Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

[Dr. Detective]

The only Zelda game I've been interested in playing is Majora's Mask because of how dark and weird it looks. If this sequel game is akin to something like that, I may have to give this one a look see.

[Polkadi~☆]

3 hours ago, Diogenes said:

I think that was just a mistranslation anyway.

And I mean, shit, it's Ganondorf. He always comes back. Zelda has some decent writing sometimes but it's still very oldschool formulaic "the villain always escapes/comes back".

This is true. The translation said that he rejected reincarnation, which caused him to enter a Calamity state. This is a mistranslation, as what happened is that he wanted to reincarnate faster, to come back before the time he was supposed to, which malformed him and put him in a Calamity state. You defeated Calamity Ganon, and now his true body is here. But it's demented and malformed thanks to the Calamity.

We're going to fight Ganon's true form, or what's left of it.

[KHCast]

https://m.ign.com/articles/2019/06/11/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-sequel-is-not-related-to-majoras-mask

It’s gonna be darker than Majora’s Mask apparently 

[Salamander]

I'm not sure if he meant "darker" than MM, or just darker than base BotW.

[QuantumEdge]

15 minutes ago, FFWF said:

I'm not sure if he meant "darker" than MM, or just darker than base BotW.

Either way, they're clearly aiming for ReDead, Gohma in OOT, moon with an eyesore face levels of creepy here just from the trailer.  Frankly, it's about time they leaned back into that aspect of the series.

[KHCast]

I certainly get The Mummy vibes from this trailer. Group searches ancient tomb, dead Ganondorf being brought back to life by a magic spell of some sort, with a creepy awakening scene, worlds now in danger of said undead person. I love it haha

[Shaddy Zaphod]

The "darkness" refers to tone, atmosphere. Technically the stuff that actually happens in BOTW is miles worse than Majora, but Majora's themes, it's dank, kind of diseased feeling was what made it hit so hard. Hyrule in BOTW is presented as ruined, but it constantly treats you to beautiful vistas, detailed nature settings, bombastic combat etc., it's never properly unsettling. So, if this new game sets out to recreate that, count me the fuck in. Actually, lemme just list my hopes for the game, in order of most to least likely:

- A moodier tone, and a more engaging story to go with it

- Proper dungeons, though I don't want to get rid of shrines, just dedicate some of those puzzles to real meaty areas

- A smaller, more focused world with more variety in enemies and locations

- A better flow, difficulty curve and structure. It can still be nonlinear, but BOTW's story suffered hard from the "any order you want" stuff

- Better side characters

- More focus given to making items actually feel special to get, something BOTW lost a lot

- Reimaginings of older side characters, or even villains, as actual people with their own agency and role in the story. I just want to see Groose again god damn it

- Playable Zelda? That's where a lot of the speculation on her hairstyle is going due to it being easier to animate, god I fucking hope so

- If Zelda is playable, then co-op?

- Let me put both Link and Zelda in Gerudo outfits

- Make Link an actual character with a voice and personality. I'm tired of lame justifications as to why he can't talk, or excuses as to what "technically counts" as a personality.

[shdowhunt60]

9 hours ago, KHCast said:

https://m.ign.com/articles/2019/06/11/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-sequel-is-not-related-to-majoras-mask

It’s gonna be darker than Majora’s Mask apparently 

What made Majora special wasn't that it was dark. It's that it made you care. Going around Clock Town, getting to know the people and solving their problems, even if temporarily, that was pretty special.

I just recently played through BotW, and as much as I enjoyed it... boy was it devoid of any sort of personality in terms of the characters. And that's really odd to say in a 3D Zelda game, usually there's at least a few characters that are engaging, but that was completely absent in BotW. That's something the sequel needs to fix.

And dungeons. The game desperately needed dungeons, not copy-pasta shrines.

[Plasme]

I've never played Majora's Mask so J'm curious; is it actually as dark and credpy as everyone makes out?

Because I really do get the impression that a lot of younger people now know it from internet videos and creepypasta and think its worse than it actually is.

[KHCast]

1 minute ago, Plasme said:

I've never played Majora's Mask so J'm curious; is it actually as dark and credpy as everyone makes out?

Because I really do get the impression that a lot of younger people now know it from internet videos and creepypasta and think its worse than it actually is.

It’s more unsettling than straight up dark(though there are some pretty fucked up implications left for the imagination), but compared to most Zelda games, it’s a pretty somber and tonally different experience. The closets you could get to it with other stuff is maybe Twilight Princess with how weird and disturbing certain things can be.(like Zant and his death) 

[Wraith]

It's a little exaggerated. The game leans on imagery and themes that's a bit more somber and harsh than it's sequels, but it's still ultimately a kids action adventure game with plenty of that quirky sense of humor you know and love. The end of it all the message it leaves you with is an optimistic one. 

Anyway, I hope that this game isn't just chasing Majora's Mask's tail. The reason the game is so impactful isn't because it's "dark" and "creepy" but because it has a commitment to it's themes. The game is air tight with almost every creative decision reinforcing the game's overarching ideas in a way I haven't seen from this series besides maybe Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild itself. I don't think the game needs to be dark like Majora's Mask to pull off that emotional resonance.

 I like a lot of what I'm seeing, but I hope there's a lot of genuine emotion and thematic significance behind it. One thing I didn't like about Twilight Princess is that a lot of the darker imagery felt like it was just for shock value in a game that was overall lighter and easier than it's predecessors. 

[JosepHenry]

I really want this. A game which the vessel for Ganon's curse is actually a good guy because the curse wasn't able to hit him, so he becomes friends with Link and Zelda and both try to protect him from the curse, and even people who want him as a vessel to kill him and block the curse once again. The same fate as the corpse that Zelda and Link find in this trailer.

 

I am absolutely letting myself to a big pile of disappointment but I do not care, this kind of story would be absolutely amazing.

[Wraith]

I have some good news for you

 

[JosepHenry]

If that's the case, best game ever along with FFVII remake.

[Polkadi~☆]

9 hours ago, Wraith said:

I have some good news for you

 

I did mention that it was said Ganon reincarnated before his time, so perhaps this song had prophesied the event that was supposed to happen, which is this. Just, you know, with an angle no one saw coming.

[StaticMania]

15 hours ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

Make Link an actual character with a voice and personality. I'm tired of lame justifications as to why he can't talk, or excuses as to what "technically counts" as a personality.

He "needs" this.

There's no justification, which is better than any justification.

[Meta77]

I really do hope the game is dark story wise. Breath of the Wild did a pretty good job. If its darker than M.Mask then Im sold already again.

[expansivelovestories]

I am hopeful that something very unique will be present as a counterpart/complement Link finding his memories in the first game!!  Theoretically there could be an increase in the strength of some enemies and perhaps combined with being invulnerable to most physical attacks.  Perhaps Zelda and Link will be searching for and be able to learn ancient magic, whether that would be spells, items, summons, it could be very wonderful in the BotW engine!     

[Lord-Dreamerz]

This video below about the upcoming game feels like a Ganon theory that sounds fairly legit to me.

 

[Diogenes]

I don't buy the argument that this is TPdorf. A lot of the connections he tries to draw feel pretty spurious. TPdorf wasn't the only one to be killed; WWdorf was as well, or at least that's what I'd assume from him being stabbed in the brain. He points out the forehead gem to try to connect Ganoncorpse to TPdorf, but every iteration of Ganondorf has had a forehead gem, and the design of this one isn't any more like TPdorf's than any other's. He says Ganoncorpse's neck cracking is him fixing the broken neck that Zant inflicted, but I'd expect an ancient corpse springing back to unlife to crackle and pop regardless of what injuries it had sustained in life. It's all very flimsy, especially for the sequel to a game that basically said fuck the timeline and placed itself as far removed from it as possible.

[KHCast]

We already had a follow up with that Ganondorf. (TP Ganondorf is OoT Ganondorf in the child timeline). I’d personally rather they not continue again with this one. Though considering one of the champions, the Gerudo one, specially namedrops OoT Ganondorf....it could very well end up happening 

[Wraith]

Zelda fans need to accept that most of the stories are self contained. Direct follow-ups and deep cuts are largely avoided. 

The only part of the theory I could see is a twili tie in. I've expected the species to return at some point. That's more of the type of broad strokes lore the series likes. 

 

[Heckboy]

Hyrule Historia was a mistake.

[Blue Blood]

6 hours ago, Heckboy said:

Hyrule Historia was a mistake.

It really, really was. I adore the parts of the timeline that add up without the necessity of the historia; Skyward Sword does make sense as the first entry (Demise is lame but whatever), Ocarina of Time does reasonably split into the child and adult timelines, Breath of the Wild comes after anything else we've seen so far in a fairly ambiguous way... That's all great. Direct sequels aside, trying to tie together the timeline into something coherent relies in tenuous links and a lot of straw clutching. It just doesn't work. And that's fine.

Even when you do look at those games that make sense chronologically, the story still isn't without its plot holes. Whatever happened to the worship of Hylia between SS and BotW? Why does Hyrule keep changing layout? The Rito evolved from the Zora but they also didn't? Was it the Goddess Hylia or the Golden Goddesses that created Hyrule?

Sod trying to make any sense of it. They're self contained stories that follow the same beats more or less and sometimes reference each other, but are really entirely independent. You have to make such broad assumptions even when following the Hyrule Historia that it just doesn't work. The series focuses do much more on symbolism than hard and fast plot points. So in response to the video that @Lord-Dreamerzposted, Ganondorf getting stabbed in the chest is just symbolic of him being defeated and sealed/killed. It's too much of a stretch to tie them together like this. 

[StaticMania]

17 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

They're self contained stories that follow the same beats more or less and sometimes reference each other, but are really entirely independent.

I would think that even with the Hyrule Historia they'e never stopped being this and it's only made for people who want there to be anything more than aesthetic connections.

You get it, it makes sense, there's nothing deep here.

The people who want more now have foundation for their theories, everyone is happy.

Spoiler

Everyone besides the people who keep referring to the Historia despite...disliking that it exists.