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Section 3.C: The Zora

So, here is the thing about the Zora:

In the Zelda series, there are two distinct types of Zora: River Zora, and Ocean Zora. Historically, River Zora have been presented as enemies that Link has to fight. They are usually green, far more fish (or probably meant to be kappa)-like in appearance, they don’t talk or have any kind of culture whatsoever. This aspect was modified in Echoes of Wisdom, where the River Zora do have a society, aren’t enemies, can talk and are just demonstrated to be different from Ocean Zora. But again, in all games preceding EoW, they were enemies you encountered and fought.

Ocean Zora, on the other hand, have always been presented as allies to Link. They’re sophisticated, cultured, and play an important role in Hyrule. They’ve had their designs changed a few times, but they’ve always had a more humanoid shape than River Zora, and in OoT they were all blue. They did, however, retain fins that resembled ocean creatures like dolphins and such even back in those days, however. (Well, a lot of them . . . Ruto not so much. They really wanted her humanoid for the whole Link-flirtation aspect.)

Now, I’m saying all of this, and if you’re a Zelda fan like I am, you’re probably thinking, “Yeah, I know, what’s the point?” Well, the point is this: 

We have Ocean Zora in OoT, but we don’t have a fucking ocean. 

Now, there are probably a few reasons for this. Number one, I don’t think Nintendo was really thinking in terms of “River Zora” and “Ocean Zora” when they made OoT. Back then, they were probably just thinking of them all as “Zora,” and not really caring to make a distinction because Nintendo’s design principle has always been gameplay first, lore second. In fact, we didn’t get both sets of Zora in the same game until Oracle of Ages, and that’s when a distinction had to be made out of necessity. So in that sense, I can forgive the issue here of Ocean Zora living in a river (and connected lakes).

Or at least, I can forgive that issue in the 1998 and 2011 versions of the game. (Since the 3DS remake was, as established, just a graphical overhaul with gameplay tweaks.)

But we are now in 2026, and this is a full-scale (heh) reimagining of OoT. So in the spirit of that, we need to fix this discrepancy.

Now, here is the other thing: I don’t think we can realistically switch to River Zora in this game. Obviously, we could overhaul their designs entirely to make them resemble River Zora. However, we would also need to completely overhaul their role, culture, and so on if we were to do that. Even if we kept the concept of River Zora being allies as seen in EoW, the River Zora have a vastly different culture than Ocean Zora. I don’t believe that we could have the same haughty, prissy Princess Ruto if she was a River Zora instead of an Ocean Zora. And you may say, well, who cares? This is a complete reimagining. Just change Ruto’s character. No one liked her anyway. To that I say:

Rude, I like Ruto, and

This is a complete reimagining and I do think some things should be drastically changed (and we’ll get to that), but this is not one of them

I think instead that what we should do is bring the ocean to OoT’s Hyrule. Zora’s Domain is already on the edge of the country, as seen in the map:

So the obvious answer here would be to remove the mountains from the borders of Zora’s Domain and instead expand it out into a vast sea. We don’t need those mountains there; Link would never be able to swim out to sea without drowning, and they could even bring in the old video game “now is not the time for that” if they didn’t want to include a stamina system. There are so many ways to stop Link from leaving the boundaries via ocean. MM did it, there is no reason why OoT can’t.

So the first thing to do would be to give the Ocean Zora an ocean. There is no reason why they shouldn’t have one. At the very least, give them rivers which connect to the ocean as they have in BotW. (But ideally just connect them directly to it like in MM. There’s no reason not to do this.)

Apart from that, I do think it would be nice to have them fleshed out more. More variety in character models, sure, but I want to see how they are a distinct monarchy from the Hylian monarchy. They have their own king, their own princess, their own territory; they work with the royal family of Hyrule, but they don’t serve them. This is one thing that BotW did correctly, which TotK then messed up. In BotW, it’s made evident that there is an alliance between the Hylians and the Zora from the completion of a reservoir project. In TotK, they have the Zora swearing fealty first to Rauru and then Zelda. It’s all kinds of messed up, but I digress. Fleshing out the Zora monarchy and culture in OoT’s Hyrule would be welcome, and I think it would also be interesting if they didn’t worship Hylia, because after all, what has she ever done for them? Nothing, that’s what.

(Plus, in OoT it’s strongly implied they worship Jabu-Jabu as a guardian spirit anyway, so . . . let’s just expand upon that.)

Section 3.D: The Gorons

On the surface, it almost feels like the Gorons should have been listed before the Zora. After all, the Gorons don’t have such a glaring flaw as the Ocean Zora not having an ocean. But the more I think about the Gorons, the more I feel that they’re one of the most neglected races across the Zelda series, and I think that a reimagining of OoT would be a great opportunity to fix that. (Though I will say that I do feel that BotW did a good job of expanding upon them, but much more could still be done.)

So, to start with. As established, OoT doesn’t take place too terribly long after SS in the grand scheme of things. We know that, in SS, Hylia decided to save only the Hylians by lifting them into the sky with the Triforce. She left pretty much every other race of people for dead. We also know that the Gorons don’t have an actual settlement on the surface in SS; they’re wandering travelers, trying to piece together history and individual commerce without much going for them as a people.

From this, I think we can extrapolate a few things:

Given that they’re sentient people in SS and not monsters, it’s reasonable to believe that whatever settlements they did have were destroyed by Demise’s armies and that, because of the situation on the surface, they haven’t been able to rebuild, and

How would they feel about knowing that a goddess chose to just outright abandon them?

The Gorons that we meet in SS don’t seem to hold any resentment toward Hylia, at least not that I can remember. (But then, it has been a long time since I’ve played.) But I do think that we should take that into consideration and bake it into the loaf when we consider their culture. Like with the Zora, I don’t think the Gorons should worship Hylia. They have no reason to; she never did anything for them. Unlike the Zora, the Gorons are never presented with an alternate guardian spirit or deity in OoT. The closest to an otherworldly being they have is Volvagia, and Volvagia eats them. But an alternative could be that while the Hylians favor Hylia, the Gorons favor Din. Din is associated with fire, and they live on a volcano. And they’re often shown living in the Eldin region as well. If the Spiritual Stones are given more lore, Din could have even potentially made the Spiritual Stone of Fire, otherwise known as the Goron Ruby. It makes sense to me if they pay more adherence to Din rather than any other divinity, even if they still aren’t as pious a race as, say, the Hylians or Zora.

The Gorons, like the Zora, loosely have their own governance in OoT, what with Darunia being their leader, but I think that we should get more focus into how their people came together, into what their culture is like. And I do think, too, that it would be nice to finally get an explanation re: gender among the Gorons. I think it was said at one time that there are female Gorons, but that they all have the same body types and that gender isn’t really recognized among Gorons (hence they all call each other “brother”). And like, that’s great! But I would like to see that extrapolated upon. And before anyone goes, “this is a kid’s game we don’t need to talk about Goron reproduction”:

I never said anything about reproduction;

I would argue that the Zelda series is more for teens than outright kids in the way that, say, Pokémon is;

If we can be told that the Gerudo are an all-woman race aside from one man every 100 years, then we can have a definitive answer for the Gorons

Nintendo has, in my opinion, largely treated the Gorons like a comic relief race. There is comedy across Zelda games, of course, but the bigger comic relief moments are often given to the Goron characters. For instance, in OoT, Darunia is depicted as the goofiest among the known Sages for how he dances to Saria’s Song. In BotW, Daruk is the goofiest among the Champions for how he doesn’t know his own strength, encourages Link to eat rocks, and most notably, is afraid of friendly dogs who literally cannot hurt him because he has rock-hard flesh. Similarly, among the characters Link partners with to access the Divine Beasts, it is only Yunobo who is goofy and cowardly, while each of the other characters (Teba, Riju, Sidon) are brave and respected among their people. The Gorons are also the only race in BotW to have exaggerated facial expressions, generally again for comic relief. And while comic relief is a good thing and it isn’t bad to include it in the game, I do feel that the Gorons deserve to be treated with the respect and dignity afforded to the other races of Hyrule. I don’t think it’s fair to them to just be the goofy, comic relief race.

At any rate, if OoT is going to be reimagined, then I think we need to reimagine the Gorons: how they got to where they are in OoT after where they were in SS, and how this has affected them and their culture. 

Part 3.E: The Sheikah

Now we’re really getting into the heart of it.

The Sheikah are one of the most fucked over races in the entire history of Hyrule. (We’ll get to the other most fucked over race in a second.) With the lore given to us in SS, we know that they have served Hylia and her descendants from the very beginning. And let me be very clear: they serve Hylia and her descendants (the royals). They serve them. And this is not a secret order of ninjas made up of people from across Hyrule who have opted into this service. This is a race of people. Despite what TotK’s character bios menu would have you believe, the Sheikah are a distinct race from the Hylians. The white hair and red eyes are indicative of the Sheikah people. BotW shows us that they have differing lifespans from Hylians as well, even without taking into things like Purah’s age technology. Robbie and Impa, after all, are both over 100, and Robbie especially is still pretty spry. His wife is probably around 50, and she looks like she’s in her 20s or 30s. Creating a Champion, the art and lore book for BotW, adds that the Sheikah tend to be physically stronger and more agile than Hylians as well. They are a separate, distinct race of people, just as the Zora, Gorons, and Gerudo are.

Now, this would be good and great if the sentence ended there, but let’s finish it: They are a race of people who are born into servitude to the royal family, as determined by a goddess. 

As I said, the Sheikah are not a ninja order of people who have opted into this service. They are born into it. They are raised believing it. We know from real life that being raised to believe that your role is to be subservient to others is extremely psychologically damaging, and this is how the Sheikah are born and raised for millennia. They don’t just serve the goddess, they also serve the royal family, mortals just like them. They fight, kill, bleed, and die for them. From their inception, the Sheikah have been treated as second-class citizens by Hylia, and yet they still worship her because that is all they’ve ever known for millennia. This generational trauma runs so deep that they don’t even question it.

That is fucked up.

But that’s a general overview of how the Sheikah are fucked over. There are specifics in various games about how they’re fucked over (the treatment of the Sheikah in BotW’s Hyrule is . . . “appalling” is an understatement), and OoT is no exception.

First and foremost, the only Sheikah we ever see is Impa. Yes, Zelda masquerades as “the last of the Sheikah,” but she is a Hylian in disguise. We never see any other Sheikah people. Now, the real world reason for this is because they had limited space on N64 cartridges and simply didn’t want to devote time and assets to Sheikah NPCs. The in-universe explanation is that Sheikah protect the royal family “from the shadows.” But Sheikah play a vital role in Hyrule’s history, and in this Hyrule, specifically, we’re supposed to infer that Ganondorf genocided them after coming into power. This is a loss that should affect us, but it doesn’t because we never knew any of them. Of course, genocide is bad regardless, you don’t have to know someone to feel bad that they were murdered. But from a player standpoint, the loss of the Sheikah is not one we feel the same way we feel the loss of the NPCs from Castletown. It’s barely a footnote, only given to us by Zelda herself when she says she’s the last of them. And for an entire race of people, I think that’s a little fucked up.

So the first way to remedy this is: give Kakariko Village to the Sheikah. It is their hidden settlement in BotW, and should similarly be their settlement in OoT’s reimagined version, particularly given its proximity to the Bottom of the Well and the Shadow Temple. Kakariko should be populated with Sheikah NPCs, and it should be Sheikah guarding the path up to Death Mountain. This way, when Ganondorf takes over in the adult era, we can also see and feel devastation in Kakariko Village as well as Castletown.

The next thing would be to further explore their culture with regards to the Hyrulean Royal Family. As I mentioned above, the Sheikah are born into servitude and raised with the mindset that their purpose in life, as given to them by Hylia, is to serve Hylia’s bloodline no matter what is asked of them. This is, incidentally, what causes the birth of the Yiga Clan after the King of Hyrule during the 10,000 Year Calamity betrays them. They felt betrayed not only by the King of Hyrule, but also by Hylia herself, because she gave them this purpose and then just did nothing when those she told them to protect decided to ethnically cleanse them.

But I digress.

The point is, during the Hyrule Civil War, the Sheikah fought on behalf of the Royal Family, killing and torturing the royal family’s enemies in the Shadow Temple. What did this do for their relations to the other races in Hyrule? What did it do to them, to carry out such grim tasks? Are all the Sheikah militarized in OoT’s Hyrule? Are only some? Many of these concepts are pretty dark for a Zelda game to get into (in the sense that I don’t think Nintendo wants to or even could gracefully contend with “this entire race of people are born and raised as servants of others and are therefore treated as second-class citizens by necessity” even though that’s what they’ve written), but I do think that touching upon them to some degree by fleshing out Sheikah culture would be a boon for them and for those of us who love lore and storytelling. We could even, perhaps, see the beginnings of them developing technology. Perhaps in the child era Kakariko Village is the most advanced settlement (apart from perhaps Castletown getting prototypes of Sheikah technology), but then in the adult era, well . . . that’s no longer the case.

Either way, the Sheikah have been treated absolutely horrendously throughout Hyrule’s history, and that probably is not changing any time soon. But giving them more representation, screentime, and importance in a game where their presence is felt but largely done nothing with would be a huge help.

But with the Sheikah out of the way, let us finally arrive at . . .

Section 3.F: The Gerudo

Hoo boy.

First and foremost, before I say anything, I would like to recommend Skittybitty’s video on the orientalist stereotypes present within Nintendo’s characterization of the Gerudo over the course of the series. This video provides excellent commentary on precisely what is wrong with how the Gerudo have been depicted, and also features insight from an Egyptian fan who can speak from personal experience about how harmful the stereotypes the Gerudo are depicted with can be. Anything I would say about the orientalist stereotypes of the Gerudo are already said in that video, and by someone who has a personal lived experience in one of the cultures that Nintendo carelessly pulls from. I really recommend giving it a watch, particularly if you’re someone who feels a little defensive at the accusation of racism being directed at something you love. Watch it with an open mind, and understand that—as is said in the video—it is entirely possible to love something while also accepting that there are flaws. I, personally, love the Gerudo (and so do both Skittybitty and Sealizms), but their depiction across the series is messy at best and it does bear pointing out.

So, with that video recommendation linked, let’s discuss the Gerudo are they are presented in OoT.

OoT is the game that introduced the Gerudo, and it introduced them as a mostly female race of warriors who have one male (Ganondorf) born to them every one hundred years. This male Gerudo is then treated as the de facto King of the Gerudo. Now, on its face, one might look at the Gerudo being primarily female warriors and think, wow, that’s so empowering! That’s so cool! But unfortunately, that wasn’t the mindset of Nintendo when making them. To begin with, if the Gerudo were meant to have Girl Power, they wouldn’t decide to hold the one man born among them as their king and serve him unconditionally. Despite what patriarchal societies might have you believe, having a penis does not in fact make you a default better ruler than the competent women who were running the place long before you were born. Second, as discussed in Skittybitty’s video, this was likely borne as a result of harem stereotypes—you know, one man surrounded by subservient women. So already, we are not off to a great start.

But then there is everything else with how the Gerudo are depicted. The Gerudo are introduced as antagonists, not only because of Ganondorf being Gerudo, but also because when you first go to the Gerudo Desert, they attack and imprison Link if they are able to defeat him. Now, to be clear, the Gerudo are completely justified in doing this. Link is technically invading their home. They’re perfectly entitled to take action against him (and the Carpenter Brothers, who are also invading their home). But it’s notable that the Gerudo are treated as antagonists who attack Link at first because none of the other races do this. Sure, Mido is a little shit among the Kokiri, but he never attacks Link and Link can’t attack him. You have to sneak past the royal guards when trying to meet with Zelda, but they never harm Link and, again, Link can’t attack them. The Gorons and Zora aren’t hostile toward Link at all, and of course neither are average Hylians.

But the Gerudo? They’re hostile. And while, again, they have every right to be (especially with the way the rest of Hyrule treats them, but we’ll get to that), it is still notable that the game presents the Gerudo as a humanoid race of antagonists who not only attack Link, but that Link can (and should) attack in turn. They are othered by the developers not only in their designs, but also in their role in the game.

And then there is the way the rest of Hyrule treats them. 

Despite the fact that we never actually see the Gerudo steal anything, Gerudo have a reputation as being thieves and criminals. The Gerudo are routinely referred to as thieves in NPC dialogue, in Navi’s enemy information, in place names like Gerudo Fortress also being called the “Thieves Hideout,” and so on. If you wear the Gerudo Mask, NPCs in Castletown will be frightened of you, and good characters like Darunia will say that they hate the Gerudo, showing that the prejudice against the Gerudo isn’t even Hylian specific. 

This is, frankly, an insane way to depict an entire race of people, even in a fantasy game. It’s especially egregious because the Gerudo are humanoid, and all have brown skin, in comparison to the white skinned Hylians. (BotW adds more skintone diversity among all races, Gerudo included, but in OoT all of the Gerudo were brown while all of the Hylians were white.) Again, Skittybitty and Sealizms cover the orientalism and racism the Gerudo are depicted with in their video and so I won’t go in-depth with it here, but I would hope that we can all agree that the depicition of the Gerudo in OoT—their debut game!—was appallingly bad.

So, then, the question needs be asked: how do we fix it?

Changing the lore that they have one man born every one hundred years and that man is their king is a dream that, even in my bluest of blue sky stages, I don’t think will ever be accomplished. Nintendo brought that lore back for TotK, after all (one of TotK’s many crimes), so I don’t think there is any chance in hell that they have any intention of changing it. Besides, it would mean significant changes to Ganondorf’s backstory, and while I would be okay with him, say, being the Chief of the Gerudo because he won it in rite of combat or something, I don’t think Nintendo has interest in doing that. So we’ll leave that aspect of the Gerudo alone.

That said, there is still so, so much that can and should be changed, so let’s get into that.

First and foremost, we need to do away with the Gerudo being regarded as thieves and criminals that all of Hyrule is prejudiced against. Again, this is an entire race of people. In the child era especially, there is absolutely no reason why they should be so hated and feared because they haven’t done anything. (Which, to be fair, is very true of real life bigotry and racism, but I don’t think that Nintendo was intending for us to take the story that way.) I could see prejudice brewing in the seven year time gap because of what Ganondorf does, and people deciding to blame the entire Gerudo people for the actions of one single man, but in the child era? You can’t make the other races of Hyrule extremely bigoted and then expect me to see them as sympathetic.

So, do away with people shrieking in terror or hatred when they see the Gerudo mask. Stop having Gossip Stones and NPCs refer to the Gerudo as thieves. And, most importantly, show them in places other than the desert in the child era especially. A Gossip Stone mentions that Gerudo sometimes come to Castletown to look for boyfriends, but we never actually see this. We don’t get to interact with any friendly Gerudo until Nabooru, or until we get the Gerudo Membership Card. (Which . . . is an extremely weird thing to exist. Again, Gerudo are a race of people. Why do they have “membership cards”?) In this reimagining, that should be changed. We should get to see Gerudo milling about Castletown at the very least, given that Castletown is the central hub of Hyrule. We know that Ganondorf has a Gerudo stallion, so perhaps we could also see some Gerudo at Lon Lon Ranch to compare their horses with Hylian horses. We should get to see and interact with them as people, flesh them out as people rather than treating them as enemies who are also human.

In the adult era, things can change. Ganondorf has now taken over Hyrule, and as established, there is a very real human tendency to scapegoat entire cultures of people based on the actions of a few. (And in OoT specifically it really felt like it was just Ganondorf and monsters who raided Hyrule; we’re never given any indication that he forced the Gerudo to help him with this.) Castletown, obviously, gets overrun by Re-Dead, so the Gerudo would have no reason to go there. But we could also notice an absence of them in other settlements, we could have NPCs speak negatively about them now, so on and so forth.

But then, the Gerudo themselves?

It’s completely ignored that the Gerudo themselves would have been suffering as a direct result of Ganondorf’s actions. Again, we’re not shown that they helped him with his conquest, but likewise we’re also not shown that they’ve benefited in any way from it. In WW, Ganondorf says that he coveted Hyrule’s wind because the desert was so harsh, and the implication many players (myself included) took from that was that he wanted to improve life for the Gerudo. But we are not shown that happening in OoT. Moreover, if Hyrule turns against them because of what Ganondorf has done, they’re now facing bigotry, oppression, and potential violence as a direct result of his actions. No longer can they go to other places in Hyrule to trade goods, because Ganondorf has burned their bridges not only with the Hylians, but also with the Gorons, Zora, and Sheikah. Their birth rate is going to go down, because they can also no longer meet potential lovers among the other races, either. And not only that, but Ganondorf has employed Koume and Kotake to terrorize any Gerudo who aren’t blindly subservient to him, as we see with what he has them to do to Nabooru. The Gerudo actively suffer as a direct consequence of Ganondorf’s conquest, and I think that they deserve to express that, to demonstrate that, and to make it clear that their defensiveness against Link and the Carpenters showing up is that they assume that Link and the Carpenters are there to attack them in retaliation for what Ganondorf has done, rather than having any peaceful reason to be there.

(On that note, having them be thieves in the adult era only would make sense, if that’s the only way they can now get goods that aren’t available in the desert. In the child era, they had free trade with the rest of Hyrule. In the adult era the rest of Hyrule will no longer trade with them, which makes certain goods scarce and forces them to drastic measures to obtain them. I would prefer if the Gerudo weren’t portrayed as thieves at all, but at least in this way we’d see that they’re thieves out of necessity, because of the bigotry they face from the rest of Hyrule.)

With all that said, let’s discuss their home, where they live. In OoT, they live in a fortress. That’s it. I can’t remember if there are living quarters in the fortress that we can actually see and visit, but it certainly seems as if they just have a cold, stone fortress that they routinely patrol with guards. Again, this others them; the other races in Hyrule have settlements, are living peacefully. Why can’t the Gerudo have an actual village? An actual town? Why are they just patrolling an enemy fortress? I’m not saying that the Gerudo can’t have a fortress, but that they should have more than that. They, too, should be able to have a Gerudo Town, an actual settlement. And we should be able to see them growing the crops (because yes, things do grow in deserts), cultivating the livestock, and so on and so forth that they trade with the rest of Hyrule. We could introduce the sand seals to OoT’s desert, as shown in BotW. Like, the Gerudo do obviously have horses for their paved roads (and for traveling in the rest of Hyrule), but they also have sand seals for the desert. We should have desert fruits and vegetables, we could have a merchant town like Kara Kara Bazaar in addition to Gerudo Town.

Essentially, what I’m saying is: treat the Gerudo as an actual race of people, with a unique culture, joys, and hardships, just as the other races in OoT’s Hyrule receive, and as the Gerudo themselves have received in recent games such as BotW and EoW.

And if we could give them a design overhaul so that they wear practical desert clothing instead of belly dancer Spirit Halloween costumes, that would be even better.