Alright, since I am not very busy this evening I have time for some random musings. Feel free to skip if you're not interested in crazy ramblings...
Playing TotK one thought that was gnawing in the back of my head was what this game means for the future of the series. According to Aonuma the next mainline 3D entry will follow the same template, which I personally think is rather vaguely defined beyond being another "open air" game. TotK obviously builds upon BotW and has many parallels to that game but also walks certain things back. I wouldn't be surprised if the next game after this drops some of the BotW-isms like shrines, durability, Koroks etc. if only to keep things fresh and for the development team to challenge themselves the same way they did with the Sheikah Runes. I said this before but I expect future games will freely switch in and out elements of Zelda games as they see fit.
That leaves three aspects that are big question marks: The characters, the lore/timeline and the map. As far as the latter goes, the recent
Ask the Developer interview had this exchange:
The Legend of Zelda series seems to be one of those franchises where the visual style and game mechanics often change drastically for each entry. Was there ever a discussion about creating a new game with a completely new world, rather than a sequel?
Aonuma: No, not really. Although the previous title, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, has its own conclusion, we started to come up with new ideas that we wanted to bring to life in this already realized version of Hyrule, so our direction in making a sequel did not change.
Fujibayashi: Just like somewhere you know inside and out, we understand where everything is in Hyrule from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and because of that, we believed it was possible to create new gameplay. For this reason, in the initial proposal, we clearly stated "the setting will not change" as an important concept. Even when I shared this with the team members here, there were no objections, and we were all aligned on that idea from that point onward.
Dohta: When I was working on the programming for Wuhu Island during Wii Sports Resort's development, I remembered Miyamoto-san saying that he wanted to “turn the actual stages of games into characters.” What he meant by that was to create one island and use that as a base to add various kinds of gameplay in different games. The idea of having new discoveries in the same setting was striking to me. I'd been wanting to try this idea with other titles, and I supposed this game would leverage that kind of approach.
There's a lot of merit to the argument posted earlier in this thread that this is the "ultimate Hyrule", a more realistic depiction of the kingdom that previously only existed as an abstract representation. Theoretically they could keep adding to this almost like an MMORPG and show it during different time periods. After all, we’ve only experienced a timespan of 3-5 years at best from BotW onwards and Age of Calamity showed us only glimpses of what Hyrule looked like 100 years ago. Whereas Hyrule during the time of Rauru, over 10'000 years ago, still bears striking similarities to the Hyrule we get to explore in the present. Whatever those changes might be, it's not going to fundamentally change the underlying topography. For an adventure series to revisit the same location three times in a row isn't very appealing, however, so they basically have three options:
- Blank slate with a completely new Hyrule
- Radical changes to this Hyrule (terraforming, mirror dimension etc.)
- A new region entirely
Which way they go will depend on a variety of factors, most importantly gameplay of course. But I think there’s also a good chance that Nintendo intends for these incarnations of Zelda and Link to be the "default" and BotW/TotK to become the foundation of next few games. We already got two mainline entries and a spinoff in Age of Calamity and I think there's probably more gas in the tank if they play their cards right.
I don't really see the current mythology involving the Zonai, Sheikah and Ganon(dorf) as a retcon of the previous games, more as the logical conclusion of its worldbuilding. Historic recurrence and birth and rebirth are central tenets of this world with smaller as well as larger events endlessly repeating and mirroring each other in imperfect and overlapping loops. It's why names, characters and concepts pop up all the time in different places across the series. At least in the games that Fujibayashi had a hand in, repeating progress and decline are a central part of how the world of Zelda works. Even Skyward Sword which is supposed to be the beginning of the saga depicts the remnants of a more advanced civilization that existed before it. As I wrote in the timeline thread, I think that BotW and TotK take the cyclical nature of the series, this endless battle of good vs. evil, and push it even further. The foundation of Hyrule by Rauru and Sonia is just the beginning of a new "cycle", so to speak, with its own recurring events within.
BotW and TotK, the latter more overtly, reference things that have happened in the previous games: The creation and the downfall of Hyrule, the Imprisoning War, the sages, the rise, defeat and resurrection of Ganondorf/Ganon etc. It's history literally repeating itself (or I guess rhyming?) over the course of millennia. It stands to reason that future games, if they continue where TotK left off, will take a similar approach in that they will reference previous games but put their own spin on them.
Putting my tinfoil hat away for a second, the following is just a combination of wishful thinking and unhinged theorycrafting.
It's difficult to map the events of BotW and TotK onto any existing timeline but I think the closest match is probably a combination of OoT and ALttP. Age of Calamity even has an Aghanim counterpart in Astor. It's a funny coincidence that in the original timeline these two games lead to the events of Ocarina of Seasons and Ages, two Fujibayashi games. Funny because a sequel to TotK that follows those two games in their broadest strokes probably makes a lot of sense: Ganon(dorf) has been defeated, Hyrule is at peace, Link is led to a different land(s) and has to defeat a new villain but it's all part of a secret plot to resurrect Ganon(dorf). The memories in TotK even suggest that
Koume and Kotake were with Ganondorf during the Imprisoning War. Yona's character profile also references a
different Zora domain which only fits the Zora Village from Ages.
Fujibayashi is known to revisit concepts and ideas in his games so it'd be interesting to see whether this is something he would like to do again. Of course things like the role of Zelda would have to be changed for a game like this. If I'm in the mood I might pen some rough ideas for this hypothetical sequel.
