mercer to play him! And he did great with what he was given, but what he was given was “ooo super scary evil man that do the funny face”. We’ve seen this Ganondorf before, he’s nothing new-why can’t he be new? His presence doesn’t add anything, you put any other villain in his place and nothing’s really lost. It’s just a wasted opportunity to reinvent the character even a little in a game where the point was to reinvent the series. (Also the ancient hero aspect armor thing is the worst reward imaginable in this Zelda themed farming sim and I wish I could destroy it and everything it fails to imply)
I have been a lifelong Zelda fan. For the past decade my personal RUclips recommendation feed has been at least 50% Zeldatubers. I have been silently following and loving the content from this community for a long time. It must hurt so much, and be so frustrating, to want Nintendo to care about this more than they do. Especially when your livelihood is tied to it. To have Nintendo literally go on record saying that there isn’t an answer…stuff just disappeared…they are all just legends…gameplay first…. Yet the people they are shutting down are literally their biggest fans. It is insulting. It makes a person feel like they are wasting their time. Recently I got talking with a friend about Ocarina of Time on the 3DS - something he was experiencing for the first time. He has also played a number of Zelda games, and considers himself a fan, but casually. He asked a question that led me to pulling out my copy of Hyrule Historia. I watched as he took in the timeline for the first time. His mind was blown, but he eventually had questions about the logic of the fallen timeline. We had a good discussion. I wanted to impress him that Zelda theorizing is worthwhile, even if Nintendo sometimes leans too far into trying to provide answers that aren’t well thought out. And especially considering that lore and consistency are low priorities in their development process. In the conversation, I referenced your channel specifically. I told him how impressed I have been that there are people out there, like you, who are so good at outside of the box lore-logic likely never intended. People who deepen my enjoyment of these games because of how determined they are to take what Nintendo didn’t properly think out and treat it with the loving attention to detail it deserves. People who know that Nintendo sucks at this part of their job, but love Zelda so much that they grab the loose hidden threads and keep working (in spite of the big N) to weave a cohesive and rich story. You make games and stories more beautiful, and I for one am grateful for what you have brought to my life. Every time Nintendo has done this (providing an official timeline, saying they are just legends, BOTW’s timeline “placement”, etc…), the theory community has kept at it and collectively told a better story than Nintendo realizes they have. And you, Moxie, are really, really good at it.
"Especially when your livelihood is tied to it." Everyday I wake up and I turn to Charlie and say: Man why couldn't totk be good. Its extremely frustrating...and to me...it felt like a slap in the face... Not the game but the dev interviews after. It was bad for my channel, it was bad for my mental, and it broke my fucking heart. I loveeeeee Zelda, but I will not stand by and say the game is great when no thought or intention was put behind it. I will come back to Zelda, but I need some time... I kept trying to write new things (Especially the Temple of Time), and something new came out that completely broke the script and reduced my writing back to square one. It happened twice and I was just so frustrated. Your comment was so heartfelt it made me tear up. I was once like you, someone who lurked in the background watching everyone's theories and just genuinely enjoying the content. When people stopped making theories and became an objective echo chamber, I just knew I had to do something. That was also after having six years to rationalize what BOTW was about. but TOTK...i don't know if ill ever be able to take it seriously.
@@MoxieWatts I feel you. I feel the same way about just playing the game. I enjoyed it at first. The tutorial section. The build up to the wind temple. Discovering the underground. Experimenting with new mechanics. Eventually though, I beat the game and set my sights on my favorite thing about BOTW - playing it again. Starting fresh with a self imposed list of challenges. For TOTK I decided to play without warping. It was fun at first, until I realized that I needed to build up my batteries again, which would require 20 hours of mindless grinding in the depths. That started my thinking process about the games flaws. So much repetitive crap. So many tasks. It didn't sound fun anymore. It looked like a pile of homework. I also feel mislead from the games trailer. And I felt the same way about BOTW's trailer. That one in early 2017 was the most emotional moment I have ever had with something like that. It made me cry. Still does. I ended up loving BOTW because of the magic of that initial exploration and discovering that huge world. But when I look back at the trailer, I realize that I was set up to believe that I was actually going to be experiencing an incredible story, not just leaning about it from flashbacks. BOTH of those trailers are incredible, but in hindsight they feel like they are for totally different games. It is like the team assigned to making the trailers took the available cutscene footage and put together a trailer for the game they knew fans would want, but unfortunately weren't going to get. I was so hyped that we might actually get to travel personally to the past. Or play as Zelda. Or have an interesting take on Ganondorf. Or tie in things from old games. Instead we got a super polished Hyrule vehicle creating simulator with a ridiculously amped up level of meaningless repetitive tasks. Anyway...sorry for the wall of text...twice...I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to my initial comment. I look forward to your content - Zelda or other. Your passion is inspiring.
Honestly I think so many of my problems with Totk is that it isn’t a sequel. It seems like they wanted to do a soft reboot of botw but they just did botw worst in terms of experience (the actual game play was fun but everything felt like such a chore after awhile)
It maybe be an unpopular opinion but as someone that has played every LoZ game, I think Breath of the Wild and Tears are bad Zelda games. For all the reasons you explain. To me these games just feel like going around and foing things. It's fun, don't get me wrong but it doesn't feel like zelda. There are very frustrating things that do nothing for the story and a lot of the game feels like pointless wandering.
i've played all the console releases other than the 1st 2 games in the series, and i agree. fun games but not proper LoZ games at all. Mox uses a good word, "contained", for what makes a classic LoZ entry
unfortunately modern Nintendo very likely doesn't care about making proper LoZ entries and instead will continue to focus on adapting the series to what the current trend is within the video game market (i.e. open-world adventures)
6:21 - 7:11 That quote Fujibayashi made… It was so random! It sounded so random… I can tell he and Aonuma did not prepare for a timeline question. They made it up. How can Hyrule be founded more than once? Hyrule was destroyed? How? When? Why? I get that there was Hylia’s Realm, the original founding of Hyrule, the Adult timeline’s founding of New Hyrule, but those foundations were out of the ashes from the old legacy that had to live on. But Tears of the Kingdom treats this founding of Hyrule as if it was the original founding. It’s a reimagining of the overarching lore! Nintendo didn’t want to admit it at this point!
I think I’m in the minority that was here for the zelda vids. I’ll stick around for a while, but I stayed for the zelda content 😕 I hope any content you do from here on out does well.
Eventually when the devs are done with the interviews I want to return. I don't really like information changing mid-scripting or editing...it happened twice while writing about the Temple of Time...thats when I tried the Mysteries & Easter Eggs...so I will return just not for a little bit. In addition, I depend on RUclips for my livelihood. Viewership went down for all Zeldatubers and I felt like that was a major indication Zelda content is in trouble for the short term...Hope you understand
They could have just added the Depths and Sky Islands as a DLC to BotW. No sign guy, no koroks, no shrines. It could have just been "post-Calamity game-play" and would have been a *brilliant* DLC. TotK suffers from being a brilliant DLC that was turned into a bloated, bland full game.
Thank you for having the guts to address how garbage the story and progression is in modern Zelda. I am one of those people who have stopped watching vids on TotK as well.
I understand, I stopped watching them too. It's okay, I dont hold it against anyone because I am literally in the same boat not being able to stomach through a Monster Maze video, even though he is my favorite-- or watch my weekly HG video... just feels bad man
For me I just dont really understand why the zonai were added. They didnt feel interesting nor thematically important. Why is Rauru the king of hyrule so the blood of the gods can justify the royal hyrule family? I dont know the story felt much weaker so I didnt care about the narrative as much.
Half way through the video, but I wanna add to the rant. I feel like in many ways totk disappointed me even more than botw, because at least that had an excuse. New engine, gameplay, big new world, etc. And totk had a chance to fix all of the issues, but they didn't. Shrines are back again, which I really don't like. Going to what essentially feels like a dev room with an impossibly large room for pure gameplay purposes just feels lazy, lore wise. They're just little pockets of gameplay, of which feel completely disconnected from the overworld. I wished they had focused instead on fleshing out the caves, dungeons, side quests, etc. Speaking of side quests, they're crap, just like in botw. Not much improvement, at all. In fact, one side quest was a literal repeat from botw, and I came out of it at a loss. I gathered that dude from Hateno village 10 frogs, and he gave me a worse ingredient in return. Why? You're better off ignoring that quest. That's the thing, not many quests actually have anything significant going on. So not only do you get next to zero physical reward, you don't even get a reward in the sense of "Oh, that was cool." like you would, in say, a game like the witcher 3. Sometimes the reward is the cool quest itself. The building mechanic was neat at first, but quickly just turned into a viral video bait. Using it in game was often a waste of time. I built a plane once, failed a couple attempts at launching, and when I did finally launch, it flashed green after, I shit you not, around 10 seconds, and it vanished. Just feels like a waste of time. The batteries already limit you, why this extra limit? Fusion mechanic was pretty neat, as at least with this mechanic you're doing it constantly, instead of building some useless contraption that you didn't even need because you would have killed the enemy camp long ago anyway. Temples were really bad. Kind of an insult to even call them temples/dungeons. Magic is basically gone from the series now. It's all either tech like magic, or divine/demonic energy. Ganondorf is no longer a sorceror, he's just a demon who shoots demon goop everywhere. Don't eve think it's the same ganondorf, which is disappointing. Why even bother bringing him back, then? At least the proper one has history they could have used to add more depth to his character. The general sense of progression is bad, like it was in botw. It often feels like I'm just doing thing until I'm like "I guess I should go to the final boss now?" and that just feels bad. Progression isn't just a sense of getting stronger and finding new things, it also comes in the form of story progression. Which, admittedly there's a little but more here, but it again comes down to find the memoriessss. And talking about the map being smaller, more compact etc, or blocking the player off with items. I actually think they could have done both here. We could have had the best of both types of Zelda games with totk, and I think that's why, at least to me, it's more of a let down than botw. We could have had a more linear story, key items, better side quests, within this admittedly cool map they have, but it feels like they wasted their chance at filling it/telling a great story within it. Nintendo have always been gameplay first, which sounds like a good thing. However, I think in cases like totk, they do it to a fault. To the point where things just happen or are the way they are because they needed it for gameplay. I'm rambling now and no one will read this. I just had to rant.
*incoherent stream of consciousness reading this* First I should start by saying, well put about botw. It did have good excuses like the whole new system and they were still grappling with how to compress that much information into what we now have. Shrines are useless. Utterly. Put the ball in the cup kid I feel like we dont learn anything about the world through the quests...because the "journey" is the reward. The temples were fun, and I think they are the best part, which is sad... I don't even know if its the same ganondorf LMAO do thing then do more thing then upgrade material Yeah its absolutely missing key items and worldbuilding quests, i agree. I read everything my guy
@VampC Read and agree with pretty much everything. Except I found the sidequests to be far more compelling than the smidgeon of nonsensical story we were given. 😠
This is going to be a little bit of a rant so please excuse me but I have kind of been feeling this way with Nintendo in general. Don’t get me wrong, ToTK is a good game, but that is more because it is a DLC for BoTW, a very good game. If any non-nintendo franchise tried basically releasing a sequel that uses the exact same assets with a few minor additions they would be rightfully lambasted but Nintendo can do it because of nostalgia and suddenly it is GoTY. Mario Wonder looks like fun, that is because 2D Mario is fun, but it is just that, 2d Mario with some new power ups. I love both of these franchises, but, at least since the Wii, when Nintendo is successful they become lackadaisical and start phoning it in. They only innovate when their backs are against the wall, we saw this with the GC into the Wii and we saw this with the WiiU into the Switch. The WiiU was a failure so we got the Switch along with BoTW and Mario Odyssey, two absolute bangers that brought their franchises to a whole new level. Now that everyone and their Grandma owns a Switch we are seeing them really phoning it in. The same exact thing happened with the Wii. This isn’t true for all Nintendo franchises, that new Metroid is a masterpiece, and Pokemon is actually trying to innovate, their problem lies more in hardware, dev ability, and a very tight schedule. Nintendo knows, as long as people own the console they will buy Zelda DLC, 2d Mario #237, or the newest rushed pokemon because we feel the good nostalgia chemicals in our brains. Hell, dude I can't even judge, I am going to buy Wonder probably day 1, I know I am part of the problem.
I hope they dont get GOTY...We also saw this innovation with TP! after WW was too "childish" I too am part of the problem... I preordered the game and the collectable Sw-OLED., Just sucks because I truly believed that at the end of the day they would at least build out some story and maybe we could craft an arrow
The best way to explain this Spirit Tracks, Twilight Princess, and Wind Waker are some of my favoritr zelda stories. Eaxh of them explore and expand side characters while having some thematic idea. Twilight Princess explored the necessity of working together and reject traditonal power structures to an extent, Spirit Tracks showed the power of humanity working together without the need of the lokomos or great spirits, wind waker reminded people not to be stuck in the past to be greatful what came before and step forward into the future. Totk just felt like a generice Good king Rauru vs evil bad man Ganondorf who ruined everything for everyone.
Its only theme that's notable up to the very end is light vs dark. The hands theme is only really in aesthetics, it has no actual depth besides "HANDS!! LOOK HANDS!!!"
BotW and TotK are fun games and good in their own right, but i am going to be holding out hope that they were a detour for the devs and that they'll return to more linear, intentional gameplay
Death of the author. If it’s not in the game, it’s not canon for me. Nintendo can say all it wants but if it’s not in the game, I’m not going to blow up my head canon over it.
speaking personally, as a creator it sucks tho bc it feels like no theory is really valid anymore. nothing has real weight because now you have to take a side: death of the author or what the devs say is canon...im not prepared to go either way and i feel like it sucks being forced into this box....
@@MoxieWatts I feel for you and the Zeldatubers community. I hope this means y’all keep making rad videos either way, however that means you personally reconcile with Nintendo opening its dumb mouth. As for me, I suppose it’s time to re-watch the death of the author videos from our Lord and Savior Lindsay Ellis as I personally grapple with this. On a separate note, I appreciate the long-form videos. Good thing to put on in the background at work.
Must say one thing about totk, still. I did not play that game in english, but in italian, so it was kind of a shock when i found out that in the english story, they did not mention: -losing the soul as a price for draconification.( In a game series with spirits reincarnating, souls are fundamental) -Ganondorf talking about courage and hell in his scenes -the extintion of the Zonau (only in english it is not explicit) - Envy of ganondorf to the zonau - some discourse that make indirect quotes to Demise, by Ganondorf, right when he transforms into the very demise like demon king form I checked and all these things are present in Italian, French, Spanish and German. The english translation did you dirty, i am sorry for you
@@MoxieWatts i noticed also this thing in the zelda mangas. In the ocarina of time's manga, they tended to translate from the english version, to italian, but when there was the twilight princess manga, they translated it directly from japanese to italian, and the quality skyrocketed
I’m still playing BoTW… 500 hours in (Just putzing around) and I’d rather replay Skyward Sword or Twilight Princess before ToTK. ToTK just looked a little gimmicky rather than a sequel, compared to say, OoT and Majora’s Mask. The statements about the lack of story leaves me feeling validated.
I entirely agree!! I want deep stories filled with good writing and lore, like what Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess had. Modern Zelda just feels reused when it comes to the plot. It's mainly why I stopped playing the newer Zelda games and picked up Final Fantasy.
@largelumbricid Oh, man, me too. But let's face it, that would require an effort on Nintendo's part, and they're obviously done with putting effort into their LoZ games.
ill watch anything you put out, im in full support of you leaving these games behind if its what its come to. while there is a degree of reverence for nostalgic series like LoZ, you still have to hold them up to the standards that are held for everything else.
thanks man, because honestly i think thats what its come to because all of the people of hyrule watched the divine beasts disappear and no one decided to ever mention it again im supposed to accept that as cannon? no fuckin way man
heres my theory: once the Blights were defeated and the divine beasts were purified, they were considered 'passive mobs'. the only thing that kept them from despawning a-la-minecraft was the presence of the previous heroes, who were keeping the chunks loaded. once they passed on to the afterlife when the calamity was sealed, the divine beasts were left *far* outside of the 128 block/meter despawn range, and they simply vanished into thin air. as both Minecraft Steve and Link (BOTW) are found in SSBU, this is clearly a reference to a future crossover event.
In the end it's an oversight. I think you should continue playing the series after 5-10 more years of development maybe they will get it right again but if you want change get the fan base together and tell Nintendo how they screwed up with the voice of thousands. Tell them "if you want to have a timeline respect it enough to tie the newest game to it in some aspects that won't require the developers to explain because they were too into themselves to actually put words to text about a significant disappearance, we are smart individuals but we cannot extrapolate information from vague happenstance when no other information is forthcoming. You ask us to assume and slap us on the wrist for your mistake. Don't lead us by the hand but don't just point with your chin". Make sure they know their exact mistake. Zelda isn't dead like Pokemon but this is the first step down that path.
@@MoxieWatts take what time you need to heal :D don't worry about branching out even if it content others are working on, another mind on a topic is a new experienced perspective, you got this Moxie.
I remember absolutely loving TotK at first... but after a while the shrines got tedious, the dungeons were too repetitive, the story too awkwardly written. I know Skyward Sword isn't overly popular, but I've never found myself getting bored with SS the way I did TotK. That's what disappoints me so much about it. I absolutely love the Zelda franchise, I don't want to be bored whilst playing. There's a lot if aspects of TotK that were really well done, but it feels like they were overambitious in some areas and lackluster in others.
I think Skyward Sword has stood the test of time because of the characters and the powerful plot driven story. While they answered many questions, they left so much up to the imagination.
There was never any overarching lore to the series. The worst thing TOTK did to the fanbase is expose the truth that Nintendo just places random worldbuilding concepts in Zelda games with no real reasoning behind them, other than what the fans make of them.
something that has bugged me are the shrines. they could have very well turned them into the classic dungeons that we know, even better than them without any explanations. the shrines are pretty cut-off from the mainworld eithout affecting anything in the world, just very good hidden. that way you please both old and new fans
@@MoxieWatts they literally are just extended tutorials. most of them end before they get good. there was one with a really good mechanic, i cannot remember the name, which when it finally clicked it just... ended. my proposal to fix that, is take a few shrines out of the game, make big shrines which reward you with 2 to 4 tokens and then call it a dungeon
The story of Tears of the Kingdom had so much potential. I haven’t stopped thinking about the game since it released. I love it and it may be my favourite Zelda game but the story is probably the worst. I had suspicions that Nintendo wasn’t going in the direction I wanted though all the way back with Age of Calamity. I know that game is licensed and not made by Nintendo, but that doesn’t mean Nintendo had no control over it. There could have been an incredible trilogy after Skyward Sword. Breath of the Wild is the convergence. Forget the timeline because all events have happened. Age of Calamity is the prequel. Show us how Calamity Ganon appears, the destruction of Hyrule, have the final mission be a Halo Reach “survive” style battle with Link vs infinite Guardians. Tears of the Kingdom would be the bow. They could have gone with the ouroboros imagery and have it be the end and beginning of the timeline. They could have gone in a different direction. Man, they could have brought back characters. I thought, like many others, we were going to have the Twili come back. But nope. They played it so safe that the story is barely there. At least the final fight with Ganondorf was awesome.
Honestly, I think one of the worst things about The Legend of Zelda is how absolutely garbage the English localization is throughout the entire series. Like for example, with Twilight Princess it was so bad to the point the lore was somewhat different or a little confusing at best. But at its worst, it contradicts itself, makes things up, and even says literally the opposite of the Japanese version. QuestWithAaron has a great video about this. It's really a shame.
Here in the Sonic fandom there are people dedicated to accurately retranslating the story from JP into EN, maybe there needs to be something like that for the Zelda fandom
I guess we’re at a point where Nintendo doesn’t know how to tell a story anymore… Ubisoft can relate to that… Rayman… the Raving Rabbids… the lack of narrative structure… Mario and Rabbids… a certain character appeared solely at the beginning of Kingdom Battle and never brought back up again until the end of the Donkey Kong DLC and a letter at the end of Sparks of Hope… A “phantom’s” unreasonable grudge against Rayman instead of Mario… there’s so much the devs left out…
I totally get you. I grew up with Zelda games and I really enjoyed ToTK, but I missed the lore and the original temples from old games. On top of that they shattered my heart with the statements about the timeline and with the announcement of no DLC. So much potential to waste!!! Now we wait for 5-7 years for another game? It is a shame…😢
I mean, Skyward Sword shows us a refounding. I feel a big problem with the story telling now, is that Nintendo is actively trying to feed the theory community, rather than give us all the information in game.
I did give up on Breath of the Wild before beating it Only hung out with Mister Mystery "zo-Na-uru" on his sky island & watched the rest through playthroughs of this thus far. I do get a kick out of ultrahand, but?? Link needs to actually emote again, or SOMETHING????
this is rather disappointing and soiled my experience quite a bit i had so much fun with the game, it was fun gameplay i was also just hoping for more story and had copium that maybe they’d expand the story further and explanations for things i love fun games that are story light like mario, but i came to zelda for both its fun gameplay and interesting story and tears didn’t live up to the story sigh… at least we still have metroid *copium*
i liked the story and hidden details of botw because of its mystery i got excited envisioning what could be and watching videos botw gave me just enough with stuff like the tablets about ruto and places named after previous characters i was very much expecting to see a lot more of the lore to be expanded and told in-game, not some interview explaining what was happening in a still vague and annoying “oh the residents don’t know why this happened and it’s still a mystery” like, no it wasn’t the residents who didn’t know, it was the devs who just didn’t care enough to explain why!
Moxie I’ve loved your content and this didn’t disappoint! Your frustration is totally valid! Nintendo has gone lazy. They gave us a game full of busy work and gimmicky mechanics. Personally I don’t believe they had any plans for the zonai until they saw how popular the speculation was. They decided to retcon so much just to give the zonai an inflated importance to the timeline and it has made me hate the zonai. And I totally agree that the way they go about giving us details about lore is horrendous. They failed to both show and tell! I feel like in 7 years we’re gonna get botw 3 with red shrines this time. Anyway just came here to gripe to the void, I’ve never participated in voting for game of the year before but im voting for baldurs gate out of spite. And I didn’t even know bg3 existed 2 months ago. I wasted years being hyped for totk
It's so validating to hear other long time, huge fans ranting about TotK. While I completely agree with there being almost nothing here for story telling, that's how I feel about most Zelda games. The plot has always been pretty minimal, and most lore is from implications and suppositions. My biggest gripe with this game is just that it's the last game over again, but with even more completely empty space, and clunkier controls/features. Everything is very exciting, for ten minutes. Everything is so new and cool, for ten minutes. Then they do nothing with it. And the laziness in removing the Sheikah stuff from the last game is unreal. I replayed BotW a single time on Master Mode, then played the DLC. It was fun enough to keep me going. Once I finished the story of TotK, I put it away and never touched it, and after a week or so, didn't think about it. I made sure to do anything I had even a tiny will to do before finishing the game because I knew that beating it would kill any motivation I had to play it. It just did not offer much. I just want another OoT, TP, or WW. Gimme that mostly linear, finely crafted adventure, with weapons that break idiotically quickly. It's a great game that I had a ton of fun with, but it just doesn't feel like a Zelda game at all, and had the plot of a third rate Anime show. And this is just a personal, tiny gripe, but BotW made me mad when it destroyed my favorite spot in the game to give us Tarrey Town. Then this one made it even worse by making it that sinfully ugly piece of trash that spread even further into what was a pretty area. They also could have given us more than like 3 NPCs who remembered who tf Link was.
for TEN MINUTES THIRD RATE ANIME SHOW 💀 honestly you're spitting homie, preach. Everytime I had to fire up the switch, I was resenting what my content was focused on, because at the end of the day how do you make content with no content?
@jakebeach8308 Oh, gosh, that last point...bugged the heck out of me. The guy travelled all over the land solving everyone's problems and practically no one remembers him? Even some of the Zora who remembered him after 100 years? Garbage, man.
Crackpot theory about the Sheikah tech disappearing: since the blue energy powering it may be some kind of spirit energy, what if it had been drawing on Calamity Ganon's power, and poofed out of existence soon after the latter was sealed because the tech was cut off from its power source?
I am more convinced of that after it was found that the device hanging over Ganon in the cavern he was sealed in has Sheikah tech integrated into it, in just a way that could be for siphoning energy, and is even called a "purification" device. Reminds me of them "purifying" Argent Energy in the Doom '16 series.
My crack theory is that the Zonai are also Interlopers like Ganondorf, people trying to conquer Hyrule. And so, Zonai technology/magic doesn't play nice with Hylia's divinity nor Sheikah's technology. Hylia not answering Zelda's prayers? It's because she has Zonais' light inside her. The Master Sword getting broken by Ganondorf? He was being powered by Zonais' Secret Stone dark edition. The Dragon Fortified Master Sword being weaker than BoTW Sword? Again, Zelda's light was really hard to harvest for the Master Sword, but thanks to long exposure to Zonai magic, the Master Sword learned how to fight against Zonai' magic. It also explains why Hylia's statue was hijacked....
Wow, I'm like, genuinely excited to listen to this video. I haven't finished the game, because I just couldnt, every time I played it, I got more and more bored, so I might go back to it after I forgotten about it. It kind of makes me feel validated to hear people say the story wasn't really great or satisfying, because I got the sense that it wouldn't be. I kind of felt super bored with the gameplay too, sick of dicovering a cool location, and then finding either a shrine or a Korok. SICK of it, I just found myself yawning more and more. And when I think about paying 70 dollars for it, I get kind of mad. But I was honestly expecting you guys to be like, in the honeymood phase, constantly praising the game, but it makees me happy to see that you are in the mindset of, loving something so much that you are willing to point out its flaws, and bullshit, believing it could have been better. Excited to listen to this. Because I feel very unimpressed with the game, and dont really wanna finish it.
@@MoxieWatts After listening, yeah I totally agree with what you were saying, the presentation definetly could have been much better, I especially agreed with the idea of solving one story question with another, regarding the Twili and the Zonai. But unfortunately we still don't know much about wither, and one of the biggest questions we had, were about the Warlike race, and if they were also Zonai, or related to ganondorf, considering the red hair. Its weird because the Zonai we see in TOTK are advanced and sophisticated, but there were artifacts of a warlike race in the zonai mazes? Odd. And yeah Nintendo's explanation about what happened to the sheikah tech was pretty lame, felt super lazy, and they didnt even build on the elements of the last game, just introduced new stuff. It would have been cool if the sheikah and Zonai were related somehow, both are over 10,000 years old, and both have similar tech. We STILL dont even know much about the sheikah, what powers their tech, what is that blue energy? They never even really talked about what powers Zonai tech/magic. I think its obvious the three power sources are Malice, Sheikah energy, and Zonai energy. Power Wisdom Courage. But I wanna know where it all COMES from. I do love the theories, but Nintendo doesnt seem to care about going into it at all. I was hoping for a lot of mysteries to be solved. But nope. Just "Secret Stones, DEMON KING?!?!" I think it would be great to delve into other games that you like, I think the lore of stray was super interesting, and I'm glad a channel I like is doing videos on them, so thank you. A podcast also sounds really cool, I love podcasts and you guys have a lot of cool thoughts that go beneath the surface level with lore in games, I think you guys have some of the best lore videos, that talk about stuff I never thought about before, even on older Zelda games, it rivals Nintendo Black Crisis. Have you guys heard of Lies of P? Not sure if you guys are willing to play through a difficult Soulslike game, but the lore in that game is SUPER JUICY. It takes the story of Pinnochio and spins it on its head. The Blue Fairy dust for example, is a power source called Ergo, which allows puppets to come to life, and helped advance technology. ....But it also brought a curse. I'm super interested to figure out what Ergo is, where it came from, and the history of the world, and how Ergo changed it. And the whole, Pinnochio learning to become human thing, is done in an interesting way too. You can give people the cold hard truth, or you can Lie to bring them comfort. Its interesting because there are moments where something awful happened, and if you tell them, it would definetly weigh on them. So far, I've been lying....but I don't know the cost of that yet..... I think you guys would LOVE Gemini. Just saying, if you want a SUPER COOL game with awesome lore, please check out Lies of P. The lore is drop fed through little notes and character dialogue, and I still don't know everything, its been fun to speculate on things, I've even had to reread some notes in order to find out things I didnt reaalize before, and I think thats really cool. It doesnt treat you like kid, and you have to investigate and think in order to learn more about the overall lore. Theres multiple endings too, and I think it depends on how much you lie or tell the truth, good boy, bad boy, etc. I'm excited to finish it. But yeah , I definetly ssupport your choice to try other games, its your craft, and if you feel passionately that Zelda is treating you stupid and its just not doing it for you, go ahead and try something else! I'm sure you'll come across the path your searching for, its probably easier said than done, but try to do what you feel is right.
My idea that we'd be assisted by a spirit of a deceased Ganon, separated from the evil of Demise after trying to resist his evil 10000 years ago and the red haired figure in the tapestry was him instead (aided by his then closest friends, a past link and a past Zelda) would have been so much better. And I'm just a loser making headcanons.
I appreciate anyone who reads and values my thoughts in any way. I've needed to vent and love this community: "Why am I doing Koroks?" is the most succinct question that sums up all the issues with both botw and totk. I laughed loudly. Thanks for trying Mox. I miss your videos and enthusiasm. I understand. It's an appropriate response to what we received. I fell in love with your idea of the chasms and the reveal process -- your idea is brilliant. From a storytelling perspective, this is common sense. It is NOT challenging to think of or execute. TOTK is missing this kind of thoughtfulness. Why can't they just hire a team or even one person to specifically focus on storytelling or do they have that already? FFXIV hires writers for EVERYTHING -- sided quests, job quests, main story writers, and all of the above. Wasted potential, wasted opportunities, and negatively impacts them and us. I'm still obsessed with totk's gameplay, I like open world but that's just a v personal thing. It is "fun" like you guys said but that's really all it is. The depths disappointed me greatly because they WASTED potential for lore, references, and all there is are fucking mines. I wanted old, destroyed castles down there. Old towns. Maybe even obvious, direct references to previous games. Like if we found a rotted, broken ocarina. The sky also was equally disappointing for the same reasons. The interviews were so infuriating, lazy, arrogant, disrespectful, and had the energy of a child who failed to prepare for a presentation. We were handed bullshit and they think we will believe it and respect it. They fail to realize we see right through them. I would feel humiliated after that interview if I were the one who answered that question with that pathetic answer. Nintendo's philosophy on gameplay first, story second cannot be relied upon anymore. It isn't working. It's resulted in a pattern of failure after failure and they stubbornly keep shoving a circle into a square peg. Don't expect them to change this philosophy. I hate to be a pessimist but what evidence is there to suggest they will actually change? They interpret feedback incorrectly.
"The interviews were so infuriating, lazy, arrogant, disrespectful, and had the energy of a child who failed to prepare for a presentation. " this part has me rolling homie i feel you on all these points...it might be time for your to try *~adult zelda*~ if these things frustrated you, maybe its time to graduate to FromSoft games ❤
@@MoxieWatts yo dude, I will look into FromSoft. thanks for the reply. you've made me laugh quite a number of times too XD. All of us miss the excited theory videos y'all post. You guys have kept vitality going.
Their philosophy only works with most of their other franchises and IP's. Franchises which aren't focused on lore which I personally love for what they are. However, Zelda used to be a lore-focused series but now it's blatantly clear they don't give a damn anymore so why should we? They're not gonna prioritise one of the aspects that made many people love the series in the first place. Imo, Xenoblade is their only IP that is BOTH lore focused and gameplay focused equally.
@@ultimatedumbass4640 Good point about their philosophy working with most of their games but not Zelda. I wish they could change their mindset when it comes to Zelda but never going to happen.
I was so burned by BOTW I pre ordered the collector’s edition tried to like it sold it for medroid dred… the story of TOTK is WAYYYYY BETTER MY GOD but I’ll never play Zelda again if this is the way they are doing things… time to fire up majoras mask on my N64 THAT STILL WORKS…
I agree that I wanna see more heartfelt and intimate storytelling like Awakening and Majora. Sometimes bigger doesn't equal better. But yeah dude, I can't wait to see you tackle other game series as you go on. I hadn't planned to get Stray before your vid, but I absolutely have to at some point now.
playing this game after waiting for it for 6 whole years felt like you know when you sometimes get insane food cravings (think something super unhealthy that you absolutely love) & then you finally eat that dish/snack/meal but you aren’t even that satisfied/are a little grossed out at how you pretty much inhaled the whole thing? it looked good on the plate, it’s been in the back of your mind for weeks, but you don’t feel quite satisfied even though you satiated your cravings. this is how the game made me feel. so much potential & hype only just for a lukewarm botw 2.0. such a shame
23:49 "This is what annoys me, dude. If you wanna, like, make a theory about anything, it's just all too vague to say one way or the other." FNAF Fans: First time?
i wrote a comment all about how i genuinely believe the lore of minecraft is better handled and expanded upon than the lore of totk and that you should check out the lore of minecraft but… youtube deleted the whole long ahh comment i poured my heart out on i went into a summary of the lore and everything, and now it’s all gone sadge if you want me to explain more, then whats the best way to tell you? i also understand if you dont want to cover minecraft because of lack of interest or the audience it will bring, but please hear me out
it’s got really cool lore that the devs surprisingly care about and expand upon in minecraft legends and minecraft dungeons minecraft legends explores a time in the past when the piglins invade, while minecraft dungeons explores and expands upon the illagers i haven’t read much on the lore of those two games, so i don’t know when it takes place exactly or if it even was revealed it’d also be nice to have someone other than matpat explore the lore i mean i’d say matpat does a decent job with the minecraft lore (unlike other game series) but we need more perspective and opinions to make it better
i also forgot to mention that the devs of minecraft do a good job of keeping the mystery while still giving enough to fill in the blanks they haven’t been like “hey you know this ancient civilization that built all of this stuff and founded the world? what if i told you there was this OTHER ancient civilization that actually founded the world?! and nobody knows who they were or why they’re gone, just trust us when we say they did this. you should forget about those other guys and look at our shiny new civilization!” (i know they said that the zonai only refounded hyrule, but it’s still annoying)
yo hmu on discord fam, my username is moxiewatts its funny you say this because i obssessed over the minecraft lore for a long time. It fascinated me. I did actually play Minecraft Legends and watched the playthrough of Technoblade(?)...if i remember correctly...playing minecraft dungeons. Have you heard of RetroGamingNow? They do these amazing lore breakdowns in minecraft. MattPat is fine and all, but I know what you mean. If you havent heard of RGN, you should check out their Minecraft Lore. They do a super good job telling us nothing, and then it also keeps my interest with the way in which it is vague for an openworld game. Homie, I will absolutely consider this. I could dip my toes considering there is a lot of new stuff in the game now...Especially the Deep Dark lore..........
@@MoxieWatts oh, i sent a friend request your way! my username is the same as here, quantumsaus. i’ve heard of RGN, actually! They made a lot of really cool minecraft lore videos and theories
As someone who’s played Zelda since Ocarina of Time, I see your point. I just wanted a more immersive and more fleshed out Zelda title more in the lines of Twilight Princess. While we can agree that Breath of the Wild needed to happen, but looking at it makes it more of a testing ground than being a full-fledged adventure. Tears of the Kingdom, while a step up, is just a beefier testing ground. As if the shrine hunting wasn’t a drag the first time around, the devs never listened… 6 years of reused assets, and it’s Breath of the Wild all over again… I still don’t understand for the life of me what the development secrecy was even about. Gameplay and plot details hush hush until the very last minute? I never understood why. Just to go off-topic, I played (almost) 3D Mario up to this point, none ever captured the same essence like that of Mario 64. Sunshine is my worst in the series; clunky controls, FLUDD, and BS level designs. The Galaxy games made up for that debacle (Rosalina is my favorite Mario character), but it’s still not 64. (Some levels made me feel disoriented). Odyssey, was the final straw for me. I gave up playing 3D Mario because they’re not Super Mario 64. I loved that game to death, but none of the games after it never captured the same spirit. Games like Banjo-Kazooie and A Hat In Time beat Nintendo at their own game! Since I gave up playing Mario, after BOTW and TOTK, Zelda might be next with franchises I’m putting behind me if Nintendo insists to keep up reusing the same Wild formula. Unfortunately, they plan to do that…
For the love of God just give me another Twilight Princess. It's better than another The Legend of Assassin's Creed. I don't even care about the timeline anymore just let me have fun again.
I would absolutely love hearing your takes on the lore of Elden Ring. Definitely agree with the sentiments of TotK your share here. When I feel a Zelda itch I find myself picking up BotW more than TotK these days.
I had the luxury of playing TOTK straight after BOTW, TOTK is so objectively bad I find it insane that other people are only just clocking how much of a mid "bar go up" game it is.
In my opinion, the price doesn't justificate how they made the game... Like 6 years of development i espected much more things than how it released.... The sky island? Disappointing The quest? Meh horrible and boring Koroks? Terrible The depths? Disappointing pt.2 The story? Don't make me even start i was sad how they deal with it Like i get it that they r more into the worldbuilding than the story BUT is the story that makes the game good to play in the end... It feels like Pokémon S&V ending aka inconcludent
@@tinkerbestie yeah i think that the trailer was sort of a scam becauseit made us understand something that in the end in the game wasn't we expected me be like... what going on in nintendo lately...
So about the "wind boomerang" and having to backtrack. Tears of the Kingdom had this too, you just didnt see it. I managed to get to the puzzle area of the water temple without talking to sidon, So the waterwheels refused to turn. They were just straight-up scripted shut.
I listened to the whole entire hour. Moxie you and Charlie are spitting facts in this video. You guys made valid points about wanting more Zelda lore, and not being completely satisfied. So um.....I'll never understand the completionists who wanted to collect all 1,000 Korok Seeds for a reward that we know isn't going to be very good. X3 Anywho, it's cool if you make content that isn't Hyrule related. I'll watch it.
Ok I know this might be a bit of a weird take right now but apart me likes the lack of a concrete answer. I know that may seem as trying to defend the devs,(trust me I don’t like the way they have treated the lore side of the community) but on the other hand the ability to have different ideas does appeal to me. Like about the sheikah tech,considering we have a pretty strong idea of how this stuff works in botw,we know it’s triggered by the appearance of ganon so without ganon this tech would obviously recognize the lack of ganon as well and so on
Like yes, however what is irritating to me is the lack of worldbuilding. Give me some non-concrete tidbits when I am doing a random quest that deepens the character of an NPC. Give me descriptions that reflect where I am and how this world functions. Tell me anything.
I can and will spend hundreds of hours in botw/totk. Its incredible! But after i beat totk, i busted out my wii and started playing wind waker, twilight princess, and majoras mask... all at the same time because i have no control and haven’t played them in many many years. The contrast is so clear. Going through these plots and working with the supporting characters is so much more important. I got more "aha!" moments from those games because when things fell into place, it was building into a greater whole rather than spider-webbing out like the open world format. Im glad totk exists because it got to do something grand and present a unique opportunity for exploring the characters we know from the last installation. But i hope they return to more linear storytelling for the sake of giving us something greater. Hell, even link between worlds gave us an open world format that kinda worked.
i can see why the developers might not like the zelda timeline, when creating a new story you have to think about where in the three timelines it fits, how it adds to the overall story, how it doesnt retcon anything, etc. all of that would be limiting in creating a new game. i would just rather they say "we arent thinking about the timeline anymore" instead of giving half assed explanations that dont even make sense within the context of the game (guardian remains, ancient arrows, and the purah pad still exist in the game). i wish they'd just tie the timeline up in a neat little bow instead of (what it seems like they're doing) convoluting the timeline so much until we stop caring, which is lowkey insulting. i still enjoy totk, acting like its objectively bad or that zelda is dying in my opinion is overreacting, but i just wish they handled this more gracefully.
its not objectively bad its super fun! I just feel like im allowed to be mad and this is kinda an expression of that frustration. I want to be transparent with my audience which is why i used clips of me talking with the people i feel closest to. I dont want to lie to you guys.
totk took so long to come out that people were expecting the true sucessor to botw, but at the end of the day, it was just an expansion...people felt disapointed, and everyone fixates on something different, to some people are the dungeons, to others is the story, and others think its the lack of meaninful rewards...but its the overall feeling of sameness
weapon breakage (as well as the MASSIVE inventory) are gameplay decisions, not lore decisions. I don't mind the multi-game lore not making sense - Nintendo doesn't work that way. They make a game as good as they can and that game's integration into any wider timeline is a secondary concern. I'm saying that they don't create the Zelda games to fit neatly into a timeline; Nintendo creates games which *stand alone* as great games. The timeline is a fan creation, entirely, anyway. We twisted and turned these games into a timeline and then Nintendo said "FINE, there's a timeline, geez."
there was always a timeline. miyamoto at one point in the early 2000's talked about the timeline, a very primitive timeline with only the first four games being present but still. the sentiment that "nintendo doesnt care about the story" is false, as it has its games depicted to telling stories and zelda is this franchise (mario not)
@@corruptedplayer if Nintendo placed the timeline high in the priority list at all, it would make much more sense. the timeline is rubbish because it isn't a primary concern for Nintendo. they keep saying "don't think about the timeline so much, just enjoy the game" and no one listens to that. we keep wanting a timeline which makes sense. it isn't going to happen for a while, if it ever does. yes the early games had placement in *A* timeline, and Nintendo more or less abandoned the idea of a timeline until "Creating a Champion" where they just copied the accepted fan-made timeline and printed it. That was Nintendo's mistake, because I think that gave people the idea that Nintendo cares about timelines, and they don't.
it's still in the running of somehting i want to cover. i think ill cover death stranding next for the new hype cycle of ds2 and then i dont have anything really planned.
Thanks for this vid! Had heard from a friend who worked at Zenimax a while ago that they had someone hired on staff whose responsibility was being in charge of the lore (of Elder Scrolls assuming). What that includes, Im not sure, but with that Im not surprised with the level of story detail in a game like Skyrim. Feel ya on the level of disappointment on totk’s story front - with each of those dragon tear memories came like, “oh, huh that’s it?”
It's nice to not feel alone in feeling disappointed with the lore and storytelling in the game. I REALLY was excited to play and learn more... and felt slighted with having more confusion and question of everything going on than when I started. BOTW started so many good things to explore and wonder about and not nearly enough was addressed or answered in TOTK...
It’s call and response. Question and answer. Exactly what Zelda RUclipsrs do. Botw asked a bunch of questions, then totk answered them. Everyone’s mad because there’s nothing to dig up and speculate about but when there is they’re mad because they have unanswered questions. I don’t understand exactly what people want from the series at this point.
I had fun, but didn’t enjoy it. Everything is minute to minute gameplay with no real interconnection from 1 thing to another. Quest-distraction-ooh materials-cave-korok-materials-fight… what was I trying to do again? I ended feeling like I had hundreds of disjointed moments with nothing tying it together into a cohesive experience. It felt like ADHD brain training, And especially with travel where I quickly defaulted to teleport to a tower, launch, dive to target, repeat so that even traveling becomes a disjointed experience. Why have a hyrule field? I’ll never cross it when I can just jump over it in a quarter of the time. I went after the end around 20 hours in because I just didn’t want to play anymore. What do I get for searching everywhere? More materials? Another shirt I’ll never wear? Do I really need full hearts when I have a ton of hearty mats? Everything just became a list of chores and check boxes with no emotional impact or meaning. Things like tarry town in botw and the monster hunter crew were the best part because I actually had an impact on the world and it’s people and some level of investment. By the end of twilight princess I enjoyed it even though I didn’t have fun at certain points because I was invested and overcoming a 1 solution challenge was rewarding at the aha moment. In TotK I went to the water dungeon and had an opal wand more effective than Sidon and there was no challenge at all to the whole dungeon because there’s a hundred answers to any problem, which pushes everything to the easiest solution, why struggle with a puzzle when I can just use recall or auto build to get over any obstacle. And sadly TotK has the same problem as most open world games, wide but shallow, see 20% and you’ve seen it all, now it’s just more versions of the same thing. Rant went longer than expected, point is I’m with you on a lot of the issues you’re pointing out and I’m sad to see Zelda which I’ve been in love with since Zelda 1, losing its heart in my opinion
I don't have time to watch the whole video right now since I have work, but I'm glad someone else is completely fed up with the lore right now. Another thing, I feel like the world of BoTW and ToTK didn't feel like Zelda. Ignoring the plot for a second, the overworld just feels so wrong to me. The size of it is fine, if anything it's a little immersive, but I hated how the Sheikah tech always stuck out like a sore thumb. I would've loved it if they blended in more with the general world. In ToTK, it looks like the developers just played a lot of G-Mod. Random Zonai tech and everything is just thrown in random places. Again, it sticks out like a sore thumb and makes it feel so wrong. Where did all the old dungeon items go? Sure, they're not needed in the new games since Link can basically use magic, but older fans would feel more connected if you found dungeon items in the tutorial area (with full dungeons), and you gained the more magical things through the free-form dungeons. This could also fix the main issue people have with dungeons, since the tutorial ones should be completed in a specific order for the items, while the overworld ones can be completed no matter what (maybe with shortcuts depending on your already completed dungeons). One non-world thing that bothers me is durability. It's something people debate on, but looking at BoTW specifically I don't like it. A well made weapon can last as long as you need it to, as long as you can take care of it. Is Link, the knight chosen to protect Zelda, the best swordsman in Hyrule who bested adults as a child, somehow awful at weapon maintenance? Sorry for my minor rant under your rant. It's just something I've wanted to say since people have been praising these games.
Just FYI people have this reaction to every Zelda ever made. "Zelda used to be x, and now they're ruining it" but Zelda didn't used to be anything, every game has been them just doing whatever they want, you just grew up. We bitched about Zelda II, bitched about LttP, people bitched about OoT, Wind Waker, etc etc etc. But if you grew up with a certain Zelda that's what Zelda is to you.
Eventually when the devs are done with the interviews I want to return. I don't really like information changing mid-scripting or editing...it happened twice while writing about the Temple of Time...thats when I tried the Mysteries & Easter Eggs...so I will return just not for a little bit.
In addition, I depend on RUclips for my livelihood. Viewership went down for all Zeldatubers and I felt like that was a major indication Zelda content is in trouble for the short term...Hope you understand homies.
Okay but did you know way back when the demon king of the gerudo fought the seven sages over the secret stones
The secret stones?
@poenpotzu2865 yeah it's actually a pretty obscure piece of lore but if you pay close attention...
LINK I HAVE AN AWESOME NEW POWER GORO
was he stronger than they expected??
@@Nonzerotonin didnt quite catch that piece, what was it??
they missed a good opportunity with the depths, a call back to the original Legend of Zelda the dungeons in that game were called the underworld, when they revealed the depths I was expecting more dungeons, maybe call backs to the original dungeons
literally anything
interactable npc's
dungeons, you name it...still depressed about the spirit temple
Definitely feeling this. TotK is a pure masterpiece gameplay wise, and the story notes that were there were wonderful, but having put the game down for a couple months now, it's become evident to me that the plot didn't just take a backseat here, it was pretty much sidelined and became very unimportant as a development priority in a way that harmed the overall experience. The balance between these elements was so much better in the past and all I can hope is that we get back toward that in the future. The main thing I haven't gotten over is hearing the same sage story 5 times in a row. It just makes me remember how, when you rescued the maidens in ALttP, you were told something unique and equally important by each one.
gotta animate the interaction between cheese and aa garden hoe
I wouldn't call it a masterpiece gameplay-wise. They did nothing to alter the gameplay loop of Breath of the Wild: they only added to it (which does not necessarily make it better). I don't find durability or rain climbing to be an issue, but I do have an issue with the nature of the shrines, the copy paste enemies, the lack of music, and the infinite recovery mechanic to name a few. I don't think that they should have made a sequel without fixing the things that were genuinely repairable about the prequel. It was forgivable with BOTW, but a seven-year-later sequel? Also the slow equip options and lag are absolutely horrible.
@@artemis_studios6555 Well I based that statement only on the total amount of fun I had with it, which was off the charts. I do agree there are things that could be better here and there throughout the game.
@@artemis_studios6555 I think the word masterpiece is thrown out way too easily, because this game certainly is not that
I’m really happy that we atleast just all agree. Even tho everyone is kinda struggling to put it into words we are still on the same page
Also then still reading some comments people would rather die than stop defending Nintendo. Like holy fck they are my childhood too but the things they get away with literally any other developer would get boycotted for is craaaaaaazy to me
ppl simp so hard for Zelda man. And I get it like~ i LOVE Zelda...its just frustrating to watch them throw away all the mysterious stuff that makes Zelda, well Zelda...
its really hard to put into words and half the reason this video seems so stale is because i was so nervous about blatantly stating my opinion.
thanks for saying whats up homie
I feel a very similar empty feeling. No game has hurt my interest more in Zelda lore than this game. The fact that we need to have the developers come out and give us clarifications multiple times, proves they just arent good at story telling.
ToTK is a suped up but less thematically consistent BoTW, and while I had a blast playing it, I have no desire to revisit it anytime soon. It had some innovative gameplay but didnt really deliver on the improvements it sorely needed. ToTK was like a student that was getting an A in science and a D in English and that student goes on to discover a new renewable energy, its like ok thats great but you're still getting a D in English.
The clarification is what killed it for me💀
Damn you'd give it a D?
I miss Skyward Sword’s storytelling dude. Having such an open world isn’t worth losing out on stories that I can care about. Totk’s story seemed like it would be so much more intriguing than what we got.
I know right! I thought they would answer some long resonating questions about the Twili (yes the twili) while presenting some deeper questions about the Zonai. Its so depressing
I think it would have been cool if the sheikah tech fell through the ground and ended up in ruin around the depths.
That... would have been so sick man
Imagine using the sheika towers as waypoints to get back to the surface ASAP!
I couldn’t watch enough Zelda lore before the ToTK release, I adored all the theories. This is the first Zelda video I’ve seen since, it all just feels a hollow and like the devs don’t care about any cohesive lore whatsoever
Especially when the lore videos had more interesting stories than what was revealed in the game. We were so excited about answers to our questions and we were all let down so hars
Welcome to the future of LoZ. 😢
My issue is this: While I cared about the story in each game, I didnt care much about the overall legend. That is untill Skyward sword and Breath of the Wild.
SS explained the origins, why these characters keep reincarnating, why it keeps boiling down to Link, Zelda, and Ganon.
BOTW felt like the end of the timeline. The cycles repeated so many times that the people of hyrule made preparations. Ganon's been reduced to a mindless force of nature, suggesting Demise's curse is hitting its limits.
Sure it was just my interpretation but i thought it was leading to the curse finally breaking, opening up possibilities for entirely new stories.
Instead... it just retreads old ground. Ganon's seal has broken, gather sages, save Zelda.
Ganondorf has zero complexity, and is even flatter than Demise.
Calamity Ganon. This great evil Zelda held in a stalemate for 100 years, that all of hyrule united against in another timeline. Yeah its basically a Phantom Ganon.
It doesn't progress the story, in fact it lessens BOTW and AOCs.
its a blockbuster remake Ocarina of the Wild 2
I still think the fanfiction and fanarts of Ganon splitting into his evil of Demise and 'king forced into his evil from the curse' and coming back as a helpful ghost, or going back in the past to save a Ganon who was a beloved friend to a past link and Zelda and that the figure in the tapestry was Ganon sacrificing himself to seal his own evil self was all so much more interesting than what we got.
Hell, keep Ganon evil, just make him more interesting for the love of God.
@@LadyAhro Exactly! Why establish a curse? Why show a bit of humanity in Wind Waker? Why suggest more complexity to this character just to toss it all aside? The others are allowed depth.
You have Zelda. The 1 incarnation who struggles with her power, who grows into a leader.
You have Link. Shown to keep a stoic attitude to deal with the pressure he's under, and has a deeper relationship to the Zora. Not much, but more than usual for him.
Then you have Ganondorf. He wants to conquer Hyrule because... he wants power, light bad, darkness good?
His fight is genuinely fantastic, and the actor makes the most of what he's given, but he comes off as a generic villain a small child would come up with.
I LOVED totk, got 70~ hours in. Then, I paused to finish my run of OoT that i had started prior to its release.
That game had completely won my heart. The atmosphere, the dungeons, ect. Now im playing through MM for the first time, and its really hard picturing myself going back after really experiencing the charm of the older games and the quirks of their worlds. Botw is very close to my heart, but I really miss the atmosphere present in the previous main line entries.
Im still impressed with the gameplay of totk, but i knew the main story would fall flat very early in. There are sidequest stories that i enjoyed, especially seeing everyone’s growth after 5~ years had passed (ignoring the few NPCs that straight up FORGOT us??? Wtf???). I found Tracy’s development from a traveling journalist to an outright news outlet owner to be a particularly fun continuity that reminded me of details found in earlier games.
I just feel like they didn’t think to focus on the story aspects at all, and it was very sad to see.
the totk gameplay is so fun but you are right the story falls on its face. I am angry about the NPC's not remembering us, and I dont think I touched on that as much as I should have.
The thing that gets me is that they didn’t even change the normal town music. Like they did when they were under attack but after you saved them it returned to their botw town theme. When kakariko has PERMANENT DAMAGE and a new leader why hasn’t the town theme changed? Same with goron village. They wanna build a theme park why isn’t the theme different? It’s things like this where it feels like something happened during development to not fix the music or the dog petting or letting Zelda be an NPC in the over world. As much fun as I had with the game I was hoping for bigger changes. Ok big rant over.
I was so excited for "New Zelda means new music!" And there was a few good additions but I was still... disappointed.
Exactly! @@Iffondrel
I shit you not, before totk, you could say i lived and breathed zelda. Ive played every game and memorized all of the lore from the books. I feel like a crazy person when i hear people saying that the timeline is incoherent or that the games arent connected, despite most of the games referencing each other in the story. I expected totk to be this grand story that would be the climax of what had started in ocarina of time. Even all of the vagueness and calamity ganon in botw just built up more hype. But now.... its seems like all those people were right, the devs don't give a shit and im the idiot for caring so much. I felt like my favorite piece of fiction has lied to me and left me behind. I straight up despise the zonai. They are representative of everything that killed the story. Rauru is a hack who stole a better character's name. Sonia is nothing. And ganondorf is asleep the whole game, this is the least active he's ever been in a zelda game. We've literally sacrificed everything for visual spectacle.
but hey~ MEAT ARROW & CHEESE HOE
*"devs don't give a shit and im the idiot for caring so much."* this part hit hard.. homie... i feel that pain to the core of my being...
@moxiewatts like who do I blame for this? Surely not aonuma, right? Maybe fujibayashi? But it couldn't be, I love what he did in skyward sword. Maybe the devs decided to do the opposite of skyward sword due to backlash. But probably not because they started botw right after finishing skyward sword, and in that time frame the reviews were stellar.
@husseinrose4883
I'm with ya.
I’m personally so confounded how they managed to create such an emotionally powerful game with great gameplay with what felt like no story and no lore. I’m having a similar experience of having no desire to play it again after playing through once. I felt like there’s just nothing really to be discovered.
there really isn't and it feels bad man
it’s so weird bc i was so excited after finally deciding to do the last fight and then after like 30 minutes of running around i was just… bored out of my mind :(
Oh man this hit me when I first tried playing. I was so immediately heartbroken, i had to to put it aside and not play for a long time and ranting with friends, it made me feel better but it took some time. It really sucked since at the beggining everyone else was so happy and I wasn't but as people started playing more and where like oh wow this actually isn't as great I felt better 😂. Like it's beautiful but how much stuff they stuffed in story wise but it was still somehow less story, especially compared to botw. All I wanted really besides lore and story, was to be able to dive and PET FUCKING ANIMALS. ALL I WANTED WAS TO PET THE GOOD BOIS AND THEY COULDNT EVEN DO THAT 😭
IKR
It's just so frustrating for those of us here for the story.
I think they should have cut out most of or even all of the depths and spent their time on actual dungeons or story and better developing the sky. We also didn't need quite that many caves. It's a case of biting off more than they could chew. Creating and developing new landscape takes a lot of time they could have spent elsewhere. Exploration was the cool new thing with BotW and they wanted to double down on it in TotK, but to go that route they should have done a new map, not reused BotW. I do think they were correct that there was potential in reusing the BotW map but that should have given them a headstart and allowed them to develop things that BotW was weaker on, like the lore, characters, and story line. Some elements, like koroks, should have been changed up more instead of just making new puzzle types.
Hard agree, the Depths are such a nothing-burger and caves are even worse. I didn’t find any reason to explore either as there was nothing to discover in either, just the same Horoblins, mines and Bubbulfrogs.
I don’t even know why the Zelda team bothered making a concrete timeline with all these complicated and interesting lore implications in the first place if they were just immediately gonna drop the ball with it in the next two mainline titles and basically go back on all of it. Zelda has always been a sort of disconnected franchise, so I just can’t understand why they’d go and try to frame it like one big overarching story, especially taking into account that most of these games just weren’t made with that goal in mind. They got the fans hopes up with a new premise in SS that recontextualized older titles and had sooo much potential for interesting themes and storytelling for future ones. Botw comes along with a janky timeline placement but still some cool and interesting lore connections to other games that lean into this new interconnected direction, with the early trailers for the sequel promising even more of that with the reveal of Ganondorf and the use of islands in the sky. Then Tears actually comes along and basically tells these lore scholars and people just- here for the storytelling and characters in general that have been strung along to go f themselves. Fuckin stings man.
Feels really, really fucking bad man
Reading my mind. I'm going into new games from now on assuming connections to older games and franchise lore are merely shallow window dressing. We can't even trust Ninty to connect the lore from one game to its direct sequel in a satisfying manner. So, if they want to reuse assets in the future, I hope they make more disconnected worlds/stories like Majora's Mask rather than direct sequels like TotK.
I couldnt even get through one playthrough before quitting after finding out the whole story was just memories again, what they called zelda dugeons werent zelda dugeons and the final boss of 2 put of 4 dugeons were a fire version of Ocarinas first boss and an octorok Seriously, what happened to scary zelda bosses in dugeons and more than one kind of monster in said dugeon? Man, I miss the Super Nintendo, 64 and Gamecube era Zeldas 😢. Alttp was my first Zelda.
Yeah man, I think we yearn for that because back then, they only had one chance to make the story and make it good and memorable. They did it with their characterization and the worldbuilding. It sucks that I felt it was the Walmart version of Hyrule
Like I was low-key a big defender of the story until the dev interview the other day when they confirmed worst reason for sheikah tech being gone
literally...i get to that...
I’d hardly call it the worst reason. It’s better than no reasoning given at all.
@@xeldalachyrule disagree
@@xeldalachyruleno reason given means fans can speculate and theorize. Sometimes, somethings are better left off unanswered
@@xeldalachyrule there could be worse reasons but they supported their reason with "Don't worry about it".
ToTk lacked the feeling, connection and why. I did not feel compelled to finish it.
So many comments have already touched on my biggest gripes (story nonexistent, zonai boring, no incentive to do anything, mechanics gimmicky, dungeons for the sake of dungeons, etc) and I feel incredibly vindicated by it, but I would like to bring up one more thing that’s been eating away at me: this is Ganondorf’s first appearance since Twilight Princess, and THIS is the best Nintendo wants to do with him? They got Matt Mercer to play him! And he did great with what he was given, but what he was given was “ooo super scary evil man that do the funny face”. We’ve seen this Ganondorf before, he’s nothing new-why can’t he be new? His presence doesn’t add anything, you put any other villain in his place and nothing’s really lost. It’s just a wasted opportunity to reinvent the character even a little in a game where the point was to reinvent the series.
(Also the ancient hero aspect armor thing is the worst reward imaginable in this Zelda themed farming sim and I wish I could destroy it and everything it fails to imply)
I have been a lifelong Zelda fan. For the past decade my personal RUclips recommendation feed has been at least 50% Zeldatubers. I have been silently following and loving the content from this community for a long time.
It must hurt so much, and be so frustrating, to want Nintendo to care about this more than they do. Especially when your livelihood is tied to it. To have Nintendo literally go on record saying that there isn’t an answer…stuff just disappeared…they are all just legends…gameplay first…. Yet the people they are shutting down are literally their biggest fans. It is insulting. It makes a person feel like they are wasting their time.
Recently I got talking with a friend about Ocarina of Time on the 3DS - something he was experiencing for the first time. He has also played a number of Zelda games, and considers himself a fan, but casually. He asked a question that led me to pulling out my copy of Hyrule Historia. I watched as he took in the timeline for the first time. His mind was blown, but he eventually had questions about the logic of the fallen timeline. We had a good discussion. I wanted to impress him that Zelda theorizing is worthwhile, even if Nintendo sometimes leans too far into trying to provide answers that aren’t well thought out. And especially considering that lore and consistency are low priorities in their development process.
In the conversation, I referenced your channel specifically. I told him how impressed I have been that there are people out there, like you, who are so good at outside of the box lore-logic likely never intended. People who deepen my enjoyment of these games because of how determined they are to take what Nintendo didn’t properly think out and treat it with the loving attention to detail it deserves. People who know that Nintendo sucks at this part of their job, but love Zelda so much that they grab the loose hidden threads and keep working (in spite of the big N) to weave a cohesive and rich story.
You make games and stories more beautiful, and I for one am grateful for what you have brought to my life. Every time Nintendo has done this (providing an official timeline, saying they are just legends, BOTW’s timeline “placement”, etc…), the theory community has kept at it and collectively told a better story than Nintendo realizes they have. And you, Moxie, are really, really good at it.
"Especially when your livelihood is tied to it." Everyday I wake up and I turn to Charlie and say: Man why couldn't totk be good. Its extremely frustrating...and to me...it felt like a slap in the face... Not the game but the dev interviews after. It was bad for my channel, it was bad for my mental, and it broke my fucking heart.
I loveeeeee Zelda, but I will not stand by and say the game is great when no thought or intention was put behind it. I will come back to Zelda, but I need some time... I kept trying to write new things (Especially the Temple of Time), and something new came out that completely broke the script and reduced my writing back to square one. It happened twice and I was just so frustrated.
Your comment was so heartfelt it made me tear up. I was once like you, someone who lurked in the background watching everyone's theories and just genuinely enjoying the content. When people stopped making theories and became an objective echo chamber, I just knew I had to do something.
That was also after having six years to rationalize what BOTW was about.
but TOTK...i don't know if ill ever be able to take it seriously.
@@MoxieWatts I feel you. I feel the same way about just playing the game. I enjoyed it at first. The tutorial section. The build up to the wind temple. Discovering the underground. Experimenting with new mechanics. Eventually though, I beat the game and set my sights on my favorite thing about BOTW - playing it again. Starting fresh with a self imposed list of challenges. For TOTK I decided to play without warping. It was fun at first, until I realized that I needed to build up my batteries again, which would require 20 hours of mindless grinding in the depths. That started my thinking process about the games flaws. So much repetitive crap. So many tasks. It didn't sound fun anymore. It looked like a pile of homework.
I also feel mislead from the games trailer. And I felt the same way about BOTW's trailer. That one in early 2017 was the most emotional moment I have ever had with something like that. It made me cry. Still does. I ended up loving BOTW because of the magic of that initial exploration and discovering that huge world. But when I look back at the trailer, I realize that I was set up to believe that I was actually going to be experiencing an incredible story, not just leaning about it from flashbacks. BOTH of those trailers are incredible, but in hindsight they feel like they are for totally different games. It is like the team assigned to making the trailers took the available cutscene footage and put together a trailer for the game they knew fans would want, but unfortunately weren't going to get.
I was so hyped that we might actually get to travel personally to the past. Or play as Zelda. Or have an interesting take on Ganondorf. Or tie in things from old games. Instead we got a super polished Hyrule vehicle creating simulator with a ridiculously amped up level of meaningless repetitive tasks.
Anyway...sorry for the wall of text...twice...I really appreciate you taking the time to respond to my initial comment. I look forward to your content - Zelda or other. Your passion is inspiring.
Honestly I think so many of my problems with Totk is that it isn’t a sequel. It seems like they wanted to do a soft reboot of botw but they just did botw worst in terms of experience (the actual game play was fun but everything felt like such a chore after awhile)
It maybe be an unpopular opinion but as someone that has played every LoZ game, I think Breath of the Wild and Tears are bad Zelda games. For all the reasons you explain. To me these games just feel like going around and foing things. It's fun, don't get me wrong but it doesn't feel like zelda. There are very frustrating things that do nothing for the story and a lot of the game feels like pointless wandering.
i've played all the console releases other than the 1st 2 games in the series, and i agree. fun games but not proper LoZ games at all. Mox uses a good word, "contained", for what makes a classic LoZ entry
unfortunately modern Nintendo very likely doesn't care about making proper LoZ entries and instead will continue to focus on adapting the series to what the current trend is within the video game market (i.e. open-world adventures)
but:⭐✨ *R E W A R D S* ✨⭐for ~ *upgrades* ~
i wanna cry
6:21 - 7:11
That quote Fujibayashi made…
It was so random! It sounded so random…
I can tell he and Aonuma did not prepare for a timeline question.
They made it up.
How can Hyrule be founded more than once?
Hyrule was destroyed?
How?
When?
Why?
I get that there was Hylia’s Realm, the original founding of Hyrule, the Adult timeline’s founding of New Hyrule, but those foundations were out of the ashes from the old legacy that had to live on.
But Tears of the Kingdom treats this founding of Hyrule as if it was the original founding.
It’s a reimagining of the overarching lore! Nintendo didn’t want to admit it at this point!
fujibayashi: "no its all cannon now go finish those koroks"
@tommoore6927
Pretty much.
I think I’m in the minority that was here for the zelda vids. I’ll stick around for a while, but I stayed for the zelda content 😕
I hope any content you do from here on out does well.
Eventually when the devs are done with the interviews I want to return. I don't really like information changing mid-scripting or editing...it happened twice while writing about the Temple of Time...thats when I tried the Mysteries & Easter Eggs...so I will return just not for a little bit.
In addition, I depend on RUclips for my livelihood. Viewership went down for all Zeldatubers and I felt like that was a major indication Zelda content is in trouble for the short term...Hope you understand
They could have just added the Depths and Sky Islands as a DLC to BotW. No sign guy, no koroks, no shrines. It could have just been "post-Calamity game-play" and would have been a *brilliant* DLC.
TotK suffers from being a brilliant DLC that was turned into a bloated, bland full game.
PREACCCCCCCH
when the $70 DLC people might have been right, it's extremely over for story nerds
Thank you for having the guts to address how garbage the story and progression is in modern Zelda.
I am one of those people who have stopped watching vids on TotK as well.
I understand, I stopped watching them too. It's okay, I dont hold it against anyone because I am literally in the same boat not being able to stomach through a Monster Maze video, even though he is my favorite-- or watch my weekly HG video... just feels bad man
@@MoxieWatts Exactly! I don't have any grudges against the Zelda channels for making content on it. I still want to support them, but not for TotK.
For me I just dont really understand why the zonai were added. They didnt feel interesting nor thematically important. Why is Rauru the king of hyrule so the blood of the gods can justify the royal hyrule family? I dont know the story felt much weaker so I didnt care about the narrative as much.
I like to think they're connected to the Twili
@GalekC I'll be blunt I don't think nintendo gives a hoot, their whole philosophy is video games are fun and stories are unnecessary
they could've easily been progenitors of the sheikah (which they likely are, but not providing any real lore sucks)
Half way through the video, but I wanna add to the rant.
I feel like in many ways totk disappointed me even more than botw, because at least that had an excuse. New engine, gameplay, big new world, etc. And totk had a chance to fix all of the issues, but they didn't.
Shrines are back again, which I really don't like. Going to what essentially feels like a dev room with an impossibly large room for pure gameplay purposes just feels lazy, lore wise. They're just little pockets of gameplay, of which feel completely disconnected from the overworld. I wished they had focused instead on fleshing out the caves, dungeons, side quests, etc.
Speaking of side quests, they're crap, just like in botw. Not much improvement, at all. In fact, one side quest was a literal repeat from botw, and I came out of it at a loss. I gathered that dude from Hateno village 10 frogs, and he gave me a worse ingredient in return. Why? You're better off ignoring that quest.
That's the thing, not many quests actually have anything significant going on. So not only do you get next to zero physical reward, you don't even get a reward in the sense of "Oh, that was cool." like you would, in say, a game like the witcher 3. Sometimes the reward is the cool quest itself.
The building mechanic was neat at first, but quickly just turned into a viral video bait. Using it in game was often a waste of time. I built a plane once, failed a couple attempts at launching, and when I did finally launch, it flashed green after, I shit you not, around 10 seconds, and it vanished. Just feels like a waste of time. The batteries already limit you, why this extra limit?
Fusion mechanic was pretty neat, as at least with this mechanic you're doing it constantly, instead of building some useless contraption that you didn't even need because you would have killed the enemy camp long ago anyway.
Temples were really bad. Kind of an insult to even call them temples/dungeons.
Magic is basically gone from the series now. It's all either tech like magic, or divine/demonic energy. Ganondorf is no longer a sorceror, he's just a demon who shoots demon goop everywhere. Don't eve think it's the same ganondorf, which is disappointing. Why even bother bringing him back, then? At least the proper one has history they could have used to add more depth to his character.
The general sense of progression is bad, like it was in botw. It often feels like I'm just doing thing until I'm like "I guess I should go to the final boss now?" and that just feels bad. Progression isn't just a sense of getting stronger and finding new things, it also comes in the form of story progression. Which, admittedly there's a little but more here, but it again comes down to find the memoriessss.
And talking about the map being smaller, more compact etc, or blocking the player off with items. I actually think they could have done both here. We could have had the best of both types of Zelda games with totk, and I think that's why, at least to me, it's more of a let down than botw. We could have had a more linear story, key items, better side quests, within this admittedly cool map they have, but it feels like they wasted their chance at filling it/telling a great story within it.
Nintendo have always been gameplay first, which sounds like a good thing. However, I think in cases like totk, they do it to a fault. To the point where things just happen or are the way they are because they needed it for gameplay.
I'm rambling now and no one will read this. I just had to rant.
*incoherent stream of consciousness reading this*
First I should start by saying, well put about botw. It did have good excuses like the whole new system and they were still grappling with how to compress that much information into what we now have.
Shrines are useless. Utterly. Put the ball in the cup kid
I feel like we dont learn anything about the world through the quests...because the "journey" is the reward.
The temples were fun, and I think they are the best part, which is sad...
I don't even know if its the same ganondorf
LMAO do thing then do more thing then upgrade material
Yeah its absolutely missing key items and worldbuilding quests, i agree.
I read everything my guy
@VampC
Read and agree with pretty much everything. Except I found the sidequests to be far more compelling than the smidgeon of nonsensical story we were given. 😠
This is going to be a little bit of a rant so please excuse me but I have kind of been feeling this way with Nintendo in general. Don’t get me wrong, ToTK is a good game, but that is more because it is a DLC for BoTW, a very good game. If any non-nintendo franchise tried basically releasing a sequel that uses the exact same assets with a few minor additions they would be rightfully lambasted but Nintendo can do it because of nostalgia and suddenly it is GoTY. Mario Wonder looks like fun, that is because 2D Mario is fun, but it is just that, 2d Mario with some new power ups. I love both of these franchises, but, at least since the Wii, when Nintendo is successful they become lackadaisical and start phoning it in. They only innovate when their backs are against the wall, we saw this with the GC into the Wii and we saw this with the WiiU into the Switch. The WiiU was a failure so we got the Switch along with BoTW and Mario Odyssey, two absolute bangers that brought their franchises to a whole new level. Now that everyone and their Grandma owns a Switch we are seeing them really phoning it in. The same exact thing happened with the Wii. This isn’t true for all Nintendo franchises, that new Metroid is a masterpiece, and Pokemon is actually trying to innovate, their problem lies more in hardware, dev ability, and a very tight schedule. Nintendo knows, as long as people own the console they will buy Zelda DLC, 2d Mario #237, or the newest rushed pokemon because we feel the good nostalgia chemicals in our brains. Hell, dude I can't even judge, I am going to buy Wonder probably day 1, I know I am part of the problem.
I hope they dont get GOTY...We also saw this innovation with TP! after WW was too "childish"
I too am part of the problem... I preordered the game and the collectable Sw-OLED.,
Just sucks because I truly believed that at the end of the day they would at least build out some story and maybe we could craft an arrow
The best way to explain this Spirit Tracks, Twilight Princess, and Wind Waker are some of my favoritr zelda stories. Eaxh of them explore and expand side characters while having some thematic idea. Twilight Princess explored the necessity of working together and reject traditonal power structures to an extent, Spirit Tracks showed the power of humanity working together without the need of the lokomos or great spirits, wind waker reminded people not to be stuck in the past to be greatful what came before and step forward into the future. Totk just felt like a generice Good king Rauru vs evil bad man Ganondorf who ruined everything for everyone.
Its only theme that's notable up to the very end is light vs dark. The hands theme is only really in aesthetics, it has no actual depth besides "HANDS!! LOOK HANDS!!!"
@cato3277 heck BOTW story felt more cohesive with the gameplay being lost in vast world eroded by time and retrieving your memories.
@@poenpotzu2865 underrated Zelda story. I really loved how it was done.
fax@@poenpotzu2865
BotW and TotK are fun games and good in their own right, but i am going to be holding out hope that they were a detour for the devs and that they'll return to more linear, intentional gameplay
i hope so...
Yes
@sentientmeat96
Hope so but doubt it. They've made too much money and gotten too much attention for this style, and that is what Nintendo is about.
Death of the author. If it’s not in the game, it’s not canon for me. Nintendo can say all it wants but if it’s not in the game, I’m not going to blow up my head canon over it.
speaking personally, as a creator it sucks tho bc it feels like no theory is really valid anymore. nothing has real weight because now you have to take a side: death of the author or what the devs say is canon...im not prepared to go either way and i feel like it sucks being forced into this box....
@@MoxieWatts I feel for you and the Zeldatubers community. I hope this means y’all keep making rad videos either way, however that means you personally reconcile with Nintendo opening its dumb mouth. As for me, I suppose it’s time to re-watch the death of the author videos from our Lord and Savior Lindsay Ellis as I personally grapple with this.
On a separate note, I appreciate the long-form videos. Good thing to put on in the background at work.
@rinforthewin-ks1vk
I've always gone along with that: if it's not in the games, it's not canon.
I just want a new villain man... Leave my redhaired brickwall of a man alone at once, let him rest for the goddesses' sake.
same tho leave it mysterious gosh
Must say one thing about totk, still.
I did not play that game in english, but in italian, so it was kind of a shock when i found out that in the english story, they did not mention:
-losing the soul as a price for draconification.( In a game series with spirits reincarnating, souls are fundamental)
-Ganondorf talking about courage and hell in his scenes
-the extintion of the Zonau (only in english it is not explicit)
- Envy of ganondorf to the zonau
- some discourse that make indirect quotes to Demise, by Ganondorf, right when he transforms into the very demise like demon king form
I checked and all these things are present in Italian, French, Spanish and German.
The english translation did you dirty, i am sorry for you
I said that to mox too. The English localization is terrible
you have no idea theyve been doing it for years
and also i play in JP and translate everything.
@@MoxieWatts i noticed also this thing in the zelda mangas. In the ocarina of time's manga, they tended to translate from the english version, to italian, but when there was the twilight princess manga, they translated it directly from japanese to italian, and the quality skyrocketed
I’m still playing BoTW… 500 hours in (Just putzing around) and I’d rather replay Skyward Sword or Twilight Princess before ToTK. ToTK just looked a little gimmicky rather than a sequel, compared to say, OoT and Majora’s Mask. The statements about the lack of story leaves me feeling validated.
bc its true! I felt crazy and charlie kept telling me to post a video. so thats how this came about... i thought id be crucified in the comments
@@MoxieWatts without the TriForce, the soul of the series buckles without its pillars.
Then again, the name of the game was foreshadowing. 😭⚠️🪦
TOTK was so bad, the next zelda is no longer an auto buy
fax they lost me as a persistent pre-orderer
Maybe I’m just nostalgia poisoned, but I want a return to the storytelling and lore pre-BoTW/ToTK.
Yeah ludonarrative dissonance ain't fun in open worlds
youre not poisoned...you just have come to expect them to continue to deliver that feeling, and its fucking valid.
I entirely agree!! I want deep stories filled with good writing and lore, like what Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess had. Modern Zelda just feels reused when it comes to the plot. It's mainly why I stopped playing the newer Zelda games and picked up Final Fantasy.
@largelumbricid
Oh, man, me too. But let's face it, that would require an effort on Nintendo's part, and they're obviously done with putting effort into their LoZ games.
oh hun, we all do. for your sake and mine, i hope they do.
ill watch anything you put out, im in full support of you leaving these games behind if its what its come to. while there is a degree of reverence for nostalgic series like LoZ, you still have to hold them up to the standards that are held for everything else.
thanks man, because honestly i think thats what its come to
because all of the people of hyrule watched the divine beasts disappear and no one decided to ever mention it again
im supposed to accept that as cannon? no fuckin way man
heres my theory: once the Blights were defeated and the divine beasts were purified, they were considered 'passive mobs'. the only thing that kept them from despawning a-la-minecraft was the presence of the previous heroes, who were keeping the chunks loaded. once they passed on to the afterlife when the calamity was sealed, the divine beasts were left *far* outside of the 128 block/meter despawn range, and they simply vanished into thin air.
as both Minecraft Steve and Link (BOTW) are found in SSBU, this is clearly a reference to a future crossover event.
the 128 block rangeeeee 💀@@Fried_Potatoes
In the end it's an oversight. I think you should continue playing the series after 5-10 more years of development maybe they will get it right again but if you want change get the fan base together and tell Nintendo how they screwed up with the voice of thousands. Tell them "if you want to have a timeline respect it enough to tie the newest game to it in some aspects that won't require the developers to explain because they were too into themselves to actually put words to text about a significant disappearance, we are smart individuals but we cannot extrapolate information from vague happenstance when no other information is forthcoming. You ask us to assume and slap us on the wrist for your mistake. Don't lead us by the hand but don't just point with your chin".
Make sure they know their exact mistake. Zelda isn't dead like Pokemon but this is the first step down that path.
im just mad for now and expressing that anger directly...im not like actually done done with zelda...i just dont want to pick it up until next game.
@@MoxieWatts take what time you need to heal :D don't worry about branching out even if it content others are working on, another mind on a topic is a new experienced perspective, you got this Moxie.
I remember absolutely loving TotK at first... but after a while the shrines got tedious, the dungeons were too repetitive, the story too awkwardly written. I know Skyward Sword isn't overly popular, but I've never found myself getting bored with SS the way I did TotK. That's what disappoints me so much about it. I absolutely love the Zelda franchise, I don't want to be bored whilst playing. There's a lot if aspects of TotK that were really well done, but it feels like they were overambitious in some areas and lackluster in others.
I think Skyward Sword has stood the test of time because of the characters and the powerful plot driven story. While they answered many questions, they left so much up to the imagination.
The story is more of a puzzle than the actual gameplay. I have a lot of fun dissecting the series.
I freaking agree. I intuit that's what Fujibayashi *wants* to do but just difficult for various reasons. Wish he could be allowed to get it
And it's like, a Zelda puzzle. Seems like he wants the lore itself to be a literal Zelda style puzzle, which is brilliant.
@@zachhiggins1668 exactly
You know I love your stuff. But this was pretty low level nonsense. :(
There was never any overarching lore to the series. The worst thing TOTK did to the fanbase is expose the truth that Nintendo just places random worldbuilding concepts in Zelda games with no real reasoning behind them, other than what the fans make of them.
Pretty much
Yeah apparently, despite the fact it's been cohesive until now. They sure fooled us.
something that has bugged me are the shrines. they could have very well turned them into the classic dungeons that we know, even better than them without any explanations. the shrines are pretty cut-off from the mainworld eithout affecting anything in the world, just very good hidden. that way you please both old and new fans
I literally havent done them and I dont feel like it removes anything from what theyre trying to convey. they feel like a fuckin chore
@@MoxieWatts they literally are just extended tutorials. most of them end before they get good. there was one with a really good mechanic, i cannot remember the name, which when it finally clicked it just... ended. my proposal to fix that, is take a few shrines out of the game, make big shrines which reward you with 2 to 4 tokens and then call it a dungeon
i found them all, i just didnt do them. theres a part where i go to my map, and you can see theres a bunch 37:20
The story of Tears of the Kingdom had so much potential. I haven’t stopped thinking about the game since it released. I love it and it may be my favourite Zelda game but the story is probably the worst.
I had suspicions that Nintendo wasn’t going in the direction I wanted though all the way back with Age of Calamity. I know that game is licensed and not made by Nintendo, but that doesn’t mean Nintendo had no control over it.
There could have been an incredible trilogy after Skyward Sword. Breath of the Wild is the convergence. Forget the timeline because all events have happened. Age of Calamity is the prequel. Show us how Calamity Ganon appears, the destruction of Hyrule, have the final mission be a Halo Reach “survive” style battle with Link vs infinite Guardians. Tears of the Kingdom would be the bow. They could have gone with the ouroboros imagery and have it be the end and beginning of the timeline. They could have gone in a different direction. Man, they could have brought back characters. I thought, like many others, we were going to have the Twili come back.
But nope. They played it so safe that the story is barely there. At least the final fight with Ganondorf was awesome.
Honestly, I think one of the worst things about The Legend of Zelda is how absolutely garbage the English localization is throughout the entire series. Like for example, with Twilight Princess it was so bad to the point the lore was somewhat different or a little confusing at best. But at its worst, it contradicts itself, makes things up, and even says literally the opposite of the Japanese version. QuestWithAaron has a great video about this. It's really a shame.
LMAO like yeah -- ME -- I found a localization error, and I dont even speak JP
@kattowo_8516
YES. Once I found out how bad it was I started learning Japanese and no longer play in English lol.
Here in the Sonic fandom there are people dedicated to accurately retranslating the story from JP into EN, maybe there needs to be something like that for the Zelda fandom
I guess we’re at a point where Nintendo doesn’t know how to tell a story anymore…
Ubisoft can relate to that…
Rayman… the Raving Rabbids… the lack of narrative structure… Mario and Rabbids… a certain character appeared solely at the beginning of Kingdom Battle and never brought back up again until the end of the Donkey Kong DLC and a letter at the end of Sparks of Hope… A “phantom’s” unreasonable grudge against Rayman instead of Mario… there’s so much the devs left out…
"safe" and *FUN*
I totally get you. I grew up with Zelda games and I really enjoyed ToTK, but I missed the lore and the original temples from old games. On top of that they shattered my heart with the statements about the timeline and with the announcement of no DLC. So much potential to waste!!! Now we wait for 5-7 years for another game? It is a shame…😢
Anything....changed....with the release of the TotK masterworks book on the horizon...? Truth be told, I only followed you because of Zelda.
Perhaps, I'm waiting on the book...
I mean, Skyward Sword shows us a refounding.
I feel a big problem with the story telling now, is that Nintendo is actively trying to feed the theory community, rather than give us all the information in game.
its like-- dont feed me just immerse me in the world
@@MoxieWatts Absolutely
I did give up on Breath of the Wild before beating it
Only hung out with Mister Mystery "zo-Na-uru" on his sky island & watched the rest through playthroughs of this thus far. I do get a kick out of ultrahand, but?? Link needs to actually emote again, or SOMETHING????
or pick up dog :(
this is rather disappointing and soiled my experience quite a bit
i had so much fun with the game, it was fun gameplay
i was also just hoping for more story and had copium that maybe they’d expand the story further and explanations for things
i love fun games that are story light like mario, but i came to zelda for both its fun gameplay and interesting story and tears didn’t live up to the story
sigh… at least we still have metroid *copium*
it really does feel bad man...
i liked the story and hidden details of botw because of its mystery
i got excited envisioning what could be and watching videos
botw gave me just enough with stuff like the tablets about ruto and places named after previous characters
i was very much expecting to see a lot more of the lore to be expanded and told in-game, not some interview explaining what was happening in a still vague and annoying “oh the residents don’t know why this happened and it’s still a mystery”
like, no it wasn’t the residents who didn’t know, it was the devs who just didn’t care enough to explain why!
dude like same here, you know...i was so hype for the new game. im with you, i was out here asking questions and wanting answers...@@quantumsaus
@@MoxieWatts thank you! my pronouns are she/her but i am fine bein called dude n stuff
Moxie I’ve loved your content and this didn’t disappoint! Your frustration is totally valid! Nintendo has gone lazy. They gave us a game full of busy work and gimmicky mechanics. Personally I don’t believe they had any plans for the zonai until they saw how popular the speculation was. They decided to retcon so much just to give the zonai an inflated importance to the timeline and it has made me hate the zonai. And I totally agree that the way they go about giving us details about lore is horrendous. They failed to both show and tell! I feel like in 7 years we’re gonna get botw 3 with red shrines this time. Anyway just came here to gripe to the void, I’ve never participated in voting for game of the year before but im voting for baldurs gate out of spite. And I didn’t even know bg3 existed 2 months ago. I wasted years being hyped for totk
feels
thanks for the validation bc if you couldnt tell i was very nervous about this episode
It's so validating to hear other long time, huge fans ranting about TotK.
While I completely agree with there being almost nothing here for story telling, that's how I feel about most Zelda games. The plot has always been pretty minimal, and most lore is from implications and suppositions. My biggest gripe with this game is just that it's the last game over again, but with even more completely empty space, and clunkier controls/features. Everything is very exciting, for ten minutes. Everything is so new and cool, for ten minutes. Then they do nothing with it. And the laziness in removing the Sheikah stuff from the last game is unreal.
I replayed BotW a single time on Master Mode, then played the DLC. It was fun enough to keep me going. Once I finished the story of TotK, I put it away and never touched it, and after a week or so, didn't think about it. I made sure to do anything I had even a tiny will to do before finishing the game because I knew that beating it would kill any motivation I had to play it. It just did not offer much.
I just want another OoT, TP, or WW. Gimme that mostly linear, finely crafted adventure, with weapons that break idiotically quickly. It's a great game that I had a ton of fun with, but it just doesn't feel like a Zelda game at all, and had the plot of a third rate Anime show.
And this is just a personal, tiny gripe, but BotW made me mad when it destroyed my favorite spot in the game to give us Tarrey Town. Then this one made it even worse by making it that sinfully ugly piece of trash that spread even further into what was a pretty area.
They also could have given us more than like 3 NPCs who remembered who tf Link was.
for TEN MINUTES
THIRD RATE ANIME SHOW 💀
honestly you're spitting homie, preach. Everytime I had to fire up the switch, I was resenting what my content was focused on, because at the end of the day how do you make content with no content?
@jakebeach8308
Oh, gosh, that last point...bugged the heck out of me. The guy travelled all over the land solving everyone's problems and practically no one remembers him? Even some of the Zora who remembered him after 100 years? Garbage, man.
Crackpot theory about the Sheikah tech disappearing: since the blue energy powering it may be some kind of spirit energy, what if it had been drawing on Calamity Ganon's power, and poofed out of existence soon after the latter was sealed because the tech was cut off from its power source?
That’s not a crackpot theory that’s the exact kind of lazy excuse Nintendo would give in an interview without anything remotely hinting that in game
I am more convinced of that after it was found that the device hanging over Ganon in the cavern he was sealed in has Sheikah tech integrated into it, in just a way that could be for siphoning energy, and is even called a "purification" device. Reminds me of them "purifying" Argent Energy in the Doom '16 series.
wouldnt it be super cool if someone on the dev team like...wrote something that supported that idea down...
@@QuasarEE 🤫
My crack theory is that the Zonai are also Interlopers like Ganondorf, people trying to conquer Hyrule. And so, Zonai technology/magic doesn't play nice with Hylia's divinity nor Sheikah's technology.
Hylia not answering Zelda's prayers? It's because she has Zonais' light inside her.
The Master Sword getting broken by Ganondorf? He was being powered by Zonais' Secret Stone dark edition.
The Dragon Fortified Master Sword being weaker than BoTW Sword? Again, Zelda's light was really hard to harvest for the Master Sword, but thanks to long exposure to Zonai magic, the Master Sword learned how to fight against Zonai' magic.
It also explains why Hylia's statue was hijacked....
22:06 HAHAHAHA!!! THIS CUT WAS SO FUNNY!! YOUR SO (understandably) DISTRAUGHT!!!
SO MUCH PAIN.....damn
thank you the pain is real
Wow, I'm like, genuinely excited to listen to this video. I haven't finished the game, because I just couldnt, every time I played it, I got more and more bored, so I might go back to it after I forgotten about it. It kind of makes me feel validated to hear people say the story wasn't really great or satisfying, because I got the sense that it wouldn't be. I kind of felt super bored with the gameplay too, sick of dicovering a cool location, and then finding either a shrine or a Korok. SICK of it, I just found myself yawning more and more. And when I think about paying 70 dollars for it, I get kind of mad.
But I was honestly expecting you guys to be like, in the honeymood phase, constantly praising the game, but it makees me happy to see that you are in the mindset of, loving something so much that you are willing to point out its flaws, and bullshit, believing it could have been better. Excited to listen to this. Because I feel very unimpressed with the game, and dont really wanna finish it.
I think the main story is worth finishing if that means anything ❤
I am interested to hear what you thought.
@@MoxieWatts After listening, yeah I totally agree with what you were saying, the presentation definetly could have been much better, I especially agreed with the idea of solving one story question with another, regarding the Twili and the Zonai. But unfortunately we still don't know much about wither, and one of the biggest questions we had, were about the Warlike race, and if they were also Zonai, or related to ganondorf, considering the red hair. Its weird because the Zonai we see in TOTK are advanced and sophisticated, but there were artifacts of a warlike race in the zonai mazes? Odd. And yeah Nintendo's explanation about what happened to the sheikah tech was pretty lame, felt super lazy, and they didnt even build on the elements of the last game, just introduced new stuff. It would have been cool if the sheikah and Zonai were related somehow, both are over 10,000 years old, and both have similar tech. We STILL dont even know much about the sheikah, what powers their tech, what is that blue energy?
They never even really talked about what powers Zonai tech/magic. I think its obvious the three power sources are Malice, Sheikah energy, and Zonai energy. Power Wisdom Courage.
But I wanna know where it all COMES from. I do love the theories, but Nintendo doesnt seem to care about going into it at all. I was hoping for a lot of mysteries to be solved.
But nope. Just "Secret Stones, DEMON KING?!?!"
I think it would be great to delve into other games that you like, I think the lore of stray was super interesting, and I'm glad a channel I like is doing videos on them, so thank you.
A podcast also sounds really cool, I love podcasts and you guys have a lot of cool thoughts that go beneath the surface level with lore in games, I think you guys have some of the best lore videos, that talk about stuff I never thought about before, even on older Zelda games, it rivals Nintendo Black Crisis.
Have you guys heard of Lies of P? Not sure if you guys are willing to play through a difficult Soulslike game, but the lore in that game is SUPER JUICY. It takes the story of Pinnochio and spins it on its head. The Blue Fairy dust for example, is a power source called Ergo, which allows puppets to come to life, and helped advance technology.
....But it also brought a curse.
I'm super interested to figure out what Ergo is, where it came from, and the history of the world, and how Ergo changed it. And the whole, Pinnochio learning to become human thing, is done in an interesting way too. You can give people the cold hard truth, or you can Lie to bring them comfort. Its interesting because there are moments where something awful happened, and if you tell them, it would definetly weigh on them. So far, I've been lying....but I don't know the cost of that yet.....
I think you guys would LOVE Gemini. Just saying, if you want a SUPER COOL game with awesome lore, please check out Lies of P.
The lore is drop fed through little notes and character dialogue, and I still don't know everything, its been fun to speculate on things, I've even had to reread some notes in order to find out things I didnt reaalize before, and I think thats really cool. It doesnt treat you like kid, and you have to investigate and think in order to learn more about the overall lore.
Theres multiple endings too, and I think it depends on how much you lie or tell the truth, good boy, bad boy, etc.
I'm excited to finish it.
But yeah , I definetly ssupport your choice to try other games, its your craft, and if you feel passionately that Zelda is treating you stupid and its just not doing it for you, go ahead and try something else! I'm sure you'll come across the path your searching for, its probably easier said than done, but try to do what you feel is right.
My idea that we'd be assisted by a spirit of a deceased Ganon, separated from the evil of Demise after trying to resist his evil 10000 years ago and the red haired figure in the tapestry was him instead (aided by his then closest friends, a past link and a past Zelda) would have been so much better. And I'm just a loser making headcanons.
the famitsu article feels like so many words to say nothing at all
my thoughts....exactly...its so angering
Tears is Breath of the Wild +. Gameplay-wise. Also the depths is a Ubisoft open-world
an ubisoft open world
Secret stone? Demon king??
Those parts of the story were always fine in my eyes.
Hire this girl as a writer for the next zelda!! Or any video game
hire anyone who knows anything about how to actually write
I appreciate anyone who reads and values my thoughts in any way. I've needed to vent and love this community:
"Why am I doing Koroks?" is the most succinct question that sums up all the issues with both botw and totk. I laughed loudly.
Thanks for trying Mox. I miss your videos and enthusiasm. I understand. It's an appropriate response to what we received.
I fell in love with your idea of the chasms and the reveal process -- your idea is brilliant. From a storytelling perspective, this is common sense. It is NOT challenging to think of or execute. TOTK is missing this kind of thoughtfulness. Why can't they just hire a team or even one person to specifically focus on storytelling or do they have that already? FFXIV hires writers for EVERYTHING -- sided quests, job quests, main story writers, and all of the above. Wasted potential, wasted opportunities, and negatively impacts them and us.
I'm still obsessed with totk's gameplay, I like open world but that's just a v personal thing. It is "fun" like you guys said but that's really all it is.
The depths disappointed me greatly because they WASTED potential for lore, references, and all there is are fucking mines. I wanted old, destroyed castles down there. Old towns. Maybe even obvious, direct references to previous games. Like if we found a rotted, broken ocarina. The sky also was equally disappointing for the same reasons.
The interviews were so infuriating, lazy, arrogant, disrespectful, and had the energy of a child who failed to prepare for a presentation. We were handed bullshit and they think we will believe it and respect it. They fail to realize we see right through them. I would feel humiliated after that interview if I were the one who answered that question with that pathetic answer.
Nintendo's philosophy on gameplay first, story second cannot be relied upon anymore. It isn't working. It's resulted in a pattern of failure after failure and they stubbornly keep shoving a circle into a square peg. Don't expect them to change this philosophy. I hate to be a pessimist but what evidence is there to suggest they will actually change? They interpret feedback incorrectly.
"The interviews were so infuriating, lazy, arrogant, disrespectful, and had the energy of a child who failed to prepare for a presentation. "
this part has me rolling
homie i feel you on all these points...it might be time for your to try *~adult zelda*~
if these things frustrated you, maybe its time to graduate to FromSoft games ❤
@@MoxieWatts yo dude, I will look into FromSoft. thanks for the reply. you've made me laugh quite a number of times too XD. All of us miss the excited theory videos y'all post. You guys have kept vitality going.
Their philosophy only works with most of their other franchises and IP's. Franchises which aren't focused on lore which I personally love for what they are.
However, Zelda used to be a lore-focused series but now it's blatantly clear they don't give a damn anymore so why should we? They're not gonna prioritise one of the aspects that made many people love the series in the first place.
Imo, Xenoblade is their only IP that is BOTH lore focused and gameplay focused equally.
@@ultimatedumbass4640 Good point about their philosophy working with most of their games but not Zelda. I wish they could change their mindset when it comes to Zelda but never going to happen.
@@MoxieWatts Moxie, I purchased Elden Ring... hope you're proud.
I was so burned by BOTW I pre ordered the collector’s edition tried to like it sold it for medroid dred… the story of TOTK is WAYYYYY BETTER MY GOD but I’ll never play Zelda again if this is the way they are doing things… time to fire up majoras mask on my N64 THAT STILL WORKS…
its def better gameplaywise but at the end of the day there is no mystery, just stuff.
It's been a fun ride but a proper zelda story might not ever happen again my heart goes out to all theorists who put effort in this mess of a story
Thanks homie, for understanding where I'm coming from. I just want a story to take me as a enthusiastic player seriously...
I agree that I wanna see more heartfelt and intimate storytelling like Awakening and Majora. Sometimes bigger doesn't equal better. But yeah dude, I can't wait to see you tackle other game series as you go on. I hadn't planned to get Stray before your vid, but I absolutely have to at some point now.
playing this game after waiting for it for 6 whole years felt like you know when you sometimes get insane food cravings (think something super unhealthy that you absolutely love) & then you finally eat that dish/snack/meal but you aren’t even that satisfied/are a little grossed out at how you pretty much inhaled the whole thing? it looked good on the plate, it’s been in the back of your mind for weeks, but you don’t feel quite satisfied even though you satiated your cravings. this is how the game made me feel. so much potential & hype only just for a lukewarm botw 2.0. such a shame
23:49 "This is what annoys me, dude. If you wanna, like, make a theory about anything, it's just all too vague to say one way or the other."
FNAF Fans: First time?
its true.
i wrote a comment all about how i genuinely believe the lore of minecraft is better handled and expanded upon than the lore of totk and that you should check out the lore of minecraft
but…
youtube deleted the whole long ahh comment i poured my heart out on
i went into a summary of the lore and everything, and now it’s all gone sadge
if you want me to explain more, then whats the best way to tell you?
i also understand if you dont want to cover minecraft because of lack of interest or the audience it will bring, but please hear me out
it’s got really cool lore that the devs surprisingly care about and expand upon in minecraft legends and minecraft dungeons
minecraft legends explores a time in the past when the piglins invade, while minecraft dungeons explores and expands upon the illagers
i haven’t read much on the lore of those two games, so i don’t know when it takes place exactly or if it even was revealed
it’d also be nice to have someone other than matpat explore the lore
i mean i’d say matpat does a decent job with the minecraft lore (unlike other game series) but we need more perspective and opinions to make it better
i also forgot to mention that the devs of minecraft do a good job of keeping the mystery while still giving enough to fill in the blanks
they haven’t been like “hey you know this ancient civilization that built all of this stuff and founded the world? what if i told you there was this OTHER ancient civilization that actually founded the world?! and nobody knows who they were or why they’re gone, just trust us when we say they did this. you should forget about those other guys and look at our shiny new civilization!”
(i know they said that the zonai only refounded hyrule, but it’s still annoying)
i hope you see this and consider it, because i care a lot about the lore of minecraft and i wish more people talked about it
yo hmu on discord fam, my username is moxiewatts
its funny you say this because i obssessed over the minecraft lore for a long time. It fascinated me. I did actually play Minecraft Legends and watched the playthrough of Technoblade(?)...if i remember correctly...playing minecraft dungeons.
Have you heard of RetroGamingNow? They do these amazing lore breakdowns in minecraft. MattPat is fine and all, but I know what you mean. If you havent heard of RGN, you should check out their Minecraft Lore.
They do a super good job telling us nothing, and then it also keeps my interest with the way in which it is vague for an openworld game.
Homie, I will absolutely consider this. I could dip my toes considering there is a lot of new stuff in the game now...Especially the Deep Dark lore..........
@@MoxieWatts oh, i sent a friend request your way! my username is the same as here, quantumsaus.
i’ve heard of RGN, actually! They made a lot of really cool minecraft lore videos and theories
Idk I only want to play Zelda..
As someone who’s played Zelda since Ocarina of Time, I see your point. I just wanted a more immersive and more fleshed out Zelda title more in the lines of Twilight Princess. While we can agree that Breath of the Wild needed to happen, but looking at it makes it more of a testing ground than being a full-fledged adventure. Tears of the Kingdom, while a step up, is just a beefier testing ground. As if the shrine hunting wasn’t a drag the first time around, the devs never listened… 6 years of reused assets, and it’s Breath of the Wild all over again… I still don’t understand for the life of me what the development secrecy was even about. Gameplay and plot details hush hush until the very last minute? I never understood why.
Just to go off-topic, I played (almost) 3D Mario up to this point, none ever captured the same essence like that of Mario 64. Sunshine is my worst in the series; clunky controls, FLUDD, and BS level designs. The Galaxy games made up for that debacle (Rosalina is my favorite Mario character), but it’s still not 64. (Some levels made me feel disoriented). Odyssey, was the final straw for me. I gave up playing 3D Mario because they’re not Super Mario 64. I loved that game to death, but none of the games after it never captured the same spirit. Games like Banjo-Kazooie and A Hat In Time beat Nintendo at their own game!
Since I gave up playing Mario, after BOTW and TOTK, Zelda might be next with franchises I’m putting behind me if Nintendo insists to keep up reusing the same Wild formula. Unfortunately, they plan to do that…
Tom!
come to the lands between homie... i promise the lore wont dissapoint. Fromsoft is one of those OG's who cares about their franchise.
i love you man! and im sorry it didnt deliver
For the love of God just give me another Twilight Princess. It's better than another The Legend of Assassin's Creed. I don't even care about the timeline anymore just let me have fun again.
I would absolutely love hearing your takes on the lore of Elden Ring. Definitely agree with the sentiments of TotK your share here. When I feel a Zelda itch I find myself picking up BotW more than TotK these days.
oh, are you tarnished? perhaps an elden lord?
@@MoxieWatts I am an Elden lord who sympathizes with those who live in death
I had the luxury of playing TOTK straight after BOTW, TOTK is so objectively bad I find it insane that other people are only just clocking how much of a mid "bar go up" game it is.
mid asf
55:57 Do you have any interest in lies of P?
I mean I could, is the lore good? I have been hearing good things about this game...
I just like your vibes and your big vape
thanks man, i like your name ❤
the vibe check on this game failed tho
@@MoxieWattseverybody wants to hear the neurodivergent rant without hearing the neurodivergent pain
In my opinion, the price doesn't justificate how they made the game...
Like 6 years of development i espected much more things than how it released....
The sky island? Disappointing
The quest? Meh horrible and boring
Koroks? Terrible
The depths? Disappointing pt.2
The story? Don't make me even start i was sad how they deal with it
Like i get it that they r more into the worldbuilding than the story BUT is the story that makes the game good to play in the end...
It feels like Pokémon S&V ending aka inconcludent
bro same. for 70 dollars I was expecting more.
@@tinkerbestie yeah i think that the trailer was sort of a scam becauseit made us understand something that in the end in the game wasn't we expected me be like... what going on in nintendo lately...
*also the decorum* if you wanna do worldbuilding, give me lots of interesting murals, reliefs and fuckin statueeees.
Dissapointed pt 2 had me ded 💀
So about the "wind boomerang" and having to backtrack.
Tears of the Kingdom had this too, you just didnt see it.
I managed to get to the puzzle area of the water temple without talking to sidon,
So the waterwheels refused to turn. They were just straight-up scripted shut.
I even tried using the fire hydrants on them. Nothing. Only going back and unlocking Sidon's quest could make the difference
like, I supposeeee... but how much did you have to grind to even be able to fly there
that is true though...it just doesnt feel the same, y'know?@@nukiradio
I listened to the whole entire hour. Moxie you and Charlie are spitting facts in this video. You guys made valid points about wanting more Zelda lore, and not being completely satisfied. So um.....I'll never understand the completionists who wanted to collect all 1,000 Korok Seeds for a reward that we know isn't going to be very good. X3 Anywho, it's cool if you make content that isn't Hyrule related. I'll watch it.
I appreciate that homie! Yeah, ngl I thought I would be crucified for this video...
The story was garbage 100% I think this was just a showcase of what's to come hoping they correct a lot for the next game
No not really garbage
Ok I know this might be a bit of a weird take right now but apart me likes the lack of a concrete answer. I know that may seem as trying to defend the devs,(trust me I don’t like the way they have treated the lore side of the community) but on the other hand the ability to have different ideas does appeal to me.
Like about the sheikah tech,considering we have a pretty strong idea of how this stuff works in botw,we know it’s triggered by the appearance of ganon so without ganon this tech would obviously recognize the lack of ganon as well and so on
Like yes, however what is irritating to me is the lack of worldbuilding. Give me some non-concrete tidbits when I am doing a random quest that deepens the character of an NPC. Give me descriptions that reflect where I am and how this world functions. Tell me anything.
I can and will spend hundreds of hours in botw/totk. Its incredible! But after i beat totk, i busted out my wii and started playing wind waker, twilight princess, and majoras mask... all at the same time because i have no control and haven’t played them in many many years. The contrast is so clear. Going through these plots and working with the supporting characters is so much more important. I got more "aha!" moments from those games because when things fell into place, it was building into a greater whole rather than spider-webbing out like the open world format.
Im glad totk exists because it got to do something grand and present a unique opportunity for exploring the characters we know from the last installation. But i hope they return to more linear storytelling for the sake of giving us something greater. Hell, even link between worlds gave us an open world format that kinda worked.
aint no aha! moments only yahahai
i can see why the developers might not like the zelda timeline, when creating a new story you have to think about where in the three timelines it fits, how it adds to the overall story, how it doesnt retcon anything, etc. all of that would be limiting in creating a new game. i would just rather they say "we arent thinking about the timeline anymore" instead of giving half assed explanations that dont even make sense within the context of the game (guardian remains, ancient arrows, and the purah pad still exist in the game). i wish they'd just tie the timeline up in a neat little bow instead of (what it seems like they're doing) convoluting the timeline so much until we stop caring, which is lowkey insulting. i still enjoy totk, acting like its objectively bad or that zelda is dying in my opinion is overreacting, but i just wish they handled this more gracefully.
its not objectively bad its super fun! I just feel like im allowed to be mad and this is kinda an expression of that frustration. I want to be transparent with my audience which is why i used clips of me talking with the people i feel closest to. I dont want to lie to you guys.
I honestly think they should've just made a new timeline instead of trying to fit all of this new lore into the old timeline
@@greenstarforce001 you right tbh
totk took so long to come out that people were expecting the true sucessor to botw, but at the end of the day, it was just an expansion...people felt disapointed, and everyone fixates on something different, to some people are the dungeons, to others is the story, and others think its the lack of meaninful rewards...but its the overall feeling of sameness
couldnt have said it better myself.
weapon breakage (as well as the MASSIVE inventory) are gameplay decisions, not lore decisions. I don't mind the multi-game lore not making sense - Nintendo doesn't work that way. They make a game as good as they can and that game's integration into any wider timeline is a secondary concern. I'm saying that they don't create the Zelda games to fit neatly into a timeline; Nintendo creates games which *stand alone* as great games. The timeline is a fan creation, entirely, anyway. We twisted and turned these games into a timeline and then Nintendo said "FINE, there's a timeline, geez."
there was always a timeline. miyamoto at one point in the early 2000's talked about the timeline, a very primitive timeline with only the first four games being present but still. the sentiment that "nintendo doesnt care about the story" is false, as it has its games depicted to telling stories and zelda is this franchise (mario not)
@@corruptedplayer if Nintendo placed the timeline high in the priority list at all, it would make much more sense. the timeline is rubbish because it isn't a primary concern for Nintendo. they keep saying "don't think about the timeline so much, just enjoy the game" and no one listens to that. we keep wanting a timeline which makes sense. it isn't going to happen for a while, if it ever does.
yes the early games had placement in *A* timeline, and Nintendo more or less abandoned the idea of a timeline until "Creating a Champion" where they just copied the accepted fan-made timeline and printed it. That was Nintendo's mistake, because I think that gave people the idea that Nintendo cares about timelines, and they don't.
I just treat it like a multiverse dealio
21:07 YES. I was saying this when i first started the game
im glad im not the only one i thought i was trippin
I WOULD LOVE HALO LORE VIDS!!!!!!!
it's still in the running of somehting i want to cover. i think ill cover death stranding next for the new hype cycle of ds2 and then i dont have anything really planned.
Doesn’t it say that it could have history that has been destroyed? Not that the kingdom it self had been
yeah something like that
@@MoxieWatts bro I totally feel the frustration tho. But I love your videos tho. In all honesty it’s sad that Nintendo cant even care enough.
I am excited to watch this video because that caption is exactly how I feel.
thanks homie, I really wanted to capture the feeling
Thanks for this vid! Had heard from a friend who worked at Zenimax a while ago that they had someone hired on staff whose responsibility was being in charge of the lore (of Elder Scrolls assuming). What that includes, Im not sure, but with that Im not surprised with the level of story detail in a game like Skyrim. Feel ya on the level of disappointment on totk’s story front - with each of those dragon tear memories came like, “oh, huh that’s it?”
literally
they dont have a script supervisor in the credits of the game so who knows.
Aonuma say, "we know you want to pet dogs!" Game comes out years later, still cannot pet dogs. It's like a middle finger
It's nice to not feel alone in feeling disappointed with the lore and storytelling in the game. I REALLY was excited to play and learn more... and felt slighted with having more confusion and question of everything going on than when I started. BOTW started so many good things to explore and wonder about and not nearly enough was addressed or answered in TOTK...
It’s call and response. Question and answer. Exactly what Zelda RUclipsrs do. Botw asked a bunch of questions, then totk answered them. Everyone’s mad because there’s nothing to dig up and speculate about but when there is they’re mad because they have unanswered questions. I don’t understand exactly what people want from the series at this point.
I had fun, but didn’t enjoy it. Everything is minute to minute gameplay with no real interconnection from 1 thing to another. Quest-distraction-ooh materials-cave-korok-materials-fight… what was I trying to do again?
I ended feeling like I had hundreds of disjointed moments with nothing tying it together into a cohesive experience. It felt like ADHD brain training, And especially with travel where I quickly defaulted to teleport to a tower, launch, dive to target, repeat so that even traveling becomes a disjointed experience. Why have a hyrule field? I’ll never cross it when I can just jump over it in a quarter of the time.
I went after the end around 20 hours in because I just didn’t want to play anymore.
What do I get for searching everywhere? More materials? Another shirt I’ll never wear? Do I really need full hearts when I have a ton of hearty mats? Everything just became a list of chores and check boxes with no emotional impact or meaning. Things like tarry town in botw and the monster hunter crew were the best part because I actually had an impact on the world and it’s people and some level of investment. By the end of twilight princess I enjoyed it even though I didn’t have fun at certain points because I was invested and overcoming a 1 solution challenge was rewarding at the aha moment. In TotK I went to the water dungeon and had an opal wand more effective than Sidon and there was no challenge at all to the whole dungeon because there’s a hundred answers to any problem, which pushes everything to the easiest solution, why struggle with a puzzle when I can just use recall or auto build to get over any obstacle.
And sadly TotK has the same problem as most open world games, wide but shallow, see 20% and you’ve seen it all, now it’s just more versions of the same thing.
Rant went longer than expected, point is I’m with you on a lot of the issues you’re pointing out and I’m sad to see Zelda which I’ve been in love with since Zelda 1, losing its heart in my opinion
I don't have time to watch the whole video right now since I have work, but I'm glad someone else is completely fed up with the lore right now.
Another thing, I feel like the world of BoTW and ToTK didn't feel like Zelda. Ignoring the plot for a second, the overworld just feels so wrong to me. The size of it is fine, if anything it's a little immersive, but I hated how the Sheikah tech always stuck out like a sore thumb. I would've loved it if they blended in more with the general world.
In ToTK, it looks like the developers just played a lot of G-Mod. Random Zonai tech and everything is just thrown in random places. Again, it sticks out like a sore thumb and makes it feel so wrong.
Where did all the old dungeon items go? Sure, they're not needed in the new games since Link can basically use magic, but older fans would feel more connected if you found dungeon items in the tutorial area (with full dungeons), and you gained the more magical things through the free-form dungeons. This could also fix the main issue people have with dungeons, since the tutorial ones should be completed in a specific order for the items, while the overworld ones can be completed no matter what (maybe with shortcuts depending on your already completed dungeons).
One non-world thing that bothers me is durability. It's something people debate on, but looking at BoTW specifically I don't like it. A well made weapon can last as long as you need it to, as long as you can take care of it. Is Link, the knight chosen to protect Zelda, the best swordsman in Hyrule who bested adults as a child, somehow awful at weapon maintenance?
Sorry for my minor rant under your rant. It's just something I've wanted to say since people have been praising these games.
i think we share more ideas than you think, hope you finish it. have a wonderful day at work ⭐
@jhollo
Good points. And I personally despise the weapons system in these two games.
Thank you. I enjoyed your rant😂❤
thanks for listening ❤
Just FYI people have this reaction to every Zelda ever made. "Zelda used to be x, and now they're ruining it" but Zelda didn't used to be anything, every game has been them just doing whatever they want, you just grew up. We bitched about Zelda II, bitched about LttP, people bitched about OoT, Wind Waker, etc etc etc. But if you grew up with a certain Zelda that's what Zelda is to you.
its the emptiness of the world fam.... also missing the items that unlock areas within the dungeons.
@@MoxieWatts Plenty of Zelda games have had empty worlds though
Nintendo is a company not an artist, you know? It's always been about the business for them. Their development cycles are nuts