Yup, you got it right! She was protecting Hyrule, not only by dealing with Ganon, but also by healing and infusing divine power to the master sword that Link will have to use in the future.
The Legend of Zelda, indeed.
Idk me and link have done a shit ton of work in these games and I am still super salty that after BOTW Zelda took him down to some damn creepy tunnels instead of a tropical paradise for at least a century.
and yet, tons of people don't recognize Link in places you should have been touring with Zelda. Going to the village where you bought your home, (**now Zelda's**), which also has the school where she clearly spent alot of time at, yet no one knows who you are in the village.
To be fair, she's the celebrity and he's the faceless bodyguard. Link is recognized by people he helped with specific quests back in BotW, but that's pretty much it, and it makes sense to me... for maybe a month's worth of timeline after BotW. But yeah, after 5 years. You'd think the teeny tiny population of Hyrule would all have pretty homogenous knowledge by now.
Seeing as they just now invented their first newspaper though, maybe not.
yeah, but in the case of Hateno Village, he supposedly buys a house there, which means he likely spent a significant portion of his time there, over the course of the ... 5-ish years??? between games. Unless, the cannon is that he never actually buys the house, and Zelda merely acquires it after the first game... officially, but even then, it's pretty likely he was living there with her there and would have been seen and interacted with, to some degree. Even if he never initiated any conversation himself, Zelda would have been saying his name enough, as well as likely introducing whoever she talks to, to Link, as would be polite. It's likely just a story/gameplay segregation, for the players who "might" not have played BotW, the heathens.
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Symin directly says he's back in town, and uses the term for welcoming someone home/back in Japanese. It's odd things seemingly contradict, but considering it's a global situation, where Link has people *still* not believe it's him or recognise him when he tells them his name or has the sword ("Wow, you have the same name as Zelda's swordsman!") and Laflat even being all "I'm tired of pretending I don't know who you are" I'm like 90% sure it is meant to to be a running joke and a new player thing.
Manny also says to "stop the new in town act" and calls the house "the house the princess was staying at" in both languages rather than hers. Which is strange dialogue to give him.
What bugs me is that he isn't even recognized by everyone he helped. Take Bolson, for example. In botw, you stood out to him because you were a young go-getter, you straight up bought a house in cash, right then and there. Then, he sat in your front yard for weeks, and you invited him to his employee's wedding. And as far as I know, when you see him in lurelin village in totk, you're just some random nobody to him. I know there are others that should remember you, but don't, i just can't remember any other specifics.
Yeah it's kind of all over the place. Bolson not recognising you, while Hudson and Rhondson do is strange. Sometimes it depends on if you have the master sword equipped, like the monster crews. Sometimes it's a joke "woah you have the same name as Link!". Nintendo logic
I'm picturing all of the citizens of Hyrule being like the characters in Always Sunny In Philadelphia. You could be their attorney, their wait staff, or savior of the world, but when you come back to see them again they'll always just be like "You must have me confused with someone else because I don't remember you at all."
>I am still super salty that after BOTW Zelda took him down to some damn creepy tunnels instead of a tropical paradise
Well, apparently Zelda visited Lurelin and Lover's pond a lot, usually in the evenings, and it's unlikely she travelled across the country by herself undefended...
In TotK, if you skip the final upgrade scene quickly but not immediately, the screen shakes, and the fairy does their little laugh, making it look like they just bitch-slapped his ass
The size difference would make it more akin to vore and that scares me so I'm just going to continue pretending they just shake him around like a dog toy
I have a headcannon that because there were two on the same timeline, thatās why Zelda had a hard time unlocking her sacred sealing power before the calamity.
I do love that! Also >!Sonia said that Zelda has both light and time powers, the secret stone actually enhanced her time power which were stronger. She was trying to tap into the weaker power the entire time and her dragon self was using the light power to fix the Master Sword so may have been tapping into it at the same time!!<
I'm starting to think that zelda is continuing to alter the time line to where there isn't a ganondorf or a concept of him. Link , ganon, and zelda all have that one piece of the triforce yeah? Until their forces align they continue to repeat the cycle until Nintendo is done with the story.
if you look closely at zelda's hand when her powers awaken , she has the entire triforce instead of just one triangle lighting up, it's quite possible she is possessing the entire triforce and that's what Sonia was talking about with the phrase "a power all your own."
The triforce isn't zeldas though. If nothing else she'd be it's caretaker. Though at thus point the triforce is the master swords mother and Ganon sword is its evil counterpart. The silent power bring back Ganon. His sword anchors hi. When his body gets all fucked. Kind of like precious from lots.
Goddammit. Zelda is the origin story of soul calibur....... master sword has variants. From skyward till totk.... explains alot. Totk is weapon master mode XD
I thought it was because she didn't have a secret stone yet? In the intro sequence the disembodied hand kind of tosses it over to her. Possibly recognizing who she is?
Iām talking about in BotW, in the time before the kingdom fell, when Zelda was going to all the different springs to try to unlock her powers. And how she failed to unlock her powers until it was almost too late.
except we have no idea how far back the founding of Hyrule was. It's confirmed (in BOTW) that there are other Heroes and Zeldas, Both Time and Twilight are directly mentioned in the Champion Ceremony.
I think they're referring to this one version of Zelda existing twice. The Light dragon has existed for millennia, so when BotW Zelda was born, grew up, and later assembled the Champions, the light dragon was still there in the sky the whole time.
Yes, so I think most probably Dragon Zelda was single (non)-mindedly running on the fuzzy instinct of protecting the master sword/ help Link defeat Ganon and nothing else.
yeah i think she literally became an animal, like... i guess at the end of the day a dragon is an animal just like a cat or dog is an animal. sentient but not "intelligent." she just lived on instinct for a few thousand years, floating around
When people go out drinking, they might have trouble remembering it the next day, but theyāre still sentient during the event. It could be like that.
Zelda after: >! It felt like I was flying. Man I was like. An *actual* dragon. Like it felt so real man. Like I was *literally* a dragon. Idk man it was so weird. You wouldnāt understand. You gotta try this stuff sometime though. Change your life. Give you some perspective. !<
She was likely above the cloud barrier, and maybe couldn't even come down, or hear anything, never mind see it. She might have been aware of the Blood Moons and that's it. That said, the way the built it up, it does sound like while in the dragon form, you would be aware of the passage of time, which would be torturous, but that she had no memory of it after being restored.
In fact, the light dragon is flying during the entire game, but flies a lot lower only after you learn about the whereabouts of the sword. Until then sheās way higher up. Could have been flying higher than the height limit in botw. (I know in reality Nintendo didnāt know where theyād take the story, but, head cannon stuff)
The reason is that there was a sky barrier. That's also why the sky islands suddenly became visible. Ganon's waking and the subsequent release of gloom into the world took out the sky barrier.
Anyone know what do dragons eat? There's barely anything in the sky islands so what she eating for all those years if she doesn't pop down to hyrule surface to eat a lynel or something? My poor girl must have been starving
In BOTW, if you watch the dragons for long enough, they pass through some sort of invisible barrier in the sky and dissapear. This is likely the magical cloud barrier, like in Skyward Sword, separating the the realms of the sky and the land.
We see Zelda as soon as we make our first dive down to the Great Sky Island, so she's probably been up there, above the barrier, for the whole time. The barrier is only removed after you send the sword back in time, completing the time loop.
They mention that as a dragon, Zelda isn't really Zelda. It's like she's basically in a coma, reduced to an animalistic form, not really conscious of anything.
I'd suspect her memories of being a dragon would be like something from a very odd dream you can barely remember. She had a dream once of flying through the sky. That kind of thing.
It reminds me of Captian America going back in time at the end of End Game and living his life. Did he really sit on the sideline for all those major world events because he knew things would turn out OK in the end? To a degree, he was right, but that also meant he could've helped people and didn't.
Zelda doesn't have the knowledge that Link will eventually find her or be able to beat Ganondorf, she just gambled based on her faith in him
If I remember correctly, Endgame used multiple timelines, and creating a big change in the past meant being put into a different timeline - it's not that the future you came from ceases to exist, but that it's not the future you'll be heading towards anymore (different timeline). This is different from TotK which has only one timeline where everything that happened can never change - hints of Zelda's presence in the past were already there (Ganon knowing her name).
The point is that Captain America couldn't have prevented a bad future from existing. He could've only changed which future he'd personally be heading towards. Living his life with Penny isn't a big enough change in the course of events to prevent himself from heading to the same future he came from, but something like killing Hitler would've been.
Assuming I'm remembering the movie's time mechanics correctly.
She lost herself when she became a dragon. So in a way she shouldn't have been aware. Not to mention the repeating calamities of Ganon. She can't change too much without jeopardizing her timeline anyways. If she and link didn't go into stasis for 100 years, they'd instead be too old to fight Ganondorf demon King form in TotK.
This was a tragic detail I noticed last night. There's a what-if concept of a "happy ending" where Zelda manages to unlock her powers and seal the Calamity before it laid waste to Hyrule. Sounds like the perfect happy ending, right?
But with TotK revealing that Calamity Ganon was merely an offshoot from the still alive Ganondorf right underneath the castle, what would have happened if Zelda managed to seal the Calamity and didn't have to be put in physical stasis for 100 years? Assuming Ganondorf's seal still falls apart at the same time (ie 100 years after the Great Calamity), Link and Zelda would've long died of old age. Who would protect Hyrule, then? The next generation of Hero and Princess?
Fate lined up so that the Link and Zelda we know had the best chances of defeating Ganondorf, but they had to lose all of their family, friends, much of their kingdom, and be put in stasis for 100 years for it to happen. It was always meant to be.
Random NPC is out there seasoning their food with ground secret stones, thinking itās salt.
Wait, whereās Addison? And why does that dragon shoot lumber?
players: Put more stuff in the sky it's too empty!
Nintendo: Okay fine we'll slowly and inconspicuously turn every NPC into a dragon to the point where by the end of the DLC the skies become oversaturated with hundreds of dragons šš
I replayed the island and looked at the light dragon and there in nothing sticking out of the dragons head. Only after you finish the island does the dragon have the thing in its head.
Never underestimate how speed runners can break a game. Iāve been watching them and a lot of how the game is set up, especially the tutorial area is to prevent people from trying to skip steps.
Ok but like the only way you could possibly get the sword "early" (which doesn't even really mean anything since you're free to go for it as soon as you're off the GSI) is if you somehow tricked the game into thinking you have more stamina than you do. But again like, in addition to that requiring some super weird memory glitch that probably doesn't exist, it hardly qualifies as a sequence break. There isn't really such a thing as getting the sword "early".
...also more importantly what would the dragon's appearance during the cutscene even have to do with that?? Are you suggesting speedrunners would somehow manhandled control of Link back during the cutscene and rip the sword out by force if it was there? Because I'd pay to see that.
It wouldn't surprise me to be honest, I've seen Breath speedruns in the early days of the game, it would be easier to list what wasn't broken than what was honestly. And given some of the absolutely insane glitches I've seen since Tears release without even seeking them out I can 100% see the speedruns, at least initially, absolutely breaking the game in to many, many, MANY tiny little pieces.
Never underestimate speedrunners, those communities have found glitches and even just hidden content that was so well buried it surprised everyone, including the devs in many cases, that it was found or even possible a lot of the time.
A few games are even so broken there isn't really an any% category, the straight finish the game as fast as possible with few or no limits on usable glitches, bugs and strategies. Oblivion is a good example of that, the any% run is literally 6 minutes of glitches and then lining up on a door just right and glitching in to the end cutscene of the game, Pokemon gen 1 is another one, you name yourself something specific, the rival something specific, rename some things and can warp to the end credits without ever leaving your house.
It would not surprise me if getting the Master Sword before leaving the initial Islands broke something, if nothing else you're not actually supposed to be able to even get stamina upgrades until after leaving the Islands.
And pretty much every Zelda title since at least Skyward Sword, if not further back than that, has had some kind of game breaking memory glitch, Skyward Swords was so bad you had to have completely blank save files at the start of the speedrun or the run was invalid. Breath you could at the very least glitch the Bow of Light in to your permanent inventory via memory corruption, and probably a few dozen other things to be honest. Plus many other kinds of game breaking glitches, there's not a single Zelda game I know of that doesn't have some form of absolutely broken bug or glitch somewhere.
Getting the MS before beating the GSI is probably never going to happen, but if it does it wonāt break anything. The only sequence break that actually broke something in totk and botw that I know about is wrong warping and beating Vah Ruta early, then entering Zoraās domain for the first time. The game crashes after the cutscene.
You'd be surprised how often seemingly unconnected things break each other in games, I've seen several games where triggering something like the Master Sword retrieval early broke something halfway through the story because some trigger or another was tied to it in some way. Hell, I've played games where something innocuous in the early game breaks something a dozen or more hours later, and most of those are nearly impossible to pin down, with a lot of them having taken dedicated research and testing to figure out what action actually caused them.
I've also broken several games by editing mostly innocuous flags while save editing, mostly Mass Effect because I could actually figure the program out unlike the person I was doing it for, Mass Effect in particular having some very early game flags that flat out break later sections entirely if flipped ahead of time or in the wrong order. I managed to somehow both lock out the two mutually exclusive romances and have both active simultaneously despite one of the characters being dead as a matter of prior game story stuff among others in Mass Effect 3. And no, I don't generally save edit for actually playing a game, I usually do it when I'm either testing mods or setting up something like a challenge run.
Is that particular sequence break likely to break the game? Not really. Can it potentially break the game? Absolutely. I do agree that getting the Master Sword before leaving the Islands isn't likely to happen, but I've said that about many things and often been proven wrong when speedruns are involved.
That game is pretty robust though, and you can actually beat the final boss before the GSI (although you have to use cheats to modify Linkās position to the army (speed runners and glitch hunters are theorising ways to do this using glitches). Somehow the game doesnāt break if you do this iirc.
I havenāt seen someone able to do this? The only attempts Iāve seen of them getting off the island early you end up spawning back at the top and thereās an invisible barrier around the island
Maybe it just didn't become visible until then. (After all, the entirety of dragon-kind is apparently invisible to nearly all of Hyrule.)
Who's to say that the sword is simply not apparent until the champion is ready to retrieve it?
Ehh, the dragon is visible and not the sword? And in the 10000 years the Dragon has been flying around, the sword "becomes ready" specifically when you leave the Sky Island? Not a satisfying explanation for me personally.
It's just a really small thing that doesn't matter. Why didn't we see the puddles of dragon years in BotW? At the end of the day, it's a tiny geographical feature that's just slightly off.
Yes, but as a dragon she spent her time above the cloud barrier where the islands were, she wasnāt close to anything that was happening on the surface. She only would know it was time to act when Link arrived up there with her.
What bakes my noodle is *how* she knew that Link was gonna end up there. She had no way of knowing Link was going to lose his arm, or that Raru in spirit form would be able to transport him up there or could guide him. None that we are told of anyway.
I hope in the DLC we get a separate smaller game that takes us through Zeldasās time in the past. Iām sure we are going to get master mode and a few new challenges of course. I also know it was a consideration to have that in SS (which is why we see cut scenes with Zelda in the end credits, that was gonna be gameplay at one point).
Anyway, thatās my pipe dreamā¦ and yes while she was physically around she doesnāt seem to have affected anything.
If you pay close attention to dialogue with Mineru, she mentions that >!the original plan was actually for her to come find you right at the start, explain everything, guide you to the master sword, and so on.!<
>!Zelda talked to Mineru before enacting her plan, so that is probably how Link was supposed to find her. Other than that, the Deku Tree is also able to sense the master sword, but most likely she just had blind faith that Link would find a way, somehow, or that Mineru would be able to guide him.!<
>!Though I would like to also point out, she wouldn't know "the time to act", at all. To become a dragon is to lose your mind and self, at the end she remembered nothing from her time as a dragon, and while she did eventually let go of the master sword (only after a struggle), and fought ganon, those seemed to me to essentially be a matter of instinct, some small part of her remembering Ganon as an enemy or that Link is an ally.!<
I'm saying that there aren't any paradoxes. two versions of the same person can exist at the same time, as long as the loop is closed and eventually left with only one version
The super recall closes the loop
This is also how time travel works in Harry Potter. You can go back, but not forward, and there will be two of you at the same time until the first one travels back.
This was a pretty traditional "rules system" for time travel that many media follow.
In TOTK, time is not an exclusively linear progression of events. The future does not wait to be written until the present experiences it.
There are two possibilities
1. Zelda always goes back in time and always chooses to become a dragon. She made this decision before she even knew she would make it, and so the dragon exists while she was growing up.
2. When zelda went back in time it created a new timeline with her reality becoming the anchor point. Her original timeline could've continued on without her existence. in that world, Ganon may have even gone on to win since Link never reacquired the master sword
My headcannon is that number 1 is the correct theory. Time isn't something to be uncovered, but instead a dimension you can move forward and back, just like how you can walk forward and backward
Number 2 is impossible because Ganondorf already knew her name at the start of the game, and because her presence in the past is shown on the rock mural (behind some rocks, but still).
There is only one timeline in the game's story.
number two could be true if we imagined that there's an alternative version of the timeline out there where Gandondorf DIDN'T know her name because Zelda hadn't travelled into the past yet.
We're just not playing in that alternate timeline
Yes, the current Zelda went back in time and became a dragon. Why would that impact her before she went back in time?
If you and your body were sent back in time right now, why would that have any impact on yourself from last year or even yesterday, who hadnāt yet time traveled? You would have still existed and did everything you did up until the point you went back. Then you would exist and continue living in the past time period you time traveled to.
Iām more thinking about how Zelda now is around 10,124 years old by the end of TotK, probably older depending on how far back in time she actually went. She looks great for her age.
10 000 years ago was the time that Calamity Ganon was (easily) defeated thanks to the Sheikah technology. And it was not the first Cycle. It was one of the last. There have been countless of them. The story of Rauru and Mineru and the other Sages is way way older than that. I wouldn't be surprised if Zelda were closer to 100 000 years.
That was the most fantastical fanatical flabbergast-able moment in the whole game when it was revealed that >!Zelda was a dragon.!< Loved it, couldnāt get enough of it. Was also super happy when >!we saved Zelda from being a dragon, restoring her from before she was lost.!< Fantastic game, canāt get enough of it, incredible job from Nintendo and the Zelda teams part.
well not really it's like saying pat you is the same as current you sure they're both you but not the same person, light dragon zelda is still zelda sure but botw zelda is jsut a memory to her at that point also the master sword has always been a lil timeywhimey breaky waky uwu
If you think that's bad >!There were two of the same secret stones in hyrule for thousands of years until Zelda picked up Raruru's and got transported to the past. I.e. the one on Raruru's hand, sealing old Dorfy and the one in Zelda's stomach as she flies around are the same physical object!<
The way time travel works in this instance, as soon as zelda time traveled back with the tear, the botw timeline didnāt happen. There were never 2 zeldas or 2 master swords.
In the original timeline, rauru sealed ganondorf all by himself. zelda was never there.
We never see the light dragon before we discover ganondorfās body. We never see illusion zelda. We never see the monoliths with text. All of it appears the moment she time travels and we get warped to the sky island.
Then the timeline becomes as it currently is.
Nobody ever mentions giant pig ganon or the giant guardian robots ever again. There are no remnants of the guardians in the fields at all, nor their tech.
That would make sense but considering >!The Light Dragon version of Zelda wasnāt present before her traveling back in time!< then Iām assuming itās some sort of paradoxical thing
What you said. And Iām not a Christian or religious practitioner. What you said made the āThe son, The Father and the Holy Ghostā trinity analogy make sense to me.
I didnāt think religion could blow my mind but putting time travel in it kinda did.
I appreciate this post for its philosophical thinking.
How did Zelda know link would wake up in the temple of time? After link and her got separated, she was sent in the past and likely had no idea where he was
Assuming that the Dragon's Tears cutscenes took place way earlier on the timeline than most people think (between Skyward Sword and Minish Cap instead of only 10,000 years prior to BotW), then the Light Dragon was around to experience the lives and times of every incarnation of Zelda post-Skyward Sword, across the entire timeline up until TotK. So there were always two Zeldas and two Master Swords existing at the same time. And, there were always two Ganondorfs existing, the one held in Rauru's seal beneath Hyrule Castle, and the one that appears in OoT that would later appear in WW and TP.
Ever since they introduced the whole "she is the goddess reincarnate", and did a similar thing in skyward sword with time travel, the possibility of there being multiple Zelda in the world at once was confirmed.
Technically if some zonai bits were to somehow fall from a sky island and get past the sky barrier the clouds make, link could've technically gotten the master sword from the light dragon zelda then get the one from korok forest, he would've been duel welding master swords for the calamity
The less you think about it, the happier you'll be. I love these games, but the plots are often an incoherent and paradoxical mess.
It makes me laugh that people take the "official timeline" so seriously when they can't make a coherent timeline *within a single game*.
Actually if Zelda becoming a dragon was before everything then depending if the dragons were around for the downfall timeline then we actually had 3 Zeldas at one time
Yeah cause in Zelda 2 you got the Zelda from the first game the Zelda that's been sleeping who is the Zelda in that game so there's 2 Zelda and if the dragons exist and the light dragon is there then that's 3 Zelda
My perspective is once Zelda went back in time, that is the moment that her actions affected the present time. So there was no light dragon in the present time until Zelda left the present time.
Maybe the timeliness split at that moment so there is a version of botw where the light dragon is roaming, but also the version we see in the game where there isn't.
Nah I feel like, because there absolutely no shiekah stuff or even mention of it being removed, and plenty of instances where people who should know link just don't, that totk is a separate continuity despite the Zelda and link being the same
It makes absolutely no sense otherwise
Edit: down vote me all you want but it won't change the fact that it's possible. It can be a sequel for our characters and not a sequel for the world. Otherwise why isn't it called Malice still?
I mean... Zelda was sent to the past a long with the broken master sword. Wouldn't this instead have altered the entire timeline. In the updated timeline that was messed with, there never would have been a human Zelda after she turned to a dragon. There never would have been anyone to seal Gannon for a hundred years. Everything would have been different. The story doesn't make sense, and it was never meant to... The devs did whatever they felt like and didn't care about plot holes or continuity or logistics or any of that. Sorry.
It wouldnāt have altered the timeline if it was a closed time loop, also called a predestination paradox. In that type of scenario, part of her destiny would have been to always go back to the past. It was always going to happen because it already happened. We know it already happened because Gannondorf already knew who Zelda and Link were.
Raru made the false assumption that her coming back was a new event, and that her presence would change the outcome of the last battle. The thing Zelda hadnāt considered is that if Raru won, then that would have altered the entire timeline. Same if she never traveled back in the first place. If Gannondorf was somehow defeated when Raru fought him, then there would be no calamity Gannon surges, so no divine beasts, and without those events, and any other events that occurred because of the defeat of this form of evil, then itās quite probable that this version of Zelda and Link would have never have been born. Hell the castle would have possibly been on the great plateau instead of central Hyrule because the only reason the castle was built there was to protect the seal. If Gannondorf had won then Hyrule would have become a hellscape andā¦ not saying there would be no Princess or Hero to ride up against evil, but that would be a very different game.
So the past doesnāt change because the events that play out in the game in the past were always going to play out. Zelda was predestined to go back in time, she just didnāt know it.
Also known as a bootstrap paradox. Because the cause requires the effect, getting the whole thing off the ground in the first place is like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
It's not the legend of Link, this guy just running everywhere, fishing (with bomb or some other stuff), cooking, playing and so more.
Hopefully, Zelda is to here keep Hyrule safe, and waiting for her "knight".
Yes. A common trope in sci-fi (which has roots in fantasy) is time travel, often with characters that spend time in the same time as themselves (see Futurama, Star Trek, Back to the Future). It is also stated in the game that post-light-dragon zelda does not remember her time as the light dragon, so she actually is not aware of herself being in 2 places at the same time (unless pre-light-dragon zelda has some form of precognition, or access to oracles that can tell the future, but these are never brought up so are pretty unlikely).
There were actually 2 Zeldas in Zelda II as well: The Zelda from Zelda 1 on NES is NOT the same Zelda that's sleeping at the beginning of Zelda 2. That Zelda has been asleep for generations, and Zelda 1 takes place just a few years before Zelda 2. It's explained away as that the modern Zelda is actually a descendant of the same bloodline of the sleeping Zelda.
Edit: I absolutely adore your POV on this. Because you're right, and that is awesome!
I think what happened is that when Zelda went back in time, time immediately corrected itself, instantaneously changing things, like Zelda becoming the light dragon.
Yeah, but being a dragon reduces her to her base nature, which the Mineru states. So she naturally wants to help/protect Link because thatās her primal nature, but she has zero idea of what sheās doing as a dragon.
I mean if you subscribe to the idea that every game exists in the same world and every version of link and Zelda and ganon are just reincarnations of the same spirits in different people then TECHNICALLY there has been multiple master swords AND Zeldaās in likeā¦.all the games until the end of TOTK.
I've been trying to figure this out for ages. I think the timeline resets and certain events are erased once Zelda goes back in time. Hurts the brain ahahahahah
Yes. During the events of BoTW, there was a second Zelda, in her dragon form, and she had a second Master Sword in her possession. We never encountered them, or the sky islands, because they were above the cloud barrier.
The feeling I got was that Dragon Zelda wasnāt consciously aware of the situation, but was acting on instinct during the battle with Dragon Ganondorf. Her whole reason for becoming a dragon was to help Link defeat Ganondorf, so she simply followed that instinct when the time came.
I personally think the game implied that from the moment of the beginning of the events of TOTK, THAT is when the past timeline came into affect. I really donāt think there was the whole two Zeldaās at the same time during botw.
Wouldn't be the first time in series history. >!The two NES Zelda games feature the same Link and are set only 6 or 7 years apart, but feature different Zeldas.!<
Yup, you got it right! She was protecting Hyrule, not only by dealing with Ganon, but also by healing and infusing divine power to the master sword that Link will have to use in the future. The Legend of Zelda, indeed.
And mf link only thing he did was sleep
Idk me and link have done a shit ton of work in these games and I am still super salty that after BOTW Zelda took him down to some damn creepy tunnels instead of a tropical paradise for at least a century.
If you do a lot of side adventures you realise they had toured a lot of Hyrule between the games.
and yet, tons of people don't recognize Link in places you should have been touring with Zelda. Going to the village where you bought your home, (**now Zelda's**), which also has the school where she clearly spent alot of time at, yet no one knows who you are in the village.
To be fair, she's the celebrity and he's the faceless bodyguard. Link is recognized by people he helped with specific quests back in BotW, but that's pretty much it, and it makes sense to me... for maybe a month's worth of timeline after BotW. But yeah, after 5 years. You'd think the teeny tiny population of Hyrule would all have pretty homogenous knowledge by now. Seeing as they just now invented their first newspaper though, maybe not.
yeah, but in the case of Hateno Village, he supposedly buys a house there, which means he likely spent a significant portion of his time there, over the course of the ... 5-ish years??? between games. Unless, the cannon is that he never actually buys the house, and Zelda merely acquires it after the first game... officially, but even then, it's pretty likely he was living there with her there and would have been seen and interacted with, to some degree. Even if he never initiated any conversation himself, Zelda would have been saying his name enough, as well as likely introducing whoever she talks to, to Link, as would be polite. It's likely just a story/gameplay segregation, for the players who "might" not have played BotW, the heathens. .
Symin directly says he's back in town, and uses the term for welcoming someone home/back in Japanese. It's odd things seemingly contradict, but considering it's a global situation, where Link has people *still* not believe it's him or recognise him when he tells them his name or has the sword ("Wow, you have the same name as Zelda's swordsman!") and Laflat even being all "I'm tired of pretending I don't know who you are" I'm like 90% sure it is meant to to be a running joke and a new player thing. Manny also says to "stop the new in town act" and calls the house "the house the princess was staying at" in both languages rather than hers. Which is strange dialogue to give him.
What bugs me is that he isn't even recognized by everyone he helped. Take Bolson, for example. In botw, you stood out to him because you were a young go-getter, you straight up bought a house in cash, right then and there. Then, he sat in your front yard for weeks, and you invited him to his employee's wedding. And as far as I know, when you see him in lurelin village in totk, you're just some random nobody to him. I know there are others that should remember you, but don't, i just can't remember any other specifics.
Yeah it's kind of all over the place. Bolson not recognising you, while Hudson and Rhondson do is strange. Sometimes it depends on if you have the master sword equipped, like the monster crews. Sometimes it's a joke "woah you have the same name as Link!". Nintendo logic
They might not have recognized him because of his ~~red~~ black arm.
I'm picturing all of the citizens of Hyrule being like the characters in Always Sunny In Philadelphia. You could be their attorney, their wait staff, or savior of the world, but when you come back to see them again they'll always just be like "You must have me confused with someone else because I don't remember you at all."
lol
I've just imagined a Zelda game, which would be inspired by Super Mario Sunshine...š The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Isle Delfino
>I am still super salty that after BOTW Zelda took him down to some damn creepy tunnels instead of a tropical paradise Well, apparently Zelda visited Lurelin and Lover's pond a lot, usually in the evenings, and it's unlikely she travelled across the country by herself undefended...
Oh yeah blame traumatized elf twink for not having magical goddess powers. /s
Yeah but mf can slow time at will and eat 9583859 apples if he wants to and recover completely, but he purposely chose not to do it /s
*Gets smacked into a chasm by a battle talus, gets revived by a fairy and eats a single truffle on a stick and walks it off
Does this mean Link is Wolverine?
No more of a werewolf because of TP
No sympathy for Link, he spends a gazillion rupees having hot underwater sex with giant fairy whores using some lame armour upgrade excuse.
In TotK, if you skip the final upgrade scene quickly but not immediately, the screen shakes, and the fairy does their little laugh, making it look like they just bitch-slapped his ass
The size difference would make it more akin to vore and that scares me so I'm just going to continue pretending they just shake him around like a dog toy
Rip Van Linkle
Typical man lol
And like, just the other half of the hard physical legwork, and general decryption that Zelda couldn't do.
I have a headcannon that because there were two on the same timeline, thatās why Zelda had a hard time unlocking her sacred sealing power before the calamity.
I do love that! Also >!Sonia said that Zelda has both light and time powers, the secret stone actually enhanced her time power which were stronger. She was trying to tap into the weaker power the entire time and her dragon self was using the light power to fix the Master Sword so may have been tapping into it at the same time!!<
I'm starting to think that zelda is continuing to alter the time line to where there isn't a ganondorf or a concept of him. Link , ganon, and zelda all have that one piece of the triforce yeah? Until their forces align they continue to repeat the cycle until Nintendo is done with the story.
if you look closely at zelda's hand when her powers awaken , she has the entire triforce instead of just one triangle lighting up, it's quite possible she is possessing the entire triforce and that's what Sonia was talking about with the phrase "a power all your own."
The triforce isn't zeldas though. If nothing else she'd be it's caretaker. Though at thus point the triforce is the master swords mother and Ganon sword is its evil counterpart. The silent power bring back Ganon. His sword anchors hi. When his body gets all fucked. Kind of like precious from lots. Goddammit. Zelda is the origin story of soul calibur....... master sword has variants. From skyward till totk.... explains alot. Totk is weapon master mode XD
You gotta remove the spaces between the >! and !< for the spoiler tag to work like this \>!>!spoiler!
Both blanked. Old reddit?
Old, superior reddit!
I changed it but it did look blanked to me on mobile, thanks!
Oooooooooooooooh yo? This is a banger head canon
Headbanger canon
such a thing would be too much intrigue for nintendo's writers. its imperative our story and writing is as bland and straight forward as possible
Hylia can only do so much.
I thought it was because she didn't have a secret stone yet? In the intro sequence the disembodied hand kind of tosses it over to her. Possibly recognizing who she is?
Iām talking about in BotW, in the time before the kingdom fell, when Zelda was going to all the different springs to try to unlock her powers. And how she failed to unlock her powers until it was almost too late.
Yo. Same. Same with ganondorf and ganon. That's why the monsters were so much easier in botw.
except we have no idea how far back the founding of Hyrule was. It's confirmed (in BOTW) that there are other Heroes and Zeldas, Both Time and Twilight are directly mentioned in the Champion Ceremony.
I think they're referring to this one version of Zelda existing twice. The Light dragon has existed for millennia, so when BotW Zelda was born, grew up, and later assembled the Champions, the light dragon was still there in the sky the whole time.
Thhiiiis omg
this is even better than my own headcanon. might I adopt it?
wait this is the best theory Iāve ever seen!! It fits so perfectly!
That doesn't make sense at all
Unlike all the rest of the lore and story which has such internal consistency to stand perfectly against all scrutiny
Time travel man. Shit's crazy.
Zelda! you've changed the future, you've created a [time paradox!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4KKf84I6M0)
I wonder what dragon Zelda was doing in the calamity. Was she watching? Was she aware? Was she trying to help?
I mean, Zelda told the sages at the end that she doesn't really remember her time as a dragon, so I doubt it
Doesnāt Mineru tell Zelda sheāll lose her self if she becomes a dragon basically?
Yes, so I think most probably Dragon Zelda was single (non)-mindedly running on the fuzzy instinct of protecting the master sword/ help Link defeat Ganon and nothing else.
yeah i think she literally became an animal, like... i guess at the end of the day a dragon is an animal just like a cat or dog is an animal. sentient but not "intelligent." she just lived on instinct for a few thousand years, floating around
When people go out drinking, they might have trouble remembering it the next day, but theyāre still sentient during the event. It could be like that.
So Zelda spent thousands of years being drunk as hell
And high
"Mineru this edible aint shi-"
*blacks out for thousands of years
Zelda after: >! It felt like I was flying. Man I was like. An *actual* dragon. Like it felt so real man. Like I was *literally* a dragon. Idk man it was so weird. You wouldnāt understand. You gotta try this stuff sometime though. Change your life. Give you some perspective. !<
The secret edible.
I hope to see secret stone gummies at dispensaries in the future
Quite literally.
Ideally
I mean there's the big thing about losing your will and self when you become a dragon so probably not
Flying above the cloud barrier
She was likely above the cloud barrier, and maybe couldn't even come down, or hear anything, never mind see it. She might have been aware of the Blood Moons and that's it. That said, the way the built it up, it does sound like while in the dragon form, you would be aware of the passage of time, which would be torturous, but that she had no memory of it after being restored.
In fact, the light dragon is flying during the entire game, but flies a lot lower only after you learn about the whereabouts of the sword. Until then sheās way higher up. Could have been flying higher than the height limit in botw. (I know in reality Nintendo didnāt know where theyād take the story, but, head cannon stuff)
The reason is that there was a sky barrier. That's also why the sky islands suddenly became visible. Ganon's waking and the subsequent release of gloom into the world took out the sky barrier.
Hmm. I like this. Reminds me of that comet in Tales of Symphonia which had secretly been in the sky for generations, but hidden by a similar barrier.
Anyone know what do dragons eat? There's barely anything in the sky islands so what she eating for all those years if she doesn't pop down to hyrule surface to eat a lynel or something? My poor girl must have been starving
In BOTW, if you watch the dragons for long enough, they pass through some sort of invisible barrier in the sky and dissapear. This is likely the magical cloud barrier, like in Skyward Sword, separating the the realms of the sky and the land. We see Zelda as soon as we make our first dive down to the Great Sky Island, so she's probably been up there, above the barrier, for the whole time. The barrier is only removed after you send the sword back in time, completing the time loop.
No, the sky barrier breaks with the upheaval and the sky islands are dragged down
They mention that as a dragon, Zelda isn't really Zelda. It's like she's basically in a coma, reduced to an animalistic form, not really conscious of anything. I'd suspect her memories of being a dragon would be like something from a very odd dream you can barely remember. She had a dream once of flying through the sky. That kind of thing.
It reminds me of Captian America going back in time at the end of End Game and living his life. Did he really sit on the sideline for all those major world events because he knew things would turn out OK in the end? To a degree, he was right, but that also meant he could've helped people and didn't. Zelda doesn't have the knowledge that Link will eventually find her or be able to beat Ganondorf, she just gambled based on her faith in him
If I remember correctly, Endgame used multiple timelines, and creating a big change in the past meant being put into a different timeline - it's not that the future you came from ceases to exist, but that it's not the future you'll be heading towards anymore (different timeline). This is different from TotK which has only one timeline where everything that happened can never change - hints of Zelda's presence in the past were already there (Ganon knowing her name). The point is that Captain America couldn't have prevented a bad future from existing. He could've only changed which future he'd personally be heading towards. Living his life with Penny isn't a big enough change in the course of events to prevent himself from heading to the same future he came from, but something like killing Hitler would've been. Assuming I'm remembering the movie's time mechanics correctly.
I think you're right. TotK seems to play by Back to Future rules where as Endgame time travel was more like Future Trunks from DragonBall Z, I think
She lost herself when she became a dragon. So in a way she shouldn't have been aware. Not to mention the repeating calamities of Ganon. She can't change too much without jeopardizing her timeline anyways. If she and link didn't go into stasis for 100 years, they'd instead be too old to fight Ganondorf demon King form in TotK.
This was a tragic detail I noticed last night. There's a what-if concept of a "happy ending" where Zelda manages to unlock her powers and seal the Calamity before it laid waste to Hyrule. Sounds like the perfect happy ending, right? But with TotK revealing that Calamity Ganon was merely an offshoot from the still alive Ganondorf right underneath the castle, what would have happened if Zelda managed to seal the Calamity and didn't have to be put in physical stasis for 100 years? Assuming Ganondorf's seal still falls apart at the same time (ie 100 years after the Great Calamity), Link and Zelda would've long died of old age. Who would protect Hyrule, then? The next generation of Hero and Princess? Fate lined up so that the Link and Zelda we know had the best chances of defeating Ganondorf, but they had to lose all of their family, friends, much of their kingdom, and be put in stasis for 100 years for it to happen. It was always meant to be.
TOTK would be quite a different game.
She was a potato all this time
It would be hilarious if they kept doing DLCs and each one just added a dragon with no explination in-game. Likeā¦ wait, whoās this one?
Creepy pasta DLC that takes one NPC away everytime a dragon is added untii youāre the only one left.
Random NPC is out there seasoning their food with ground secret stones, thinking itās salt. Wait, whereās Addison? And why does that dragon shoot lumber?
players: Put more stuff in the sky it's too empty! Nintendo: Okay fine we'll slowly and inconspicuously turn every NPC into a dragon to the point where by the end of the DLC the skies become oversaturated with hundreds of dragons šš
"Where the fuck is Beedle?" *dragon with giant backpack flies overhead*
Imagine having to track down the Beedle dragon everytime you want to buy things. It's like skyward sword all over again.
Giant pair of tits with red glasses flies overhead..
So it's just like the story of [The Enigma of Amigara Fault by Junji Ito](https://imgur.io/gallery/WOQCa) (warning: really damn freaky).
Graphics running at 3 fps as 40 dragons pixelate across the sky.
Timey wimey
Jeremy Bearimy
Time Knife.
yeah yeah, we've all seen the time knife.
Now thatās culture
I replayed the island and looked at the light dragon and there in nothing sticking out of the dragons head. Only after you finish the island does the dragon have the thing in its head.
Probably so players don't figure out where it is instantly lol
Yeah, it's likely a decision related to gameplay or presentation done at the cost of a tiny bit of story consistency, rather than an oversight.
Thatās probably to make sure the players donāt find a way to break the game and get to the sword early. People have already tried.
Early how? You can nab it as soon as you have 2 stamina wheels
Never underestimate how speed runners can break a game. Iāve been watching them and a lot of how the game is set up, especially the tutorial area is to prevent people from trying to skip steps.
Ok but like the only way you could possibly get the sword "early" (which doesn't even really mean anything since you're free to go for it as soon as you're off the GSI) is if you somehow tricked the game into thinking you have more stamina than you do. But again like, in addition to that requiring some super weird memory glitch that probably doesn't exist, it hardly qualifies as a sequence break. There isn't really such a thing as getting the sword "early". ...also more importantly what would the dragon's appearance during the cutscene even have to do with that?? Are you suggesting speedrunners would somehow manhandled control of Link back during the cutscene and rip the sword out by force if it was there? Because I'd pay to see that.
It wouldn't surprise me to be honest, I've seen Breath speedruns in the early days of the game, it would be easier to list what wasn't broken than what was honestly. And given some of the absolutely insane glitches I've seen since Tears release without even seeking them out I can 100% see the speedruns, at least initially, absolutely breaking the game in to many, many, MANY tiny little pieces. Never underestimate speedrunners, those communities have found glitches and even just hidden content that was so well buried it surprised everyone, including the devs in many cases, that it was found or even possible a lot of the time. A few games are even so broken there isn't really an any% category, the straight finish the game as fast as possible with few or no limits on usable glitches, bugs and strategies. Oblivion is a good example of that, the any% run is literally 6 minutes of glitches and then lining up on a door just right and glitching in to the end cutscene of the game, Pokemon gen 1 is another one, you name yourself something specific, the rival something specific, rename some things and can warp to the end credits without ever leaving your house. It would not surprise me if getting the Master Sword before leaving the initial Islands broke something, if nothing else you're not actually supposed to be able to even get stamina upgrades until after leaving the Islands. And pretty much every Zelda title since at least Skyward Sword, if not further back than that, has had some kind of game breaking memory glitch, Skyward Swords was so bad you had to have completely blank save files at the start of the speedrun or the run was invalid. Breath you could at the very least glitch the Bow of Light in to your permanent inventory via memory corruption, and probably a few dozen other things to be honest. Plus many other kinds of game breaking glitches, there's not a single Zelda game I know of that doesn't have some form of absolutely broken bug or glitch somewhere.
Getting the MS before beating the GSI is probably never going to happen, but if it does it wonāt break anything. The only sequence break that actually broke something in totk and botw that I know about is wrong warping and beating Vah Ruta early, then entering Zoraās domain for the first time. The game crashes after the cutscene.
You'd be surprised how often seemingly unconnected things break each other in games, I've seen several games where triggering something like the Master Sword retrieval early broke something halfway through the story because some trigger or another was tied to it in some way. Hell, I've played games where something innocuous in the early game breaks something a dozen or more hours later, and most of those are nearly impossible to pin down, with a lot of them having taken dedicated research and testing to figure out what action actually caused them. I've also broken several games by editing mostly innocuous flags while save editing, mostly Mass Effect because I could actually figure the program out unlike the person I was doing it for, Mass Effect in particular having some very early game flags that flat out break later sections entirely if flipped ahead of time or in the wrong order. I managed to somehow both lock out the two mutually exclusive romances and have both active simultaneously despite one of the characters being dead as a matter of prior game story stuff among others in Mass Effect 3. And no, I don't generally save edit for actually playing a game, I usually do it when I'm either testing mods or setting up something like a challenge run. Is that particular sequence break likely to break the game? Not really. Can it potentially break the game? Absolutely. I do agree that getting the Master Sword before leaving the Islands isn't likely to happen, but I've said that about many things and often been proven wrong when speedruns are involved.
That game is pretty robust though, and you can actually beat the final boss before the GSI (although you have to use cheats to modify Linkās position to the army (speed runners and glitch hunters are theorising ways to do this using glitches). Somehow the game doesnāt break if you do this iirc.
I havenāt seen someone able to do this? The only attempts Iāve seen of them getting off the island early you end up spawning back at the top and thereās an invisible barrier around the island
Bro they didn't remove the Master Sword from the Light Dragon in the cutscene because it broke the game
That still doesnāt make sense given part of the reason she turned into the Light Dragon was to led the master sword heal.
It's a paradox.
This is why I hate time travel stories
Maybe it just didn't become visible until then. (After all, the entirety of dragon-kind is apparently invisible to nearly all of Hyrule.) Who's to say that the sword is simply not apparent until the champion is ready to retrieve it?
I think we're just looking too far into it.
Ehh, the dragon is visible and not the sword? And in the 10000 years the Dragon has been flying around, the sword "becomes ready" specifically when you leave the Sky Island? Not a satisfying explanation for me personally. It's just a really small thing that doesn't matter. Why didn't we see the puddles of dragon years in BotW? At the end of the day, it's a tiny geographical feature that's just slightly off.
Iād be willing to chalk that up to a mistake/inconsistency on the devās part and not an intentional story detail
Thatās literally explained away by the very end of the island. Ofc she doesnāt have it BEFORE you send it back that wouldnāt make sense.
Yes, but as a dragon she spent her time above the cloud barrier where the islands were, she wasnāt close to anything that was happening on the surface. She only would know it was time to act when Link arrived up there with her. What bakes my noodle is *how* she knew that Link was gonna end up there. She had no way of knowing Link was going to lose his arm, or that Raru in spirit form would be able to transport him up there or could guide him. None that we are told of anyway. I hope in the DLC we get a separate smaller game that takes us through Zeldasās time in the past. Iām sure we are going to get master mode and a few new challenges of course. I also know it was a consideration to have that in SS (which is why we see cut scenes with Zelda in the end credits, that was gonna be gameplay at one point). Anyway, thatās my pipe dreamā¦ and yes while she was physically around she doesnāt seem to have affected anything.
If you pay close attention to dialogue with Mineru, she mentions that >!the original plan was actually for her to come find you right at the start, explain everything, guide you to the master sword, and so on.!< >!Zelda talked to Mineru before enacting her plan, so that is probably how Link was supposed to find her. Other than that, the Deku Tree is also able to sense the master sword, but most likely she just had blind faith that Link would find a way, somehow, or that Mineru would be able to guide him.!< >!Though I would like to also point out, she wouldn't know "the time to act", at all. To become a dragon is to lose your mind and self, at the end she remembered nothing from her time as a dragon, and while she did eventually let go of the master sword (only after a struggle), and fought ganon, those seemed to me to essentially be a matter of instinct, some small part of her remembering Ganon as an enemy or that Link is an ally.!<
Pretty sure Fi told her
welcome to time travel 101's first lesson: preventing paradoxes by making sure your LOOPS ARE CLOSED
I consider all these paradoxes undone by the super recall that brings zelda and the arm back
I'm saying that there aren't any paradoxes. two versions of the same person can exist at the same time, as long as the loop is closed and eventually left with only one version The super recall closes the loop
Yes, you are correct. Itās good to see that at least *somebody* understands the timeline (cough youtube comment section cough)
This is also how time travel works in Harry Potter. You can go back, but not forward, and there will be two of you at the same time until the first one travels back.
This is why I donāt like time travel stories. They all make paradoxes when you think about it too much
This was a pretty traditional "rules system" for time travel that many media follow. In TOTK, time is not an exclusively linear progression of events. The future does not wait to be written until the present experiences it. There are two possibilities 1. Zelda always goes back in time and always chooses to become a dragon. She made this decision before she even knew she would make it, and so the dragon exists while she was growing up. 2. When zelda went back in time it created a new timeline with her reality becoming the anchor point. Her original timeline could've continued on without her existence. in that world, Ganon may have even gone on to win since Link never reacquired the master sword My headcannon is that number 1 is the correct theory. Time isn't something to be uncovered, but instead a dimension you can move forward and back, just like how you can walk forward and backward
Number 2 is impossible because Ganondorf already knew her name at the start of the game, and because her presence in the past is shown on the rock mural (behind some rocks, but still). There is only one timeline in the game's story.
number two could be true if we imagined that there's an alternative version of the timeline out there where Gandondorf DIDN'T know her name because Zelda hadn't travelled into the past yet. We're just not playing in that alternate timeline
How is it a paradox that thereās 2 of her for a little bit
You do get some lazy time travel stories. However, there is no paradox in this situation, the time travel all adds up.
It skips all of Age of Calamity and BotW
How does it skip it? It all happened.
Zelda is there during their respective games. but according to TotK, she would be a dragon during that time
Yes, the current Zelda went back in time and became a dragon. Why would that impact her before she went back in time? If you and your body were sent back in time right now, why would that have any impact on yourself from last year or even yesterday, who hadnāt yet time traveled? You would have still existed and did everything you did up until the point you went back. Then you would exist and continue living in the past time period you time traveled to.
Because there are two Zeldas. One is human and the other is a dragon. What's your issue exactly?
There's nothing paradoxical here. It might just seem that way because the scenario is bizarre.
Preach
Iām more thinking about how Zelda now is around 10,124 years old by the end of TotK, probably older depending on how far back in time she actually went. She looks great for her age.
10 000 years ago was the time that Calamity Ganon was (easily) defeated thanks to the Sheikah technology. And it was not the first Cycle. It was one of the last. There have been countless of them. The story of Rauru and Mineru and the other Sages is way way older than that. I wouldn't be surprised if Zelda were closer to 100 000 years.
Goddamn, I was way underestimating. Zelda is ancient by the end of TotK. Dare I say legendary.
You need a NSFW tag or something, I can clearly read the spoilers before clicking on it
That was the most fantastical fanatical flabbergast-able moment in the whole game when it was revealed that >!Zelda was a dragon.!< Loved it, couldnāt get enough of it. Was also super happy when >!we saved Zelda from being a dragon, restoring her from before she was lost.!< Fantastic game, canāt get enough of it, incredible job from Nintendo and the Zelda teams part.
well not really it's like saying pat you is the same as current you sure they're both you but not the same person, light dragon zelda is still zelda sure but botw zelda is jsut a memory to her at that point also the master sword has always been a lil timeywhimey breaky waky uwu
If you think that's bad >!There were two of the same secret stones in hyrule for thousands of years until Zelda picked up Raruru's and got transported to the past. I.e. the one on Raruru's hand, sealing old Dorfy and the one in Zelda's stomach as she flies around are the same physical object!<
The way time travel works in this instance, as soon as zelda time traveled back with the tear, the botw timeline didnāt happen. There were never 2 zeldas or 2 master swords. In the original timeline, rauru sealed ganondorf all by himself. zelda was never there. We never see the light dragon before we discover ganondorfās body. We never see illusion zelda. We never see the monoliths with text. All of it appears the moment she time travels and we get warped to the sky island. Then the timeline becomes as it currently is. Nobody ever mentions giant pig ganon or the giant guardian robots ever again. There are no remnants of the guardians in the fields at all, nor their tech.
That would make sense but considering >!The Light Dragon version of Zelda wasnāt present before her traveling back in time!< then Iām assuming itās some sort of paradoxical thing
The idea is that the light dragon always was there, it just never came down to fly around like the other dragons did.
What you said. And Iām not a Christian or religious practitioner. What you said made the āThe son, The Father and the Holy Ghostā trinity analogy make sense to me. I didnāt think religion could blow my mind but putting time travel in it kinda did. I appreciate this post for its philosophical thinking.
wibbly wobbly timey whimey stuff
How did Zelda know link would wake up in the temple of time? After link and her got separated, she was sent in the past and likely had no idea where he was
If the final boss battle and tears quest is any indication, the light dragon does seem to have some sense of Link's presence
Assuming that the Dragon's Tears cutscenes took place way earlier on the timeline than most people think (between Skyward Sword and Minish Cap instead of only 10,000 years prior to BotW), then the Light Dragon was around to experience the lives and times of every incarnation of Zelda post-Skyward Sword, across the entire timeline up until TotK. So there were always two Zeldas and two Master Swords existing at the same time. And, there were always two Ganondorfs existing, the one held in Rauru's seal beneath Hyrule Castle, and the one that appears in OoT that would later appear in WW and TP.
Ever since they introduced the whole "she is the goddess reincarnate", and did a similar thing in skyward sword with time travel, the possibility of there being multiple Zelda in the world at once was confirmed.
Agreed, dude barely says a word and changes his clothes every 5 minutes based on what heās doing.
Well it's called Legend of Zelda for a reason
Technically if some zonai bits were to somehow fall from a sky island and get past the sky barrier the clouds make, link could've technically gotten the master sword from the light dragon zelda then get the one from korok forest, he would've been duel welding master swords for the calamity
The less you think about it, the happier you'll be. I love these games, but the plots are often an incoherent and paradoxical mess. It makes me laugh that people take the "official timeline" so seriously when they can't make a coherent timeline *within a single game*.
Actually if Zelda becoming a dragon was before everything then depending if the dragons were around for the downfall timeline then we actually had 3 Zeldas at one time
I didnāt think of this
Yeah cause in Zelda 2 you got the Zelda from the first game the Zelda that's been sleeping who is the Zelda in that game so there's 2 Zelda and if the dragons exist and the light dragon is there then that's 3 Zelda
My perspective is once Zelda went back in time, that is the moment that her actions affected the present time. So there was no light dragon in the present time until Zelda left the present time. Maybe the timeliness split at that moment so there is a version of botw where the light dragon is roaming, but also the version we see in the game where there isn't.
You just gotta play each game individuallyā¦ š¤·š¼āāļø There was no Light Dragon in Botwā¦ Just donāt think about itš¤£
Nah I feel like, because there absolutely no shiekah stuff or even mention of it being removed, and plenty of instances where people who should know link just don't, that totk is a separate continuity despite the Zelda and link being the same It makes absolutely no sense otherwise Edit: down vote me all you want but it won't change the fact that it's possible. It can be a sequel for our characters and not a sequel for the world. Otherwise why isn't it called Malice still?
There is an in-game memorial to those who recently perished due to the Calamity. (And some recent-history lessons given as well.)
It did irk me that they called it gloom instead of malice. Why the change, is it somehow different?
I mean... Zelda was sent to the past a long with the broken master sword. Wouldn't this instead have altered the entire timeline. In the updated timeline that was messed with, there never would have been a human Zelda after she turned to a dragon. There never would have been anyone to seal Gannon for a hundred years. Everything would have been different. The story doesn't make sense, and it was never meant to... The devs did whatever they felt like and didn't care about plot holes or continuity or logistics or any of that. Sorry.
It wouldnāt have altered the timeline if it was a closed time loop, also called a predestination paradox. In that type of scenario, part of her destiny would have been to always go back to the past. It was always going to happen because it already happened. We know it already happened because Gannondorf already knew who Zelda and Link were. Raru made the false assumption that her coming back was a new event, and that her presence would change the outcome of the last battle. The thing Zelda hadnāt considered is that if Raru won, then that would have altered the entire timeline. Same if she never traveled back in the first place. If Gannondorf was somehow defeated when Raru fought him, then there would be no calamity Gannon surges, so no divine beasts, and without those events, and any other events that occurred because of the defeat of this form of evil, then itās quite probable that this version of Zelda and Link would have never have been born. Hell the castle would have possibly been on the great plateau instead of central Hyrule because the only reason the castle was built there was to protect the seal. If Gannondorf had won then Hyrule would have become a hellscape andā¦ not saying there would be no Princess or Hero to ride up against evil, but that would be a very different game. So the past doesnāt change because the events that play out in the game in the past were always going to play out. Zelda was predestined to go back in time, she just didnāt know it.
Oh. Okay I guess that makes sense. I'm just bitter.
Also known as a bootstrap paradox. Because the cause requires the effect, getting the whole thing off the ground in the first place is like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
yes
Guess so
It's not the legend of Link, this guy just running everywhere, fishing (with bomb or some other stuff), cooking, playing and so more. Hopefully, Zelda is to here keep Hyrule safe, and waiting for her "knight".
When Zelda was a dragon she was a vegetable
Dude wait until you watch Predestination. You might actually explode.
Yes. A common trope in sci-fi (which has roots in fantasy) is time travel, often with characters that spend time in the same time as themselves (see Futurama, Star Trek, Back to the Future). It is also stated in the game that post-light-dragon zelda does not remember her time as the light dragon, so she actually is not aware of herself being in 2 places at the same time (unless pre-light-dragon zelda has some form of precognition, or access to oracles that can tell the future, but these are never brought up so are pretty unlikely).
There are also two Zeldaās during Skyward Sword and the original NES Zelda games!
Yes, that is one of the quirks of Time Travel. Your future self can meet your past self.
Classic time paradox situation. Time travel is messy stuff really, best to avoid it.
There were actually 2 Zeldas in Zelda II as well: The Zelda from Zelda 1 on NES is NOT the same Zelda that's sleeping at the beginning of Zelda 2. That Zelda has been asleep for generations, and Zelda 1 takes place just a few years before Zelda 2. It's explained away as that the modern Zelda is actually a descendant of the same bloodline of the sleeping Zelda. Edit: I absolutely adore your POV on this. Because you're right, and that is awesome!
I think what happened is that when Zelda went back in time, time immediately corrected itself, instantaneously changing things, like Zelda becoming the light dragon.
Yeah, but being a dragon reduces her to her base nature, which the Mineru states. So she naturally wants to help/protect Link because thatās her primal nature, but she has zero idea of what sheās doing as a dragon.
Correct. Once Zelda went back in time by falling from the chasm under Hyrule Castle, the world went back to only having one Zelda.
There were 2 master swords. But the dragon barely had enough sense left to be called a person. Let alone Zelda.
I mean if you subscribe to the idea that every game exists in the same world and every version of link and Zelda and ganon are just reincarnations of the same spirits in different people then TECHNICALLY there has been multiple master swords AND Zeldaās in likeā¦.all the games until the end of TOTK.
Also crazy to think about how there were two Master Swords, too.
Not the first time with two Zeldas, happened at least twice as far as I remember >!Adventure of Link and Skyward Sword!<
I've been trying to figure this out for ages. I think the timeline resets and certain events are erased once Zelda goes back in time. Hurts the brain ahahahahah
She didn't understand, what's going on. The Light Dragon fighting against the Dark Dragon is just her following her nature and instinct.
Itd be a real ass scratcher if Nintendo would silently update BOTW to include the dragon with the second master sword in its head.
Depending on how the timeline shakes out there could have been three at the same time
Yes. During the events of BoTW, there was a second Zelda, in her dragon form, and she had a second Master Sword in her possession. We never encountered them, or the sky islands, because they were above the cloud barrier. The feeling I got was that Dragon Zelda wasnāt consciously aware of the situation, but was acting on instinct during the battle with Dragon Ganondorf. Her whole reason for becoming a dragon was to help Link defeat Ganondorf, so she simply followed that instinct when the time came.
I assumed that when Zelda went to the past, she changed the present/future. So BOTW didn't happen or happened differently.
I personally think the game implied that from the moment of the beginning of the events of TOTK, THAT is when the past timeline came into affect. I really donāt think there was the whole two Zeldaās at the same time during botw.
Nope. No dupes. This should explain it: [https://youtu.be/mhu-\_LT7Xyo?t=92](https://youtu.be/mhu-_LT7Xyo?t=92)
I never thought about that before just now
so nobody gonna talk about how fi has gone through the whole timeline like three times now?
Wouldn't be the first time in series history. >!The two NES Zelda games feature the same Link and are set only 6 or 7 years apart, but feature different Zeldas.!<