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[Imic]

I have done nothing but play Tears of the Kingdom since sunday and I am like... 50% done, maybe.

I don't know if I can finish this, I tried to finish every single shrine but I gave up at 60-something. The prospect of more story dungeons fills me with unspeakable dread.

[Telgin]

I haven't had a ton of time to play it and don't know my total hours, but I think I'm a bit less than halfway done since I've finished two temples so far and about 45 shrines.  I will say that the game has an almost overwhelming amount of stuff to do, to the point I've started avoiding talking to people because I'm afraid it'll add yet another distraction to the point I'll totally forget why I'm going somewhere.

Overall I've really enjoyed the game, but I sometimes think I preferred BotW a hair.  I keep feeling oddly resistant to embracing and engaging with the new mechanics like Fuse and building vehicles, and miss the infinite bombs from BotW.  The glaring retcons and lack of continuity with BotW are a bit jarring too.

[Madman198237]

The game is great fun but I think they got spooked by all the suggestions that it would just be a BotW DLC dressed up as a new game.

The total lack of any continuity is extremely jarring, yes, I think I hate it more than anything else in this game. What retcons are you talking about?

[Telgin]

Maybe not blatant, outright retcons so much as the lack of continuity implies some.  Almost all of the ancient Sheika stuff has been replaced with ancient Zonai stuff instead, for example.  It's almost like it always was just the Zonai, and the Sheikah are just reverse engineering some of their stuff in modern times.  The utter lack of any mention of the divine beasts and guardians implies they were just never there.  Nobody talks about the champions from Breath of the Wild and they introduce new ancestors that take a similar role.  Things like that.

Or maybe the new ancestors are the same champions?  They're all wearing masks and are kind of unidentifiable, for some reason.

Admittedly I've only gotten halfway through the game so maybe I haven't run into some of this yet, but it feels like it's just the direction they wanted to take with the game.  Forget about stuff that happened in BotW because it's not important.

Edit: Oh, actually, the Purah Pad is kind of a direct retcon of the Sheikah Slate.  It's obviously the same thing, with a different name and with different functions.  It's implied to be a new invention despite Link having a Sheikah Slate in BotW.  Pretty sure Zelda had one too.

[Madman198237]

In BOTW Link uses Zelda's Sheikah Slate. I think the Slate is actually mentioned once as being taken by Purah to be studied? But yes the total unexplained disappearance of the Divine Beasts and all Sheikah technology (with the singular exception of the decrepit Guardian on top of one of the ancient tech labs) irks me to no end.

[Ozyton]

So I bought this since I had a bunch of Best Buy gift cards so I essentially got it for free. Really liked what I had played so far, but I've been jumping around so much I haven't made too much progress in any one area. I've done the main quest for the Rito but other than that it's been doing odds and ends in various regions. Haven't actually touched the Gerudo or Zora regions at all.

Then the Dragon's Dogma 2 trailer came out and I was inspired to go back and get all the achievements in DD:DA, so TotK has been put on hold for now...

[Frumple]

So for the folks that have been playing, since I haven't seen any explanation in the playthrough I've been watching...

... does the game ever explain where Zelda picks up the hyrulean prison ink, and who she killed in the process of getting it? 'Cause teardrops like that are known as a sign you've murdered someone, and I've been wondering who she offed ever since they showed up. She didn't start the game with the things, so it had to have been picked up in the past at some point.

[Bumber]

... does the game ever explain where Zelda picks up the hyrulean prison ink, and who she killed in the process of getting it?

Maybe it's part of an elaborate backstory Sonia and Rauru made up for her to fit in.

[Imic]

The game just keeps going. It just keeps going. There's just so much of it.

I love Totk, but I cannot truthfully say that I prefer it to Botw. Botw was a far more tightly designed game, whilst totk has a lot of odd loose ends that it has to retroactively deal with. The retcons are incredibly jarring. I have found exactly one reference to the Calamity in the entire game besides item descriptions that were lifted from botw, and it was a random memorial north of Hyrule castle that's incredibly easy to miss. I'm sure that people will be finding all sorts of ways to tie them together, but the fact that Calamity Ganon is never once mentioned is so strange. So much of the game's story is clearly set up to be a follow-up to botw, but it almost goes out of its way to never say anything out loud. Malice is never mentioned, it's all gloom now. They probably intended for Gloom to be a more powerful version of Malice, but Malice is never acknowledged in any way. There's just so many strange loose ends that would be so easy to tie up, but it's like they can't acknowledge the past game for legal reasons. There is a very conspicuous empty spot in Zora's domain where the old shrine used to be which is not used for anything in totk, it's just empty. It all feels... extra. I think I agree; They probably became worried about it being too closely associated with botw so they steered away from it... but in ways that don't work very well.

And I still amn't done the game yet. For all my criticisms, I think that the shrines are fun, I love the proving grounds type shrines where they take away your things and force you to be resourceful, I like that there's a bit more focus on characters than in botw, I love being able to explore everything again, I enjoy making dumb machines that desintegrate, I adore the new boss fights, bu- wait, I've got it.

The reason Totk weirds me out sometimes is because the way the map and story has been changed reminds me of Wow Cataclysm. If you know, you know.

[Telgin]

The more I think about it, the more I think they chose to scrub references to Breath of the Wild in an attempt to make new players not feel like they had to play it to understand the game.

That's somewhat understandable, but it's still very jarring.  Also frankly surprising since you'd think it would make people more inclined to buy BotW if they hadn't played it already.

[LuuBluum]

There's some details here and there.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

One of the sidequests requires you to take a picture of a mural thing of the Calamity sitting in the Chief's house in Kakoriko, then help with a class where you explain what the Calamity was to a bunch of kids.

Also, I can't remember who says it and the circumstances (maybe Impa?), but I vaguely remember at some point someone saying something about Calamity Ganon being Ganondorf's anger seeping out, or something like that.

Honestly the main mystery to me at this point is where all that Sheikah stuff went. My guess is that, what with none of it being necessary any more, that the shrines/towers receded into the ground and the divine beasts disassembled for the technology. The Sheikah Slate also probably stopped working during that and the Purah Pad was an attempt to reconstruct it. That or she just tore it apart and used it to make the other thing in an attempt to understand how all this stuff works. Divine beasts also could've simply stopped working due to not being necessary anymore; hell, BotW ends with Zelda saying that you two needed to head off because one of them stopped working, I think in a little blurb after the credits. It's been like 5 years since BotW ended, after all.

There's also, to my knowledge, only one Sheikah Slate. The one Zelda uses during the flashbacks in BotW is the one she gives to you, hence why it has all those photos of notable moments you spent together that are the locations of the memories.

The Divine Champions of BotW don't get much mention outside of the Zora one, but she does get a good deal of mentioning. The others are just... not really relevant anymore. Remember, they died 100 years ago. Anyone who knew any of them is dead, except for the Zora one, which is why she gets her fair share of mentioning.

As for guardians, they don't get a direct mention, but their legs are used as a part of the contraption involved in setting Link up to transfer data to a tower. Plugs in the data USB thing and holds him in place before shooting him into the sky. Again, not really a device needed after Calamity Ganon was defeated, so whatever functional ones remained were probably torn apart for research and the remainder simply disposed of.

[Stench Guzman]

The more I think about it, the more I think they chose to scrub references to Breath of the Wild in an attempt to make new players not feel like they had to play it to understand the game.

That's somewhat understandable, but it's still very jarring.  Also frankly surprising since you'd think it would make people more inclined to buy BotW if they hadn't played it already.

I haven't played BotW or TotK, but this is a Zelda game, and with a couple of exceptions these games aren't big on continuity.

[Bumber]

Only some NPCs seem to remember Link. You'd think more in Hateno village would recognize him, considering he was supposedly around when Zelda was setting up the school (after she stole his house.)

[Imic]

Well, I finished it, and I can truthfully say that although I overall prefer Botw, Totk was still worth every cent.

[Telgin]

I haven't played BotW or TotK, but this is a Zelda game, and with a couple of exceptions these games aren't big on continuity.

This is true, but this is the first time a Zelda game "sequel" has actually reused most of the same world, right?  Majora's Mask is effectively a sequel to Ocarina of Time, but it takes place in an entirely different location and all, for example.  As far as I can remember, every other game introduces an entirely new version of Hyrule so that the lack of continuity doesn't feel as weird.  Maybe some of the 2D games are different since I haven't played any but the original.