#uni rambles

Oh my god and then in that final tear/memory when Zelda takes it upon herself to swallow her secret stone despite the many warnings from Mineru that if she's to do that, there's no guarantee she'll be able to return to her former self. That takes alot of guts to do, throwing yourself away knowing fully well that you may never be the same after if there's even a sliver of hope that things can turn around and your people will be safe. The buildup was something else entirely, it starts of fairly calm, with it having bits and pieces of the BotW/TotK ost, a little of her lullaby sprinkled in, and then builds intensity as the scene goes on. Kinda like signifying that, again, she's doing this all for her kingdom and for Link. When she finally swallows the stone, it cuts to silence (save for the ambience), which kinda jars you and makes you see that hey, something's about to happen. As she begins to go through the draconification, it starts strong with her lullaby, progressing further and further into sounding more and more sinister, dark, going silent again as she tells Link to protect everyone and holy SHIT if that doesn't give you goosebumps I don't know what will. While I'm on this, I might be just reading into it too much but it almost sounds like her screaming (albeit kinda distorted) underneath her roaring as the dragon that second time she roars. Almost like that was the last bit of her in there, before she finally "lost herself" as Mineru warned her that she would

Tbh just about all of it was god tier imo. The visuals, the characters, all of it. Were there some things that could've been improved? Ofc, there's no real perfect game but fuck did this one come close

I could go on and on about just about anything you throw my way about TotK, but the real star of the show (to me anyway) is the soundtrack and all the little details in everything. I've always believed that the main three things that make or break something is the characters, the plot/story and the soundtrack. I've also always loved when there were these little details that gave whatever media it is a little more oomph. And DAMN did TotK have a banger of a soundtrack and was it packed with details

One of my favorite lil details with the soundtrack is when you're through with the Tarrey Town quest, you're able to make a house for Link, right? Cool cool, you get to do a bit of a Sims type beat, which that in itself had me giving mad props to Nintendo. And folks have been getting hella creative with their layouts, I saw this one person make their house look like the triforce if I'm not mistaken? It was cool as hell, there's a good bit of freedom. But the detail, if you listen real closely, the song that plays when you've got your house up and you're meandering around inside, it's the theme for when you're inside a building in Ocarina of Time. We already knew that there's gonna be lil nods to past games since in BotW there was a shitton already but they really bumped that up a few pegs in TotK

Another one of my favorites is in the cutscene where Rauru uses his power to keep Ganondorf on lock, as he's telling G-Money that eventually Link will come whoop his ass and to "remember his name," the main fucking Zelda theme starts playing which honestly just adds so much more fucking power to that cutscene and it had me tearing up hearing the main theme playing in the background. On that same note, in I think the last phase of the fight against Ganondorf before he swallows his stone, there's a huge throwback to BotW and you get those lil motifs of the blight battles

Yet another, at the end when you're going to catch Zelda after she turns back into her former self, the main theme for TotK is going. Cool, strong, fucking awesome right? As you get closer to Zelda, her lullaby starts playing and oh my godddd I was a mess, but then you throw in the main Zelda theme after as you're prompted to catch her and at that point you can see why the game is called "Tears of the Kingdom." Because it makes you cry, alot. At that point it's like you're coming full circle, before now you'd never failed to save Zelda, you'd always saved her before until now when you failed to catch her in the beginning. So with it starting with you not catching her and then ending with you catching her, it's like you're making up for that failure and I absolute adored that

Kinda on the same note about the soundtrack, I think the other temples (minus the spirit temple) had the same sort of thing going but I definitely noticed divine beast/past champion themes going for the wind temple. It's not that obvious until towards the end when you've got most of the terminals, then you start to really hear motifs to the Vah Medoh theme and Revali's theme

SPEAKING OF I noticed Tulin taking on a very slight Revali-ish attitude, even the npc's had noticed and took note of it. And if you think back to Age of Calamity, in one of the cutscenes, Tulin tells Revali that he wants to be just like him once he's older, while yes I know AoC isn't technically canon it's a cute as hell thing I noticed and can't help but have a huge ahh smile on my face thinking of. Lil Tulin's growing up, and he's starting to take after his role model, fuckin adorable

There's a shitton more lil details and references but I'd be here all day if I were to attempt to mention them all

While there's def a good few positives for this game, there's also a couple negatives imo. It's mostly just personal issues but I'm sure a few folks might agree with me

So first up, why did they have to call them secret stones? It's so damn hard to take things seriously that way. It makes it sound almost like some children playing pretend. Literally anything else could've been good, much better than secret stones. Especially because the same ol phrase gets repeated over and over again when the new champions/sages learn about what happened all those years ago. It gets so repetitive man

Speaking of champions, it seems a bit like they completely forgot about the past champions and the calamity. Like nobody mentions it, save for a couple npcs for side quests, and there's no memorials from what I can tell aside from the occasional stone Zelda dedicated to the casualties, Mipha Court in Zora's Domain, and some other things but that's just about it. I get that eventually life goes on but something about them seemingly forgetting entirely about them just rubs me the wrong way. And the divine beasts, what happened to them? I've heard a couple theories that it was because they were afraid another calamity would take place and they'd get possessed all over again so they took them down, which makes sense but it'd have been so cool to see them just in the background somewhere with the scenery, withering and decaying to the sands of time. Of course they wouldn't have to be explorable, but it would've added so much more oomph imo

And don't even get me started on some of the dialogue. I mentioned the stones thing, but there was some other lines that just, eurgh. Prime example is from none other than Ganondorf himself. At the end when you go to give him a good beatdown, he goes on this sort of monologue. Which is all fine and dandy, he's a villain after all, that's what villains do. But then he goes and says shit like "weak, peace loving cowards" and that "the world should be shrouded with darkness and not bathed in insufferable light"?? That makes him sound like an angsty teen trying to sound cool and edgy, I physically recoiled a bit. Not your finest moment, G-man.

Last but def not least, they really missed out on bringing back malice. I dunno, I just feel like calling it gloom really takes away from the overarching darker tone of the game. Like having it be called malice again would really sell that TotK is a bit darker, malice sounds more life threatening and harmful. Meanwhile it being called gloom just sounds more like you're describing how the weather's gonna be that day. Plus I just think malice spawn sounds much cooler than gloom spawn by a long shot