RagnarokX
Piranha Plant
I don't know if this has already been discussed, but I think I found pretty big evidence that we are most definitely getting themed dungeons back (as in full-on dungeons and not just explorable interiors).
Most agree that this page (154) depicts a boss room of some sort. It goes further than that, however, as on the door to that room there are 5 engravings of a creature that seems to hold a chain suspending the door in its mouth.
Another picture shows the same creature existing in two states, one is inactive with its mouth closed, and another with its eyes glowing and mouth opened.
When an engraving is activated it opens its mouth, releasing the chain within. When all five are active, the door to the 'boss room' will be opened.
Notice that this is extremely similar to how BoTW does its dungeons, with you needing to activate 5 terminals in each Divine Beast to access the boss fight of said dungeon.
I didn't love the Divine Beasts. I'm sure most people agree that having 4 very "samey" feeling dungeons made them feel repetitive, but if there's one thing I'd hope they keep it's being able to complete a dungeon in the order you want. The terminals in my mind are what helped BoTW to accomplish that.
Hopefully with the possibility of new themed dungeons in ToTK, we get the best of both worlds.
That's very worrysome if true. One of the things that made BotW's beasts very lackluster as dungeons was their absolute non-linearity.
Eh, some of the best dungeons in the series are largely non-linear imo. GMT’s Boss Key video series does a pretty good job of showing this off.
I like more linear dungeons too of course - Twilight Princess is probably my favorite Zelda game after all lol. It’s all in the execution, which is what you probably meant be “it really depends.”
Mark Brown created that series with a very clear bias but when he got to Skyward Sword he loved the dungeons despite them contradicting his premise and then was meh with the divine beasts, which are the most non-linear "dungeons" in the series. Breath of the Wild's beasts aren't like previous dungeons. The non-linear dungeons Mark Brown enjoyed aren't absolutely linear. You get a key and you have options which door to use it on. You might have to backtrack across rooms you already cleared or find a door you haven't found. The dungeon still opens up in stages. You still have to do A before B before C or D. Breath of the Wild's beasts are designed like a single room dungeon with 5 puzzle stations and you can solve the 5 puzzles in any order. Puzzles don't ramp up in difficulty and nothing is interconnected.
So if Rauru is the Hand in the first trailer which seems quite likely (and the story hasn’t actually changed from this pretty early concept we have seen in 2019) - then is he still around in the present? Did he loose his arm when he struck Ganondorf and it functioned as a seal or did he spend all this time locked up with him slowly consuming his body and essence as the seal is slowly weakening with nothing but an arm left of him when Zelda and Link find this prison. If it‘s the first why does he have two arms in the concept art? Or do we see him only in flashbacks.
Is the cloud barrier that up until now hid the sky islands actually also a time barrier somehow breaking with Ganondorf returning that allows us to see and visit a civilisation from long ago when we travel up? And the information we find up there in form of the big Nazcalines helps us discover ancient ruins in present hyrule that were lost and buried over time, just like the divine beasts?
Also what’s up with the Deku tree. It‘s not visible in any trailer or any concept art.
There‘s so many cool possibilities.
And that's exactly why I think there has to be more there. Perhaps by being the ruler of the Gerudo, and already gifted with strong magical potential, it made him an easy candidate for training with the Zonai.
What happened to make him go bad this go around is something that we'd have to remain to be seen. Hopefully, it's something more beyond "Demise made him do it".
I guess it all depends on how much of the murals we've seen are things that actually did go down in the past (like what glimpses we've seen that looked like Ganondorf about to be "grabbed" by Rauru's hand?), and what part of it is is still prophecy.
Either way, I can't imagine that if Ganondorf really was someone who abused Zonai-styled secrets to suit his own agenda, that Rauru and "Basket Girl" would take that all lying down.
Well the flash of light casts a shadow from the past on the wall and it certainly looks like Rauru was physically there.
And I doubt Rauru is just a hand in this scene:
The Rauru we know lived a long time. He built the Temple of Time over the Sealed Temple BEFORE the founding of Hyrule and he was still alive in OoT.