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Breath of the Wild:

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a post-apocalyptic tale that focuses not (solely) on the pain of the events of the apocalypse, but rather how life continues and sustains despite it. Taking place one hundred years after Calamity Ganon returned to Hyrule and ravaged the landscape and its people, Link—the Hylian Champion and Princess Zelda's appointed knight—awakens in a Hyrule that, while still marked and marred by ruins of former villages and decayed Guardians (sentinels that Ganon used to kill people), has healed and continued on without him. Breath of the Wild's core theme is hope, growth, and renewal—how second chances can come about even after undeniable, devastating defeat.

Because while Hyrule has moved on and healed, the story isn't over. Calamity Ganon wasn't banished; instead, Princess Zelda has been using every ounce of strength and magic she has to keep him bound in Hyrule Castle with her. There are still Guardians under his influence that attack and kill any civilians who come near them; there are still monsters roaming the landscape, who are reborn every blood moon. Link's task is go to Hyrule Castle and relieve Zelda of her duty by weakening Calamity Ganon enough for Zelda to seal him. And to do that (in the way the game intends), he has to recover the memories he lost during his one hundred year coma, and free the Divine Beasts, giant mechanical animals that are currently haunted both by a piece of Calamity Ganon's soul, and also the souls of the dead former Champions—his friends and allies.

But Breath of the Wild is not really Link's story. He has an important part of it, yes. But most of the memories he regains are memories that are focused on Zelda, on her character journey and, tangentially, his relationship with her. One hundred years in the past, the Royal Family was warned about Calamity Ganon's return, an event which was to occur on Princess Zelda's seventeenth birthday. In order to seal Calamity Ganon, they would need a Hero wielding the Master Sword, and a princess descended from the Goddess Hylia who inherited her sealing power. These two people are Link and Zelda, respectively. But while Link was able to draw the Master Sword when he was around twelve or thirteen, Zelda was not able to access her sealing power.

This was a massive pain point for Zelda. Her sealing power was not only her birthright, but it was vital for sealing away Calamity Ganon and saving the people of Hyrule. As the Calamity drew near, Zelda tried everything she could to unlock her power, including praying in freezing spring waters dedicated to the three golden goddesses. Her father, the king, layered the pressure on her, letting her know that the people of Hyrule viewed her as the "heir to a throne of nothing" because she couldn't unlock her power. She tried to focus on the recovered Sheikah technology they'd found to fight the Calamity, believing that could help—but her father impressed upon her that, no, her power was vital, and without that, she would not help.

Having been discovered as the Hero from his preteen years, Link, too, felt an immense amount of pressure not to let people down. He started concealing his emotions and not speaking so as to not appear as less of a Hero to them. Zelda, however, misunderstood this. She believed that he was silently judging her (just like everyone else was) for not being able to awaken her power. She thought he must hate her. And she, in turn, hated him, begrudging him being able to so easily (so she thought) step into his own destiny while she was denied hers.

Eventually, Zelda came to understand that Link was not judging her, that he actually did care about her. And little by little, they opened up to each other, becoming each other's confidant and best friend.

When Calamity Ganon returned, Zelda still hadn't awakened her power. The four Champions—Urbosa of the Gerudo, Revali of the Rito, Daruk of the Gorons, and Princess Mipha of the Zora—went to their Divine Beasts, which to their shock and ultimate demise had been also possessed by Calamity Ganon. Link took Zelda and ran—but they were pursued by Guardians, which you'll remember were also possessed by Ganon. Link held them off as long as he could, but eventually was worn down; and just before he died, Zelda's love for him awakened her power and she banished Ganon from all the Guardians present. Zelda ordered Sheikah attendants to take Link to the Shrine of Resurrection so his life could be saved, returned the Master Sword to its pedestal in the Lost Woods, and then went to the castle to bind Calamity Ganon there with her.

So what we have here is a story about Zelda's strength and power. The narrative of the past is focused on her journey. For the first time in the series history, she is not the one imprisoned; she is imprisoning Ganon, and holds him there for one hundred years, until Link is able to arise from his sleep in the Shrine of Resurrection. (And then regain his strength so he can relieve her of her duty.) Zelda is the one with the character arc. Zelda is at the core of the plot. Zelda is incredibly strong, not because of her power (though that is a part of it), but because of the mental and emotional fortitude she has had to bind Ganon to her for the past century to spare her people from as much harm as possible. (After, I should add, the death of her father, of her friends and allies, and very nearly her beloved appointed knight.)

The one last bit of important lore concerns the Sheikah technology mentioned above: the Guardians and the Divine Beasts.

The Sheikah have, historically, been the guardians of the Hyrulian royal family. While the royal family obviously has knights and soldiers, the Sheikah protect the royal family because the royal family is descended from the Goddess Hylia. Thus, their protection of the royal family comes down to religious belief and code; this has been true since even before Hyrule's official founding, as seen with Impa in Skyward Sword.

10,000 years before Breath of the Wild takes place, Calamity Ganon was set to once again ravish Hyrule. Once again, the people were given warning. The Sheikah, who had many brilliant scientists and inventors, sought to help the Hero and the Princess of the era seal away Calamity Ganon. To do this, they built great mechanical Guardians to serve as soldiers on the ground, as well as the Divine Beasts to weaken Ganon's power.

This plan worked. The Guardians were able to kill Ganon's monsters, while the Divine Beasts successfully weakened Ganon. Calamity Ganon was sealed away once again.

However, the King of Hyrule of that era grew paranoid about the Sheikah's technological prowess. Although the Sheikah were devoted to the royal family because of the religious belief mentioned above, he grew fearful that they would turn their technology on him in order to usurp him. Thus, he decreed that the Sheikah were to be banished from the land of Hyrule, and their technology buried underground or destroyed. Further, any Sheikah who was found to be still conducting scientific investigation or research was to be killed.

As a result of this, the Divine Beasts and all of the Guardians were hidden away underground. The same was true of the Sheikah Shrines that dotted the landscape (places for training the Hero), and the Sheikah Towers (used to generate maps of the landscape). Everything was buried underground and deactivated.

The Sheikah, meanwhile, split into two factions. One faction, still devoted to Hylia and her descendants, hid themselves away in a hidden village known as Kakariko. Another faction, feeling that Hylia had betrayed them through her descendants, went on to form the Yiga Clan, who swore allegiance to Ganon and vowed to kill any future Heroes and Princesses.

So, 9,900 years pass. Once again, Calamity Ganon is set to rise. The Sheikah who are still loyal reach out to the royal family, and the Sheikah technology is excavated: the Shrines, the Sheikah Slate (used to activate the Shrines and Towers), the Guardians, and the Divine Beasts. Champions are chosen to pilot the Divine Beasts, the Guardians are trained by the knights . . . all seems well.

But Calamity Ganon learned from last time. And this time, he took control of the Divine Beasts and the Guardians and used them against those who sought to destroy him. And that was how the Calamity occurred.

So, with all of this groundwork from Breath of the Wild laid, we can now begin to talk about the ways in which Age of Calamity and especially Tears of the Kingdom disrespected it.

Hyrule Warriors — Age of Calamity:

Age of Calamity is a spinoff in the same style as Hyrule Warriors—which, in turn, is a Zelda-styled Warriors game. When Age of Calamity was being marketed, it was marketed as the prequel to Breath of the Wild; much of the marketing at the time stated that this game would show us what life was like in the pre-Calamity era, and that we would get to see even more of how things led to the events that in turn would lead into Breath of the Wild.

This turned out to be a lie.

I'm not being dramatic by saying this. The events of Age of Calamity do not, in any way, lead into the events of Breath of the Wild. Rather, Age of Calamity is a time-travel fix-it AU which makes it so that no one important dies during the Calamity, and Calamity Ganon is sealed away by the end.

Now, if the game had been marketed as such—if it had been marketed as, "this is your chance to prevent the tragedy of the Calamity!"—I don't think I would have been as mad. It's the fact that I got my hopes up for a deep dive into the tragedy (as well as the meat of Link and Zelda's relationship, but more on that in a second) only to not get that at all which pissed me off so badly.

I know there are some who would say, well, you can't show what actually happened, because then the game will end on a downer. To that I say, Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core exists and is excellent. Crisis Core ends with the brutal execution of its protagonist because it has to. Because it is a prequel to Final Fantasy VII, and Zack Fair is dead before that game begins, because he had to die in order for main character Cloud Strife to inherit his identity. (It makes sense in context. Also, I know that apparently the remake is retconning all this, but I'm talking about the original games.) Players are capable of playing through tragedy, especially when that tragedy leads to a second game where the wrongs are righted (and we already know that they are because we played that game first). Or if they really didn't want us to have a downer ending, then tell us outright via the marketing that this is an alternate universe fix-it so that we know what we're getting going in.

But even then, I personally find the idea of a time-travel fix-it to be unsatisfying at best when it comes to Breath of the Wild. Because while I love Urbosa, Revali, Mipha, and Daruk (and loved them ever since Breath of the Wild, from the small scenes we got with them in flashbacks and with their spirits), their deaths mattered. The deaths of the countless who died in Calamity Ganon's razing of Hyrule mattered. This all mattered because remember what I said up top: Breath of the Wild's theme is hope, is growth, is renewal, is getting a second chance after a devastating, undeniable loss. It's about how life continues despite devastation, despite the world ending. You can't have that theme if the world doesn't end, if no one actually dies. It completely nullifies what was a beautiful and important story.

And I do think that Breath of the Wild has a beautiful and important story. There are so many post-apocalyptic stories that focus on the pain, the loss, the devastation. Rarer, I feel, is the story that focuses on new growth, on hope, on life persisting. Breath of the Wild is a beautiful game both in its visuals and in its theming. Because we interact with the people of Hyrule. We interact with the NPC who calls out to Link if the player puts Link on the edge of a bridge, begging him not to jump because life is still worth living. We interact with NPCs who are attacked by monsters while truffle hunting, whom we save. We interact with NPCs who searching for treasure, who are running businesses, who are cultivating crops, who are living the best lives they can in spite of the dangers that still persist and the devastating that ravaged their home a century ago. We see that despite the turmoil, despite the death, that despair did not win. And that is beautiful, and also important at a time in our real world where there is death and devastating happening every single day.

Age of Calamity, though, doesn't want that. It spits on it. It undoes it. Because who cares about telling a story about overcoming loss and adversity when you can instead just undo it all and avoid that altogether. Wouldn't it be neat if we could use time travel to avert all the world's crises? Age of Calamity thinks so, and frankly, I hate it.

(Funnily enough, even the MCU was able to avoid this. Because while time travel was used to undo the Snap in Avengers: Endgame, it wasn't a bloodless victory; Natasha Romanoff and Tony Stark both died for it.)

The other way Age of Calamity spits on Breath of the Wild is through its portrayal of Link and Zelda's relationship.

I touched on this above, but in Breath of the Wild, Link and Zelda's relationship is one that happened organically, slowly, over time. Zelda did not like Link at first, through no fault of his own. We see several flashbacks where she is cold toward or outright yells at him to get away from her. We see one where she flees all the way to Gerudo Town to escape him (because men aren't allowed in Gerudo Town). She acknowledges in her diary that she knows she isn't being fair, that he's just doing her job (even right after she yells at him she acknowledges in her diary that she feels bad about it), but she can't help the way she feels, either. It isn't until he saves her from an assassination attempt that she starts making an effort to get to know him, and from there, their relationship goes from a purely professional one to one of friendship, companionship, and ultimately love.

Age of Calamity decided that it wasn't interested in this. We don't see any friction in Link and Zelda's relationship at all. They are polite and kind to each other the entire time, with some players even able to point at hints of romance from the very beginning of their relationship. The most we get is Zelda wondering to Urbosa why everything comes so easily to Link, and Urbosa immediately telling her that Link has troubles of his own. And that's it. That's the most that we get from them. We don't get to see their relationship blossom, for it to go through stages from them being strangers (and Zelda having one-sided beef) to becoming so close that Zelda was able to awakening her sealing power because of her love for him. I actually don't remember how Zelda awakened her power in Age of Calamity, but I know that it was nothing as emotionally powerful as the moment in Blatchery Plain in Breath of the Wild. Link and Zelda's relationship was flattened, and both of their characters (but mostly and most importantly Zelda's) suffered because of it.

There were other parts of the continuity that suffered as a result of all the retconning / gameplay. For instance, we see Link pull the Master Sword in Age of Calamity, when we shouldn't have, because he had it since he was twelve according to Breath of the Wild's lore (as stated in Creating a Champion and implied in Mipha's diary). But the issues with spitting on the themes and ruining characters are much, much more important to me.

Tears of the Kingdom:

Tears of the Kingdom is the direct sequel to Breath of the Wild. This is not the first time this has happened in the franchise's history; Majora's Mask is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, A Link to the Past has three (arguably four) direct sequels, and Phantom Hourglass is a direct sequel to Wind Waker. But this is only the second time that a direct sequel has taken place in the same Hyrule as its predecessor. (Phantom Hourglass being the other time, although that wasn't exactly Hyrule . . . again, it makes sense in context.)

We aren't given an exact amount of time that has passed between Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, but we are given context clues to figure it out, mainly in the appearance of children in the game. Several of the Hateno Village children have grown, and most notably, two NPCs who were married in Breath of the Wild now have a daughter around kindergarten age. Thus, we can deduce that about five or six years have passed. Unlike the jump between all of the previous Zelda games and Breath of the Wild, where tens of thousands of years have passed and as such it's understandable that continuity might be a little shaky in places, five or six years is a very short amount of time. It should be completely possible for the lore to be kept consistent in such a short time frame.

Nintendo failed to do this.

One of the most glaring continuity errors is the complete and utter absence of Sheikah technology. There are no longer Sheikah Towers, nor are there Sheikah Shrines. The decayed and deactivated Guardians are nowhere to be seen, except for on the roof of Purah's lab. The Sheikah Slate is no more, and instead has been replaced with the "Purah Pad" (which is essentially the same thing, except renamed). All of the Sheikah's contributions to Breath of the Wild's Hyrule have been completely erased, which is, frankly, gross considering how the Sheikah were treated earlier in this Hyrule's history. (Namely, that their technology was buried and destroyed, they were erased . . . the same thing happened again, except with no explanation.)

Well, I should say almost no explanation. One of the directors for Tears of the Kingdom (it might have been Aonuma but I'm not sure) tried to give the half-baked excuse that the Sheikah technology vanished because Calamity Ganon was sealed. However, this makes no sense, because:

That didn't happen last time Calamity Ganon was sealed, 10,000 years ago, and

There is still a Guardian on Purah's lab

It seems to me that the answer "the technology vanished because Calamity Ganon was gone" was a half-baked answer thought up on the spot. It doesn't fit with the narrative at all.

Now, you may be thinking that this is not a big deal. And I suppose to some, it isn't. It is to me, because I think the Sheikah deserve better than that, but if this was the only glaring continuity issue in the game, I wouldn't have a problem.

However, it gets so much worse than that.

It seems that Nintendo decided to respond to some criticisms of Breath of the Wild voiced by the type of Zelda fan who is allergic to change. There were some Zelda fans who were incensed at the fact that Ganon was no longer a character in Breath of the Wild (the most understandable of this flavor of criticism but one that I was all right with), who were incensed that there were not big temples in Breath of the Wild (the Divine Beasts WERE the temples but all right), who hated that there were no Sages in Breath of the Wild (Sages aren't a staple but even if they were, the Champions were Sages by a different name). And Nintendo decided to respond by catering to these criticisms despite how clumsily they had to work things into Breath of the Wild's Hyrule.

First, Ganon. They decided to stick Ganondorf's desecrated corpse under Hyrule Castle, in deep tunnels that we never knew existed. (They also decided to rename Ganon's Malice to Gloom, which . . . a.) why, and b.) gloom sounds far less intimidating than malice.) The claim was that Ganon had been impaled and left to rot there during a new era of Hyrule's founding (so not Skyward Sword, but something else) by the first king of Hyrule, named Rauru, and that once Link and Zelda show up to investigate, he gets revived and yeets Zelda into the past and cuts off Link's arm.

So, there are a few issues with this.

The first is what I've already touched upon, which is that this "era of Hyrule's founding" that we're shown contradicts what was previously established. Now, I could buy the argument that this is the era of this Hyrule's founding, which is separate from Skyward Sword and also is unrelated to the new Hyrule that Link and Tetra form after the conclusion of Wind Waker (/ Phantom Hourglass). However, we're never given any indication that this is the case. Moreover, the original conceit behind Breath of the Wild having references to all three timelines was that Breath of the Wild took place after a timeline merger at some point along Hyrule's history. How or when this timeline merger happened we aren't told, but that was the explanation given.

So, to me, that should return Hyrule's founding back to Skyward Sword. And arguably, that's what we're led to believe in Breath of the Wild, given that Zelda's powers are explicitly because she is descended from the goddess Hylia, with the Triforce itself even appearing on her hand when she activates her sealing power.

But that isn't what we're given. Instead, we're shown a new era of Hyrule's founding, with the first King of Hyrule being a member of the Zonai tribe, who are in effect goat people, and the first queen being a Hylian woman named Sonia (even though girls born into the royal family are meant to be named Zelda because that was the name of the very first Queen of Hyrule in Skyward Sword).

Rauru and Sonia present their own problems, but I want to stick to Ganon and why he, specifically, is an issue, so we'll return to them in a bit.

In the version of events we're given, Ganon(dorf) is the King of the Gerudo, as he normally is. However, the Gerudo do not have a king in Breath of the Wild. Instead, they are led by a chief. In the era of the Calamity, this was Urbosa; now, it's her descendant Riju. Gerudo Town doesn't allow men entry in Breath of the Wild even after Link (disguised as a woman in a story bit a good number view as transmisogynistic) helps them calm the Divine Beast Vah Naboris. But if they had a king at one point, then surely they would have had to?

But this isn't touched upon, nor explained. We aren't told how or why they have a king in this era. We aren't told that Ganondorf's actions (leading the Gerudo in war against the rest of Hyrule) is why they no longer allow men or have kings. We aren't given any sort of continuity balm. Ganondorf's inclusion as the Gerudo King isn't used to enrich the history of the Gerudo of this era; it's just tacked on because people and Nintendo wanted Ganondorf to be a character and didn't think to spend any time incorporating that into the lore they had already established.

Next, Ganondorf's behavior in this game . . . doesn't make sense at all. As I mentioned, Ganondorf is revived when Link and Zelda show up to where his body is imprisoned at the start of the game. He is revived to the point where he is buff and healthy. You would think that, at this point, he would attempt to wage war against Hyrule once again; perhaps he would try to reestablish dominance over the Gerudo, perhaps he would take an active role in murdering people in revenge.

Nope. He decides to just sit in his pit and wait for Link to recover and come after him again.

I understand the need to have him be the Final Boss. But there is no explanation given for why he decides to sit there and wait for Link to come after him. You would think he would want to hunt Link down while Link was still weak in order to eliminate the threat. Yet, he does not. Instead, he just sits and waits. Unlike in Breath of the Wild, where the reason given was that Zelda was literally holding Ganon there with her, we have no such reasoning in Tears of the Kingdom. Instead, Ganon just looks completely ineffective waiting in his hidey-hole for the Hero to come and shank him.

Again, there is no emotional or narrative weight here. There's no pressure. Link can take as long as he wants because Ganon will never leave his hole. It's fine. It's really fine.

So those are the issues with bringing Ganon back the way they did. (And, I should add, completely discarding the sequel hook they'd set up in the process; in Breath of the Wild's golden ending, Zelda and Link are headed to Zora's Domain because Divine Beast Vah Ruta is malfunctioning; since Vah Ruta no longer exists in Tears of the Kingdom, this is rendered null and void.)

Now let's talk about Rauru and Sonia.

As I mentioned, Rauru and Sonia being the very first king and queen of Hyrule contradict what we already know of Zelda lore. If that was the biggest issue they presented, I could get over it. But no, they aren't.

First, they really lean in on the idea that Hyrule is a land that is supported by the Zonai people. Again, the Sheikah are nowhere. Despite the Sheikah serving the Hyrule royal family because of the goddess Hylia, they and their technology are nowhere. Instead, we have the Zonai and Zonai technology, which in many ways is exactly like Sheikah technology, except it's green instead of blue. Honestly, I see no reason for this to have happened, other than "we want something new" or perhaps even to give the implication that perhaps the Sheikah stole Zonai tech, which a.) why, and b.) no.

In any case, the Zonai play a much more important role in this era of founding than the Hylians do, with Sonia being the only named Hylian character we have. (And the Sheikah, again, being absent.) But worse still is what is done with the powers the two have.

Now, given everything that I've said, you might assume that Sonia is descended from Hylia, and thus has the powers that come with being Hylia's descendant—namely, the sealing power that Zelda uses against Calamity Ganon once she finally is able to access it within herself. This is what would make logical, lore-accurate sense.

It's also wrong.

Instead, Sonia has time-reversal abilities and Rauru has the sealing power. Rauru is the one who seals Ganondorf beneath Hyrule castle in the age of imprisonment, while the Sages and Zelda stand around looking open-mouthed as he accomplishes this. Rauru is, essentially, treated as the divine one, and the most important person in the age of imprisonment, while Sonia is, frankly, fridged in order to create drama and give Zelda a "secret stone." (More on that in a second.) Considering how Breath of the Wild was about Zelda coming into her power, and her strength as a character, and how vital and central she was to the story, to see her agency and importance and even power given to this male character is, honestly, an insult. And it's an insult made even worse by the fact that Rauru shouldn't even have that fucking power, because he is both a.) a man, and b.) not Hylian. That power came from Hylia, passed down through her female descendants, something that was even repeated in Breath of the Wild and its corresponding companion book, Creating a Champion. Nintendo couldn't even keep THAT straight? Are you fucking kidding me?

And then there's how Zelda is treated in all of this. Zelda is yeeted back to this age of Hyrule's founding, and given that one of her core character traits is that she loves research and discovery, in a way this is exciting for her. And her interactions with Sonia and Rauru are sweet. However, Zelda is rendered both out of focus (because of the importance placed upon Rauru), and has her agency completely ripped away from her as a result. Because not only does Rauru now have the sealing power used against Ganondorf, but Zelda comes to realize that the only way she can get back to her own time is by waiting for the millennia to pass. And she decides to do this by swallowing a "secret stone" to turn herself into a mindless dragon, unaware of who she is and without access to any of her memories.

The issues with this are, again, numerous.

The first issue is that Zelda being the light dragon is, again, a contradiction to Breath of the Wild. It would be one thing if this was planned all along and the light dragon existed in Breath of the Wild, flying through Hyrule's skies in the same way that Dinraal, Naydra, and Farosh do. However, it doesn't. Thus, there is a continuity error with the light dragon not existing just five or six years ago when she should have.

Next, it removes Zelda's agency and power in the plot and reduces her to a damsel who has to be saved. Yes, she chose to swallow the "secret stone" (I put it in quotes because that's a fucking stupid name). However, once she did that, she lost all sense of self and identity, and really only got turned back into herself in the end through deus ex machina. Contrast this with Breath of the Wild, where Zelda was wholly conscious and in control for one hundred years as she held Calamity Ganon back. She went from being the one who not only had the sealing power, but who had the strength and fortitude to take control, to being someone who just needed to be rescued because she was turned into a mindless dragon. To repeat myself from earlier, are you fucking kidding me?

Moving on from Hyrule's royals, let's next examine the temples and the Sages. The temples have the same issue as the light dragon: they were nowhere to be found in Breath of the Wild, and while the Water Temple has an explanation (it's in the fucking sky), there is no explanation given for the others. Nor is there an explanation given, I should add, for the Zonai Shrines all over Hyrule's landscape, or why we have them and not just updated Sheikah Shrines. Nintendo just hates the Sheikah, I guess.

The Sages are another story. As I said before, the Champions were Sages, just under a different name. They were able to form special connections with their Divine Beasts, and each had a special power; Urbosa could summon lightning, Revali could create wind from nothing to boost himself into the sky, Daruk had an impenetrable shield, and Mipha had healing powers. In Breath of the Wild, we see that Daruk's descendant, Yunobo, has inherited his shielding power, which is nice.

In Breath of the Wild we're given Sages, most of whom are characters we met in the previous game. Riju, Urbosa's descendant, is said to be the Sage of Lightning and is now given lightning powers. Sidon, Mipha's younger brother, doesn't have healing powers like her, but he can make a protective water bubble. Tulin is a young Rito who is unrelated to Revali, but can summon wind behind him. And you would think, well, we know Yunobo's power, because of the last game! But no. Yunobo no longer has Daruk's shield, and instead can just roll really fast and break things apart.

Again, this game takes place only five or six years after the first one. Yunobo was established to have Daruk's shield. Yet now he doesn't, because . . . ?

Well, likely because they felt that it would overlap with Sidon's power. But give Sidon a different power, then. Sidon wasn't shown to have any powers at all in the first game. He could have easily had super strength while Yunobo had the shield. But here again, we have a continuity issue because apparently the writers were too goddamn lazy to look at what they'd already established.

The fifth Sage, the Sage of Spirit, is Mineru, who was Rauru's sister, and who was also the Sage in the past. Her spirit inhabits a suit of armor now. You'd think they'd also have a new Sage for the present era, and that it would be a Sheikah woman known as Purah who has a lot in common with Mineru, but nope. The Sheikah aren't allowed to have anything.

It's a nitpick to be sure, but I also simply do not like how there was no mention of Sages at all in Breath of the Wild, only for them to be treated as so vitally important now. It would be one thing if it was stated that each people's Sage became a Champion, but no. This is a completely new idea. And to add insult to injury, the Champions from the previous game are barely mentioned, despite how important they were. I would say Mipha gets the most mention, but even her statue was sent off to Ploymus Mountain, whereas it previously had a place of vital importance in Zora's Domain. The disrespect is tangible. Like, "their story is over, forget them now!"

And it's not as if they wanted us to be attached to the previous Sages, either, because they aren't even given names, let alone any characterization. I assume they're named and fleshed out in Age of Imprisonment, but again, I haven't played that and I don't really plan to.

Tears of the Kingdom also fails in a way that Breath of the Wild succeeded in another area: non-linear storytelling.

Breath of the Wild, as you can probably tell, is a character-driven narrative. Finding out what happened one hundred years ago is the main through-line of the story, and we find that out through discovering what its characters went through: Zelda most importantly, but also the four Champions. Because of this, it truly does not matter at all in which order you go to visit the Divine Beasts, because each area is devoted to its respective Champion. You learn new information every single time, no matter where you go. The memories that you regain across the map don't spoil this either, because the memories you regain are centered on Zelda, whose story overlaps with but is different from the four Champions.

Tears of the Kingdom, however, massively fucks this up. First, since we now have Sages that we need to dedicate time to, every single Temple ends with the Sage of the Past telling the Sage of the Present about the imprisoning war. And it is the same exact goddamn story every godforsaken time. It is extremely repetitive and therefore dull. There is no emotional impact, because we have no reason to care about the Sage of the Past. They weren't anyone's friend, but merely an ancestor. And the story is not complicated, so the repetition of hearing it four separate times isn't needed either.

Moreover, the "mystery" that is meant to drive the plot is why and how Zelda keeps being spotted in the present. But since the memories found across Hyrule show us very clearly that Zelda is in the past (because they are her memories, cried from the light dragon, hence the title), you can figure out by the first temple that Zelda is in the past and that the Zelda we see is either a projection of her through time (as she did near the beginning of the game to give Link the time reversal power), or a trick. And it is indeed a trick, by Ganon, piloting a phantom Zelda remotely.

So what we're left with is a gameplay loop that does not work, and one that has made people decry non-linear storytelling in Zelda games even though Breath of the Wild pulled it off flawlessly. In trying to revert to a classic Zelda story, they lost the ability to tell a non-linear story. It doesn't work. It's a bad narrative.

But speaking of the narrative—what is the theme?