Tears of the Kingdom

I've been reading online theories of this game and I came across this remark.

#GanonIsGood Theory is like the #FlatEarth of the Zelda franchise

So by all means, we gotta discuss it here! 

What are your theories on the game?

I mean, they were trying to make the point it's wrong because "flat earth dumb like dumb thing". Thing is, it's not (that sentiment can pply to both or just the theory, take your pick). Ganon more closely matches the color scheme of the 2nd person in the tapestry at the start of BOTW. Plus, Ganon isn't explicitly evil, he holds a piece of the triforce. My personal theory is that we see a trading of roles, with Zelda as the antagonist, maybe possessed by the thing that's not Calamity that I can't remember the name of. We see Ganon acting as either a helper, or the game's damsel.

video games are for children

I have discussed in depth before that the makers of the Legend of Zelda titles are very strong Flat earther advocates.

https://www.theflatearthsociety.org/forum/index.php?topic=30593.0

The tie between the video game industry and the flat earth ideology - It most definitely exists. I started my career creating content published by Bungie and sold worldwide in brick and mortar stores; updating their games and dev tools and then Take Two's. It was evident in every persons mind that the only sustainable engine you could build was a flat one. The same is true now - though sometimes they play on some clever tricks to make it appear round.

Today, one of the largest franchises of all time - Minecraft - is based on the concept, and we even see Fortnite has adopted the flat earth model - mind you the biggest cash cow in the industry at the moment. The fact must be that art emulates life, and again and again we will see it resurface in popular culture and art mediums until we all stop, collaborate, and listen - and then evolve our language of science.

Our language is literally screaming at us to stop talking and listen. It's flat.

The reason games have a flat world is because it's easier to make everything align to a coordinate grid. Spherical coordinates are a pain, but they are a thing. Tell me, would you rather work with three numbers moving along a line, or angles, warped grids, and making a world that feels large enough to properly wrap all the way around?

Yes, that is a big part of it, though it speaks to the elegance of flat earth models that they can be implemented easier than round earth ones.

Yes, that is a big part of it, though it speaks to the elegance of flat earth models that they can be implemented easier than round earth ones.

Simplicity is not the same as elegance.

Quote from: Username on May 15, 2023, 07:50:03 AM

Yes, that is a big part of it, though it speaks to the elegance of flat earth models that they can be implemented easier than round earth ones.

Simplicity is not the same as elegance.

No, but simplicity is a trait of elegance. It's also more parsimonious, coherent and aesthetically pleasing.

I'd say it's definitely more elegant. It's easier to just tell the camera to move 3 units left than rotate 30 degrees clockwise and move 3 units left and down to compensate for the sphere. Look up how the camera for Mario Galaxy works, it's a giant clusterfuck. However, this isn't a conclusion we can easily extrapolate to the real world; the difference is that in the game engine we make the world, but in real life we're mapping it. The situations are opposite. This doesn't necessarily mean that the conclusions are opposite, but it does mean that assuming correlation is a poor strategy.

Also, this game is fun. It expanded on BotW's gameplay in a lot of great ways, and it's still permissive to player creativity. Ganon's model is cool.

Some of the stuff being done makes me question whether its even zelda anymore. I mean, building giant mecha and laser birds and stuff just feels different.

Some of the stuff being done makes me question whether its even zelda anymore. I mean, building giant mecha and laser birds and stuff just feels different.

I agree. While I love both of these games, Zelda has always been a dungeon game to me, and BotW and TotK are both missing that, outside of some odds and ends in the DLC. BotW was my first Zelda, and even with that bias I can't help but feel like it's the wrong series. Even with it's weirder exploration, Wind Waker still had dungeons to explore.

Quote from: Username on May 15, 2023, 10:33:20 AM

Some of the stuff being done makes me question whether its even zelda anymore. I mean, building giant mecha and laser birds and stuff just feels different.

I agree. While I love both of these games, Zelda has always been a dungeon game to me, and BotW and TotK are both missing that, outside of some odds and ends in the DLC. BotW was my first Zelda, and even with that bias I can't help but feel like it's the wrong series. Even with it's weirder exploration, Wind Waker still had dungeons to explore.

Aw, that's sad to hear. I heard Tears brought back the larger dungeons; I just assumed I haven't gotten to any yet.

Quote from: Magicalus on May 15, 2023, 10:36:12 AM

Quote from: Username on May 15, 2023, 10:33:20 AM

Some of the stuff being done makes me question whether its even zelda anymore. I mean, building giant mecha and laser birds and stuff just feels different.

I agree. While I love both of these games, Zelda has always been a dungeon game to me, and BotW and TotK are both missing that, outside of some odds and ends in the DLC. BotW was my first Zelda, and even with that bias I can't help but feel like it's the wrong series. Even with it's weirder exploration, Wind Waker still had dungeons to explore.

Aw, that's sad to hear. I heard Tears brought back the larger dungeons; I just assumed I haven't gotten to any yet.

Did it? I haven't gotten that far either, I just assumed both from what I've seen playing and on youtube. If there are larger dungeons, it's a welcome return to form.

The answer seems to be a "kind of."
https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/gaming/does-tears-of-the-kingdom-have-traditional-zelda-dungeons/ar-AA1b6sY1
This article describes them as larger shrines, focused on puzzles above any form of exploration.

Not really impressed with TotK so far. It's been pretty boring/tedious

Not really impressed with TotK so far. It's been pretty boring/tedious

Yeah; a lot of the stuff they added was pretty cool - the building cool stuff sorta things. The rest is just a reskin of BotW, and honestly I got more than my share of play hours on that to be finding korok seeds, walking across hyrule and solving temples again. Bringing over just the horses from the saved game was questionable.

it's pronounced tears

Playing a bit more, I'm getting past a lot of the tedium now that I'm using the physics pieces to get by mundane things like climbing mountains. I could see myself changing my mind though.

The reason games have a flat world is because it's easier to make everything align to a coordinate grid. Spherical coordinates are a pain, but they are a thing. Tell me, would you rather work with three numbers moving along a line, or angles, warped grids, and making a world that feels large enough to properly wrap all the way around?

Almost as though if you were a God who created the heaven and the earth, this would be the ideal way to create things...

it's pronounced tears

Like the tears that you will get when you learn they removed alot of the things that made BotW easier.

RIP Hearty Durians.

Or the tears of pain you feel exploring the underground.

Aw, that's sad to hear. I heard Tears brought back the larger dungeons; I just assumed I haven't gotten to any yet.

Somewhat underwhelming. The dungeons do take awhile to complete, but I found the BotW world mechanic to be kinda clunky and basically revolve around "Find the five switches and use your allies to pull them." True, there is a sense of having to solve puzzles in order to access said switches, but Link to the Past and Skyward Sword had more authentic to the Zelda experience in that regard. The idea of dungeons is that you can't just run through four rooms in rapid succession. But the BotW/TotK open world mechanic makes this difficult. It did an okay job of making sections that were difficult to open, but it felt more like low-fat dungeons, only having the key sections unable to just pass through a room.

I think TotK should have introduced Zonai items 1/dungeon and had them more like tools in previous Zelda games. But the shrines occasionally tried that premise.

I found some of the sections of Hyrule Castle more like what I wanted.

I have beaten the game this day.

The last section was really insane tho. "Hey let's have a Gloom Spawn and a Lynel guarding the final boss entrance. Also, let's have the final boss hit solid gloom for two straight battles so you almost can't heal at all. Let's also enforce story anti-skipping by doing this..."


One army fight, six boss fights, and three fights vs Ganon proper. Good luck!

I finally got the last korok seed. It's pretty wild because once you get it, Link looks into the camera and speaks for the first time saying "Hyrule exists on a flat world. Floating islands found in nature don't exist on globes."

You must have got the cartridge version.

Mine doesn't do that.