#i didnt add a readmore bc theyre annoying to navigate with im sorry. also the post gets yeeted if i ever change my url

[heliianth]

hey zelda nerd tell me about the inconsistencies in aoc i don't know much abt botw and i wanna hear

holy fuck. u have unlocked a pandoras box

ok to preface: i do not hate aoc. i clocked over 100 hours in the original hyrule warriors and i think aoc is better, and the only reason i dont have as much playtime is due to the fact that i am not 11 with infinite free time forever anymore. for a dynasty warrior type game where spamming ur light combo chain is typically a viable option no matter what it is actually decently difficult (at least to me) and the skill trees are engaging. there are no characters that feel like an absolute slog and the campaign is fun, if short. it is a fun game. and there ARE some character interactions that are gold—notably, the ones between sidon and mipha are genuinely heartbreaking, the DLC scene with revali and tulin is the best shit to happen to his character ever, and this version of link and zelda are adorable, despite what im going to talk abt for the next like. hour

the inconsistences that ive noticed are ones that like. u guessed it. have to do with link and zelda. in botw, they're the ones with the most screentime, and therefore have more material to botch compared to the champions who are pretty simple to understand and don't have more than a few establishing scenes outside of the divine beasts. they serve to support the theme as simple anchors for the player to relate each area in the game with the story. in comparison, link and zelda carry the themes of botw on their backs

botw is About a lot of things, but the main About is healing from failure by finding connection and beauty in yourself and the people around you. the story is fundamentally set up on a tragedy—the apocalypse happens, a countless amount of innocent people die, and in hindsight it seems entirely preventable, but it happens anyway. the entire game purposefully and starkly contrasts this backstory with serene, peaceful, grassy landscapes and an anxiety-free method of story delivery. there's melancholic optimism in the fact that even the most world-ending disaster is moved past by trees and wildlife and people. this video is an excellent deconstruction if you want something to listen to for like, an hour. it phrases things better than i ever could (it also dives into what im going to say abt zelda as a character but hang on with me for a little bit). to paraphrase it, botw says "life is tenacious". but it's also kind of hard to grasp this, for an audience, when it's on such a magnitude---most people cannot relate to the calamity ravaging hyrule and forcing it into a state where it takes 100 years to heal as a failure. to actually convey the theme, it needs more personalized representations for the audience to connect with

zelda and link, as characters, show different failures and ways to react to them. before i start i want to say that when i say "failure" referring to them, im talking about what is considered by the people around them as a failure. zelda physically not being able to unlock her magic or link being like, an actual person, is not a failure. social construction and all that. the importance is them believing, perceiving, it to be a failure among themselves. capiche?

im going to talk about link first, because link is the foundation that zelda builds on. ive made posts about it before, but the way links backstory is constructed as a collection of clues that must be strung together by people who are dedicated to it is representative of him as a person, or at least who he used to be. link is a child soldier who draws the master sword at 12-13 years old and finds the weight of being one of two people with the responsibility of killing the prehistoric incarnation of hatred and death unceremoniously dropped on his shoulders. to cope with that, his response is absolute conformity. he shuts down so completely that he doesn't speak, or even emote, to anyone, for fear of not being what hyrule needs from the mythical hero of legend. he decides dehumanizing himself is easier than not living up to that expectation.

zelda is similar but different in some very key ways. she has a direct lineage tracing back to the goddess hylia, all of whose female descendents possess some form of holy sealing magic that vanquishes ganon. she loses her mother at age six and the king thinks it is a brilliant idea to give her one year to mourn before forcing her into trying to unlock her sealing magic via rigorous prayer and devotion. despite her best efforts, she finds she cannot conform, that she genuinely cannot do what people are asking her to. instead, she tries to put herself to use somewhere else, finding passion and connection in the sheikah and their ancient technology, and holds onto a spirit of individuality for 10 years straight.

the way zelda builds on link is in the fact that she has a character arc. eventually, after a while of hating and projecting insecurity onto link, who refuses to communicate back to her, she develops the courage to reach out an olive branch. with that, she finds connection and worth and, yeah, love. link opens up to her a little bit, but cannot bring himself to lower his facade completely. this uhhh fucking kills him. he dies (or, i guess, "falls" but the place they put him in was called the shrine of resurrection. he was dead). and zelda lives because this newfound connection and understanding was the key to unlocking her sealing magic, which saves both her and fort hateno. with link and zelda, pre-calamity, botw says "finding worth, connection, and love (im really trying to dodge amatonormativity please see my attempts . please) within yourself and others is the key to overcoming failure. by denying your own humanity and isolating, you're dooming yourself." zelda uses her connection and love to ward off the calamity for 100 years. basic magic of friendship stuff

link has more development in the fact that hes the personification of the literal land of hyrule itself and the themes come full circle by his death healing him in the same way the land healed after 100 years and only when he regains his connection to zelda, uninhibited by the restrictions he placed on himself pre-calamity, can he go help her blah blah blah thats largely unimportant because that's post-calamity stuff, which is irrelevant to aoc.

and god we JUST arrived at aoc im so sorry but i needed to explain all that to succinctly explain why i'm bothered by the way it writes these two. ok. you see all that i just splurged out? with help from all my brainworms and 500 hours of playtime? aoc does none of this.

aoc was kind of doomed from the beginning. botw being post-post-apocalypse is so important to its themes and narrative that everyone and their mom expected aoc to be the darkest zelda game ever released. it was marketed as a botw prequel--- the fleshed out story of the calamity, which, as i mentioned, ends with everyone including link fucking dying, and that was what people wanted out of it. i personally had suspicions back in, what, 2021? that it wasnt going to end on a note like that but everyone was largely hopeful that it was going to remain faithful and let us experience the story that was largely told through flashbacks in botw. this is not the case and it was so obviously not the case that i feel silly for believing otherwise, because its hyrule warriors, and more importantly, its a video game. they're not going to end a video game, especially not one in a genre which has a gameplay loop that relies on post-campaign content and grinding, on an unwinnable final boss. would it have been metal as fuck? yes. but from an actual game content standpoint, where they want to reward the player for more playtime? not gonna happen.

so already were off to a bad start. but an everyone lives no one dies au isn't the worst case scenario, i suppose. but. um.

aoc not only straight up does not include the important parts of link's backstory that i mentioned (that is, the fact that he is deathly anxious and traumatized and that this is the reason why he's quiet), but it also doesn't really... have a pronounced "zelda finds connection" arc. at least, it's not notable enough for me to remember it. sure, she grows closer to link, and her love of him is still what unlocks her magic, but she never despises him like she started out doing in botw. there's little to no projection in a way that emphasizes her independence and self-respect that's in conflict with her self-loathing. there's no interpersonal conflict to link's conformity that makes them thematic foils. this all makes her revelation in fort hateno where link originally dies much less potent, discounting the fact that originally the result of her revelation gives her the strength to hold back hatred incarnate for 100 years. but that doesn't happen either because as we've established this is an everyone lives nobody dies au and link's character arc goes unfulfilled as well because, well, everybody lives.

for all the time travel stuff is weird and the egg is a retcon and king rhoam's death is set up as a sacrifice and then later rug pulled for the sake of another playable character (and also sympathy-baiting) its what ive mentioned above that grinds my gears the most because my favorite thing about botw is its themes and the way it handles them in relation to link, zelda, and the open world gameplay. and age of calamity doesnt tick any of those boxes. so while there are more gaping plot holes or nitpicks i could make, i don't really think theyre worthwhile in comparison to the issues ive described. thats why i cant love it the way i love botw and am loving totk right now, even though its technically part of the trilogy. its fun to think about in isolation, and it doesnt ruin everything the way a movie like httyd3 does, but it's also one massive "they would not fucking say that" which bothers me occasionally

woo. there u go. hopefully u had fun hearing

#heliianswers #long post #i didnt add a readmore bc theyre annoying to navigate with im sorry. also the post gets yeeted if i ever change my url #heliichats #tloz