Notes from the Depths

This is a short term blog I’ve set up to ponder the game The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which is made out of missed opportunities in my opinion. I’ve never played a game and been more fascinated by what they left out than what’s in it. Don’t know why it’s occupying me lately, came out ages ago, but if I’m going to post for no reason, this is the place to do it.

For the record I do love the series, warts and all. The way this one game panned out is just so interesting to me.

I gotta say, I feel a bit robbed that the next Zelda game to take place after TotK (if that ever happens) won’t have that Zelda wearing an outfit based on the Light Dragon. Like, they’re not, right? They won’t do that. She got changed back, it’s all forgotten. It could have been a great reference though, and so distinctive against other Zelda designs. A wee gal wearing an antler tiara, a slightly too big frumpy dress that trails behind her, crystal tear earrings, layered necklace like heavy scales.

I don’t spent a lot of time thinking about alternative universe stuff, but it has hit me just now that Tears of the Kingdom would be more interesting if Zelda landed anywhere other than right in front of Sonia and Rauru.

Out in the wilderness. She has to BotW Link her way through the landscape with nothing but sticks for weapons. Maybe she eventually finds a village that doesn’t belong to Hyrule and becomes a teacher, but not their leader or nobility. The Sheikah?

Gerudo Desert! Really difficult to survive alone, showing how resourceful she is. Still probably passes out, at which point the Gerudo save/capture her… leading to her being indebted to… Ganondorf! Zelda instantly knows he’s Ganon, but also becomes a respected member of his society to undermine him.

Any of the other tribes. How do the Zora see the new kingdom rising up nearby? Is it Zelda that convinces the Gorons to join? What was going on in the forest during his era? Would Zelda look badass in a Rito outfit shooting light arrows? Yes.

She goes back in time, but doesn’t change position. She’s in the Depths chamber before it crumbles in the distant future. She climbs out to where the castle will one day be built. She makes it to Sonia and Rauru, but since she didn’t magically appear before them there is now tension that she is a spy or tricking them somehow.

I just had a really cool visual of the guardians scattered across Hyrule evaporating into those blue teleportation lines as you approach them, you don’t even get to be close, they evaporate when they’re on screen. It’s only explained by one NPC, and even they don’t know what’s happening, just that they’re gone, it’s the end of an era. You do a quest to sneak up on one, and this is the only one that doesn’t evaporate until you get up close, a cutscene of Link plays reaching towards it and then it turns into wiggly blue lines and the camera follows it into the sky.

I also think it could help give Link a character arc, evolving from a soldier who follows orders to a king and partner who can help Zelda rule. We see Link meet all these different kings of Hyrule, and in this rewrite, these experiences influence what kind of leader he wants to be, instead of just them being there to help Link in the opening.

I don’t really do shipping, but I agree that what’s missing from the Wilds era is an arc for Link. I’d argue it’s Zelda that should learn from past kings to become a new kind of leader. Hyrule has fallen twice and she experienced both falls, so rather than ending with the sages swearing allegiance to her exactly like Rauru, she should have been moving Hyrule forward to something new.

I think making Link also take on some challenge to attain royalty would have been one possible way to give him an arc. The sky islands would have been ideal places to put some kind of Trial of Kings thing, where we could learn more about the Zonai and why Rauru is a king at all.

Purely through accidental game design Link shows signs of being priest-like / holy; he can see koroks, ghosts, dragons, he’s come back from the dead pretty much, which now I think about it lines him up with Sonia (though her being a priestess is only mentioned outside the game, I think). Him learning to become a priest / leader of the sages could have been something, possibly bringing the three goddesses back into play.

If they’d leaned more into the idea of rebuilding Hyrule and forming ties he could have become a general of a united army, going from knight to captain is something I guess.

Characters you could make for Age of Imprisonment with your eyes closed:

Sheik. Mineru’s ninja bodyguard who is ambiguously gendered and morally grey (but not really). At some point ends up with the blueprints for the Purah Pad which will lay the foundation for the Sheikah Slate thousands of years later, in a silly paradox. Wields a naginata like the original Hyrule Warriors Impa.

Tantari. Name taken from Zelda 2 for fun. A high priestess, as Sonia was said to be before she became queen. Through her we learn about whatever it is people believe in during this period. Classic healer type with stuff borrowed from the series, such as Nayru’s Love, fairy stuff, Din’s Flame, SS Impa’s shield magic. Explicitly from Sonia’s tribe, not just a Hylian.

Dracuzo. Named after an area in Faron. Look. Someone built the original BotW Zonai ruins. Someone wore the barbarian set. So this guy. Dracuzo is a Rhoam / Tauro sized Hylian who is a big ol’ berserker. I guess he has access to big boomerangs and a two-handed sword.

Sonia. Sonia. Not as DLC later. She’s got time travel powers. You can even make her playable after her death if you massage the lore a little. Time travel powers. Bow of light.

Kotake and Koume. Do anything with them and make them playable, and not as a DLC later that doesn’t count. Right out of the gate. They’re two characters but they play as one. Run in circles to create magic death traps of ice and fire. Teleport to each other. Evil things.

Beedle. Post Skyward Sword it’s clear this guy is at all ends of the timeline, if that’s a thing now. Ancient Beedle. Has a pull random crap out of his bag move set. Beetle powers. You understand?

Linkle. Link’s own ancestor. Maybe give her brown hair this time and base her a little on Zelda 1 for the reference. Remember Linkle? Maybe give her the hookshot and other forgotten items. Let her have a conversation with Zelda that is about literally anything. You can call her something else. Seres.

Not to be a huge bitch but I’m looking over the twenty playable characters in Age of Imprisonment and half of them, the new ones, are boring. They don’t hold a candle to the average tumblr Original Character. I wish I could draw because I think most of these need a redesign and some cool feature each, both visually and narratively. They look like ordinary townsfolk from Breath of the Wild. Gorons, Zoras and Gerudo have been wearing the same style of clothes for 100000 years apparently. Compare this to the first Hyrule Warriors and it’s laughable honestly.

You can pick any fish for a Zora and they’re more or less generic, standardised town guard looking guys from BotW Zora’s Domain. Rito? Any bird. Gorons are a bit indistinct, but there’s a lot you can do with size and weight distribution. The Gerudo are okay but their faces are very similar, live a little, dare to give one of them a pointy OoT Ganondorf nose.

Also, there’s way more men than women in the cast, which again is just silly. I don’t think there’s any agenda behind that, it’s just not thinking at all.

Plus, what, no playable Ganondorf? Those two unique Gerudo by his side are unnamed, unplayable and don’t appear in the story much (to my knowledge)? No evil Zonai because fuck it why not? No glamorous flamboyant side villain that steal the spotlight and becomes everyone’s fav?

Thanks for reading my post for no one!

I’ve got second-hand regret that King Rauru wasn’t a twist villain or just straight up made the villain from the start, simply because all of Ganondorf’s lines in the present would sound better coming from him.

“…witness a King’s arrival…”

“That is what a king must do.”