This is random, but I love the fact that Zelda has green eyes and link has blue, link with blue eyes corolating to wisdom, and green eyes corolating to courage!
Where is the Triforce? And are the dragons in past games such as the three dragons in Skyward sword (Lanayru, Faron and Eldin) also created using Secret stones, could they be the same dragons in TOTK?
The only thing that makes any sense is that one of the timeline Zelda or King, maybe even Link wished on the TriForce to unify the world, and the Gods of Nintendo are telling the events from before Skyward sword until TOTK. The only thing that survived is items such as the Master Sword which is a God made artifact.
I believe the more "barbaric" style of Zonia architecture was used to cover up the original Zonia "pristine" style. I speculate it was a way to cover up or hide the true history of the ancient Zonia so descendants of Raru and Sonia wouldn't seek the power of Ganandorf just as the castle was built over the sealing chamber. Being most descendants start taking the genes of the mother more and more, I figure the ancient aspect was the start of losing the Zonia genes and advanced technological skills. And the Zonia / Hylian mix became the Zonia we know from BOTW. Just as we have some back story and new outcome in Hyrule Warriors. I'd love to see the gap bridged between the ancient and newer Zonia and more expalanation of the dragons in a separate game.
The biggest unsolved mystery for me is Rauru and Sonia's child. There is heavy implication in her dialogue and motherly aura that Zelda is a direct descendant of their bloodline. Since Sonia dies while Zelda is there, it implies there must already be a small child around that's never shown. (Maybe they literally couldn't design the child without igniting the Great Furry Debate!) The "dead mother" trope is really popular in Zelda lore...examples being Zelda's mother dying when she was young, OOT Link's mother dying after bringing him to the Deku Tree, Koko and Cottla's mother dying before the game starts etc. Sonia is such an unusually motherly character for a Zelda game, it would be downright bizarre for the lore to insist that she and Rauru were actually childless and Zelda's own royal lineage plus her secret stone powers were completely unrelated to them. Link's mother is also never mentioned in BOTW/TOTK lore, although we do know his father was a knight. Given the strength of his/her/their lineage, one can assume Sonia and Rauru's baby would also have had some sort of heroic power. This missing kid has major main character energy but we never find out anything more!
I mean considering that Sonia and Raru die as well as his sister I kinda doubt they had a child? But I mean considering that their history is entombed underneath Hyrule castle they would’ve had to have had an heir, maybe the child was already old enough to have left? Idk
There isn’t “implication” that Zelda is a direct descendant, they outright say it. She has Rauru’s light power and Sonia’s time power. They had to have had a child
@@itzriotplayz2377 Not impossible, we don't know how old the Zonai can typically live to be, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're one of those races that can outlive everyone, might explain why we only know of two since long living races typically don't have much drive to have kids, and thus the race basically just went extinct because of this 🤔
@@itzriotplayz2377 I thought that too! But wasn't too sure about the timeline. Going by instinct it would fit as the Ganondorf that killed Sonia was the one that was defeated by the ancient hero. That would give him a pretty strong motive too. However the ancient hero is clearly designed to look remind people of Link...that feels a bit weird as it would make him and Zelda distant relatives (?). Lore accurate Link never has royal blood and is always some kid from a farm or village.
My headcanon was that the dragons were Zonai worshippers of the Golden Goddesses. High priests/priestesses, maybe even cult leaders, who went a step too far in their pursuit of divinity, and when they "drank the Kool-aid" the other Zonai were so aghast they banned the practice entirely. Heck, maybe that's even why the Golden Goddesses have taken such a back seat compared to Hylia in BotW/ToTK. After the "draconification incident", it might have left a bad taste in people's mouths about even worshiping the goddesses at all.
For the zonai architecture, I think it was Hylian's trying to preserve zonai architecture without having the skill or knowledge to make it the same prestige way. If you look at the barbarian armor in botw, it looks like the hylian "guards" seen in the totk memories. So the barbaric 'zonai' were actually early hylians trying to preserve what they could understand of zonai architecture.
Possibly some other Zonai from outside of Hyrule joined with them (Since in those days Hyrule was just the Great Plateau), with the Hero of the Calamity being a hybrid who was also a Knight. I also think the Sheikah studied under Mineru, and that's where their tech came from.
The dragons have features that hint at their original form: Zelda has a thin face and blond hair, Ganondorf is bulky with red hair, the three sacred dragons have a goat-like snout and bright hair. Rauru reminds me a lot of the latter. The Ember / Charged / Frostbite armor have Zonai attributes and their description mentions ancient rituals, it's not crazy to assume people who used them, likely Zonai, turned into these dragons.
I also like to think that the 3 dragon transformations may have something to do with the zonai's departure from hyrule. We know for a fact that draconification is only considered under very tight or extreme circumstances. If the zonai appeared somewhere between the distant past and founding eras, there's great potential in this convergence
I believe the era of Hyrule founding is really the rebirth of the Hyrule Kingdom, but the founders didn't know Hyrule was real before they created the kingdom as it only be legends to them like Atlantis is to us.
THIS. I love this theory because I came to the same conclusion and logic as I played the game, and the devs went on to hint at it. It's the most logical and less hurting explanation, canonically speaking, as it simply rebuilds the kingdom without rewriting history.
I'm in favor of that, too. It stacks on the "timeline merge" theory. Hyrule gets flooded, then not flooded, and instead of New Hyrule being founded far away, Hyrule gets re-founded.
@@DemonicAdj Totally. It explains Hyrule after the flood; after the fallen hero timeline, which shows a kingdom in decadence; and is easy to apply to the child timeline for the same reason, even if the events after Twilight Princess weren't as violent and dire, all kingdoms die and fade away eventually.
11:20 the reason the refounding of Hyrule has so much traction is because the developers (Fujibayashi and Aonuma) strongly hinted at it in an interview with Famitsu. Basically when asked about the timeline conflict between Skyward Sword and TOtK, they said it's quite a possibility that the Hyrule from the previous games was destroyed and a new Hyrule established. Of course they didn't outright confirm it but heavily implied it.
As soon as I discovered that sheikah tech was gone, finding out what happened to it and the sacred beasts became my biggest motivation to explore every single inch of the world. I was very sad to discover that there is just no explanation for it.
My main theory is that Zelda ordered it all to be dismantled due to being scared of the Calamity coming back at some point and taking control of it all again, its the only thing that makes sense, thats why the new towers are made from the tech because Gannon cant do much with a tower.
I think it makes more sense for the Hylians to have been a tribe on the surface in Faron. Rauru came down and gave them structure in the form of a kingdom. He married Sonia, likely the next in line to lead the tribe, to create the kingdom of Hyrule. Faron is also close enough to the Gerudo region, and it's known that the Gerudo primarily partner with Hylians. If this was generally done more forcefully, as one of the carpenters in Ocarina of Time suggested, then allying with the Zonai and becoming a kingdom would've been a threat to the continuation of the Gerudo, as they could now set up to defend themselves. This would've necessitated a response from the leader of the Gerudo, Ganondorf. We know Ganondorf wants to take over Hyrule, but we never _really_ see why. If he's just power hungry, then it would be a good excuse to gain support, at least.
My thoughts on Sheikah Tech from playing the game: the towers and shrines must have sank back into the ground, because they did serve their purpose and were no longer needed. The divine beasts and Guardians were probably dismantled by the Hylians to prevent Ganon from taking them over again, and their parts were repurposed for the Skyview Towers and Purah Pad (which is why there are Guardian legs in the towers). The Guardian on the tech lab is probably the last remaining one that Robbie and Purah kept as a cultural artifact.
the guardian on top of that lab was also defeated during the Calamity and thus can’t be taken over so it isn’t a threat. If they only disassembled the Guardians that were in danger of being taken over again then that would explain why it was left where it is.
@@pancakes8670 True. Those arrows were canonically developed by the Sheikah, so it's more likely that they just came across those and can replicate the technology (no too far-fetched, considering what a Zonai construct can do tbh)
Hmm possibly, since it's the Mining Construct that sells the ancient arrow heads, not the Smithing Construct. Maybe tech that was lost in the depths didn't get the signal to disappear that the surface tech got.
I rather expect that the Three Dragons were some form of Oracles like in Oracle of Seasons and Ages where the Golden Goddesses appeared as Humans and taking the roles of Oracles
I don't think the Shiekah tech disappeared, but it ceased to function over time. BotW's epilogue mentions that Vah Ruta stopped working. I wouldn't be too surprised if the others soon followed. The kingdom of Hyrule probably decided to recycle it.
Back when I was thinking Tears of the Kingdom was rebooting the lore, I kind of wondered if maybe the Din, Nayru, and Farore of the new continuity were Zonai who were instrumental in the creation of Hyrule, and who became dragons for... reasons. I am currently leaning towards refounding theory, so now I'm wondring if instead they're incarnations of the Oracles that went by the same names.
I think they became dragons to make link and zelda reincarnate with their powers, so ganondorf would always be defeated, and i think thats why when rauru lived there was no link, the goddesses didn’t become dragons yet and just lived on a hidden sky island, but after rauru died, i think they became dragons to make sure link could deteat evil
The ruins look weird to you because of auto build. The green autobuild parts must change over time, as the civ must have used autobuild to make green objects, hence aging to be a different color over time etc
given the devs answer of where the sheikah tech went, i wouldnt be surprised if the ancient hero's aspect has a tail because "lol i dunno it looks cool"
It's not a bad answer. The sheikah tech disappeared because they served their purpose isn't a bad explanation. I mean, everything had to be excavated from underground in Botw.
A tremendous mystery for me is who got Mineru's Stone? I figured it was Purah & she became the new sage of spirit. Also, what do the previous sages look like? I thought at some point we would see their faces but we never did
It think if Zelda lore holds out Purah would become a Sage of Shadow. Though I kind of wonder if TotK's Sage of Spirit is equivalent OoT's Sage of Shadow and TotK's Sage of Lightning is equivalent to OoT's Sage of Spirit based on the colors being orange and purple. It's possible that in OoT's time lightning was saw as being energy and therefore lumped in with spirit energy. And that the cloned spirits were seen as being shadows of yourself.
Either Purah, or possibly Link. Note that Mineru has the same "sand garden Sage chat" cutscene like the others, only this time, Link is the only person to talk to.
From what I've heard and kinda got outta the stone tablet beneath Typhoid Ruins where you find the Dusk Sword or whatever they call it is that a lot of that stuff that was built that looks more ancient or barbaric was done by Hylians in honor of the actual Zonai.
My theory is that the Zonai before Raruru were heavily adapted to war. He's shown how powerful he can be. Those stones are the greatest weapon they possess. Also, my theory about the other 3 dragon's is that they were Zonai who chose to become dragons, and it was discovered that by doing so, they stopped being themselves, thus it becoming a forbidden act. Also, the ancient Hero being a zonai may be the descendant of Raruru and Sonia.
That could tie into Rauru and Mineru seemingly being the last of their kind. They may have wiped each other out. The dark skeletons in the Depths (mirroring the Leviathan skeletons) might have belonged to dragons, showing they definitely can be killed. If some of the dragonified Zonai were big on destruction, it would be a quick decision to forbid dragonification. The three dragons we see might have been the first.
@@DemonicAdjNot to mention Link literally *spoilers*..... kills a dragon in TOTK, so it's completely plausible that Zonia magic could kill others too.
On the topic of the Ancient Hero; To me, they look very much like how one may interpret a Zonai/Hylian hybrid. Smaller, Hylian ears, hair that isn’t Zonai White and is located only on the head, shorter face, more flat-but-not fully-human feet, a distinct lack of horns. Less anthropomorphic furry, more “my mom/dad was a furry”, if that makes any sense…
If there are 7 sacred Stones, is it possible that there are originally 10 of them? And since Link have found the Ember, Frostbite and Charged Armor, weren’t they owned by Dinraal, Naydra and Farosh before being Draconified? This has been a theory I can’t get over since I look back at “Creating the Champions” back while playing TOTK at the same time.
I had a similar thought about the original wearers of the Ember, Frostbite and Charged armor sets. My theory was they were priests/priestesses who devoted their lives to the 3 Goddesses and in an attempt to become immortal and live amongst their deities, they ate their Sacred Stones, but became immortal dragons instead of immortal "gods" which caused the act to be declared as forbidden
I don't necessarily think there is a limit to the number of Sacred Stones. It would be different if we knew each stone had a specific power, but we see the original Time Stone become the Dark Stone as well as the original Light Stone become a new Time Stone. We also know that even though the stones are consumed they technically are embedded on the dragon somewhere (G-dorf's being on his forehead just like in his mortal forms). And that killing a dragon is possible if you break the stone... or at least we assume this kills the dragon and doesn't do something else like cutting off the One Ring from Sauron's hand did in LotR. In the end, there can be any number of the stones. While the Secret Stones were secret, we only see 7 of them in TotK as Zelda's and Rauru's stones are the same one. Which is why the mural only shows seven. There were only seven involved in the story. So there is nothing saying if there are 7, 10, or even 20. There's also the implication that other dragons in the series if not a monster might have also consumed sacred stones.
@@verdantmistral442 if we're going by everything presented to us in TotK, then there's the possibility of there being at least 10 Secret Stones. The Light and Demon Dragons still have their Secret Stones even in their dragon forms, and there are 3 elemental dragons who, if they underwent draconification, also have a Secret Stone each, so if we add that to the original 7 then that'd bump the number of Secret Stones up to 10
@@Sarah_H I was mostly saying there isn't any specified cap to the number of stones. And that the seven comes from the mural which is only showing the stone important to the story and saying there can easily be any number of stones.
My head-canon for the Shiekah technology is that it was permanently retired after Calamity Ganon was defeated since it... You know... DID KINDA contribute to the near eradication of most of Hyrule. I think it was dumped into the Hyrule Castle Observatory, and then completely buried.
That isn't a given to my knowledge. We see hero's called Link but I don't believe it's stated anywhere that the Hero MUST be called Link. Very possible that in an ancient age the hero took on different names.
very great video, you approach things in a way better way than most theorists, especially regarding hyrule's founding, as so many just take Fujibayashi interview a the final answer without seeing that what the game says is not that simple, and what the director said was vague on purpose. Otherwise for another mystery, I can't figure out where was the underground entrance in the castle Link and Zelda used at the start of the game to get to ganondorf, and would have loved to see the whole trip from the surface with those 2
1. Yes, they are indeed the Goddesses. 2.After what happened to the Demon King the "Ancient" Hylians merge with the Zonai. 3.They had fear of what happened with the Calamity. 4. It's the Hero of Legend a Merge (In relation to the second mistery) of Zonai, Hylians, and Gerudo (Ganondorf/Ganon related) 5. That "Ancient Hyrule foundation era" was after all the rest of the games. And before the Calamity 10.000 years ago.
re: dragons I always suspected that the three elemental dragons were Zonai spring maidens, who underwent draconification to continue to watch over their respective springs and continue to serve the Goddesses, and were not originally named Farosh, Naydra, and Dinraal but were given those names when they 1) became attendants for the springs of the Goddesses, or 2) after they became dragons and their original names were lost to history. In the Song of the Stormwind Ark we learn that the Zonai were at least once referred to as "gods" by the Rito, when a "god" came down from the heavens above Hebra and was assisted in ascending back up to the heavens by the Rito; the song also mentions the "god" "pouring a mysterious power into" the materials the Rito had gathered to build ships, which IMO means that the Rito were witnessing a Zonai using Ultrahand to build boats, which then begs the question of whether ALL Zonai had the abilities that Link's new arm does/Rauru presumably had (obviously not Recall because that's a Sage ability from Zelda, but Ultrahand, Ascend, and Fuse). So Zonai being considered "gods" by ancient Hyrulean races = the elemental dragons were once "gods", not the literal Golden Goddesses but were once of a people considered to be gods re: timeline This is a brand new, refounded Hyrule, far FAR into the future, after the ends of the previous timelines and a convergence. There is no other explanation that satisfactorily ties up all the loose ends that would be created if this Era of Hyrule's Founding took place BEFORE OoT (or pre-Skyward Sword). How do the Rito exist? The ancient Zora Sage looks like BotW-era Zora, so if this is pre-OoT, the Zora un-evolved from that form and then re-evolved back into it? How does Ganondorf exist outside of the Imprisoning Chamber? This is a different Hyrule Castle than we see in other games and the game says that the castle itself is key to maintaining the seal on Ganondorf; multiple castles are DESTROYED in other games, which would mean that the seal on TotK Ganondorf would be broken, but this castle IS STILL STANDING by the time of BotW/modern-day TotK, so it CANNOT be the same one. Why is the geography of this Hyrule so different from other games? You're tellin' me that Hyrule's geographical history is bookended by two Hyrules that are almost identical? How are we able to find armor and gear from ALL THREE timelines if BotW/TotK supposedly take place at the end of ONE of them? Where's the Triforce if this is supposed to be pre-OoT? Zelda has it in both BotW and TotK, but if this Era of Founding is pre-OoT, then that would mean the Triforce somehow left the Light Dragon and was then transplanted into the Zelda/Link/Ganondorf of later eras/games, and we see in a cutscene that Zelda is using the Triforce to regenerate the Master Sword the entire time she's a dragon, so it...left her, was briefly held by others, and then...came back? Plus many more inconsistencies I can't think of right now
Ganondorf's time below: This is no mystery at all as far as I'm concerned. During the last few months before TotK was released, I came to theorize that everything we were seeing in the trailers & leaks was all happening after all the old timeline branches. Then playing through the game, I felt even more sure that Hyrule had been previously been destroyed off screen and later refounded by a new incarnation of Rauru. It makes sense everything the developers had said about BotW in prior interviews implied that the reason they set that game so far into the future was to give themselves more room to be creative when making the game. Whether we like it or not, BotW and by extension TotK are a sort of soft reboot for the series. To then go back and directly involve the sequel in events from the old timeline would be contradictory to those sentiments. Then that recent interview where it was suggested that Hyrule had a re-founding by none other than Fujibayashi himself was the biggest wink and a nudge we could have gotten. That's as close to a confirmation of the Refounding Theory as we're likely to get from the developers.
That’s not the case at all no one knows about the demon king not even link and Gannon Dorf does not know about him either until rarau mentions him this Hass to be a completely separate timeline from the original because of what I mentioned earlier Gandolf has been defeated by many reincarnations of the hero so he would’ve known about this link before rarau even mentioned him
7:32 i think Zelda may have taken a secret task to destroy all og shiekah tech considering how in-touch she is with the people of hyrule while still keeping some newer tech under a new name
so fun fact: there was more than one calamity. the ancient tapestry depicts the ancient hero along with what is assumed a princess of hyrule, fighting the calamity, with the aid of the guardians and divine beasts. meaning that this tapestry depicts an event after sealing ganondorf, after zelda transfroms. this also explains why there are two master swords. the "newest" one is being restored while its old self was used against the calamity by the ancient hero. zelda could have told the old royal family its original location. the ancient hero would have taken up the blade to fight the calamity. the calamity is released for at least a second time during botw.
We hear of 3 Separate Calamity Events: - 10,000~ Years ago (The Original Tapestry) - 100 Years ago (When Link Fell//Same Calamity we fight in BotW) - Some far off distant "Land" fought a Calamity that nearly wiped out the Land, but it was defeated...
@@gabriellockwood2780 you got any more info about that third point? my post was about the first two points you raised. id like to know where that info in the third point can be found. thanks
I think the Hero's Aspect has the same shaped head as the raised fist statue in the depths. Perhaps the Zonai originally started in the Depths and eventually rose to the Surface and then the Skies. I mean there's some implications that the Goron tribe came from the Depths. (Which might explain why the Goron disappear at points in Hyrule's history or don't seem to have a homeland like in WW and SS). The Zonai give big Fantasy Elf vibes. So it wouldn't odd if there were variations depending on their environment. Dark elves, forest elves, and high elves for instance kind of match the dwellings of the Zonai. You have the Depths Zonai, the Faron Zonai, and the Sky Zonai. They also have a similar feel of once a great advanced magic culture that fell apart and is dying out found in the fantasy worlds from the 80s and prior.
My assomption about the Zonai architecture discrepancy is that Zonai were officially a long-gone barbaric tribe at the time of Breath of the Wild, put in the game to have mysterious ancient ruins, just like the frog-like statue we see in the depths during the questline near the Central Hyrule chasm in Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo took many elements that were discussed in the community about Breath of the Wild to include them in Tears of the Kingdom. Notably, the hability to build machines is a derivative of the "Flying Machine", a glitch using two minecarts and magnesis. And the focus on Zonai following their official reveal in the making-of book Creating a Champion. Zonai were not sky-goat-people inhabiting marble palaces before Tears of the Kingdom, i'm sure of it. This is retcon. The "two-styles" pillar in front of the spirit temple chasm makes no sense and is probably just there to suggest they are indeed one and the same, every old stonework being a coat on top of the true Zonai style, whatever the reason behind it (Nintendo doesn't know either).
Or it could be some of the Hylians took the name Zonai after the last two remaining Zonai died. They tried to carry on their legacy but lost the techniques to build things like the Zonai did without the technology the Zonai used. After all we know the Hylians built Typhlo so it's not a stretch to think they were using an adapted style. Over time they could have lost memory of the true Zonai and became a warlike tribe before dying out at some point. Edit: a real world example of this happening is i Asia. China started many things and Japan adapted those things over time after some people settled there. Now its two completely different cultures that share a history with each other.
I think there's more than enough evidence to suggest Ganondorf could have a version of himself be reborn on the surface while his original self remained imprisoned. His power manifests into beings with their own will within BOTW itself as the Malice monsters and the Calamity Ganon itself. Not to mention in Skyward Sword, the canonical first Link and Zelda, they mention an ancient robot-building race that vanished before Hylia raised the land into the sky. What if that race was the Zonai? And the land being raised into the sky are due to the events we see in TOTK? And that would explain why there was no Link or Zelda or Master Sword in Rauru and Sonia's time, because they came after in Skyward Sword.
About the Zonai structures, I think that either Zelda or someone who took over after she changed could have ordered that all remaining Zonai structures on the surface be covered up to protect the secret of what happened. After all, they built Hyrule Castle over the remains of Rauru & Ganondorf. It' not hard to believe that they could do comparably minor work of other structures.
A lore friendly explanation for all the missing Sheikah tech would be that the towers and shrines dissapeared into the earth again after their purpose was fulfilled while all the remaining guardians and divine beasts were deconstructed and their remains either fully destroyed or buried so no evil force could corrupt them ever again. Would have been an easy and believable explanations but the story writers slept on that
For the shiekah tecks disappearance, I think that at the central control unit under the castle (which I think was a little bellow the astral observatory but not all the way down to the depths) Purah and Robbie activated a mechanism that made all tech revert back to a previous and determined state before it was mined and manufacturted. I believe that it would have been done by space-time shift stones that can be removed from and not added to cirtain tech. Once this happened, the pillar that holds the casle up (which may have been partly removed to add the observatory) would "reapear" and, now with the obseratory gone, the gloom could be more easily spotted causing Purah to send Link and Zelda down to investigate. [Edit]- I still wonder how the hero's aspect could connect to the shrines [Edit2]- I still wonder why luminous stone can be found in the walls of the forgot foundation and no where else in the depths. Aside from zonait, luminous stone is the only ore that can be found in large deposits and oddly can be found in the sky too. It also had a resell price change, in btow, it was 70 rupees, now in totk, its 30.
I still think the easiest solution to the disappearance of the Shiekah Tech is that without the Shiekah Monks maintaining the energy in prayer it simply faded. We know even the Master Sword can lose its luster to time without prayer or sacred energy. Similarly, Zonai tech similarly has a shelf live where it dissolves not unlike the Monks do. There's also the implication that the energy used by Zonai is similar to the Ancients engery (if flatout not the same thing, as higher amounts of compressed Zonai energy turns blue). We also know that Shiekah tech isn't 100% going to disappear either. Some components are robust enough to survive destruction (any of the ancient parts we seen in BotW). The Zonai tech we seen in TotK appears to be the stuff that somehow survived on its own being somewhat more stable and not decaying back into energy. And Purah and Robbie simply made do with the stuff that remained. It might explain why the Shiekah Towers have spirit seals on them. They are trying to keep the Shiekah tech from randomly decaying into energy.
And the blue stuff mentioned to be under the ancient furnaces (where you get blue flames) in the artbook. There's definitely a fuel supply involved. We know Zonaite can be refined into power sources, and the bots basically ran on autopilot, some mined and refined, so nearby ones might have gotten periodic recharges. Others just go dormant to save battery. I like your idea of compressed zonai energy turning blue.. since the battery bars are blue when you get the second set of battery bars. Maybe the ancient shiekah energy is some odd "liquid" zonaite formed under the right conditions.
The dragons in both games are described as "servants of the springs", making it unlikely that they are the golden goddesses. If they were once anything other than a dragon, it is more plausible that they were someone tasked with taking care of their respective spring/deity. As for the Sheikah technology, we do see parts of it in use such as in the new towers, and I think it was stated somewhere that it was recycled by the inhabitants of Hyrule. This doesn't necessarily make a conflict with the developer's statement of disappearance. The towers and shrines, many of which didn't appear until activating a particular tower, would have disappeared after fulfilling their purpose of aiding the hero. The mechanical bits like guardians and Divine Beasts would have been recycled. This doesn't explain every piece of technology, such as the Sheikah slate, but remember that we are trying to give an in-game explanation to a real world decision. If they had left them in, the surface would have been too crowded and Purah would not have needed to make a replacement slate. Depending on how deep the connection of the slate to the old tech was, it's possible that the slate stopped working, possibly when the towers and shrines disappeared. It too had fulfilled its purpose. That or Purah/Robbie destroyed it with tinkering.
Yeah, the Slate might have "served its purpose" and broke down like Vah Ruta did. But by then, Purah was already mostly done with her Pad, with dreams of making them for everyone in Hyrule.
The Koopalings were never Bowser's children. Eggman Nega was never from Blaze's world. Ganondorf has been sealed since Hyrule's founding. there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
I personally think the more central america inspired Zonai ruins, such as the ones in Faron and Typhlo ruins, were purposely built to look different to the pristine zonai architecture. It's kinda a "we shouldn't try to mimic the gods, but to honor them" sorta thing. Think about it this way, do you see more churches built in the architecture of ancient Judea or in a style native to the people building the churches?
That and the Hylian zonai tribe likely covered up the proper Zonai architecture to protect it from wear and tear. Kinda like putting stucco on a house.
The style of the Hylian made ruins also seems to match better with the zonai devices and the zonai art, such as the statues on top of the Zonai temple of time, so if the hylians wanted to mimic the gods it makes sense that they'd mimic the art over the normal architecture, since it'd probably be harder to make the pristine style than the machine style
Uhhh… Fujibyashi was asked about the timeline placement of TOTK.. and pretty much stated the way he saw it was that a great catastrophe had destroyed the original Hyrule that we know of and that the founding spoken of in BOTW was essentially a refounding.. which isn’t that far out there.. look at WW.. Tetra and link went and searched for new lands to re-establish the New Hyrule we play in in spirit tracks. So in a way Fujibyashi is keeping the old timelines still relevant while keeping a singular timeline going forward. The only question left now is, is this the same Ganondorf we’ve fought before or his spirit reincarnated in a new body?? We see two Gerudo women who seem to represent Kotake and Koume in the cutscene in Hyrules throne room.. soooo.. werw they reincarnate as well or named for the original surrogates who became surrogates for Ganons reincarnated form??? That’s what’s bugging me.. I mean it’s a little convoluted but.. stranger things have happened before…
"Koume" and "Koutake" could be the Gerudo equivalent of "Impa". Some kind of legacy name handed down, possibly for the first set of twins in a generation or something.
Didn't one of the tablets or the quest to get to the Dragon Isles talk about how they hid the area? It would make sense for them to put their own style over it to hide that it is Zonai in that case. I need to play again, but I'm sure someone says it.
Is he though ? It's true he is the only one who can lift it from its pedestal in a lot of games, but in the memories of BOTW it's shown that Zelda was able to take the Master Sword to the Deku Tree by herself. I think the condition to wield it is to be accepted by the spirit of the sword: Fi.
For the zonai architecture, I believe that the sky islands and depths style architecture came first, and were built by the zonai when they first descended upon hyrule, but then if that style came first, then how did the zonai build the faron style architecture if they were already extinct by then? Well, we know that rauru and sonia had a child, and many other zonai who had died by the time of the memories must have too, and since lots of them probably had children with hylians, i doubt that their children would just be fully hylian. My theory is that after Rauru sacrificed himself, and Mineru turned into a spirit, the children of the zonai that married hylians, like rauru and sonia, were actually zonai hylian hybrids. I also think that one of these hybrids was the ancient hero, which is why he has both Hylian and Zonai traits. I believe that the Zonai Hylian hybrids moved to the zonai ruins in faron, so that they could protect the entrance to the construct factory, which is one of the only zonai buildings on the surface, and to protect it even more, they built a coat over the old zonai architecture which is made of much stronger material, so that it can protect the spirit temple. The zonai hylian hybrids slowly became more hylian like, and also evolved a bit more to survive in the wild, (which may explain why the ancient hero has more animalistic feet than the original zonai), and one of the hybrids then became the ancient hero from the tapestry, and along side evolving to live in the wild better, they also evolved their clothing to become more warrior like, since they would probably have to fight lots of enemies and wild animals in faron. This is why the barbarian armor looks warrior like, but still shares some zonai traits, like how the skull with the red hair looks like the zonaite helm, and the barbarian chest piece looks like rauru's shirt, and the barbarian legwear look like the zonaite legwear. I believe after this they then found a beach right outside of faron, and realized that they had access to a bunch of fish there, so they decided to start a village there called lurelin village. They then became more hylian like, and slowly forgot about their zonai past, while still having some remaining traits of the zonai. I think this idea of the people of lurelin village being the zonai is hinted at, because Tauro, who is from lurelin village, has a streak of white hair. I think this was intentional, to show the connections between them and the zonai, since the zonai had white hair. Tauro also is very interested in the zonai, and can even read zonai text, and all across lurelin village you can find zonai swirls and ruins. They also have darker skin than normal hylians, which they might have gotten from their zonai ancestors, who had dark grey skin. Anyway thats my theory on that
I do wish there was a bigger link (no pun intended) between totk and botw it doesn’t really “follow on” as I would have imagined, also how have they not aged at all since botw 😂 I want whatever skincare is around in Hyrule
To attempt to quote something, i vaugely remembor from nintendo by memory all the zelda games are legends so they may all be 100 percent acurate or any percent bellow that as they are all ment to be like storys passed around the kindom of hyrule changing with each telling from one generation to the next
The aging is more obvious with the children, as the ones in BOTW are older in TOTK. I imagine that anyone past puberty is just assumed to not have changed enough to warrant a design change more drastic than a new hairstyle
If you look at the menu, the ancient hero’s aspect is the 3 masks at the front of link when he equips it. Maybe the ancient hero was human looking and his appearance changed when he equipped the masks, like Link. Rauru and Mineru have something similar equipped, but only 1 each.
Although i agree with the fact that the guardians disappearing was a bit of an on the spot answer, it is sort of fitting that the only guardian remaining in TOTK is also the only one that was tied down to the top of a building in BOTW.
The guardians are still in the game they’re used in the tower to launch link into the sky at least their arms are used to give him the cord for the map but the divine beasts are another thing
I personally believe that the BotW/TotK version of Hyrule is a refounding and I'd place it somewhere after Wind Waker on the adult timeline. In TotK, we see that the Rito were already present in the ancient past and since they haven't been shown in any other timeline (except for the mural in TP HD which was confirmed to have no actual canon implications), this makes the most sense. At least it does to me. I doubt that this kingdom is New Hyrule from Spirit Tracks, given that both in the past and the present there are no visible train tracks. It could be the actual old Hyrule at some point in time after the Great Flood had possibly receeded (which would be a theory supported by the salt items in BotW) or an entirely different stretch of land named Hyrule that happens to bear great similarities to the kingdom of old.
@@skaionex not possible because it’s in a different timeline altogether the developers may think that but they’re wrong the reason that it’s in a different timeline is because this demon king doesn’t even know about the hero until he is sealed away by the one who mentions that to him and no one in the kingdom even knows about the demon king until after it’s discovered later on so that’s why this Hass to be in a whole separate timeline from the Original timeline with the split
After, most likely. Calamity Ganon would be the bits of Malice/Gloom that bubbles up from the seal from time to time. It just takes a long time for the gloom levels to get high enough for a critical mass for another Calamity event. A sign on the passage from the shelter to the castle says the seal is connected to the castle so that the seal's strength would be tied to the prosperity of the kingdom. So skimping on maintenance might have hastened the seal breaking or weakening. Zelda basically put the castle last on her to-do list, and opted to live in Link's house in Hateno.
Something I hadn't thought about before concerning the portrait depicting the ancient battle with Ganon is rather than it telling a story of the past, what if actually it has been misinterpreted as events of the future battle in totk. It could technically be the case considering you can where the heroes aspect during the last half of the Ganon fight and just like it's depiction showing that it also shows the princess fighting along side the hero, same goes for the inclusion of the other champions races helping fight him
The divine beasts and towers were already sort of in the ground at the start and before botw ( some shrines too ), so what if the guardians decayed and was burred in the ground along with the other sheika technologys.
"The Dragons' Identity"; given that their head (ear, hair, face) are closer related to the Zonai aesthetic, as opposed to Zelda, whose ears and hair much more resembles a Hylian than a Zonai, it's a safe assumption to say that it may have been three Zonai that did the forbidden deed (which may have been forbidden afterwards to keep those three the only three). Perhaps they were guardians or worshippers of their respective Goddess at some point and ascended to some sort of godhood to serve them better. But the motivation behind their transformation is purely speculative of course. But I don't think it's a stretch to call who they may have been in the past; namely Zonai. Probably those that first descended before everyone else ascended back to the sky or died out with the exception of Rauru and Mineru. "Ganondorf's Time Below"; that is only a mystery if you put the Era of the Wild's founding story as the actual founding that happened between SS and MC. The mystery is solved when you put that (re-)founding somewhen after any of the last games of any or all timelines. Which I believe to be the case, otherwise it'd just contradict too much of what we know of the founding, how the sages work between SS and OoT, why there'd be multiple Ganondorfs (which would diminish OoT's Ganondorf's character IMO), etc. It'd also make the king in OoT look even more foolish than he already does, because I think that records and the events of the Imprisoning War would be fresh in the minds and libraries of the time (since it'd be "only" a couple centuries ago), if you stop and think that tens of thousands of years (more than 10,000 years) later, there are still records available to the royal family of what lurks beneath the castle. And there's be the next problem: the castle. It's established that it was built on the seal to strengthen/protect it. It was obviously obliterated in OoT for 7 years, got destroyed and rebuilt in TP and in WW it was buried beneath the sea for hundreds of years and fell into neglect. And it moved several times apparently. So were there multiple castles? Was it built atop the seal or not? That only makes sense if it has been built after the games and has not moved since (which is already pretty unlikely in that time span, but even more so (it did move or got destroyed factually) if you put its construction between SS and MC). Fujibayashi also mentioned a destructive event, which would make it a refounding, as a possibility as the first thing that came to his mind when asked where TotK's past may play. This is, of course, not concrete, but solid enough for me. And we know Rauru is not infallible. He says Zelda came from a future that won't happen. But we know from the mural, and Ganondorf himself (he knows them already), that it has happened and will always happen. So he has no clue and probably just says it to raise Zelda's spirits, since they are about to fight the Big Bad. Him saying "the last time I checked" is of course a throwaway line, but who's to say it's not the case that he doesn't know? All he knows is that the Zonai descended somewhen in his distant past (so even more distant that the past already is), he has no way of knowing what was before that.
DLC idea, play as Rauru in the past with all his abilities being natural to him, being much more powerful and efficient. Plus, with his size, wielding two handed weapons with one hand or even dual wielding them for a new fighting style altogether
My theory about the zonai architecture is that in the 10-100,000 years since the Zonai existed, a barbaric tribe of people of unknown origin began worshipping the idea of the zonai as gods, and interpreted their depictions of draconification as them being able to turn to dragons at will and being fierce warriors. They adopted the name of zonai as a tribute to their gods, and created the draconic architecture to worship them. That would also explain the misinterpretation of the sealing of ganondorf from BOTW zonai architecture, because they could have interpreted that as an ancient ritual celebrating a powerful warrior, and would explain the barbarian armor’s appearance as well.
Another neat little detail on the dragons is that, during the side adventure quest to restore the mother goddess statue, I noticed that the voice in one of the statues called Dinraal “she.” Idk if the other two dragons are females as well or if their sex is significant at all. I’m heavily convinced that they were Zonai given their appearances and similarities to the elemental outfits you can find (which may have been made either for them or after they turned into dragons, idk). However, whether they were sages, cult leaders, or other important figures in Zonai culture is still a mystery. They clearly came before Rauru and Mineru, but how far back is yet to be seen.
Maybe the zoni where disguising their architecture to make it seem they are barbaric tribe by building over their original design cause they knew that they were going to be banished or massacred by the hyrulians and they don’t want the hyrulians to know what’s on their walls.
Also I think what they mean by the shieka tech disappeared they mean the tech and all the guardians bury down back under the ground like how they pop up out of the ground in breath of the wild. And the guardians that bury themselves under ground they went back to the giant columns that’s around hyrule castle and is probably why there’s a lot of tunnels under the ground now.
I very much hold to the theory that all the green barbaric looking "Zonai" architecture was built by a tribe of barbaric Hylians after the Zonai left, maybe even going so far as to call themselves Zonai over time. It also helps explain why some Sheikah shrines are found with accompanying Zonai ruins in BotW, it wasnt the Zonai that helped construct them but this ancient tribe of Zonai-Hylians.
With Sheika tech, I understood that as the shrines and towers, and possibly even the divine beasts, went back underground once they weren’t needed anymore. I just assumed the guardians and stuff got cleaned up or maybe reused to build the new towers?
There are weird elements to this game. Honestly, for a game that took so long to make it feels like a somewhat rushed world where time wasn't taken to keep things consistent. Despite this being a direct sequel. I think the Ganondorf one is pretty simply. The "founding" has to be a re-founding. We can try to question it. But it makes the most sense. Ganondorf wasn't dead down there. So I simply can't see other versions of him with the same soul walking around living lives during all the other games.
Ok TBF! Guardians only scared me a little. These new gloom hands? I about pissed myself when I ran into them the first time. They got nothing on these robots. Kinda like ocarina of time redeads. Not worth it. Stay away lol. If it wasn’t for those gloom pods I’d just blip them outta existence with ancient arrow tips.
@@mischarowe that’s true there aren’t many. It would be cool if they brought back the mini bosses before the main boss in temples again. There could be space for gloom hands to be running around. The only super effective thing against them are elemental arrows so it would add more challenge and strats. Cause then you’d have to prioritize the usage of them.
I've always quibbled the assertion that the Ancient Hero was a Zonai. Looking at his aspect, there are more differences than similarities to the known living depictions of Zonai in Rauru and Mineru, and to the statues Zelda specifically states as depicting them. Honestly he looks less similar to a Zonai than a Gerudo does to a Hylian. No idea what he is instead, mind. Clearly more peoples have walked the land of Hyrule than we know.
I think most people confuse him for a Zonai because he’s wearing a variation of the zonaite set. But Zonai clothing does not equal being a Zonai. That armor set was made for other races to wear as well, since the headdress piece Link wears is obviously made for a Hylian or similar race. I like the idea that the ancient hero was a member of the new Depths race, who would have had access to Zonai technology. Wearing armor that improves battery efficiency when using that tech would make sense for the Depths people.
He could be a hybrid. It's very much heavily implied if not outright confirmed that Zelda is a descendant of Rauru and Sonia. As such they had to have a child. What would that look like? I think the hero's aspect is showing us. Mind it could also be that the hero's aspect is of a descendant of that child as well. Losing more and more Zonai traits as time goes by as the Hylian ones take over.
@@777SilverPhoenix777 if he’s a hylian Zonai hybrid, then why does he have dog feet, a tail, and animal-like eyes? Zonai have human looking feet, no tail, and human-like eyes.
The shieka tech lost power due to Ganondorfs seal weakening. the sealing power created two biproducts: light energy->blue flame, and gloom->malice. After defeating the calamity ganon the seal really started to break down and the blue flame that powers the divine beasts, shieka slate, and guardians went out. The light energy was just swirling over Ganondorfs body in TOTKs start while the gloom was pouring out and spreading. There was almost no light energy left and all dark energy
What I don't get is if Ganondorf has no memory of his time as the Calamity then how did he know what the Sanctum looked like 100 years before or that Link would have memories of it?
@@legomaster2538 My theory is that he regains his memories by that point but attributes Link's win to the Divine Beast and continues to not take him or the shattered kingdom seriously.
I think it would’ve been interesting if the gloom hands popped up anywhere (not in the sky, that is) and anytime instead of specific locations. It would make the game a lot more anxiety inducing and fun, in my opinion.
When BOTW came out, it was the first Zelda game where you couldn't give a custom name to Link/the player character. This was a pretty weird design choice. However, it make sense with TOTK context, considering Zelda had to mention Link's name to Rauru and by proxy Ganondorf to complete the time loop. Thus this incarnation cannot have a custom name and is definitively named Link. Also there exists a timeline where TOTK Ganon is still sealed if we take Age of Calamity into account (even though it is a semi-non-canon spinoff).
About The Ancient Hero - Rauru couldn’t have told us anything because The war with Great Calamity from 10 000 years ago happened AFTER Ganondorf was sealed.
I dont remember the barbarian armor set ever explicitly saying that the “warlike tribe” were Zonai, only that they lived in the Faron region. The appearance of the armor suggests that it wasn’t made by the Zonai, but by a culture of humans. However, given that the Zonai are extinct and Ganondorf alluded to them perhaps once being worshiped as gods by the people of Hyrule, perhaps this barbarian tribe used these ruins for worship. The clothing of this tribe was crude and no structures attributed to them have been found, implying that their architecture may have been primitive and unable to stand the test of time, if it existed at all. My personal opinion is that this was a tribe of either Hylians, round-eared humans (which are suspiciously absent in both BOTW and TOTK), or another ethnic group entirely that used the ruins of the Zonai as cult centers and/or shelter, building on top of these ruins with cruder materials as necessary. However, I also wouldn’t be too surprised if this was a separate group of Zonai like what was suggested in the video. The Zonai disappeared entirely with only their buildings and technology remaining. We haven’t seen any evidence of ancient super weapons or a great Zonai civil war yet, but the possibility that there was some kind of conflict isn’t entirely off the table. I mean, the Zonai built colosseums so I don’t think they were all as peaceful as Rauru and Mineru.
my own headcannon for the disappearing Sheikah tech is that it was dismantled and repurposed. iirc at the end of BotW Zelda mentions that Vah Ruta has stopped working (after Mipha's spirit departed with the rest of the Champions/King Rhoam), so the other Divine Beasts probably stopped working too. to avoid a 2nd Calamity-like event, they might have completely taken the Divine Beasts and the Guardians apart, and Purah could have taken the towers apart to study them and eventually make her own with the salvaged parts from those and everything else. dunno what would have happened to the Shrines, maybe those follow the developer's suggestions and "vanished" after serving their purpose lol
One big mystery is: where is Link at Rauru‘s time? Whenever an incarnation of Ganondorf came into the world there also was one of Link and Zelda. We may assume that Sonia was the Zelda of her time, but where is the hero and the legendary sword?
I feel no one talks about how throughout all the Zeldas, technically there were multiple since this Zelda would've had to live throughout all the other zelda timeliness as a dragon.
i like to headcanon that there was a split faction of zonai that became the barbarian tribe of the faron woods, kind of like how the yiga split from the shiekah, and they were the ones who built the structures there and the labyrinths. maybe they even called themselves Lomei, like the labyrinth names suggest.
For the last mystery, I have a theory of my own. So based on clues from botw it appears as though Nintendo wants to get rid of all the timeline confusion by basically starting over with botw. Brand new Hyrule and brand new Zelda games going forward. My theory is that botw wasn't the reset to the timeline, but skyward sword was. So the biggest reason for this is how different botw was from the other games except for skyward sword. The biggest reason is because they share the same director, but let's add the other reasons. First: the importance of goddess Hylia and her connection to Zelda. Let's say something happened to old Hyrule, like Ganondorf tired of losing over and over delving further into dark or demonic magic and triggered an evolution. After taking on a new name, Demise, he once again rallied his monster forces and invaded Hyrule. Taking inspiration from totk his new found power broke the Hylian made master sword and maybe even killed the hero. At this point we're not sure where the triforce is, but let's say Zelda was able to assemble it and made a wish, a wish to be able to fight Demise herself, and as a result of Demise being so powerful Zelda became Goddess Hylia. Still she wasn't able to completely defeat him and sealed him away. She used her new found divinity to repair the master sword and set about the events of skyward sword. After such a long time the people of skyloft forgot all about Hyrule and the events of all the other games. Fi did mention that the Hylians liked to pass on legend through oral tradition so the old people of Hyrule probably didn't bring a lot of books with them from the surface so lost a lot of history. I know they had books in skyloft but those were probably made up there. Next I'm guessing that while some people went with Link and Zelda to the surface not everyone in skyloft did. After all the surface was said to be inhospitable and filled with monsters so I'm guessing not everyone wanted to go down there. These people may have evolved into the Zonai and thinking now that they have all this fancy magitech they can survive on the surface and descended onto a very young kingdom. Maybe it was an incredibly young Hyrule, maybe it didn't have a name yet. We do know that Sonia was a priestess instead of a princess so it didn't appear they had a strong government. There's even a chance that the Zelda from skyward sword had multiple children and one of them could've returned to skyloft and became the ancestor of Rauru. That's pure speculation but we do know that magic is passed from parent to child in the Zelda universe so this could be why Rauru had Zelda's light power and Sonia didn't. For all we know Sonia may not be a descendant of skyward sword Zelda, I'm only going based on the resemblance. Anyway that's how I like to explain the odd connections between skyward sword and botw (and now totk.) Also just a little extra theory, after Rauru sealed Ganondorf away, I believe the calamity Ganon from 10,000 years ago was Ganondorf's escape attempt #1. We all know that the Ganondorf was still sealed away and calamity Ganon was a mindless puppet. I'm just trying to give you guys a timeframe for botw. Granted we don't know how long after Ganondorf was sealed before he tried the first calamity, but it was probably a good while. Obviously it was long enough for everyone to forget about the Zonai and Ganondorf. Though I don't know how this would explain the very Zonai like hero on the tapestry. Anyway thank you for reading.
the elemental dragons are distinctly NOT the same as the light dragon. the goddess dragons have the same type of hair as Rauru, and they the same scaly, furry mouth and big goat ears. the light dragon has a much more fuzzy face, distinct glowing hair that’s basically the same as her human form, and her horns are a very different style. she more resembles a deer than a goat. the elemental dragons were zonai, and demon dragon and light dragon were humans
My headcannon is the three dragons are the three reincarnations of the oracles from the Oracle games: Naydra (Nayru, Oracle of Ages), Dinraal (Din, Oracle of Seasons), and Farosh (Farore, Oracle of Secrets). That’s just my headcannon though
My bet is that everything in the previous zelda games took place in the 10,000 years leading up to the first calamity, starting with skyward sword and ending with spirit tracks. Then comes the first calamity, completely destroying hyrule, but also bringing the zonai and the hero into the picture. After calamity ganon is defeated for the first time, the zonai help rebuild hyrule. 100 years later, Ganondorf is reborn and starts wreaking havoc. Ganondorf is then sealed away for another 10,000 years by Rauru and the sages, and hyrule moves on. (I also think that the calamity was at least partially caused by Rauru's seal weakening, because in BOTW it happens sooner than they expect.)
I like the "theory" that zelda going back in time is the 'first loop'. and most of the sheika stuff got erased by timeline shenanigans. its just as vauge as what we got. but i like it. it could also somewhat explain the zonai shrines... just... appearing. the shrines appearing due to the purification terminal being damaged is my headcanon for that part though. could sonia's departure and missing child be a result of zelda going back? creating a paradox where she isnt born... nah. couldnt be.
One theory I've seen regarding the "past timeline" is that the Dragon's Tears show the true events of Hyrule's past, and the previous games were all just stories passed down through history. I'm not saying it's a good theory, but it is A theory.
I'd love a video going into who the best Swordsmen in the Zelda series are (not including any of the Links or Ganondorfs.) I want my boi Alphonso to get some love.
for Gandorf to show himself in Hyrule would be gloom copies, his true power hasn't been measured so we don't know his true power level but every time Link has been there to stop him, we don't know what happens to Link after he defeats and parties. Does Link go to rest in a chamber that stops his aging, does it just puts him in cold storage or is it something else like he gets teleported forward in time to a different part of Hyrule's era
The "Bargainer Statues". When we talked to the Goddess Statue in the ruins of the temple on the Plateau, it pointed us to a statue underwater.. a little Bargainer Statue. When we put the eyes back in the big statue under the mine complex, it offered us a choice of Health or Stamina. A very familiar choice. Under the 3 springs? Giant Bargainer Statues. Under the forgotten temple? Giant Bargainer Statue. All the big places we associate with Hylia or even the Goddesses have a Statue under them. Have they been taking our calls since Breath of the Wild? Given they are at the wellsprings of the great springs, do they provide power when they pass souls on? (I'm thinking if the Depths were like the Zelda equivalent of Final Fantasy 7's Lifestream).
Nice vid. There were so many unanswered questions in TOTK that it made the ending hard to completely enjoy since I knew it was ending. SPOILERS AHEAD: The lack of the Triforce, the Zonai's complete 180 in terms of what they were, Rauru and Sonia's lack of a child being present, the 3 dragons mystery, the lack of explanation regarding the "lost races" of Hyrule, such as the Kokiri and the Mogmas, and finally - my most disappointing aspect of TOTK - the unresolved Zelda / Link romance. I cannot believe that the developers completely bypassed this in the end.
@@Ahouro The people who created this game don’t know crap about it there’s a lot of hints in the game leading to this game being an alternate timeline for once there’s no loft wings and nowhere in the kingdom mention it
I think some tribes were influenced by the Zonai. Rauru didn’t look anything like the barbarian armor. But look at those early royal guards seen in the cutscenes, specifically the scene where Zelda was having tea with Sonia and Rauru, you can see the way they are dressed. For the dragons, I don’t see why they could even be the goddesses. They don’t have to be. But the way the Zonai are described as god-adjacent could be hinting that the golden goddesses might have been Zonai and were perceived as goddesses in the legends due to their powers. I feel like the way the Zonai are linked to the sky and even space, kind of gives me Anunnaki vibes. And the way they helped shape the Hylians and their world then disappeared, is an interesting parallel to the Anunnaki story.
What else is still Unsolved in Tears of The Kingdom's world?
This is random, but I love the fact that Zelda has green eyes and link has blue, link with blue eyes corolating to wisdom, and green eyes corolating to courage!
Where is the Triforce? And are the dragons in past games such as the three dragons in Skyward sword (Lanayru, Faron and Eldin) also created using Secret stones, could they be the same dragons in TOTK?
The only thing that makes any sense is that one of the timeline Zelda or King, maybe even Link wished on the TriForce to unify the world, and the Gods of Nintendo are telling the events from before Skyward sword until TOTK. The only thing that survived is items such as the Master Sword which is a God made artifact.
I believe the more "barbaric" style of Zonia architecture was used to cover up the original Zonia "pristine" style. I speculate it was a way to cover up or hide the true history of the ancient Zonia so descendants of Raru and Sonia wouldn't seek the power of Ganandorf just as the castle was built over the sealing chamber. Being most descendants start taking the genes of the mother more and more, I figure the ancient aspect was the start of losing the Zonia genes and advanced technological skills. And the Zonia / Hylian mix became the Zonia we know from BOTW. Just as we have some back story and new outcome in Hyrule Warriors. I'd love to see the gap bridged between the ancient and newer Zonia and more expalanation of the dragons in a separate game.
What the Age of Calamity timeline of the Upheaval inevitably has to look like.
The biggest unsolved mystery for me is Rauru and Sonia's child. There is heavy implication in her dialogue and motherly aura that Zelda is a direct descendant of their bloodline. Since Sonia dies while Zelda is there, it implies there must already be a small child around that's never shown. (Maybe they literally couldn't design the child without igniting the Great Furry Debate!) The "dead mother" trope is really popular in Zelda lore...examples being Zelda's mother dying when she was young, OOT Link's mother dying after bringing him to the Deku Tree, Koko and Cottla's mother dying before the game starts etc. Sonia is such an unusually motherly character for a Zelda game, it would be downright bizarre for the lore to insist that she and Rauru were actually childless and Zelda's own royal lineage plus her secret stone powers were completely unrelated to them. Link's mother is also never mentioned in BOTW/TOTK lore, although we do know his father was a knight. Given the strength of his/her/their lineage, one can assume Sonia and Rauru's baby would also have had some sort of heroic power. This missing kid has major main character energy but we never find out anything more!
I mean considering that Sonia and Raru die as well as his sister I kinda doubt they had a child? But I mean considering that their history is entombed underneath Hyrule castle they would’ve had to have had an heir, maybe the child was already old enough to have left? Idk
There isn’t “implication” that Zelda is a direct descendant, they outright say it. She has Rauru’s light power and Sonia’s time power. They had to have had a child
i think the ancient hero was rauru and sonia"s child.
@@itzriotplayz2377 Not impossible, we don't know how old the Zonai can typically live to be, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're one of those races that can outlive everyone, might explain why we only know of two since long living races typically don't have much drive to have kids, and thus the race basically just went extinct because of this 🤔
@@itzriotplayz2377 I thought that too! But wasn't too sure about the timeline. Going by instinct it would fit as the Ganondorf that killed Sonia was the one that was defeated by the ancient hero. That would give him a pretty strong motive too. However the ancient hero is clearly designed to look remind people of Link...that feels a bit weird as it would make him and Zelda distant relatives (?). Lore accurate Link never has royal blood and is always some kid from a farm or village.
My headcanon was that the dragons were Zonai worshippers of the Golden Goddesses. High priests/priestesses, maybe even cult leaders, who went a step too far in their pursuit of divinity, and when they "drank the Kool-aid" the other Zonai were so aghast they banned the practice entirely. Heck, maybe that's even why the Golden Goddesses have taken such a back seat compared to Hylia in BotW/ToTK. After the "draconification incident", it might have left a bad taste in people's mouths about even worshiping the goddesses at all.
For the zonai architecture, I think it was Hylian's trying to preserve zonai architecture without having the skill or knowledge to make it the same prestige way. If you look at the barbarian armor in botw, it looks like the hylian "guards" seen in the totk memories. So the barbaric 'zonai' were actually early hylians trying to preserve what they could understand of zonai architecture.
Possibly some other Zonai from outside of Hyrule joined with them (Since in those days Hyrule was just the Great Plateau), with the Hero of the Calamity being a hybrid who was also a Knight.
I also think the Sheikah studied under Mineru, and that's where their tech came from.
The dragons have features that hint at their original form: Zelda has a thin face and blond hair, Ganondorf is bulky with red hair, the three sacred dragons have a goat-like snout and bright hair. Rauru reminds me a lot of the latter. The Ember / Charged / Frostbite armor have Zonai attributes and their description mentions ancient rituals, it's not crazy to assume people who used them, likely Zonai, turned into these dragons.
I also like to think that the 3 dragon transformations may have something to do with the zonai's departure from hyrule. We know for a fact that draconification is only considered under very tight or extreme circumstances. If the zonai appeared somewhere between the distant past and founding eras, there's great potential in this convergence
I believe the era of Hyrule founding is really the rebirth of the Hyrule Kingdom, but the founders didn't know Hyrule was real before they created the kingdom as it only be legends to them like Atlantis is to us.
THIS.
I love this theory because I came to the same conclusion and logic as I played the game, and the devs went on to hint at it. It's the most logical and less hurting explanation, canonically speaking, as it simply rebuilds the kingdom without rewriting history.
There's some implication that the Depths might actually be the Old Hyrule since we find former heroes' tunics that are said to be the real thing.
@@annieandelsieofarendelle3294 the only problem i have with that is how would the depths be mirrored if it’s supposed to be the “original layer”
I'm in favor of that, too. It stacks on the "timeline merge" theory. Hyrule gets flooded, then not flooded, and instead of New Hyrule being founded far away, Hyrule gets re-founded.
@@DemonicAdj Totally. It explains Hyrule after the flood; after the fallen hero timeline, which shows a kingdom in decadence; and is easy to apply to the child timeline for the same reason, even if the events after Twilight Princess weren't as violent and dire, all kingdoms die and fade away eventually.
11:20 the reason the refounding of Hyrule has so much traction is because the developers (Fujibayashi and Aonuma) strongly hinted at it in an interview with Famitsu. Basically when asked about the timeline conflict between Skyward Sword and TOtK, they said it's quite a possibility that the Hyrule from the previous games was destroyed and a new Hyrule established. Of course they didn't outright confirm it but heavily implied it.
now they need to make a game where we witness the former hyrule being ruined lmao, it would be sick
As soon as I discovered that sheikah tech was gone, finding out what happened to it and the sacred beasts became my biggest motivation to explore every single inch of the world. I was very sad to discover that there is just no explanation for it.
Yeah it is a bit gutting lol
My main theory is that Zelda ordered it all to be dismantled due to being scared of the Calamity coming back at some point and taking control of it all again, its the only thing that makes sense, thats why the new towers are made from the tech because Gannon cant do much with a tower.
I think it makes more sense for the Hylians to have been a tribe on the surface in Faron.
Rauru came down and gave them structure in the form of a kingdom. He married Sonia, likely the next in line to lead the tribe, to create the kingdom of Hyrule. Faron is also close enough to the Gerudo region, and it's known that the Gerudo primarily partner with Hylians. If this was generally done more forcefully, as one of the carpenters in Ocarina of Time suggested, then allying with the Zonai and becoming a kingdom would've been a threat to the continuation of the Gerudo, as they could now set up to defend themselves. This would've necessitated a response from the leader of the Gerudo, Ganondorf. We know Ganondorf wants to take over Hyrule, but we never _really_ see why. If he's just power hungry, then it would be a good excuse to gain support, at least.
that sounds normal enough. a group perceived to be threatening your existence, even if they actually aren't... well...
*gestures at WWII *
My thoughts on Sheikah Tech from playing the game: the towers and shrines must have sank back into the ground, because they did serve their purpose and were no longer needed. The divine beasts and Guardians were probably dismantled by the Hylians to prevent Ganon from taking them over again, and their parts were repurposed for the Skyview Towers and Purah Pad (which is why there are Guardian legs in the towers). The Guardian on the tech lab is probably the last remaining one that Robbie and Purah kept as a cultural artifact.
the guardian on top of that lab was also defeated during the Calamity and thus can’t be taken over so it isn’t a threat. If they only disassembled the Guardians that were in danger of being taken over again then that would explain why it was left where it is.
The ancient arrow pieces may be even more ancient technology than the sheikah tech, since there's a construct in the spirit temple selling them.
My interpretation was that they just found leftover arrow heads lying around the Depths.
@@pancakes8670 True. Those arrows were canonically developed by the Sheikah, so it's more likely that they just came across those and can replicate the technology (no too far-fetched, considering what a Zonai construct can do tbh)
Hmm possibly, since it's the Mining Construct that sells the ancient arrow heads, not the Smithing Construct. Maybe tech that was lost in the depths didn't get the signal to disappear that the surface tech got.
@@RSanchez111 but none of the ancient blades i got were in the depths.
I rather expect that the Three Dragons were some form of Oracles like in Oracle of Seasons and Ages where the Golden Goddesses appeared as Humans and taking the roles of Oracles
I assumed that the dragons were originally Zonai rather than Hylians, give their goat-like faces.
I don't think the Shiekah tech disappeared, but it ceased to function over time. BotW's epilogue mentions that Vah Ruta stopped working. I wouldn't be too surprised if the others soon followed. The kingdom of Hyrule probably decided to recycle it.
Exactly that’s what they did with the Guardian arms
@@majesticespeon3126 the purah pad is also just a reverse-engineered shiekah slate.
Thank you for having in-depth captions available. It's really appreciated
You're welcome 🤙
Back when I was thinking Tears of the Kingdom was rebooting the lore, I kind of wondered if maybe the Din, Nayru, and Farore of the new continuity were Zonai who were instrumental in the creation of Hyrule, and who became dragons for... reasons.
I am currently leaning towards refounding theory, so now I'm wondring if instead they're incarnations of the Oracles that went by the same names.
I think they became dragons to make link and zelda reincarnate with their powers, so ganondorf would always be defeated, and i think thats why when rauru lived there was no link, the goddesses didn’t become dragons yet and just lived on a hidden sky island, but after rauru died, i think they became dragons to make sure link could deteat evil
The ruins look weird to you because of auto build. The green autobuild parts must change over time, as the civ must have used autobuild to make green objects, hence aging to be a different color over time etc
given the devs answer of where the sheikah tech went, i wouldnt be surprised if the ancient hero's aspect has a tail because "lol i dunno it looks cool"
"A wizard did that too"
It's not a bad answer. The sheikah tech disappeared because they served their purpose isn't a bad explanation. I mean, everything had to be excavated from underground in Botw.
A tremendous mystery for me is who got Mineru's Stone? I figured it was Purah & she became the new sage of spirit. Also, what do the previous sages look like? I thought at some point we would see their faces but we never did
It think if Zelda lore holds out Purah would become a Sage of Shadow.
Though I kind of wonder if TotK's Sage of Spirit is equivalent OoT's Sage of Shadow and TotK's Sage of Lightning is equivalent to OoT's Sage of Spirit based on the colors being orange and purple.
It's possible that in OoT's time lightning was saw as being energy and therefore lumped in with spirit energy. And that the cloned spirits were seen as being shadows of yourself.
Either Purah, or possibly Link. Note that Mineru has the same "sand garden Sage chat" cutscene like the others, only this time, Link is the only person to talk to.
@@DemonicAdj Hmm, the sage of spirit is... The individual with the spirit of the hero. Would be fitting, actually
From what I've heard and kinda got outta the stone tablet beneath Typhoid Ruins where you find the Dusk Sword or whatever they call it is that a lot of that stuff that was built that looks more ancient or barbaric was done by Hylians in honor of the actual Zonai.
My theory is that the Zonai before Raruru were heavily adapted to war. He's shown how powerful he can be. Those stones are the greatest weapon they possess. Also, my theory about the other 3 dragon's is that they were Zonai who chose to become dragons, and it was discovered that by doing so, they stopped being themselves, thus it becoming a forbidden act. Also, the ancient Hero being a zonai may be the descendant of Raruru and Sonia.
That could tie into Rauru and Mineru seemingly being the last of their kind. They may have wiped each other out. The dark skeletons in the Depths (mirroring the Leviathan skeletons) might have belonged to dragons, showing they definitely can be killed. If some of the dragonified Zonai were big on destruction, it would be a quick decision to forbid dragonification. The three dragons we see might have been the first.
@@DemonicAdjNot to mention Link literally *spoilers*..... kills a dragon in TOTK, so it's completely plausible that Zonia magic could kill others too.
On the topic of the Ancient Hero; To me, they look very much like how one may interpret a Zonai/Hylian hybrid. Smaller, Hylian ears, hair that isn’t Zonai White and is located only on the head, shorter face, more flat-but-not fully-human feet, a distinct lack of horns. Less anthropomorphic furry, more “my mom/dad was a furry”, if that makes any sense…
If there are 7 sacred Stones, is it possible that there are originally 10 of them?
And since Link have found the Ember, Frostbite and Charged Armor, weren’t they owned by Dinraal, Naydra and Farosh before being Draconified?
This has been a theory I can’t get over since I look back at “Creating the Champions” back while playing TOTK at the same time.
I had a similar thought about the original wearers of the Ember, Frostbite and Charged armor sets. My theory was they were priests/priestesses who devoted their lives to the 3 Goddesses and in an attempt to become immortal and live amongst their deities, they ate their Sacred Stones, but became immortal dragons instead of immortal "gods" which caused the act to be declared as forbidden
I have been suggesting this mystery to this channel for the last few months about this after I found out about Zeldas draconification
I don't necessarily think there is a limit to the number of Sacred Stones. It would be different if we knew each stone had a specific power, but we see the original Time Stone become the Dark Stone as well as the original Light Stone become a new Time Stone.
We also know that even though the stones are consumed they technically are embedded on the dragon somewhere (G-dorf's being on his forehead just like in his mortal forms). And that killing a dragon is possible if you break the stone... or at least we assume this kills the dragon and doesn't do something else like cutting off the One Ring from Sauron's hand did in LotR.
In the end, there can be any number of the stones. While the Secret Stones were secret, we only see 7 of them in TotK as Zelda's and Rauru's stones are the same one. Which is why the mural only shows seven. There were only seven involved in the story.
So there is nothing saying if there are 7, 10, or even 20. There's also the implication that other dragons in the series if not a monster might have also consumed sacred stones.
@@verdantmistral442 if we're going by everything presented to us in TotK, then there's the possibility of there being at least 10 Secret Stones. The Light and Demon Dragons still have their Secret Stones even in their dragon forms, and there are 3 elemental dragons who, if they underwent draconification, also have a Secret Stone each, so if we add that to the original 7 then that'd bump the number of Secret Stones up to 10
@@Sarah_H I was mostly saying there isn't any specified cap to the number of stones. And that the seven comes from the mural which is only showing the stone important to the story and saying there can easily be any number of stones.
My head-canon for the Shiekah technology is that it was permanently retired after Calamity Ganon was defeated since it... You know... DID KINDA contribute to the near eradication of most of Hyrule. I think it was dumped into the Hyrule Castle Observatory, and then completely buried.
I don't think we need to talk about the ancient heroes identity because all the heroes are named Link lol
That isn't a given to my knowledge. We see hero's called Link but I don't believe it's stated anywhere that the Hero MUST be called Link. Very possible that in an ancient age the hero took on different names.
very great video, you approach things in a way better way than most theorists, especially regarding hyrule's founding, as so many just take Fujibayashi interview a the final answer without seeing that what the game says is not that simple, and what the director said was vague on purpose.
Otherwise for another mystery, I can't figure out where was the underground entrance in the castle Link and Zelda used at the start of the game to get to ganondorf, and would have loved to see the whole trip from the surface with those 2
1. Yes, they are indeed the Goddesses.
2.After what happened to the Demon King the "Ancient" Hylians merge with the Zonai.
3.They had fear of what happened with the Calamity.
4. It's the Hero of Legend a Merge (In relation to the second mistery) of Zonai, Hylians, and Gerudo (Ganondorf/Ganon related)
5. That "Ancient Hyrule foundation era" was after all the rest of the games. And before the Calamity 10.000 years ago.
re: dragons
I always suspected that the three elemental dragons were Zonai spring maidens, who underwent draconification to continue to watch over their respective springs and continue to serve the Goddesses, and were not originally named Farosh, Naydra, and Dinraal but were given those names when they 1) became attendants for the springs of the Goddesses, or 2) after they became dragons and their original names were lost to history. In the Song of the Stormwind Ark we learn that the Zonai were at least once referred to as "gods" by the Rito, when a "god" came down from the heavens above Hebra and was assisted in ascending back up to the heavens by the Rito; the song also mentions the "god" "pouring a mysterious power into" the materials the Rito had gathered to build ships, which IMO means that the Rito were witnessing a Zonai using Ultrahand to build boats, which then begs the question of whether ALL Zonai had the abilities that Link's new arm does/Rauru presumably had (obviously not Recall because that's a Sage ability from Zelda, but Ultrahand, Ascend, and Fuse). So Zonai being considered "gods" by ancient Hyrulean races = the elemental dragons were once "gods", not the literal Golden Goddesses but were once of a people considered to be gods
re: timeline
This is a brand new, refounded Hyrule, far FAR into the future, after the ends of the previous timelines and a convergence. There is no other explanation that satisfactorily ties up all the loose ends that would be created if this Era of Hyrule's Founding took place BEFORE OoT (or pre-Skyward Sword). How do the Rito exist? The ancient Zora Sage looks like BotW-era Zora, so if this is pre-OoT, the Zora un-evolved from that form and then re-evolved back into it? How does Ganondorf exist outside of the Imprisoning Chamber? This is a different Hyrule Castle than we see in other games and the game says that the castle itself is key to maintaining the seal on Ganondorf; multiple castles are DESTROYED in other games, which would mean that the seal on TotK Ganondorf would be broken, but this castle IS STILL STANDING by the time of BotW/modern-day TotK, so it CANNOT be the same one. Why is the geography of this Hyrule so different from other games? You're tellin' me that Hyrule's geographical history is bookended by two Hyrules that are almost identical? How are we able to find armor and gear from ALL THREE timelines if BotW/TotK supposedly take place at the end of ONE of them? Where's the Triforce if this is supposed to be pre-OoT? Zelda has it in both BotW and TotK, but if this Era of Founding is pre-OoT, then that would mean the Triforce somehow left the Light Dragon and was then transplanted into the Zelda/Link/Ganondorf of later eras/games, and we see in a cutscene that Zelda is using the Triforce to regenerate the Master Sword the entire time she's a dragon, so it...left her, was briefly held by others, and then...came back? Plus many more inconsistencies I can't think of right now
I would take ten Guardian jump scares over even a single Gloom Hands jump scare.
Hahaha fair
Ganondorf's time below: This is no mystery at all as far as I'm concerned.
During the last few months before TotK was released, I came to theorize that everything we were seeing in the trailers & leaks was all happening after all the old timeline branches. Then playing through the game, I felt even more sure that Hyrule had been previously been destroyed off screen and later refounded by a new incarnation of Rauru.
It makes sense everything the developers had said about BotW in prior interviews implied that the reason they set that game so far into the future was to give themselves more room to be creative when making the game. Whether we like it or not, BotW and by extension TotK are a sort of soft reboot for the series. To then go back and directly involve the sequel in events from the old timeline would be contradictory to those sentiments.
Then that recent interview where it was suggested that Hyrule had a re-founding by none other than Fujibayashi himself was the biggest wink and a nudge we could have gotten. That's as close to a confirmation of the Refounding Theory as we're likely to get from the developers.
That’s not the case at all no one knows about the demon king not even link and Gannon Dorf does not know about him either until rarau mentions him this Hass to be a completely separate timeline from the original because of what I mentioned earlier Gandolf has been defeated by many reincarnations of the hero so he would’ve known about this link before rarau even mentioned him
@@majesticespeon3126 This is a different Ganondorf. Ganondorf was also different in Four Swords Adventures.
@@Mustafa-h7s9b That’s what I just said it’s in a different timeline so a different one
7:32 i think Zelda may have taken a secret task to destroy all og shiekah tech considering how in-touch she is with the people of hyrule while still keeping some newer tech under a new name
so fun fact: there was more than one calamity. the ancient tapestry depicts the ancient hero along with what is assumed a princess of hyrule, fighting the calamity, with the aid of the guardians and divine beasts. meaning that this tapestry depicts an event after sealing ganondorf, after zelda transfroms. this also explains why there are two master swords. the "newest" one is being restored while its old self was used against the calamity by the ancient hero. zelda could have told the old royal family its original location. the ancient hero would have taken up the blade to fight the calamity.
the calamity is released for at least a second time during botw.
We hear of 3 Separate Calamity Events:
- 10,000~ Years ago (The Original Tapestry)
- 100 Years ago (When Link Fell//Same Calamity we fight in BotW)
- Some far off distant "Land" fought a Calamity that nearly wiped out the Land, but it was defeated...
@@gabriellockwood2780 you got any more info about that third point? my post was about the first two points you raised. id like to know where that info in the third point can be found. thanks
I think the Hero's Aspect has the same shaped head as the raised fist statue in the depths.
Perhaps the Zonai originally started in the Depths and eventually rose to the Surface and then the Skies. I mean there's some implications that the Goron tribe came from the Depths. (Which might explain why the Goron disappear at points in Hyrule's history or don't seem to have a homeland like in WW and SS).
The Zonai give big Fantasy Elf vibes. So it wouldn't odd if there were variations depending on their environment. Dark elves, forest elves, and high elves for instance kind of match the dwellings of the Zonai. You have the Depths Zonai, the Faron Zonai, and the Sky Zonai. They also have a similar feel of once a great advanced magic culture that fell apart and is dying out found in the fantasy worlds from the 80s and prior.
My assomption about the Zonai architecture discrepancy is that Zonai were officially a long-gone barbaric tribe at the time of Breath of the Wild, put in the game to have mysterious ancient ruins, just like the frog-like statue we see in the depths during the questline near the Central Hyrule chasm in Tears of the Kingdom.
Nintendo took many elements that were discussed in the community about Breath of the Wild to include them in Tears of the Kingdom. Notably, the hability to build machines is a derivative of the "Flying Machine", a glitch using two minecarts and magnesis. And the focus on Zonai following their official reveal in the making-of book Creating a Champion.
Zonai were not sky-goat-people inhabiting marble palaces before Tears of the Kingdom, i'm sure of it. This is retcon.
The "two-styles" pillar in front of the spirit temple chasm makes no sense and is probably just there to suggest they are indeed one and the same, every old stonework being a coat on top of the true Zonai style, whatever the reason behind it (Nintendo doesn't know either).
Or it could be some of the Hylians took the name Zonai after the last two remaining Zonai died. They tried to carry on their legacy but lost the techniques to build things like the Zonai did without the technology the Zonai used. After all we know the Hylians built Typhlo so it's not a stretch to think they were using an adapted style. Over time they could have lost memory of the true Zonai and became a warlike tribe before dying out at some point.
Edit: a real world example of this happening is i Asia. China started many things and Japan adapted those things over time after some people settled there. Now its two completely different cultures that share a history with each other.
@@777SilverPhoenix777 Seems like a very plausible possibility.
The only mystery that I am still pondering is why Nintendo won't confirm whether or not Link has lost his v-card...
He got to second base and that’s the farthest
Probably
Some of them did.
I'm glad I wasn't drinking something when I read this.😂😂😂😂😂😂
👀
I think there's more than enough evidence to suggest Ganondorf could have a version of himself be reborn on the surface while his original self remained imprisoned. His power manifests into beings with their own will within BOTW itself as the Malice monsters and the Calamity Ganon itself.
Not to mention in Skyward Sword, the canonical first Link and Zelda, they mention an ancient robot-building race that vanished before Hylia raised the land into the sky. What if that race was the Zonai? And the land being raised into the sky are due to the events we see in TOTK? And that would explain why there was no Link or Zelda or Master Sword in Rauru and Sonia's time, because they came after in Skyward Sword.
About the Zonai structures, I think that either Zelda or someone who took over after she changed could have ordered that all remaining Zonai structures on the surface be covered up to protect the secret of what happened. After all, they built Hyrule Castle over the remains of Rauru & Ganondorf. It' not hard to believe that they could do comparably minor work of other structures.
That’s a really good point.
A lore friendly explanation for all the missing Sheikah tech would be that the towers and shrines dissapeared into the earth again after their purpose was fulfilled while all the remaining guardians and divine beasts were deconstructed and their remains either fully destroyed or buried so no evil force could corrupt them ever again.
Would have been an easy and believable explanations but the story writers slept on that
A wizard did it, and everyone saw it but nobody bothered to even acknowledge it.
That's basically the explanation.
If the goddesses are the dragons post-secret-stone-buffet, then maybe it'd explain why the Triforce is rarely seen or mentioned in BOTW and TOTK
For the shiekah tecks disappearance, I think that at the central control unit under the castle (which I think was a little bellow the astral observatory but not all the way down to the depths) Purah and Robbie activated a mechanism that made all tech revert back to a previous and determined state before it was mined and manufacturted. I believe that it would have been done by space-time shift stones that can be removed from and not added to cirtain tech. Once this happened, the pillar that holds the casle up (which may have been partly removed to add the observatory) would "reapear" and, now with the obseratory gone, the gloom could be more easily spotted causing Purah to send Link and Zelda down to investigate.
[Edit]- I still wonder how the hero's aspect could connect to the shrines
[Edit2]- I still wonder why luminous stone can be found in the walls of the forgot foundation and no where else in the depths. Aside from zonait, luminous stone is the only ore that can be found in large deposits and oddly can be found in the sky too. It also had a resell price change, in btow, it was 70 rupees, now in totk, its 30.
I still think the easiest solution to the disappearance of the Shiekah Tech is that without the Shiekah Monks maintaining the energy in prayer it simply faded. We know even the Master Sword can lose its luster to time without prayer or sacred energy.
Similarly, Zonai tech similarly has a shelf live where it dissolves not unlike the Monks do. There's also the implication that the energy used by Zonai is similar to the Ancients engery (if flatout not the same thing, as higher amounts of compressed Zonai energy turns blue).
We also know that Shiekah tech isn't 100% going to disappear either. Some components are robust enough to survive destruction (any of the ancient parts we seen in BotW).
The Zonai tech we seen in TotK appears to be the stuff that somehow survived on its own being somewhat more stable and not decaying back into energy. And Purah and Robbie simply made do with the stuff that remained. It might explain why the Shiekah Towers have spirit seals on them. They are trying to keep the Shiekah tech from randomly decaying into energy.
And the blue stuff mentioned to be under the ancient furnaces (where you get blue flames) in the artbook. There's definitely a fuel supply involved. We know Zonaite can be refined into power sources, and the bots basically ran on autopilot, some mined and refined, so nearby ones might have gotten periodic recharges. Others just go dormant to save battery.
I like your idea of compressed zonai energy turning blue.. since the battery bars are blue when you get the second set of battery bars. Maybe the ancient shiekah energy is some odd "liquid" zonaite formed under the right conditions.
i like to think that pura and her team took the ancient sheika tech and repurposed it as you can kinda see throughout the game just a theory though
The dragons in both games are described as "servants of the springs", making it unlikely that they are the golden goddesses. If they were once anything other than a dragon, it is more plausible that they were someone tasked with taking care of their respective spring/deity.
As for the Sheikah technology, we do see parts of it in use such as in the new towers, and I think it was stated somewhere that it was recycled by the inhabitants of Hyrule. This doesn't necessarily make a conflict with the developer's statement of disappearance. The towers and shrines, many of which didn't appear until activating a particular tower, would have disappeared after fulfilling their purpose of aiding the hero. The mechanical bits like guardians and Divine Beasts would have been recycled. This doesn't explain every piece of technology, such as the Sheikah slate, but remember that we are trying to give an in-game explanation to a real world decision. If they had left them in, the surface would have been too crowded and Purah would not have needed to make a replacement slate. Depending on how deep the connection of the slate to the old tech was, it's possible that the slate stopped working, possibly when the towers and shrines disappeared. It too had fulfilled its purpose. That or Purah/Robbie destroyed it with tinkering.
Yeah, the Slate might have "served its purpose" and broke down like Vah Ruta did. But by then, Purah was already mostly done with her Pad, with dreams of making them for everyone in Hyrule.
The Koopalings were never Bowser's children.
Eggman Nega was never from Blaze's world.
Ganondorf has been sealed since Hyrule's founding.
there is no war in Ba Sing Se.
Maybe the guardians floated up like the sky island's, thats why it's tied down to the roof.
Get that Guardian a bag of cat food to hold onto!
I personally think the more central america inspired Zonai ruins, such as the ones in Faron and Typhlo ruins, were purposely built to look different to the pristine zonai architecture. It's kinda a "we shouldn't try to mimic the gods, but to honor them" sorta thing.
Think about it this way, do you see more churches built in the architecture of ancient Judea or in a style native to the people building the churches?
That and the Hylian zonai tribe likely covered up the proper Zonai architecture to protect it from wear and tear. Kinda like putting stucco on a house.
The style of the Hylian made ruins also seems to match better with the zonai devices and the zonai art, such as the statues on top of the Zonai temple of time, so if the hylians wanted to mimic the gods it makes sense that they'd mimic the art over the normal architecture, since it'd probably be harder to make the pristine style than the machine style
The other option for the Guardian atop the Hateno Tech Lab is that… well, maybe that specific Guardian hasn’t yet served its purpose… 👀
Uhhh… Fujibyashi was asked about the timeline placement of TOTK.. and pretty much stated the way he saw it was that a great catastrophe had destroyed the original Hyrule that we know of and that the founding spoken of in BOTW was essentially a refounding.. which isn’t that far out there.. look at WW.. Tetra and link went and searched for new lands to re-establish the New Hyrule we play in in spirit tracks. So in a way Fujibyashi is keeping the old timelines still relevant while keeping a singular timeline going forward. The only question left now is, is this the same Ganondorf we’ve fought before or his spirit reincarnated in a new body?? We see two Gerudo women who seem to represent Kotake and Koume in the cutscene in Hyrules throne room.. soooo.. werw they reincarnate as well or named for the original surrogates who became surrogates for Ganons reincarnated form??? That’s what’s bugging me.. I mean it’s a little convoluted but.. stranger things have happened before…
Nope different timeline from the original
@@majesticespeon3126 no.. it’s not.
"Koume" and "Koutake" could be the Gerudo equivalent of "Impa". Some kind of legacy name handed down, possibly for the first set of twins in a generation or something.
@@MamaWolf920 yes it is Ganondorf isn’t known in this new timeline
I like to think the Ancient Hero was the child
Didn't one of the tablets or the quest to get to the Dragon Isles talk about how they hid the area? It would make sense for them to put their own style over it to hide that it is Zonai in that case.
I need to play again, but I'm sure someone says it.
Was ALL of Thyphlo Ruins built by Hylians? I read the marker as referring only to that underground room where the marker and sword are.
The Ancient hero is a Link because only Link can use the Master sword.
Is he though ? It's true he is the only one who can lift it from its pedestal in a lot of games, but in the memories of BOTW it's shown that Zelda was able to take the Master Sword to the Deku Tree by herself. I think the condition to wield it is to be accepted by the spirit of the sword: Fi.
@@EileenC1601 She didn't use the Master sword, others can move it but not use it.
For the zonai architecture, I believe that the sky islands and depths style architecture came first, and were built by the zonai when they first descended upon hyrule, but then if that style came first, then how did the zonai build the faron style architecture if they were already extinct by then? Well, we know that rauru and sonia had a child, and many other zonai who had died by the time of the memories must have too, and since lots of them probably had children with hylians, i doubt that their children would just be fully hylian. My theory is that after Rauru sacrificed himself, and Mineru turned into a spirit, the children of the zonai that married hylians, like rauru and sonia, were actually zonai hylian hybrids. I also think that one of these hybrids was the ancient hero, which is why he has both Hylian and Zonai traits. I believe that the Zonai Hylian hybrids moved to the zonai ruins in faron, so that they could protect the entrance to the construct factory, which is one of the only zonai buildings on the surface, and to protect it even more, they built a coat over the old zonai architecture which is made of much stronger material, so that it can protect the spirit temple. The zonai hylian hybrids slowly became more hylian like, and also evolved a bit more to survive in the wild, (which may explain why the ancient hero has more animalistic feet than the original zonai), and one of the hybrids then became the ancient hero from the tapestry, and along side evolving to live in the wild better, they also evolved their clothing to become more warrior like, since they would probably have to fight lots of enemies and wild animals in faron. This is why the barbarian armor looks warrior like, but still shares some zonai traits, like how the skull with the red hair looks like the zonaite helm, and the barbarian chest piece looks like rauru's shirt, and the barbarian legwear look like the zonaite legwear. I believe after this they then found a beach right outside of faron, and realized that they had access to a bunch of fish there, so they decided to start a village there called lurelin village. They then became more hylian like, and slowly forgot about their zonai past, while still having some remaining traits of the zonai. I think this idea of the people of lurelin village being the zonai is hinted at, because Tauro, who is from lurelin village, has a streak of white hair. I think this was intentional, to show the connections between them and the zonai, since the zonai had white hair. Tauro also is very interested in the zonai, and can even read zonai text, and all across lurelin village you can find zonai swirls and ruins. They also have darker skin than normal hylians, which they might have gotten from their zonai ancestors, who had dark grey skin. Anyway thats my theory on that
I do wish there was a bigger link (no pun intended) between totk and botw it doesn’t really “follow on” as I would have imagined, also how have they not aged at all since botw 😂 I want whatever skincare is around in Hyrule
To attempt to quote something, i vaugely remembor from nintendo by memory all the zelda games are legends so they may all be 100 percent acurate or any percent bellow that as they are all ment to be like storys passed around the kindom of hyrule changing with each telling from one generation to the next
I've heard a lot of people feel this way, I get it for sure
The aging is more obvious with the children, as the ones in BOTW are older in TOTK. I imagine that anyone past puberty is just assumed to not have changed enough to warrant a design change more drastic than a new hairstyle
If you look at the menu, the ancient hero’s aspect is the 3 masks at the front of link when he equips it. Maybe the ancient hero was human looking and his appearance changed when he equipped the masks, like Link. Rauru and Mineru have something similar equipped, but only 1 each.
Although i agree with the fact that the guardians disappearing was a bit of an on the spot answer, it is sort of fitting that the only guardian remaining in TOTK is also the only one that was tied down to the top of a building in BOTW.
The guardians are still in the game they’re used in the tower to launch link into the sky at least their arms are used to give him the cord for the map but the divine beasts are another thing
I personally believe that the BotW/TotK version of Hyrule is a refounding and I'd place it somewhere after Wind Waker on the adult timeline. In TotK, we see that the Rito were already present in the ancient past and since they haven't been shown in any other timeline (except for the mural in TP HD which was confirmed to have no actual canon implications), this makes the most sense. At least it does to me. I doubt that this kingdom is New Hyrule from Spirit Tracks, given that both in the past and the present there are no visible train tracks. It could be the actual old Hyrule at some point in time after the Great Flood had possibly receeded (which would be a theory supported by the salt items in BotW) or an entirely different stretch of land named Hyrule that happens to bear great similarities to the kingdom of old.
Botw/totk takes place at the end of all timelines. Was confirmed by the developers.
@@skaionex not possible because it’s in a different timeline altogether the developers may think that but they’re wrong the reason that it’s in a different timeline is because this demon king doesn’t even know about the hero until he is sealed away by the one who mentions that to him and no one in the kingdom even knows about the demon king until after it’s discovered later on so that’s why this Hass to be in a whole separate timeline from the Original timeline with the split
If Ganondorf was underground this whole time, when did he and Ganon split into two entities? Did the calamity happen before or after Rauru's reign??
Yet another mystery xD 👀
After, most likely. Calamity Ganon would be the bits of Malice/Gloom that bubbles up from the seal from time to time. It just takes a long time for the gloom levels to get high enough for a critical mass for another Calamity event.
A sign on the passage from the shelter to the castle says the seal is connected to the castle so that the seal's strength would be tied to the prosperity of the kingdom. So skimping on maintenance might have hastened the seal breaking or weakening. Zelda basically put the castle last on her to-do list, and opted to live in Link's house in Hateno.
@@DemonicAdj in perfect harmony with ocarina of time Zelda 😂 accidentally making it worse
Something I hadn't thought about before concerning the portrait depicting the ancient battle with Ganon is rather than it telling a story of the past, what if actually it has been misinterpreted as events of the future battle in totk. It could technically be the case considering you can where the heroes aspect during the last half of the Ganon fight and just like it's depiction showing that it also shows the princess fighting along side the hero, same goes for the inclusion of the other champions races helping fight him
The divine beasts and towers were already sort of in the ground at the start and before botw ( some shrines too ), so what if the guardians decayed and was burred in the ground along with the other sheika technologys.
"The Dragons' Identity"; given that their head (ear, hair, face) are closer related to the Zonai aesthetic, as opposed to Zelda, whose ears and hair much more resembles a Hylian than a Zonai, it's a safe assumption to say that it may have been three Zonai that did the forbidden deed (which may have been forbidden afterwards to keep those three the only three).
Perhaps they were guardians or worshippers of their respective Goddess at some point and ascended to some sort of godhood to serve them better. But the motivation behind their transformation is purely speculative of course.
But I don't think it's a stretch to call who they may have been in the past; namely Zonai. Probably those that first descended before everyone else ascended back to the sky or died out with the exception of Rauru and Mineru.
"Ganondorf's Time Below"; that is only a mystery if you put the Era of the Wild's founding story as the actual founding that happened between SS and MC. The mystery is solved when you put that (re-)founding somewhen after any of the last games of any or all timelines. Which I believe to be the case, otherwise it'd just contradict too much of what we know of the founding, how the sages work between SS and OoT, why there'd be multiple Ganondorfs (which would diminish OoT's Ganondorf's character IMO), etc.
It'd also make the king in OoT look even more foolish than he already does, because I think that records and the events of the Imprisoning War would be fresh in the minds and libraries of the time (since it'd be "only" a couple centuries ago), if you stop and think that tens of thousands of years (more than 10,000 years) later, there are still records available to the royal family of what lurks beneath the castle.
And there's be the next problem: the castle. It's established that it was built on the seal to strengthen/protect it.
It was obviously obliterated in OoT for 7 years, got destroyed and rebuilt in TP and in WW it was buried beneath the sea for hundreds of years and fell into neglect. And it moved several times apparently. So were there multiple castles? Was it built atop the seal or not?
That only makes sense if it has been built after the games and has not moved since (which is already pretty unlikely in that time span, but even more so (it did move or got destroyed factually) if you put its construction between SS and MC).
Fujibayashi also mentioned a destructive event, which would make it a refounding, as a possibility as the first thing that came to his mind when asked where TotK's past may play. This is, of course, not concrete, but solid enough for me.
And we know Rauru is not infallible. He says Zelda came from a future that won't happen. But we know from the mural, and Ganondorf himself (he knows them already), that it has happened and will always happen. So he has no clue and probably just says it to raise Zelda's spirits, since they are about to fight the Big Bad. Him saying "the last time I checked" is of course a throwaway line, but who's to say it's not the case that he doesn't know? All he knows is that the Zonai descended somewhen in his distant past (so even more distant that the past already is), he has no way of knowing what was before that.
DLC idea, play as Rauru in the past with all his abilities being natural to him, being much more powerful and efficient.
Plus, with his size, wielding two handed weapons with one hand or even dual wielding them for a new fighting style altogether
Swallowing the stones was forbidden due to the pain of it and the fact that it’s irreversible. The ancient hero looks like Sonia got busy with Ganon
My theory about the zonai architecture is that in the 10-100,000 years since the Zonai existed, a barbaric tribe of people of unknown origin began worshipping the idea of the zonai as gods, and interpreted their depictions of draconification as them being able to turn to dragons at will and being fierce warriors. They adopted the name of zonai as a tribute to their gods, and created the draconic architecture to worship them. That would also explain the misinterpretation of the sealing of ganondorf from BOTW zonai architecture, because they could have interpreted that as an ancient ritual celebrating a powerful warrior, and would explain the barbarian armor’s appearance as well.
Another neat little detail on the dragons is that, during the side adventure quest to restore the mother goddess statue, I noticed that the voice in one of the statues called Dinraal “she.” Idk if the other two dragons are females as well or if their sex is significant at all. I’m heavily convinced that they were Zonai given their appearances and similarities to the elemental outfits you can find (which may have been made either for them or after they turned into dragons, idk). However, whether they were sages, cult leaders, or other important figures in Zonai culture is still a mystery. They clearly came before Rauru and Mineru, but how far back is yet to be seen.
Maybe the zoni where disguising their architecture to make it seem they are barbaric tribe by building over their original design cause they knew that they were going to be banished or massacred by the hyrulians and they don’t want the hyrulians to know what’s on their walls.
Also I think what they mean by the shieka tech disappeared they mean the tech and all the guardians bury down back under the ground like how they pop up out of the ground in breath of the wild. And the guardians that bury themselves under ground they went back to the giant columns that’s around hyrule castle and is probably why there’s a lot of tunnels under the ground now.
What exactly is the reason or explanation for a bunch of armor pieces Link has found in BotW needing to be found again in TotK?
They are starting a Zelda movie!!!!!!😆
Thank you for addressing the adjective phase ‘Barbarian’ for the Zonai. In TOTK Rauru not warlike! But that description does fit Ganon.
I very much hold to the theory that all the green barbaric looking "Zonai" architecture was built by a tribe of barbaric Hylians after the Zonai left, maybe even going so far as to call themselves Zonai over time. It also helps explain why some Sheikah shrines are found with accompanying Zonai ruins in BotW, it wasnt the Zonai that helped construct them but this ancient tribe of Zonai-Hylians.
With Sheika tech, I understood that as the shrines and towers, and possibly even the divine beasts, went back underground once they weren’t needed anymore. I just assumed the guardians and stuff got cleaned up or maybe reused to build the new towers?
There are weird elements to this game. Honestly, for a game that took so long to make it feels like a somewhat rushed world where time wasn't taken to keep things consistent. Despite this being a direct sequel.
I think the Ganondorf one is pretty simply. The "founding" has to be a re-founding. We can try to question it. But it makes the most sense. Ganondorf wasn't dead down there. So I simply can't see other versions of him with the same soul walking around living lives during all the other games.
Dude, in Zelda 2, there's 2 zelda's.
Ok TBF! Guardians only scared me a little. These new gloom hands? I about pissed myself when I ran into them the first time. They got nothing on these robots. Kinda like ocarina of time redeads. Not worth it. Stay away lol. If it wasn’t for those gloom pods I’d just blip them outta existence with ancient arrow tips.
I wish there'd been more gloom hands running around...
@@mischarowe that’s true there aren’t many. It would be cool if they brought back the mini bosses before the main boss in temples again. There could be space for gloom hands to be running around. The only super effective thing against them are elemental arrows so it would add more challenge and strats. Cause then you’d have to prioritize the usage of them.
@@melocitygaming7081 Elemental arrows? Lol I've just been using bomb arrows. Might try that.
They freak me out too but yeah, wish there was more. :)
I've always quibbled the assertion that the Ancient Hero was a Zonai. Looking at his aspect, there are more differences than similarities to the known living depictions of Zonai in Rauru and Mineru, and to the statues Zelda specifically states as depicting them. Honestly he looks less similar to a Zonai than a Gerudo does to a Hylian.
No idea what he is instead, mind. Clearly more peoples have walked the land of Hyrule than we know.
I think most people confuse him for a Zonai because he’s wearing a variation of the zonaite set. But Zonai clothing does not equal being a Zonai. That armor set was made for other races to wear as well, since the headdress piece Link wears is obviously made for a Hylian or similar race. I like the idea that the ancient hero was a member of the new Depths race, who would have had access to Zonai technology. Wearing armor that improves battery efficiency when using that tech would make sense for the Depths people.
He could be a hybrid. It's very much heavily implied if not outright confirmed that Zelda is a descendant of Rauru and Sonia. As such they had to have a child. What would that look like? I think the hero's aspect is showing us. Mind it could also be that the hero's aspect is of a descendant of that child as well. Losing more and more Zonai traits as time goes by as the Hylian ones take over.
@@777SilverPhoenix777 if he’s a hylian Zonai hybrid, then why does he have dog feet, a tail, and animal-like eyes? Zonai have human looking feet, no tail, and human-like eyes.
The shieka tech lost power due to Ganondorfs seal weakening. the sealing power created two biproducts: light energy->blue flame, and gloom->malice. After defeating the calamity ganon the seal really started to break down and the blue flame that powers the divine beasts, shieka slate, and guardians went out. The light energy was just swirling over Ganondorfs body in TOTKs start while the gloom was pouring out and spreading. There was almost no light energy left and all dark energy
I like your theory about the golden goddesses
Thanks!
What I don't get is if Ganondorf has no memory of his time as the Calamity then how did he know what the Sanctum looked like 100 years before or that Link would have memories of it?
Maybe he only has vague memories of Calamity Ganon?
@@legomaster2538 My theory is that he regains his memories by that point but attributes Link's win to the Divine Beast and continues to not take him or the shattered kingdom seriously.
I think it would’ve been interesting if the gloom hands popped up anywhere (not in the sky, that is) and anytime instead of specific locations. It would make the game a lot more anxiety inducing and fun, in my opinion.
When BOTW came out, it was the first Zelda game where you couldn't give a custom name to Link/the player character. This was a pretty weird design choice. However, it make sense with TOTK context, considering Zelda had to mention Link's name to Rauru and by proxy Ganondorf to complete the time loop. Thus this incarnation cannot have a custom name and is definitively named Link.
Also there exists a timeline where TOTK Ganon is still sealed if we take Age of Calamity into account (even though it is a semi-non-canon spinoff).
I don't think we'll even get answers to any of this since they said they won't go back to this Hyrule again. And their claims of no dlc aswell.
Where..... Is...... KASS!?!?!? 😢
About The Ancient Hero - Rauru couldn’t have told us anything because The war with Great Calamity from 10 000 years ago happened AFTER Ganondorf was sealed.
I dont remember the barbarian armor set ever explicitly saying that the “warlike tribe” were Zonai, only that they lived in the Faron region. The appearance of the armor suggests that it wasn’t made by the Zonai, but by a culture of humans. However, given that the Zonai are extinct and Ganondorf alluded to them perhaps once being worshiped as gods by the people of Hyrule, perhaps this barbarian tribe used these ruins for worship. The clothing of this tribe was crude and no structures attributed to them have been found, implying that their architecture may have been primitive and unable to stand the test of time, if it existed at all. My personal opinion is that this was a tribe of either Hylians, round-eared humans (which are suspiciously absent in both BOTW and TOTK), or another ethnic group entirely that used the ruins of the Zonai as cult centers and/or shelter, building on top of these ruins with cruder materials as necessary.
However, I also wouldn’t be too surprised if this was a separate group of Zonai like what was suggested in the video. The Zonai disappeared entirely with only their buildings and technology remaining. We haven’t seen any evidence of ancient super weapons or a great Zonai civil war yet, but the possibility that there was some kind of conflict isn’t entirely off the table. I mean, the Zonai built colosseums so I don’t think they were all as peaceful as Rauru and Mineru.
my own headcannon for the disappearing Sheikah tech is that it was dismantled and repurposed. iirc at the end of BotW Zelda mentions that Vah Ruta has stopped working (after Mipha's spirit departed with the rest of the Champions/King Rhoam), so the other Divine Beasts probably stopped working too. to avoid a 2nd Calamity-like event, they might have completely taken the Divine Beasts and the Guardians apart, and Purah could have taken the towers apart to study them and eventually make her own with the salvaged parts from those and everything else. dunno what would have happened to the Shrines, maybe those follow the developer's suggestions and "vanished" after serving their purpose lol
WHY ARE THE CONCEPT GUARDIANS NOT IN THE GAME!?
Ok I’ll stop
Shoutout to the discord server!
RIGHT!?
Always
One big mystery is: where is Link at Rauru‘s time? Whenever an incarnation of Ganondorf came into the world there also was one of Link and Zelda. We may assume that Sonia was the Zelda of her time, but where is the hero and the legendary sword?
I feel no one talks about how throughout all the Zeldas, technically there were multiple since this Zelda would've had to live throughout all the other zelda timeliness as a dragon.
i like to headcanon that there was a split faction of zonai that became the barbarian tribe of the faron woods, kind of like how the yiga split from the shiekah, and they were the ones who built the structures there and the labyrinths. maybe they even called themselves Lomei, like the labyrinth names suggest.
For the last mystery, I have a theory of my own. So based on clues from botw it appears as though Nintendo wants to get rid of all the timeline confusion by basically starting over with botw. Brand new Hyrule and brand new Zelda games going forward. My theory is that botw wasn't the reset to the timeline, but skyward sword was. So the biggest reason for this is how different botw was from the other games except for skyward sword. The biggest reason is because they share the same director, but let's add the other reasons. First: the importance of goddess Hylia and her connection to Zelda. Let's say something happened to old Hyrule, like Ganondorf tired of losing over and over delving further into dark or demonic magic and triggered an evolution. After taking on a new name, Demise, he once again rallied his monster forces and invaded Hyrule. Taking inspiration from totk his new found power broke the Hylian made master sword and maybe even killed the hero. At this point we're not sure where the triforce is, but let's say Zelda was able to assemble it and made a wish, a wish to be able to fight Demise herself, and as a result of Demise being so powerful Zelda became Goddess Hylia. Still she wasn't able to completely defeat him and sealed him away. She used her new found divinity to repair the master sword and set about the events of skyward sword. After such a long time the people of skyloft forgot all about Hyrule and the events of all the other games. Fi did mention that the Hylians liked to pass on legend through oral tradition so the old people of Hyrule probably didn't bring a lot of books with them from the surface so lost a lot of history. I know they had books in skyloft but those were probably made up there. Next I'm guessing that while some people went with Link and Zelda to the surface not everyone in skyloft did. After all the surface was said to be inhospitable and filled with monsters so I'm guessing not everyone wanted to go down there. These people may have evolved into the Zonai and thinking now that they have all this fancy magitech they can survive on the surface and descended onto a very young kingdom. Maybe it was an incredibly young Hyrule, maybe it didn't have a name yet. We do know that Sonia was a priestess instead of a princess so it didn't appear they had a strong government. There's even a chance that the Zelda from skyward sword had multiple children and one of them could've returned to skyloft and became the ancestor of Rauru. That's pure speculation but we do know that magic is passed from parent to child in the Zelda universe so this could be why Rauru had Zelda's light power and Sonia didn't. For all we know Sonia may not be a descendant of skyward sword Zelda, I'm only going based on the resemblance. Anyway that's how I like to explain the odd connections between skyward sword and botw (and now totk.) Also just a little extra theory, after Rauru sealed Ganondorf away, I believe the calamity Ganon from 10,000 years ago was Ganondorf's escape attempt #1. We all know that the Ganondorf was still sealed away and calamity Ganon was a mindless puppet. I'm just trying to give you guys a timeframe for botw. Granted we don't know how long after Ganondorf was sealed before he tried the first calamity, but it was probably a good while. Obviously it was long enough for everyone to forget about the Zonai and Ganondorf. Though I don't know how this would explain the very Zonai like hero on the tapestry. Anyway thank you for reading.
I'm guessing the 3 dragons were once Zonai because their faces look a lot like a Zonai and Rauru's sister knew about the dragon cult as well .
the elemental dragons are distinctly NOT the same as the light dragon. the goddess dragons have the same type of hair as Rauru, and they the same scaly, furry mouth and big goat ears. the light dragon has a much more fuzzy face, distinct glowing hair that’s basically the same as her human form, and her horns are a very different style. she more resembles a deer than a goat.
the elemental dragons were zonai, and demon dragon and light dragon were humans
My headcannon is the three dragons are the three reincarnations of the oracles from the Oracle games: Naydra (Nayru, Oracle of Ages), Dinraal (Din, Oracle of Seasons), and Farosh (Farore, Oracle of Secrets). That’s just my headcannon though
My bet is that everything in the previous zelda games took place in the 10,000 years leading up to the first calamity, starting with skyward sword and ending with spirit tracks. Then comes the first calamity, completely destroying hyrule, but also bringing the zonai and the hero into the picture. After calamity ganon is defeated for the first time, the zonai help rebuild hyrule. 100 years later, Ganondorf is reborn and starts wreaking havoc. Ganondorf is then sealed away for another 10,000 years by Rauru and the sages, and hyrule moves on. (I also think that the calamity was at least partially caused by Rauru's seal weakening, because in BOTW it happens sooner than they expect.)
I like the "theory" that zelda going back in time is the 'first loop'. and most of the sheika stuff got erased by timeline shenanigans. its just as vauge as what we got. but i like it. it could also somewhat explain the zonai shrines... just... appearing. the shrines appearing due to the purification terminal being damaged is my headcanon for that part though.
could sonia's departure and missing child be a result of zelda going back? creating a paradox where she isnt born... nah. couldnt be.
One theory I've seen regarding the "past timeline" is that the Dragon's Tears show the true events of Hyrule's past, and the previous games were all just stories passed down through history.
I'm not saying it's a good theory, but it is A theory.
I'd love a video going into who the best Swordsmen in the Zelda series are (not including any of the Links or Ganondorfs.) I want my boi Alphonso to get some love.
for Gandorf to show himself in Hyrule would be gloom copies, his true power hasn't been measured so we don't know his true power level but every time Link has been there to stop him, we don't know what happens to Link after he defeats and parties. Does Link go to rest in a chamber that stops his aging, does it just puts him in cold storage or is it something else like he gets teleported forward in time to a different part of Hyrule's era
The "Bargainer Statues". When we talked to the Goddess Statue in the ruins of the temple on the Plateau, it pointed us to a statue underwater.. a little Bargainer Statue.
When we put the eyes back in the big statue under the mine complex, it offered us a choice of Health or Stamina.
A very familiar choice.
Under the 3 springs? Giant Bargainer Statues. Under the forgotten temple? Giant Bargainer Statue.
All the big places we associate with Hylia or even the Goddesses have a Statue under them.
Have they been taking our calls since Breath of the Wild?
Given they are at the wellsprings of the great springs, do they provide power when they pass souls on? (I'm thinking if the Depths were like the Zelda equivalent of Final Fantasy 7's Lifestream).
Nice vid. There were so many unanswered questions in TOTK that it made the ending hard to completely enjoy since I knew it was ending.
SPOILERS AHEAD: The lack of the Triforce, the Zonai's complete 180 in terms of what they were, Rauru and Sonia's lack of a child being present, the 3 dragons mystery, the lack of explanation regarding the "lost races" of Hyrule, such as the Kokiri and the Mogmas, and finally - my most disappointing aspect of TOTK - the unresolved Zelda / Link romance. I cannot believe that the developers completely bypassed this in the end.
It’s in a whole different timeline from the one that has the three splits
@@majesticespeon3126 Incorrect, Botw is after Oot on the timeline this has been confirmed by Aonuma.
@@Ahouro nope new timeline the demon king is not known in this new timeline
@@majesticespeon3126 No, Botw and Totk is after Oot this is a fact just because you are misinformed don´t change this.
@@Ahouro The people who created this game don’t know crap about it there’s a lot of hints in the game leading to this game being an alternate timeline for once there’s no loft wings and nowhere in the kingdom mention it
I think some tribes were influenced by the Zonai. Rauru didn’t look anything like the barbarian armor. But look at those early royal guards seen in the cutscenes, specifically the scene where Zelda was having tea with Sonia and Rauru, you can see the way they are dressed.
For the dragons, I don’t see why they could even be the goddesses. They don’t have to be. But the way the Zonai are described as god-adjacent could be hinting that the golden goddesses might have been Zonai and were perceived as goddesses in the legends due to their powers. I feel like the way the Zonai are linked to the sky and even space, kind of gives me Anunnaki vibes. And the way they helped shape the Hylians and their world then disappeared, is an interesting parallel to the Anunnaki story.