In one of the memories for totk Naborus says that Ganondorf has taken over the last free Gerudo settlement, this heavily implies that the desert not only wasn't united until Ganondorf became Alexander the Great but that there were many settlements there.
In one of the memory cut scenes, the Gerudo sage mentions that the last free Gerudo settlement has fallen. That suggests there were several other than Kara Kara Bazaar and Gerudo Town.
It would make sense logistically. Resorces in the desert would most likely be few and far between, so concentrating the entire population in a single settlement would just mean depleting what little food and water were available that much faster. I would assume they likely occupied a large number of small settlements around whatever water sources they could find and/or migrated between them seasonably as they were depleted and refilled via underground aquafers. This probably would have changed when they found an underground reservoir big enough to last them through the year until it was refilled by melting snow from the highlands, wherein they would've built their primary settlement around it. This might also contribute to the "no boys allowed" policy in Gerudo town. Forcing/pushing women to leave when they come of age to find husbands could be a part of system meant to prevent the population from growing past what their water supply could sustain.
That’s exactly what i was thinking! I just wish that nintendo would make a dlc for totk to play in hyrule as it was 10,000 years ago so we could experience these other settlements.
Something to support this theory is that in the past, the gerudo population should have been as numerous as hylians or even greater numbers to wage wars in such a way as hinted in this game and others
No, most Hylian men are lousy warriors- Look at the monster control crew with their mop weapons, and the women don't fight. Gerudo are a race of fierce warriors with a Demon King as their leader.
@@er7739 that's after both the calamity and the upheaval. for the most part these are untrained civilians, not trained knights. even then, the upheaval caused most regular weapons to decay. the monster control crew is doing what they can with what they have, but they aren't at all comparable to a genuine military force. also, aren't there a few women in the crew? at least one of the captains is a woman, i think. so it's not like the women don't fight
If Nintendo had included a playable Princess Zelda where we get see more of Ancient Hyrule from the distant past and explore the in depth backstory of this version of in Tears of the Kingdom, perhaps there could’ve given us a grand opportunity to see what these lost Gerudo civilizations is like before turned into ruins.
I don’t think nintendo will ever make Zelda a playable character in a main line Zelda game over link and I’m thankful for that. Link always was and should be the main hero. Games where you go back and forth between characters break immersion. However I would not mind a dual release where one game is links main journey and the dual release is Zelda’s journey of the same game. Kinda like Pokémon does with their dual releases.
I always thought the ruins scattered about were from ancient cities. Plus in one of the dragon tear memories, one of that sages says "the last free village in gerudo desert has fallen." that implies that there were more towns.
Yes, that's exactly what was going through my mind when watching this video as well. Gerudo always seemed to be like its own autonomous country, especially when the Gerudo sage in the tears memory said that.
I'm surprised how you didn't mentioned the heroines statues, one of them has completely sink down due to the unstable sand, also i think gerudo town was made on top of an older one (probably the one ganondorf habited since in it has scripts of the lighting temple and the lighting temple probably was made to protect the secret stone after ganon was sealed) but with the time the town was getting burried by the sand so the gerudo decided to make another city on the roof of the original one thus explaining why they wanted to leave secret entrances to their history and also why the walls have the rocky appearance just as if once was a mountain or something like that
@Rhyz-1 as far as I can tell, some people are unhappy how far ToTK diverse from "the canon of the zelda series". personally I think ToTK in it self builds a vibrant and lively world to explore, and has plenty of stories to tell and theories to dig into, regardless of the main plot and the grand narrative
For real. We all want to see what they have to say, even if it’s hard to make it fit with canon! I was so excited for new TOTK content and it just went silent.
I think it's pretty much a certainty that there was a significantly larger Gerudo population in the past. In one of the memories, it's reported that "the last free settlement" of Gerudo had fallen to Ganondorf. Meaning that there were multiple settlements at that time. It's possible that all the ruins we find in BotW/TotK are remnants of Ganondorf's invasion of the desert.
Great content!! IMO the Gerudo Region is the epitome of mystery, intrigue, deep lore, obfuscation, horror, otrosities, frustration and in some cases utter disgust. But strangely you can find: sand, rock. water, ice and Noble Pursuits all in one region. I believe, much like other deserts in our real beauty world, the deserts in botw and totk were once saturated with water and brimming with life. The presence of hydromelon and palm fruit, normally found in coastal villages, only confirms this theory. But....what happened? Climate change? Zonai Invasion?
Melon growing guide online says that "melons perform best in hot, sunny locations with fertile, well-drained soils" and prefer "sandy loam soils", which retain water better. In-game it never rains in the desert, but we do see several underground water sources and oases, so maybe there's a network of underground water sources and/or the desert DOES get rain, just rarely and off-screen
We speculate in that the same way we speculate on how the Leviathans died out. I'm sure there was once a sea in the Gerudo Desert since it is there we can find a dead Leviathan nested with its young. The loss of water may have been sudden for them to have been trapped.
Considering the Gorons had a massive city beneath Death Mountain in the era of Hyrule's founding, it's not hard to believe the Gerudo had something similar.
I don't think just one big city, but many smaller cities. As many pointed out already, this is hinted at in one of the memories. Plus I think Ganondorf (before he became the demon king) would need a few more people (than we see in the present time) to actually wage war on Hyrule. And I think that would be sooooo interesting to see, because apparently not all Gerudo supported Ganondorf (the sage at least, plus the way they say that the last town has fallen, kinda implying that they stood their ground against him). So was Ganondorf actually the one to extremely diminish the number of his own people? Like the Gerudo were thriving before, but once Daddy G-Dorf went completely nuts, they turned against him and in the end, were almost destroyed by him, which let to the ruin of a majority of these towns...
I've been wondering about the ruined settlements in the desert ever since I first went there in btow, sadly I never found enough information about their life to say anything conclusive or even coherent.
You raise a good point Adam. I don't think this grand city you speculate about would have existed in the time of Ganondorf during the founding of Hyrule. I say that because the Ancient Sage reports in a memory to Rauru that the last "free Gerudo village" had fallen. As such, I'm inclined to say that there are many small Gerudo settlements across the desert, even beyond the boundary of the map, probably going out to the coast. From the sky, you can see that from Gerudo Canyon to the Lightning Temple, that is only about halfway out to the coast, so there is a lot of desert we don't get to explore. Perhaps in an even more ancient time, there was a grand city that you propose. It's possible that within the 10,000 or so years since Ganondorf's time, the Gerudo built such a thing. I think it is equally possible that they just built these smaller structures for whatever reason.
The lightning temple might be a reference to mysterious pyramid seen in OoT. The one that can only be seen when lightning lights up the horizon, Of course we now know that object was just a regular mountain, But if one were to headcanon there is indeed a pyramid out there, The easter egg is a nice wink to that.
In one of the cutscenes they talk about how the last free village in gerudo desert fell, I believe the desert used to be like central hyrule with many village dotted across the landscape
Whoever was in charge of designing the Gerudo area of TOTK knocked it out of the park. That one region has almost everything great about this Zelda iteration but in concentrate form. There's all the mysterious areas and ruins. The mysteries themselves, such as the state of the city when you arrive. The cool temple. Intriguing lore. Creepy monsters. NPCs with their own interesting things going on. All the surprising things with the Yiga clan. And a genuinely new landscape not found in BOTW (not talking about caves).
I remember while gliding high above the Gerudo Desert shortly before sunset, and noticing that the positions of the Lightning Temple, Gerudo Town, and the Kara Kara Bazaar seemed familiar. They reminded me a LOT of the the famed Great Pyramids of Giza. It made the mind wonder if Gerudo Town and the Bazaar were once similar structures to the Lightning Temple, with Gerudo Town being built from ruins, while the Bazaar was a completely forgotten ruin. Probably coincidence, but it was cool to think about.
I just love your theory videos. You always make them so engaging and with exactly the right visuals and sound design. They are epic and mysterious but always with a sense of humor. Thanks for doing these. I enjoy them so much. 😊
I like to believe that the Gerudo desert had many villages and settlements, and that what we know as gerudo town was once just the palace of Ganondorf. The remaining Gerudo, being a smaller group, moved into this palace after he is sealed
I thought a lot about the fact that the temple of lightning had a lot of resemblances to Ganon's pyramid in A link to the past, this leads me to think that perhaps it is a representation of an era where Ganon reigned as king over the Gerudo people from the top of his pyramid at a time when the Gerudo were more scattered in the desert
I think the Gerudo ruins reflect more how Egyptian, Aztec, Mayan and most recently the Derinkuyu and Gobekli tepe used to display their main structures. Most have found spread out ruins that don't seem to connect to anything they are just spread out. Some studies from the ancient Aztecs and Olmecs usually suggest they were constructions showing the political power of its time but when a new political power rose, those temples or whatever they were meant to be get abandoned and new projects are requested to build to show off their new political power. So most likely is, the ruins of the Gerudo, show the different Eras when the Gerudo used to be and moved around between the era of Rauru and Sonia until the BOTW timeline showing different stages of Gerudo political powers. Japan used to change the location of the castle every time a new Emperor was appointed, so this could be the same situation or maybe like you said, a sand like place shifts so often the Gerudo needed to relocate their main city every time and those ruins were the last remaining structures of ancient locations they inhabited.
It should be noted that sinkholes are often caused by groundwater moving, so the ruins under the sinkholes could have originally been near water sources on the surface in the ancient past.
I was so disappointed that the Lightning Temple wasn't just called the Arbiter's Grounds. They already had an amazing ruin that basically serves the same narrative purpose as the Lightning Temple. Why did we need it? If nothing else, at least we got our mysterious pyramid that was rumored in OoT.
I think the lightning temple was the Gerudo palace 10,000 years ago which was also used to produce electricity for power and the mechanic of rising upward might’ve been a necessary precaution in case of a great sandstorm so they wouldn’t have to worry about that.
I love seeing exciting new totk videos and theories. So many people talking about being tired of Tears of the Kingdom. While some might be, I tend to think of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I think the alternative is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the content creators were more excitedly making totk videos, less would think it is "tired," at the same time though the creators measure the interest in their videos by the view counts and engagement... anyway, I'm not tired, I love your videos, and I hope they never end.
In one of the geoglyphs the zora champion says "we've just got word that the last village in the gerudo desert has fallen" meaning that there were many gerudo people and villages they lived in but probably all got destroyed by Ganon's army.
at some point, probably over 150 hours in, it suddenly hit me. "What if theres something below those sink holes?" So I went to the desert and jumped in... only to find a friggin DUNGEON. The desert is such an awesome location for a game like this. I really wish we could get a spinoff with the gerudo.
Great video Adam! Gerudo Desert is always one of my favorite locales in any Zelda simply because of the mystery that it always seems to have. Something about secrets potentially being buried even further is super intriguing!
I would love to see the ruins and landmarks outlined more clearly on a map of Gerudo Desert. Perhaps the shape of this lost city could be calculated. We also can’t underestimate the destruction caused by Vah Naboris during the Calamity
I like to imagine several spread out hamlets or villages in the desert with one or two large settlements where there're enough resources to support a large population
A king needs a kingdom, and ganondorf is a king. Also we see in the memories of zelda a vast army of gorudo, that many couldn't have come from one town.
One more piece of evidence: the thronw room has a gaping open window behind it to the desert, which has always felt like an odd choice. Why would the Gerudo leader sit with their back to a desert where they could be exposed to assassins? It makes a lot more sense if you think that gerudo town was surrounded by a much larger city, and possibly even elevated much higher above the sand. Maybe Gerudo town as it is now is actually the spire of what was once a grand castle? The shelter under the town is very reminiscent of the passage from hyrule castle to lookout landing... idk this theory isn't very crackpot at all
I for sure have my own version of a noble pursuit on me already. Great theory! I feel like gerudo has a million different things a theory can be made on. Can't wait for more!
I am pretty sure the ruins north were an old temple, the ruins southeast were either a city or labyrinth, Southwest was arbiter’s grounds, and the cavern before Gerudo town was some sort of caravan “eye of the needle” so to speak. I think gerudo town is The city, they just lost a lot of it to the sand and have just now rediscovered some of its features after taking refuge from the gibdo invasion.
The shelter ruins under Gerudo Town immediately reminded me of the real world site of Gobekli Tepe, which was also underground and dates back thousands of years. While Nintendo is largely unconcerned with filling in missing bits of lore, they're at least still generous enough to give us a sandbox world to speculate upon. And not only that, but the location underground has that graveyard, which is wholly unique to them. It seems like the Gerudo region is the most rife with secrets and mysteries than anywhere else in Hyrule, at least in proportion to its size.
I don't think this is out there at all, and am confused why you think so. It makes sense from what I can tell. Also, might be related, might not be, but there's also the Gerudo Graveyard in the Depths which I was thinking about earlier today. The Depths are Zonai heavy, but there's also of course the Fire Temple and Gorondia, in which Gorons once lived underground, but Gerudo probably would not, given they're basically human. But still, it's suggested they at least visited the Depths/underground, unless that Graveyard over time just kept sinking and sinking over thousands and thousands of years until it ended up there, but seeing as the graves are still mostly in tact, I doubt it. Much to think about.
The rito arrived on the ark in the previous upheavel, the gorons came from the depths, and the zoras fron abroad, so the gerudo have to have an origin too
The Termina Stone Tower theory? If the area where the Twinmold is fought were in a Hylian desert, at least. (Personally, I think that's how the Dark Interlopers came over, that's way too "soon")
Wow I wished there would be more games in the world of hyrule without it being centred around link, Zelda or ganondorf. Like imagine playing a game as a gerudo in that ancient gerudo civilisation, or a zora during the great flood. I would love to see and experience more of the world and the universe from different perspectives and walks of life basically, I feel like it would be amazing in adding more depth to the interactions with each race if you’ve actually experienced some of the hardships and breakthroughs that theylived through. This video is basically my point for that. Going through the gerudo desert as link is one thing but I think it would be cool to actually experience it from the inside, this time. And I think they could do it in a way, I mean mekar and Medli were playable for a bit, that gave me a feel for what it was like to be them and made the world feel so much richer and deeper than when I was just link alone. And ofocurse there’s majoras mask giving a good taste of that. And I think it would solve the problem of the story getting very old, and the characters, It’s not that I hate link or Zelda but after 20 years of playing with mostly them in mind, I would love to also be in someone else’s shoes. Great video!!
You couch a lot of your theories in “I don’t know, this is really out there,” or “I could be wrong idk,” but with most of the other Zelda tubers AWOL right now, you ARE the resident granddaddy Zelda on RUclips. Have confidence in yourself. All eyes are on you right now, in a good way. No more couching or qualifiers in your content, k? You got this.
This theory makes sense, I definitely believe there is more to Gerudo desert and Gerudo town than what we see now. Another explanation as to why they spread so far across the desert could be the water supply. We can see at Gerudo Town and Kara Kara Bazaar that there are prominent water sources, it's possible that they migrated to be closer to those, or spent all of the water resources in other areas of the desert, prompting them to move around to find more.
This makes perfect sense to me. It's much more sensical to think that all of these ruins were a part of a mega city, than separately built structures with no relation to each other, probably at the time of Ganon before the war. I would love to see artist depiction of this city including all of the ruins.
I don't know if I think it was ONE city spanning the whole desert. Probably something like we see other places in game and in the real world where it was several big cities and a number of smaller towns and villages
I don't think this theory is that far fetched. I mean, if you include the ruins you can find underneath the desert through sink holes and caves, the ruins span an extremely large chunk of Gerudo desert. Additionally, all of the ruins, minus the lightning temple, appear to be built from the same material and in the same architectural style. At minimum, it's extremely likely that the ruins (again, minus the lightning temple) were build by the same people around the same time period. Even if the underground ruins were built underground and didn't sink there (and honestly them sinking and/or getting buried feels like a perfectly reasonable conclusion), it would still be a city's worth of ruins. The theoretical city could just be divided between the surface and the underground sections (I mean, Gerudo town itself has an intentionally underground extension to it that operates basically the same way the surface of Gerudo town does, so maybe Gerudo architects just consistently favor a style of building where part of what they construct is above ground and part of it is below for whatever reason). Even if the ruins somehow aren't from one big city, the sheer number/density/proximity of the ruins and their afore mentioned similarities in style and material would indicate that, at bear minimum, some of the ruins were proper settlements, while others acted to connect all the other ruins (maybe a bunch of the generic columns were some form of path markers, or used to support shade over more properly built roads so people traveling from one facility to another wouldn't be directly subjected to the desert's heat). At minimum, the ruins indicate that some culture used to have a wide spread presence in Gerudo desert, and the idea of the ruins being from one massive city feels fitting to me, cause I feel like if you were to map you where all the ruins in Gerudo desert are, underground or above, the collective area of those ruins would amount to a city's worth.
In one of the flashbacks it's reported that the last free village in the desert has fallen which certainly suggests the desert was a lot more populated in the past. What if all these ruins were the result of Ganondorf himself razing the desert and attacking his own people after becoming the demon king? As the origin point the Gerudo desert and it's various settlements would have seen the most damage kinda like how central Hyrule saw the most damage from the calamity. The reason Gerudo town looks so new might be because it's a rebuilt version of the original Gerudo capital. Makes me want to see what Hyrule Castle and Castle Town will look like when Hudson's done.
I respect you for doing many lore videos about Tears of the Kingdom, a game I struggle see as canon at all due to many strange decisions from a lore standpoint.
I wonder if this city was sunk before the Imprisoning War. Ganondorf's motivation to conquer Hyrule was due to him feeling like Hyrule was decadent and unworthy of its prosperity, and had no fighting spirit. Rauru rules an elegant palace and gardens while his cities are sunk by sand and age. It is also said he killed his own people to assert his domination, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were sunk intentionally due to his magic.
And also explains why they turned on him. I mean.....Imagine the hatred that they felt for him upon seeing their leader and king happily turn on and send their people to their demises! So much so, that even they were granted the honor and privilege of having one of the Zonai secret stones bestowed upon one of their people to aid their efforts in fighting the very man who led them down the path to a pointless war which almost resulted in their peoples' destruction!
Definitely checks out. Especially considering they did it with the desert region in Skyward Sword, which was highlighted by the time shift mechanic. And as others have pointed out that the memories in TotK imply a larger settlement. Also I find the number of ruins themselves plausible evidence.
Out of curiosity, overlaying the desert with gerudo desert from oot do you think some of these ruins overlap with the spirit temple and the other gerudo village? Maybe some of them are old parts that were not shown in oot or even TP? And k don't mean the full wilds map. Just the desert portions overlapped and rotated around to look at placements?
It was mentioned in one of the memories that there was more then a few villages in gerudo desert. How many no idea all we can guess is that they were all killed by their then king
the ariters grounds was the name of a boss area in Twilight princess that was nothing but sand and a boss fight which could be a nod to it and if im not mistaken the temple you fight that boss in is in the desert so might be a reference to other games
Posting this comment before your theory because it made me think of something. It's not odd to me that you would have settlements in far flung reaches. It's how you maintain sovereignty over a larger area of a country. I live in Canada. Heck there is an island that we "fight" over with denmark where we leave a bottle of rye and our flag and they take it and leave a flag and schnapps that we then take. I'm interested to see why you think the Geurodo built in crazy places.
So to add; The tension between the Gerudo and the rest of Hyrule would lead credence to the thought that these little settlements around the desert would be so they can claim people live there so Hyrule can't expand into their territory.
I hope all the theorist folks are working together on a new theory about Hylia and Zelda's separation with the new info we have from the statues in totk! Is that even the same Hylia which existed pre-SS?
@@DemonicAdj I had the idea that that “Hylia” is something of a hive mind of goddesses that together make a whole. Like her consciousness has been shattered and inhabit shrines and statues. Who knows maybe Zelda being the light dragon, an immortal being, can be connected to the resurrection of Hylia
@robinita46853 But my question referred to how you can receive requests from a Bargainer Statue by way of the Goddess Statue in the ruined Temple of Time. That wasn't Hylia on the line. First, it was the little Statue in the water, then it was the big Bargainer Statue underneath the Plateau. (Who wanted their eyes put back in). After doing that, it gave a very familiar choice: "health or stamina?" Showing that Bargainer Statues can: 1. Talk through Goddess Statues 2. Offer Health or Stamina upgrades. It's possible that these were the origin of the upgrades as far back as Breath of the Wild. (Spirit Orbs might be the souls of the Monks in physical form, and the Bargainers are trading you life or vitality for giving them very particular souls that they can send to the afterlife).
@@DemonicAdj Agreed its interesting to see that Wild era Hylia is more connected to the Bargainers than to Demise. Another thing to consider is that the original Hylia was a goddess of life, light, and time. Zelda, as we know, has light and time powers. What do you have left over when you take OG Hylia and subtract light and time power? Just a goddess of life force. What do we see in the wild era? Statues that distribute life force and do NOTHING else. The original Hylia was the spiritual opposite of Demise. This new "Hylia" is the opposite of the bargainers. They seem to be different entities at least in terms of their powers and domains. We know that the wild era doesn't care much to follow the rules of Zelda so really anything is possible.
The reason the ruins aren't closer together could be that at one time the desert wasn't a desert. Like the Sahara desert was a lush forest thousands of years ago, gerudo desert could have been a place full of life before. The ability to get to each of the ruins would have been much easier so keeping it compact wasn't a big issue.
Also in the The Sages' Vow memory, the Water Sage says "we just received word that the last free village in Gerudo Desert has fallen [to the Demon King and his army]". So it's probably less that these villages were slowly forgotten and swallowed by the desert, and more that they were *decimated* and *forcibly evacuated,* like what happened with all the Hyrulean settlements that we see in Central Hyrule that were destroyed by the Calamity. We don't know exactly when the law of "no voe in Gerudo Town" was instated (it was present in the Heroines' time according to the stela we find at the end of the sidequest The Mysterious Eighth, which says they couldn't properly repay the Hylian voe who saved them due to this law), but I'm thinking that, after the villages of Gerudo Desert were destroyed and the Demon King sealed, the remaining Gerudo moved into the more centralized and fortified Gerudo Town, and from then on no more voe were allowed since the Demon King had been one
I’d like to think the separate settlements might have been migratory places. Some settle for a while and then move when the land gets too scarce to even forage, maybe following wild game and their migratory patterns
To be honest, it makes a lot of sense because it always seemed weird to me that there was a group of people living out in a waste land. But pride and ancestry to the land would explain that
I think it’s very likely! We discover so many things in our real work out in the dessert, or jungles, even mountains. Have you heard of Göbeklitepe in Turkey? we’ve only uncovered about 5% of this massive “pre history” settlement. Great video!
I'm pretty sure you're right. Just judging by the real world, it seems that every so often, some ancient city is discovered below the surface. I would expect there to have been many more Gerudo in the past than we have evidence for.
It would make sense that Gerudo town would have been a much larger city... if we were thinking about real world cities. The massive structures would make you think that, however if we look at the rest of BotW/TotK the largest settlements only have a handful of houses, even Castle town with the massive castle structure only seemed to have a small amount of houses around it before the Calamity, its almost as though the world building team for Zelda games either doesn't want the worlds to feel very populated OR they simply don't want to design cities with large numbers of people in them even though they have massive structures nearby.
To give examples of real life, the Sahara Desert is a really interesting place because you coumd argue that there's two periods of "lost civilizations" in it. The first one was when the Sahara desert was actually a vast grassland with mulfipke lakes. Here you have multiple remains of peoples and cjltures existing in a region that latter on became near unlivable. Although, being this during the Stone Age and early Neolithic, they didn't leave anything on the scale of a lost city. The second period is basically all of pre-industrial History, as there were a lot of cities and empires that appeared in the Sahara, mainly basing their existence on trade routes and oasis. The moment the trades networks dissapeared or changed routes or the oasis dried up, this cities or empires disappeared or were significantly reduced in size. So both things might have happened in the Gerudo dessert.
I mean. Whatever mountain Ganondorf was standing on, the lands below looked pretty good. Much greener than Hyrule's fields. Why not take those, and be done with it?
H.G, you had me at "crazy theory." To me, those are the best kind of theories for Zelda games. And you know what the best part of those kind of theories are? That they're usually right or partially, right. Keep up the great videos. I love your content.❤ P.S I have made a list of Zelda, Theory lore mystery and history videos for my personal viewing. And quite a few of your videos are on that list. This one will also be joining it. Again, love your content. Keep up the good work. I love adding your videos to my list of Zelda, mystery, history, theory, and lore.
I literally stopped what I was doing, got my Nintendo Switch Oled, went to Gerudo town, bought a noble pursuit, went to the light dragon to ride on her back, (my hangout spot.) and unpaused the video.
Wasn’t one of the memory cutscenes (or some other one) mention about other gerudo settlements falling to ganondorf? Am I mis remembering that? 🤔 I think it was one of the ones after he stole the secret stone. There was a line in there that stuck out to me.
You completely forgot one important fact. That the desert wasn't always a desert. It was once full of grass and trees and shit. Over-mining caused an environmental disaster in that region and turned it into a desert. The *entire* Lanayru mining facility is down there somewhere. The ancients who built that place were pretty damned advanced too. Using autonomous robots, laser weapons etc. Sounds pretty familiar. Most likely, the Hyrule of 10,000 years ago *was* in this region back then and *they* caused the disaster. Especially since we see the giant Hyrule wing crest in the desert. My personal head canon is that all of the other games take place within that 10,000 year span between the technologically advanced Hyrule and BoTW Hyrule. All those blue time shift stones were the basis for all of their technology. The blue energy weapons/shields, Guardians glow blue and shoot blue lasers etc. They knew that it was going to cause an environmental disaster and kept mining anyway. Why? Because the alternative was letting Ganon come back and possibly do far worse damage. The reason they stopped using all that tech was because the time stones were all (mostly) mined and used up. They *couldn't* make more because there were no more stones. Or more probably the environmental damage would have been far more widespread than one single desert and the sea next to it drying up completely and probably contributed to the collapse of that particular Hyrule. The survivors being taken to Skyloft to avoid the whole mess down there. The only people left on the surface were the species that *could* survive down there. An aquatic species, a species made of rock, a species that lives underground. I know that Hyrule Historia might contradict this, but meh. I go by what's in the game. Not some book made after the fact as a cash grab by Nintendo that is full of contradictions and errors :P
You know speaking of lost cities, I've been thinking a lot about Ordon Village. You ever wonder why Nintendo seem to deliberately leave out the entire Ordon province. The other provinces have become core parts of Hyrule's map ever since. And BotW/TotK's map is the most crammed with winks and nods to the past but not Ordon. I mean Hateno and the Necluda region could have referenced Ordon but no. It doesn't quite have the feel of something Nintendo forgot about like Kasuto Town from Adventure of Link. It feels deliberately left out, like there's a reason for it.
If Gerudo desert is anything lot our real world deserts there could be more hidden under the ever shifting sands. Example: the tombs that have been lost and then found many years later in Egypt due to sand shifting around and burying and unburying tombs, and other ruins.
Something you haven’t made a video about yet and I haven’t seen it anywhere on RUclips but I think it’s a good guess Because I think that the temple of time on the great plateau is, was the original high rule castle
Is there a Lost City hiding in the Gerudo Desert? 🤔
In one of the memories for totk Naborus says that Ganondorf has taken over the last free Gerudo settlement, this heavily implies that the desert not only wasn't united until Ganondorf became Alexander the Great but that there were many settlements there.
I don't know. I must watch the video
Maybe. Or maybe it was a nice vacation spot for Ganondorf.
Or is there a Gerudo Desert hiding in the Lost City?
Possibly since we have seen what Hyrule is use to be in the distant past
In one of the memory cut scenes, the Gerudo sage mentions that the last free Gerudo settlement has fallen. That suggests there were several other than Kara Kara Bazaar and Gerudo Town.
It would make sense logistically. Resorces in the desert would most likely be few and far between, so concentrating the entire population in a single settlement would just mean depleting what little food and water were available that much faster. I would assume they likely occupied a large number of small settlements around whatever water sources they could find and/or migrated between them seasonably as they were depleted and refilled via underground aquafers.
This probably would have changed when they found an underground reservoir big enough to last them through the year until it was refilled by melting snow from the highlands, wherein they would've built their primary settlement around it. This might also contribute to the "no boys allowed" policy in Gerudo town. Forcing/pushing women to leave when they come of age to find husbands could be a part of system meant to prevent the population from growing past what their water supply could sustain.
This makes excellent sense.
It's simply a fact of life in a desert.
That’s exactly what i was thinking! I just wish that nintendo would make a dlc for totk to play in hyrule as it was 10,000 years ago so we could experience these other settlements.
Something to support this theory is that in the past, the gerudo population should have been as numerous as hylians or even greater numbers to wage wars in such a way as hinted in this game and others
No, most Hylian men are lousy warriors- Look at the monster control crew with their mop weapons, and the women don't fight. Gerudo are a race of fierce warriors with a Demon King as their leader.
@@er7739that sounds like something a gerudo would say lmao
@@er7739 that's after both the calamity and the upheaval. for the most part these are untrained civilians, not trained knights. even then, the upheaval caused most regular weapons to decay. the monster control crew is doing what they can with what they have, but they aren't at all comparable to a genuine military force. also, aren't there a few women in the crew? at least one of the captains is a woman, i think. so it's not like the women don't fight
If Nintendo had included a playable Princess Zelda where we get see more of Ancient Hyrule from the distant past and explore the in depth backstory of this version of in Tears of the Kingdom, perhaps there could’ve given us a grand opportunity to see what these lost Gerudo civilizations is like before turned into ruins.
same with the goron’s gorondia (fire temple) under death mountain
*this version of Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom,
@@aylinilya. What sort of secrets do you think Gorondia has in stored?
"What a nice idea! I wonder if Nintendo™ will make a DLC for this?"
I don’t think nintendo will ever make Zelda a playable character in a main line Zelda game over link and I’m thankful for that. Link always was and should be the main hero. Games where you go back and forth between characters break immersion. However I would not mind a dual release where one game is links main journey and the dual release is Zelda’s journey of the same game. Kinda like Pokémon does with their dual releases.
I always thought the ruins scattered about were from ancient cities. Plus in one of the dragon tear memories, one of that sages says "the last free village in gerudo desert has fallen." that implies that there were more towns.
Yes, that's exactly what was going through my mind when watching this video as well. Gerudo always seemed to be like its own autonomous country, especially when the Gerudo sage in the tears memory said that.
@@tossingturnips it was actually the zora sage that said it but I totally agree with you
I'm surprised how you didn't mentioned the heroines statues, one of them has completely sink down due to the unstable sand, also i think gerudo town was made on top of an older one (probably the one ganondorf habited since in it has scripts of the lighting temple and the lighting temple probably was made to protect the secret stone after ganon was sealed) but with the time the town was getting burried by the sand so the gerudo decided to make another city on the roof of the original one thus explaining why they wanted to leave secret entrances to their history and also why the walls have the rocky appearance just as if once was a mountain or something like that
thanks for this video. I'm so addicted to totk videos and most of zelda tubers just stopped releasing new videos
No problem, enjoy!
There is so much still to theorie and discover about the dept still. Too bad most quit
@Rhyz-1 as far as I can tell, some people are unhappy how far ToTK diverse from "the canon of the zelda series".
personally I think ToTK in it self builds a vibrant and lively world to explore, and has plenty of stories to tell and theories to dig into, regardless of the main plot and the grand narrative
So basically watching this caz there's nothing else to watch. Haha😂
For real. We all want to see what they have to say, even if it’s hard to make it fit with canon! I was so excited for new TOTK content and it just went silent.
I think it's pretty much a certainty that there was a significantly larger Gerudo population in the past. In one of the memories, it's reported that "the last free settlement" of Gerudo had fallen to Ganondorf. Meaning that there were multiple settlements at that time. It's possible that all the ruins we find in BotW/TotK are remnants of Ganondorf's invasion of the desert.
Great content!! IMO the Gerudo Region is the epitome of mystery, intrigue, deep lore, obfuscation, horror, otrosities, frustration and in some cases utter disgust. But strangely you can find: sand, rock. water, ice and Noble Pursuits all in one region. I believe, much like other deserts in our real beauty world, the deserts in botw and totk were once saturated with water and brimming with life. The presence of hydromelon and palm fruit, normally found in coastal villages, only confirms this theory. But....what happened? Climate change? Zonai Invasion?
Thanks a lot! Really appreciate hearing your thoughts!
Melon growing guide online says that "melons perform best in hot, sunny locations with fertile, well-drained soils" and prefer "sandy loam soils", which retain water better. In-game it never rains in the desert, but we do see several underground water sources and oases, so maybe there's a network of underground water sources and/or the desert DOES get rain, just rarely and off-screen
We speculate in that the same way we speculate on how the Leviathans died out. I'm sure there was once a sea in the Gerudo Desert since it is there we can find a dead Leviathan nested with its young. The loss of water may have been sudden for them to have been trapped.
Considering the Gorons had a massive city beneath Death Mountain in the era of Hyrule's founding, it's not hard to believe the Gerudo had something similar.
This seems quite likely to me. If not one city, there wwere likely several city-states across the desert.
Absolutely!
I don't think just one big city, but many smaller cities. As many pointed out already, this is hinted at in one of the memories. Plus I think Ganondorf (before he became the demon king) would need a few more people (than we see in the present time) to actually wage war on Hyrule.
And I think that would be sooooo interesting to see, because apparently not all Gerudo supported Ganondorf (the sage at least, plus the way they say that the last town has fallen, kinda implying that they stood their ground against him). So was Ganondorf actually the one to extremely diminish the number of his own people? Like the Gerudo were thriving before, but once Daddy G-Dorf went completely nuts, they turned against him and in the end, were almost destroyed by him, which let to the ruin of a majority of these towns...
"Daddy G-Dorf" sounds like his pr0nstar name lol.
I've been wondering about the ruined settlements in the desert ever since I first went there in btow, sadly I never found enough information about their life to say anything conclusive or even coherent.
Breath the of wild
You raise a good point Adam. I don't think this grand city you speculate about would have existed in the time of Ganondorf during the founding of Hyrule. I say that because the Ancient Sage reports in a memory to Rauru that the last "free Gerudo village" had fallen. As such, I'm inclined to say that there are many small Gerudo settlements across the desert, even beyond the boundary of the map, probably going out to the coast. From the sky, you can see that from Gerudo Canyon to the Lightning Temple, that is only about halfway out to the coast, so there is a lot of desert we don't get to explore.
Perhaps in an even more ancient time, there was a grand city that you propose. It's possible that within the 10,000 or so years since Ganondorf's time, the Gerudo built such a thing. I think it is equally possible that they just built these smaller structures for whatever reason.
The lightning temple might be a reference to mysterious pyramid seen in OoT. The one that can only be seen when lightning lights up the horizon, Of course we now know that object was just a regular mountain, But if one were to headcanon there is indeed a pyramid out there, The easter egg is a nice wink to that.
In one of the cutscenes they talk about how the last free village in gerudo desert fell, I believe the desert used to be like central hyrule with many village dotted across the landscape
Hyrule Gamer: It’s on the verge of crackpot conspiracy theorist…
Alex Jones as Zelda conspirist: THEY’RE TURNING THE FROX GAY!
I laughed so hard at this. 🤣
Whoever was in charge of designing the Gerudo area of TOTK knocked it out of the park. That one region has almost everything great about this Zelda iteration but in concentrate form. There's all the mysterious areas and ruins. The mysteries themselves, such as the state of the city when you arrive. The cool temple. Intriguing lore. Creepy monsters. NPCs with their own interesting things going on. All the surprising things with the Yiga clan. And a genuinely new landscape not found in BOTW (not talking about caves).
I remember while gliding high above the Gerudo Desert shortly before sunset, and noticing that the positions of the Lightning Temple, Gerudo Town, and the Kara Kara Bazaar seemed familiar. They reminded me a LOT of the the famed Great Pyramids of Giza.
It made the mind wonder if Gerudo Town and the Bazaar were once similar structures to the Lightning Temple, with Gerudo Town being built from ruins, while the Bazaar was a completely forgotten ruin. Probably coincidence, but it was cool to think about.
I just love your theory videos. You always make them so engaging and with exactly the right visuals and sound design. They are epic and mysterious but always with a sense of humor. Thanks for doing these. I enjoy them so much. 😊
Thank you so much, I really appreciate that! 🙏
I like to believe that the Gerudo desert had many villages and settlements, and that what we know as gerudo town was once just the palace of Ganondorf. The remaining Gerudo, being a smaller group, moved into this palace after he is sealed
I thought a lot about the fact that the temple of lightning had a lot of resemblances to Ganon's pyramid in A link to the past, this leads me to think that perhaps it is a representation of an era where Ganon reigned as king over the Gerudo people from the top of his pyramid at a time when the Gerudo were more scattered in the desert
That actually makes sense, no way Riju's throne ever fit his jacked ass
I think the Gerudo ruins reflect more how Egyptian, Aztec, Mayan and most recently the Derinkuyu and Gobekli tepe used to display their main structures. Most have found spread out ruins that don't seem to connect to anything they are just spread out.
Some studies from the ancient Aztecs and Olmecs usually suggest they were constructions showing the political power of its time but when a new political power rose, those temples or whatever they were meant to be get abandoned and new projects are requested to build to show off their new political power.
So most likely is, the ruins of the Gerudo, show the different Eras when the Gerudo used to be and moved around between the era of Rauru and Sonia until the BOTW timeline showing different stages of Gerudo political powers.
Japan used to change the location of the castle every time a new Emperor was appointed, so this could be the same situation or maybe like you said, a sand like place shifts so often the Gerudo needed to relocate their main city every time and those ruins were the last remaining structures of ancient locations they inhabited.
It should be noted that sinkholes are often caused by groundwater moving, so the ruins under the sinkholes could have originally been near water sources on the surface in the ancient past.
What if the Ancient Hero WAS a Zonai-hybrid and thus an original schism between Hylians and Gerudo comes from dual claims to the Hyrulean throne?
I was so disappointed that the Lightning Temple wasn't just called the Arbiter's Grounds. They already had an amazing ruin that basically serves the same narrative purpose as the Lightning Temple. Why did we need it?
If nothing else, at least we got our mysterious pyramid that was rumored in OoT.
There are so many buried buildings there indeed.
Underground as well.
Great vid and stay awesome ^^
Thanks!
I think the lightning temple was the Gerudo palace 10,000 years ago which was also used to produce electricity for power and the mechanic of rising upward might’ve been a necessary precaution in case of a great sandstorm so they wouldn’t have to worry about that.
I love seeing exciting new totk videos and theories. So many people talking about being tired of Tears of the Kingdom. While some might be, I tend to think of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I think the alternative is also a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the content creators were more excitedly making totk videos, less would think it is "tired," at the same time though the creators measure the interest in their videos by the view counts and engagement... anyway, I'm not tired, I love your videos, and I hope they never end.
In one of the geoglyphs the zora champion says "we've just got word that the last village in the gerudo desert has fallen" meaning that there were many gerudo people and villages they lived in but probably all got destroyed by Ganon's army.
I believe it wasn't a massive city, but rather a series of villages of differing sizes. Lukely from different eras.
at some point, probably over 150 hours in, it suddenly hit me.
"What if theres something below those sink holes?"
So I went to the desert and jumped in...
only to find a friggin DUNGEON.
The desert is such an awesome location for a game like this. I really wish we could get
a spinoff with the gerudo.
Great video Adam! Gerudo Desert is always one of my favorite locales in any Zelda simply because of the mystery that it always seems to have. Something about secrets potentially being buried even further is super intriguing!
Ay thanks a ton!
the desert has always interested me. it’s so empty yet mysterious :)
Exactly! It's such a fascinating place in terms of the environment and history!
I would love to see the ruins and landmarks outlined more clearly on a map of Gerudo Desert. Perhaps the shape of this lost city could be calculated. We also can’t underestimate the destruction caused by Vah Naboris during the Calamity
HYRULE GAMER IS THE BEST!!Theories are always fun and logical.I will be a fan of you as long as THE LEGEND OF ZELDA is in this world.
I like to imagine several spread out hamlets or villages in the desert with one or two large settlements where there're enough resources to support a large population
So anyone else remember that it was once a ocean in skyward so Atlantis now trapped in sand instead of the sea
A king needs a kingdom, and ganondorf is a king. Also we see in the memories of zelda a vast army of gorudo, that many couldn't have come from one town.
One more piece of evidence: the thronw room has a gaping open window behind it to the desert, which has always felt like an odd choice. Why would the Gerudo leader sit with their back to a desert where they could be exposed to assassins?
It makes a lot more sense if you think that gerudo town was surrounded by a much larger city, and possibly even elevated much higher above the sand. Maybe Gerudo town as it is now is actually the spire of what was once a grand castle? The shelter under the town is very reminiscent of the passage from hyrule castle to lookout landing... idk this theory isn't very crackpot at all
I for sure have my own version of a noble pursuit on me already. Great theory! I feel like gerudo has a million different things a theory can be made on. Can't wait for more!
I am pretty sure the ruins north were an old temple, the ruins southeast were either a city or labyrinth, Southwest was arbiter’s grounds, and the cavern before Gerudo town was some sort of caravan “eye of the needle” so to speak. I think gerudo town is The city, they just lost a lot of it to the sand and have just now rediscovered some of its features after taking refuge from the gibdo invasion.
The shelter ruins under Gerudo Town immediately reminded me of the real world site of Gobekli Tepe, which was also underground and dates back thousands of years. While Nintendo is largely unconcerned with filling in missing bits of lore, they're at least still generous enough to give us a sandbox world to speculate upon.
And not only that, but the location underground has that graveyard, which is wholly unique to them. It seems like the Gerudo region is the most rife with secrets and mysteries than anywhere else in Hyrule, at least in proportion to its size.
I don't think this is out there at all, and am confused why you think so. It makes sense from what I can tell. Also, might be related, might not be, but there's also the Gerudo Graveyard in the Depths which I was thinking about earlier today. The Depths are Zonai heavy, but there's also of course the Fire Temple and Gorondia, in which Gorons once lived underground, but Gerudo probably would not, given they're basically human. But still, it's suggested they at least visited the Depths/underground, unless that Graveyard over time just kept sinking and sinking over thousands and thousands of years until it ended up there, but seeing as the graves are still mostly in tact, I doubt it. Much to think about.
The rito arrived on the ark in the previous upheavel, the gorons came from the depths, and the zoras fron abroad, so the gerudo have to have an origin too
The Termina Stone Tower theory? If the area where the Twinmold is fought were in a Hylian desert, at least.
(Personally, I think that's how the Dark Interlopers came over, that's way too "soon")
Wow I wished there would be more games in the world of hyrule without it being centred around link, Zelda or ganondorf.
Like imagine playing a game as a gerudo in that ancient gerudo civilisation, or a zora during the great flood.
I would love to see and experience more of the world and the universe from different perspectives and walks of life basically,
I feel like it would be amazing in adding more depth to the interactions with each race if you’ve actually experienced some of the hardships and breakthroughs that theylived through. This video is basically my point for that.
Going through the gerudo desert as link is one thing but I think it would be cool to actually experience it from the inside, this time.
And I think they could do it in a way, I mean mekar and Medli were playable for a bit, that gave me a feel for what it was like to be them and made the world feel so much richer and deeper than when I was just link alone.
And ofocurse there’s majoras mask giving a good taste of that.
And I think it would solve the problem of the story getting very old, and the characters,
It’s not that I hate link or Zelda but after 20 years of playing with mostly them in mind, I would love to also be in someone else’s shoes.
Great video!!
Thanks for somehow being one of the only Zelda tubers actually making videos consistently right now
You couch a lot of your theories in “I don’t know, this is really out there,” or “I could be wrong idk,” but with most of the other Zelda tubers AWOL right now, you ARE the resident granddaddy Zelda on RUclips. Have confidence in yourself. All eyes are on you right now, in a good way. No more couching or qualifiers in your content, k? You got this.
I think in one of the memories mentions multiple villages in the gerudo desert
This theory makes sense, I definitely believe there is more to Gerudo desert and Gerudo town than what we see now. Another explanation as to why they spread so far across the desert could be the water supply. We can see at Gerudo Town and Kara Kara Bazaar that there are prominent water sources, it's possible that they migrated to be closer to those, or spent all of the water resources in other areas of the desert, prompting them to move around to find more.
This makes perfect sense to me. It's much more sensical to think that all of these ruins were a part of a mega city, than separately built structures with no relation to each other, probably at the time of Ganon before the war. I would love to see artist depiction of this city including all of the ruins.
Thank goodness more theory videos!!
😄
I was thinking just today that one of the Zeldatubers should talk about some Gerudo Desert theories. There’s a lot to talk about here. 🙌 GG
Appreciate you watching! 🤙
I mean just look into the depths of the area. There is a whole graveyard down there.
This is such a cool idea. Nice vid!
Thank you!
I don't know if I think it was ONE city spanning the whole desert. Probably something like we see other places in game and in the real world where it was several big cities and a number of smaller towns and villages
I don't think this theory is that far fetched. I mean, if you include the ruins you can find underneath the desert through sink holes and caves, the ruins span an extremely large chunk of Gerudo desert. Additionally, all of the ruins, minus the lightning temple, appear to be built from the same material and in the same architectural style. At minimum, it's extremely likely that the ruins (again, minus the lightning temple) were build by the same people around the same time period. Even if the underground ruins were built underground and didn't sink there (and honestly them sinking and/or getting buried feels like a perfectly reasonable conclusion), it would still be a city's worth of ruins. The theoretical city could just be divided between the surface and the underground sections (I mean, Gerudo town itself has an intentionally underground extension to it that operates basically the same way the surface of Gerudo town does, so maybe Gerudo architects just consistently favor a style of building where part of what they construct is above ground and part of it is below for whatever reason). Even if the ruins somehow aren't from one big city, the sheer number/density/proximity of the ruins and their afore mentioned similarities in style and material would indicate that, at bear minimum, some of the ruins were proper settlements, while others acted to connect all the other ruins (maybe a bunch of the generic columns were some form of path markers, or used to support shade over more properly built roads so people traveling from one facility to another wouldn't be directly subjected to the desert's heat). At minimum, the ruins indicate that some culture used to have a wide spread presence in Gerudo desert, and the idea of the ruins being from one massive city feels fitting to me, cause I feel like if you were to map you where all the ruins in Gerudo desert are, underground or above, the collective area of those ruins would amount to a city's worth.
In one of the flashbacks it's reported that the last free village in the desert has fallen which certainly suggests the desert was a lot more populated in the past. What if all these ruins were the result of Ganondorf himself razing the desert and attacking his own people after becoming the demon king? As the origin point the Gerudo desert and it's various settlements would have seen the most damage kinda like how central Hyrule saw the most damage from the calamity. The reason Gerudo town looks so new might be because it's a rebuilt version of the original Gerudo capital. Makes me want to see what Hyrule Castle and Castle Town will look like when Hudson's done.
I respect you for doing many lore videos about Tears of the Kingdom, a game I struggle see as canon at all due to many strange decisions from a lore standpoint.
I wonder if this city was sunk before the Imprisoning War. Ganondorf's motivation to conquer Hyrule was due to him feeling like Hyrule was decadent and unworthy of its prosperity, and had no fighting spirit. Rauru rules an elegant palace and gardens while his cities are sunk by sand and age. It is also said he killed his own people to assert his domination, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were sunk intentionally due to his magic.
And also explains why they turned on him. I mean.....Imagine the hatred that they felt for him upon seeing their leader and king happily turn on and send their people to their demises! So much so, that even they were granted the honor and privilege of having one of the Zonai secret stones bestowed upon one of their people to aid their efforts in fighting the very man who led them down the path to a pointless war which almost resulted in their peoples' destruction!
Definitely checks out. Especially considering they did it with the desert region in Skyward Sword, which was highlighted by the time shift mechanic. And as others have pointed out that the memories in TotK imply a larger settlement.
Also I find the number of ruins themselves plausible evidence.
I always thought those were ruins from the settlements that fell to Ganondorf.
Many possible did! Can't really say for 100% sure.
Out of curiosity, overlaying the desert with gerudo desert from oot do you think some of these ruins overlap with the spirit temple and the other gerudo village? Maybe some of them are old parts that were not shown in oot or even TP? And k don't mean the full wilds map. Just the desert portions overlapped and rotated around to look at placements?
It was mentioned in one of the memories that there was more then a few villages in gerudo desert. How many no idea all we can guess is that they were all killed by their then king
the ariters grounds was the name of a boss area in Twilight princess that was nothing but sand and a boss fight which could be a nod to it and if im not mistaken the temple you fight that boss in is in the desert so might be a reference to other games
Posting this comment before your theory because it made me think of something. It's not odd to me that you would have settlements in far flung reaches. It's how you maintain sovereignty over a larger area of a country. I live in Canada. Heck there is an island that we "fight" over with denmark where we leave a bottle of rye and our flag and they take it and leave a flag and schnapps that we then take.
I'm interested to see why you think the Geurodo built in crazy places.
So to add; The tension between the Gerudo and the rest of Hyrule would lead credence to the thought that these little settlements around the desert would be so they can claim people live there so Hyrule can't expand into their territory.
I hope all the theorist folks are working together on a new theory about Hylia and Zelda's separation with the new info we have from the statues in totk! Is that even the same Hylia which existed pre-SS?
This. Who's answering those prayers?
@@DemonicAdj I had the idea that that “Hylia” is something of a hive mind of goddesses that together make a whole. Like her consciousness has been shattered and inhabit shrines and statues. Who knows maybe Zelda being the light dragon, an immortal being, can be connected to the resurrection of Hylia
@@robinita46853 Ooh, like how the Great Fairy in Majora's Mask was fragmented.
@robinita46853 But my question referred to how you can receive requests from a Bargainer Statue by way of the Goddess Statue in the ruined Temple of Time.
That wasn't Hylia on the line. First, it was the little Statue in the water, then it was the big Bargainer Statue underneath the Plateau. (Who wanted their eyes put back in).
After doing that, it gave a very familiar choice: "health or stamina?"
Showing that Bargainer Statues can:
1. Talk through Goddess Statues
2. Offer Health or Stamina upgrades.
It's possible that these were the origin of the upgrades as far back as Breath of the Wild. (Spirit Orbs might be the souls of the Monks in physical form, and the Bargainers are trading you life or vitality for giving them very particular souls that they can send to the afterlife).
@@DemonicAdj Agreed its interesting to see that Wild era Hylia is more connected to the Bargainers than to Demise. Another thing to consider is that the original Hylia was a goddess of life, light, and time. Zelda, as we know, has light and time powers. What do you have left over when you take OG Hylia and subtract light and time power? Just a goddess of life force. What do we see in the wild era? Statues that distribute life force and do NOTHING else.
The original Hylia was the spiritual opposite of Demise. This new "Hylia" is the opposite of the bargainers. They seem to be different entities at least in terms of their powers and domains.
We know that the wild era doesn't care much to follow the rules of Zelda so really anything is possible.
The reason the ruins aren't closer together could be that at one time the desert wasn't a desert.
Like the Sahara desert was a lush forest thousands of years ago, gerudo desert could have been a place full of life before.
The ability to get to each of the ruins would have been much easier so keeping it compact wasn't a big issue.
I wish this could be tackled in game via DLC. 😢
Also in the The Sages' Vow memory, the Water Sage says "we just received word that the last free village in Gerudo Desert has fallen [to the Demon King and his army]". So it's probably less that these villages were slowly forgotten and swallowed by the desert, and more that they were *decimated* and *forcibly evacuated,* like what happened with all the Hyrulean settlements that we see in Central Hyrule that were destroyed by the Calamity. We don't know exactly when the law of "no voe in Gerudo Town" was instated (it was present in the Heroines' time according to the stela we find at the end of the sidequest The Mysterious Eighth, which says they couldn't properly repay the Hylian voe who saved them due to this law), but I'm thinking that, after the villages of Gerudo Desert were destroyed and the Demon King sealed, the remaining Gerudo moved into the more centralized and fortified Gerudo Town, and from then on no more voe were allowed since the Demon King had been one
I’d like to think the separate settlements might have been migratory places. Some settle for a while and then move when the land gets too scarce to even forage, maybe following wild game and their migratory patterns
To be honest, it makes a lot of sense because it always seemed weird to me that there was a group of people living out in a waste land. But pride and ancestry to the land would explain that
Well I know there is a lot of the arbitors grounds still buried as the arbitors grounds was massive
Seems more than reasonable to me! I forget most of Skyward Sword but wasn't there a lot of advanced tech in the desert?
Yeah, before it was desert, there was grass and water. And among all that, there were robots built by Lanaryu the dragon (the first one, probably).
It does feel like the entire desert is a continuous area of structures with some areas just more buried than others.
I think it’s very likely! We discover so many things in our real work out in the dessert, or jungles, even mountains.
Have you heard of Göbeklitepe in Turkey? we’ve only uncovered about 5% of this massive “pre history” settlement.
Great video!
I seriously want to try Noble Pursuit.
I love everything Gerudo.
Thank you for this.
I’m sooo curious about what the lighting temple is originally used for in the potentially ancient huge desert city?
Yoo, now vid, let's go
Let's gooooo!
@@HyruleGamerone of the best Zelda tuber and youtoober
I'm pretty sure you're right. Just judging by the real world, it seems that every so often, some ancient city is discovered below the surface. I would expect there to have been many more Gerudo in the past than we have evidence for.
It would make sense that Gerudo town would have been a much larger city... if we were thinking about real world cities.
The massive structures would make you think that, however if we look at the rest of BotW/TotK the largest settlements only have a handful of houses, even Castle town with the massive castle structure only seemed to have a small amount of houses around it before the Calamity, its almost as though the world building team for Zelda games either doesn't want the worlds to feel very populated OR they simply don't want to design cities with large numbers of people in them even though they have massive structures nearby.
To give examples of real life, the Sahara Desert is a really interesting place because you coumd argue that there's two periods of "lost civilizations" in it.
The first one was when the Sahara desert was actually a vast grassland with mulfipke lakes. Here you have multiple remains of peoples and cjltures existing in a region that latter on became near unlivable. Although, being this during the Stone Age and early Neolithic, they didn't leave anything on the scale of a lost city.
The second period is basically all of pre-industrial History, as there were a lot of cities and empires that appeared in the Sahara, mainly basing their existence on trade routes and oasis. The moment the trades networks dissapeared or changed routes or the oasis dried up, this cities or empires disappeared or were significantly reduced in size.
So both things might have happened in the Gerudo dessert.
I mean. Whatever mountain Ganondorf was standing on, the lands below looked pretty good. Much greener than Hyrule's fields. Why not take those, and be done with it?
Based on his interactions with Rauru and Link, he also wants power, and someone to test it against.
Question: What/Where is that at 0:35?
Lightening Temple, boss room
@@HyruleGamer ohhhhhhh, thanks
Congrats on 150k 🥳🎉
Also what do you think of the Zelda movie?
Thanks a lot!
I'm excited to see what they're cooking 👀
I appreciate the fact you are continuing to make TotK content.
There's something so funny about a Zelda youtuber saying they "live life on the edge"
I do think your theory makes a fair bit of sense
Have you explored the depts underneath the desert? There is a cemetery. Probably a lot more too.
This theory doesn't sound crackpot to me at all. Honestly, it seems very plausible.
H.G, you had me at "crazy theory." To me, those are the best kind of theories for Zelda games. And you know what the best part of those kind of theories are? That they're usually right or partially, right. Keep up the great videos. I love your content.❤
P.S I have made a list of Zelda, Theory lore mystery and history videos for my personal viewing. And quite a few of your videos are on that list. This one will also be joining it. Again, love your content. Keep up the good work. I love adding your videos to my list of Zelda, mystery, history, theory, and lore.
Thanks a lot!
@@HyruleGamer thank you for the great videos. 👍
Consider: the state of that area of the map in Skyward Sword (for more in the environmental storytelling of the region)
I really liked this one. Great job my friend
Thanks man!
I literally stopped what I was doing, got my Nintendo Switch Oled, went to Gerudo town, bought a noble pursuit, went to the light dragon to ride on her back, (my hangout spot.) and unpaused the video.
Awesome Video Bro!
Thanks!
No problem.
Wasn’t one of the memory cutscenes (or some other one) mention about other gerudo settlements falling to ganondorf? Am I mis remembering that? 🤔 I think it was one of the ones after he stole the secret stone. There was a line in there that stuck out to me.
You completely forgot one important fact. That the desert wasn't always a desert. It was once full of grass and trees and shit. Over-mining caused an environmental disaster in that region and turned it into a desert. The *entire* Lanayru mining facility is down there somewhere.
The ancients who built that place were pretty damned advanced too. Using autonomous robots, laser weapons etc. Sounds pretty familiar. Most likely, the Hyrule of 10,000 years ago *was* in this region back then and *they* caused the disaster. Especially since we see the giant Hyrule wing crest in the desert.
My personal head canon is that all of the other games take place within that 10,000 year span between the technologically advanced Hyrule and BoTW Hyrule. All those blue time shift stones were the basis for all of their technology. The blue energy weapons/shields, Guardians glow blue and shoot blue lasers etc. They knew that it was going to cause an environmental disaster and kept mining anyway. Why? Because the alternative was letting Ganon come back and possibly do far worse damage. The reason they stopped using all that tech was because the time stones were all (mostly) mined and used up. They *couldn't* make more because there were no more stones. Or more probably the environmental damage would have been far more widespread than one single desert and the sea next to it drying up completely and probably contributed to the collapse of that particular Hyrule. The survivors being taken to Skyloft to avoid the whole mess down there. The only people left on the surface were the species that *could* survive down there. An aquatic species, a species made of rock, a species that lives underground.
I know that Hyrule Historia might contradict this, but meh. I go by what's in the game. Not some book made after the fact as a cash grab by Nintendo that is full of contradictions and errors :P
You know speaking of lost cities, I've been thinking a lot about Ordon Village. You ever wonder why Nintendo seem to deliberately leave out the entire Ordon province. The other provinces have become core parts of Hyrule's map ever since. And BotW/TotK's map is the most crammed with winks and nods to the past but not Ordon. I mean Hateno and the Necluda region could have referenced Ordon but no.
It doesn't quite have the feel of something Nintendo forgot about like Kasuto Town from Adventure of Link. It feels deliberately left out, like there's a reason for it.
If Gerudo desert is anything lot our real world deserts there could be more hidden under the ever shifting sands. Example: the tombs that have been lost and then found many years later in Egypt due to sand shifting around and burying and unburying tombs, and other ruins.
Something you haven’t made a video about yet and I haven’t seen it anywhere on RUclips but I think it’s a good guess Because I think that the temple of time on the great plateau is, was the original high rule castle