#and its kind of nintendos fault with botw/totk | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

minnowtank · 1 year

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ok so i was already disappointed with totk's story and now i feel like people are making up things that didnt happen. like how does any of this represent a character progression. when compared to her botw self, totk zelda does not experience character growth. she merely learns that she has to make a sacrifice, then acts on it, with no internal conflict in between. and the sacrifice is basically just a less-bad version of the sacrifice she previously made. nothing she does in totk is connected to her arc in botw; in fact, the game makes a point of not mentioning her conflict in botw at all because it would only serve to highlight the sheer lack of growth she experiences in this game

large spoilers below

totk's story is essentially a watered down and neutered version of botw's story.

-> botw's story leads up to zelda sacrificing her humanity to seal ganon away by entering what is essentially a time prison where she and ganon are trapped, alive and perpetually conscious, in zelda's destroyed childhood home. throughout the story she struggles to learm how to use her magic due to a mental block, has an external conflict with her father that ends up fueling her internal conflict about her magic, is forced to become more mature in the face of tragedy, learns to like and value link, her appointed knight, has to own up to not being able to access her sealing power in time, and ends up being the last person standing. though her father was definitely to blame for worsening the mental block that kept her from learning her magic in time, the death of her father, champions, and the kingdom are her fault, too, because she had her own established flaws (i.e being stubborn contributed to her mental block). so she puts her life on the line to save the last living person she's grown to care about -- link. it's a tragic story, and a cautionary tale, and zelda grows from it. she is a fully realized character with a unique personality.

-> totk's story leads up to zelda sacrificing her humanity to transform into a dragon in order to act as a mobile USB charging port for the master sword; this causes her to go into a coma/dream state for most of it (debatably she gets out of the coma state when it is time to reunite with link except that makes very little sense when you think about how dragonification is explained. however she does say that she was "dreaming"). she learns a new magical ability with relative ease, and does not have any internal conflicts caused by the other characters in the story because they are all nice to her and believe her the whole time. nothing she does affects the story beyond her final act/what happens to rauru and ganondorf because its already "set in stone" and its made extremely clear that none of them could have done anything to stop ganondorf since he was too powerful. there is only one thing she does that COULD be seen as unintentionally assisting in ganondorf's rise to power but that was mostly sonia (& rauru's) fault, and also it's such an uncharacteristically stupid and nonsensical thing that it's clear they literally only act in this way to have the plot move along.*

essentially, zelda repeats a similar sacrificial act at the end of the story but goes through 0 personal journey/arc of her own beyond deciding that shes going to do it and learning a fun new power along the way. but oh no it gets worse. over and over the characters drill into your head that dragonification is permanent and cannot be undone in any way, and that zelda will be giving up her body and mind forever. they say this literally over and over again and then guess what happens. SHES RETURNED TO HUMAN FORM AT THE END. WITH NO SIDE EFFECTS EITHER BTW SHES JUST COMPLETELY RESTORED. because zelda turning into dragonification was a kind of "death" for her since she becomes a husk, this ends up being one of the most drawn-out fakeout deaths i have ever seen in a piece of media. i dont understand why nintendo did this like just COMMIT??! i still wouldnt have liked the overall story, but i wouldve given them credit if they just had zelda stay a dragon forever. at least with botw the entire point of zelda's sealing-ganon-away sacrifice was that she held out hope that link would be healed and come back to save her. so its never meant to be a permanent thing like dragonification. with the dragonification sacrifice the story literally just lies to you. LMAOOOO

anyway i was not satisfied with the story in this game. zelda is once again ripped away from link but the game doesnt have a good reason for it. the game really expects you to be like "yeah we decided to separate zelda from link for the entire game so that she could be used as a charging port for the master sword only to have her come back at the end with no side effects to her sacrifice. this was definitely a better idea than having the player rebuild the destroyed master sword alongside zelda and getting to learn more about zelda and develop her relationship with link. yeah we also decided to not flesh out link at all in this game, like we dont give him any personal motivation or any kind of feeling or the faintest whiff of a backstory to make him feel like a real person that exists and not just a player avatar. oh and he barely emotes in the story cutscenes for no reason again. hes not allowed to smile, and even if theres a point where he could be smiling the cutscene wont let you see it. arent you happy? oh also there are next to no references to the previous game's events and almost all of the sheikah technology has disappeared without a trace and no one brings that up. also zelda never brings up that she sacrificed herself for 100 years when talking about how she is committed to dragonification even though literally anyone in her shoes would bring that up or at least allude to it. also we didnt give any of the zonai characters or sonia any actual flaw and just had it so that ganondorf was just too powerful to beat them without it even really being their fault, but we'll pretend like rauru had "hubris" anyway even though he fucking was, quote, "aware of ganondorf's evil nature." YAYY"

*i am referring to the scene in which sonia and zelda confront the puppet zelda. the scene establishes that they've known that the puppet zelda is in fact a puppet from the start, but for some fucking reason they decide to follow along with it and have the puppet lead them outside the castle interior to an unguarded area (the first line from sonia confirms this). then, and only then, do they reveal that they are in on it, and by that time it is already too late and ganondorf is able to sneak up on sonia, kill her, and take her secret stone. maybe this is supposed to be a representation of the nonexistent "hubris" rauru has but it makes no sense. you know it's a puppet, so why dont you just immediately say that and try to fight the puppet in the guarded castle with rauru? what? why would you LISTEN TO WHAT ITS TELLING YOU TO DO?? these characters are supposed to be smart right? anyway just having it so that nobody knows it's a puppet would have salvaged this entire scene .

#totk spoilers #🐟

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