Wind Waker and Tears of the Kingdom landscape similarities
I made an amazing discovery. I feel like I'm going nuts here. I was mapping Wind Waker onto TOTK and stumbled across some crazy coincidences. I measured out how the map would be placed if each square on Wind Waker's map was a square kilometer and TOTK's castle marked the location of the Tower of the Gods. As soon as I sized up the maps, I noticed this: Forest Haven from Wind Waker lands very close to Batrea Lake in TOTK. And what's at Batrea Lake?
Is this what remains of the Great Deku Tree from the Hero of Time's era?
I kept looking at what lined up on the map. Check out the curved shape of the snow-topped plateau that has the big shadow over it, and compare it to the curve of the treeline on the cliff on the right side of Outset. (You'll want to expand the picture to see it clearly.) It kind of took my breath away when I spotted it.
Greatfish Isle lines up close to Nero Hill, which is full of ruins, just like Greatfish is.
Ice Ring Island lines up with the large, unnamed rocky hill/plateau where Hyrule Field Skyview Tower was built. That rock rises up over the horizon like the big head on Ice Ring.
Headstone Island is a little north of TOTK's Spectacle Rock. The Earth Temple seems like a nice, sacred place for Satori to grow a sakura tree.
Alternatively, there is a cave through the Koukot Plateau that might be a reference instead. Or neither of them are. It's more of a stretch than the Deku Tree or the Outset cliff.
The northern portion of Wind Waker's map goes just a tad too far north, but that might be a miscalculation of mine. Gale Island is completely off the map, but this formation west of the Lomei Labyrinth shares a resemblance.
Though to be fair, the ice pillar that really sells the look only appeared in TOTK, not BOTW.
Forsaken Fortress is in the far northwestern part of Hyrule, in Hebra. Western Mount Drena is probably Windfall, but I couldn't compare the terrain very well because the falling snow kept limiting my visibility of the landscape. I noticed some possible similarities, but nothing obvious, like the rock arch over the ocean. Death Mountain is a little too far east, but it's always been apparent that Dragon Roost is supposed to be Death Mountain. A lot of what I pointed out are likely coincidences, but I'm pretty convinced that the Deku Tree and Outset are on purpose.
Here's my map in case anyone else wants to check things out:
If you found this interesting, here's a masterpost of other map comparisons I've done.
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
A simple map I made showing off the world of Ever Diverging Paths. Eventide is where Zola live, Aluron is where the demons mostly live, and Dromiand is monster territory.
The map for my Skyward Sword 2 au/idea
The surface, a few hundred years post the events of the first game. The landscape has changed quite a bit, with many small villages and settlements taking shape.
Classic Zelda species are also popping up, like the Gerudo and the Zora. Obviously this map isn’t a 100% accurate depiction of the locations, it’s vastly simplified. This is just to give an idea of where everything is.
(This is a rough idea of the map and Temples. As you can see, some names are more creative than others. If this was a proper game, everything would have a good name instead of “generic water temple”)
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
I haven’t posted any of this here yet, BUT I downloaded some gameboy zelda tilesets and ended up making a HUGE over world map over the course of a week! These were mostly just made for fun, so I didn’t follow any of the game boy screen limitations or anything! BUT ANY WAY wow this definitely came out a lot bigger than I ever planned for it to be!
Headcanon of the week: More of a map theory, actually. (Part 1)
Map theories archive
I'm gonna go through some games and talk about how I think the maps relate.
Part 1: NES The Legend of Zelda and Echoes of Wisdom.
I was very impressed by Echoes of Wisdom's map, so I'm very excited to talk about some interesting things I noticed while playing the game.
First things first, I'm just gonna slap TLoZ on EoW's map. It's much easier than I thought it would be:
Make sure to click/tap on the photos to easily swipe between them to see the similarities. The shore to the east has changed a bit over time, but even that is in the right place. I'll display some common features between the two locations:
The most notable similarities are the gravesite and the bodies of water in the center of TLoZ. Both maps have a lake south of a mountain with two islands. The lake has a river running south from it on both maps. The graveyard is west of the river. East of the two-island lake are two more lakes in TLoZ. At first, the lakes seem to be missing in Echoes, but I was amazed to discover that there is a depression in the ground in the exact spots where the lakes will be. You can see it more clearly here:
The two dry lakes are marked by Zelda's head. The location matches exactly. You can also have a clearer view of the possible future shoreline to the east. There are a few possible ways the shoreline could end up, based on the cliffs jutting out of the waters in the Zora area. I personally take great interest in the particularly tall cliff that goes east from the reticle and then goes south. Then the greenery ends, but there is a cliff that continues west at the bottom with water south of that. I think that's a very similar shape to the shoreline of TLoZ. I'll let you decide which cliffs you think mark the future shore.
Going back to the previous pictures with my notes scribbled on top, you'll see a few lines that connect circles. These are locations that may be connected. So far, I haven't had to stretch the map at all, but these northern locations are a bit off, so the relationship is more tenuous. The body of water to the northeast is especially questionable, but I found it worth mentioning. The connected circles more in the middle of the northern area have a little more evidence backing their possible connection. If you look closely at the LoZ map, you can hopefully see a river running from the smaller lake to the north into the larger two-island lake. Actually, let me get a better picture for you.
Ah, now you can see that river. It mostly runs east to west across the northern section of the map. On the maps with my markings, I marked that river with a purple line with an arrow pointing up to another purple line. Because the northern lake I circled in Echoes also has a river flowing from that body of water to the two-island lake. Part of it is much wider and contains little ice flows, but it could very well be the same northern lake with the same river flowing into the larger lake.
How this relates to other maps and the importance of it:
Finding NES The Legend of Zelda's location on the Echoes of Wisdom map is very useful because it was hard to figure out where TLoZ and Zelda II: Adventure of Link (AoL) were in relation to Lesser Hyrule (the ALttP/ALBW map). We knew AoL takes place primarily north of Death Mountain, and TLoZ is in the southwestern part of AoL's map, but it wasn't so clear where that was compared to earlier games on the downfall timeline. But since Echoes is just an extended version of the ALttP/ALBW map, we can see that TLoZ takes place just northeast of the castle, easily marked by the shared gravesite. Is the castle that the EoW princess lives in the same one that the LoZ princess lives in? Possibly! Or maybe Echoes' castle has been destroyed by the time of TLoZ, and that Zelda lives elsewhere. We can't say for sure.
Part 2 - Zelda II: Adventure of Link and Breath of the Wild (with a side of NES The Legend of Zelda)
Part 3 - Echoes of Wisdom and Breath of the Wild/TOTK
Part 4 - Discrepancies when putting it all together
