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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Biggest Unanswered Questions

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Unsolved mysteries.

It speaks to the power of The Legend of Zelda series that one demo can inspire such fervor. Since Nintendo announced its existence in 2013, and even more after its re-unveiling at E3 earlier this month, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has dominated many of our discussions. Franchise diehards and newcomers alike are already captivated--this is the game so many were waiting to purchase a Wii U for--and they have spent borderline obsessive amounts of time combing through footage, looking for clues about this new (or possibly familiar) Link, who the old man on the plateau is, why your primary tool is a tablet, and--perhaps most mystifying of all--where Breath of the Wild sits in the official Zelda timeline.

I know all this because I'm one of those people. I've listened to Youtube rips of the trailer music for hours and spent far too much time reading and watching others' thoughts on Breath of the Wild's mysteries. I can't help but get lost wading through Zelda lore and trying to find that one magical link (ha) that would contextualize Breath of the Wild within the larger Zelda series. I know that the Zelda timeline is a retcon by Nintendo to satiate superfans' need for some kind of structure in the history of Hyrule. I'm probably devoting too much brain power to this. But I--like you reading this, who I assume is also on the Zelda lore bandwagon--can't help it.

Who is Link?

We know next to nothing definitive about the Link of Breath of the Wild. We are told he is revived from a deep slumber in order to defeat Calamity Ganon--this game's iteration of the series' recurring antagonist--and prevent him from overtaking all of Hyrule. Link wakes up 100 years after Calamity Ganon's appearance, but this doesn't necessarily mean that Link has been asleep for only 100 years. He could have potentially been asleep for much, much longer, as it's never explicitly stated that he has been asleep exactly for those 100 years; we don't know when he fell asleep. There are half a dozen fan theories already trying to identify him as a Link from a previous game. A grown-up Hero of Winds, a revived Twilight Princess Link (which seems likely, given the compatibility of the Wolf Link amiibo with Breath of the Wild), the same Link from A Link to the Past...

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There is some evidence to support that he is not new, all found in what footage we've seen of Breath of the Wild. After being revived, Link finds chests containing clothes with descriptions noting they are a bit small, suggesting that their former owner was smaller than Link--possibly a younger Link himself, since he's been asleep for so long. Additionally, before Link exits the cave, the disembodied female voice directing him says: "You are the light, our light, that must shine on Hyrule once again." This makes me think that this isn't Link's first time mopping up Ganon.

Additionally, this new Link potentially shares a telepathic connection with a woman, like the Link from A Link to the Past; if we assume the mysterious voice waking him up is Zelda, then this is similar to the opening of A Link to the Past, where Princess Zelda wakes a sleeping Link and calls him to action.

However, I'm not of the mind that this disembodied voice is definitely Zelda. It could be Impa, the Sheikah woman who has been guarding Zelda and the royal family for all of Hyrule's history. She has guided Link in the past, and even spent some time (see Zelda II: The Adventure of Link) simply watching over a sleeping princess. Impa could be guiding Link to Zelda in this scenario.

A Sheikah monk in a shrine.
A Sheikah monk in a shrine.

There are so many questions left about Link that I doubt we'll see answered until Breath of the Wild's release. Who put Link to sleep in the first place? Why did they put him to sleep? Who woke him up? The place he emerges from is called the Shrine of Resurrection--could he possibly have been dead and then revived with Sheikah technology? Although I think the idea of meeting new iterations of Link and Zelda has potential, but most of me is keen on the idea of Breath of the Wild's Link being one we met before. Each Link's story is always so short, and bringing back a familiar Link would mean having a more powerful hero; he's already trained, already aware of Ganon's wiles and how to fight and use magic, and his potential would be greater.

An Old Man and an Older Threat

The Old Man Link runs into as he exits the Shrine of Resurrection is already inciting a lot of speculation. Based on his appearance alone, many fans assume he is the King of Hyrule, or one of his descendents. His facial structure looks very similar to that of Daphnes Nohansen Hyrule, the King of Hyrule in Wind Waker who gave up his human form to become a boat--the King of Red Lions. When Link first meets the Old Man, he identifies the area they are in as the Great Plateau, the birthplace of Hyrule--this is the remains of Skyloft, which crashed into the ground at the end of Skyward Sword and where the first Zelda's father founded the kingdom. The fact that the Old Man hasn't strayed from this area insinuates that he is bound to it by duty.

However, I have a theory that the Old Man isn't a servant of Hyrule at all: he's Ganon. At the beginning of Breath of the Wild, we know that a malicious spirit called Calamity Ganon is locked in Hyrule Castle, unable to escape but still managing to swim in the skies above the building. We're told that he's close to breaking the seal on his prison and escaping, and as Link prepares to do battle with him he travels the land collecting Spirit Orbs. In some gameplay clips from E3, the Old Man is seen paragliding in as Link exits a shrine with a Spirit Orb. Perhaps Ganon can't break his seal yet because he needs more power, or because his power is diverted elsewhere--namely into a fragment of him, or his body, posing as the Old Man.

Calamity Ganon.
Calamity Ganon.

Ganon also has a pretty solid track record of using others to meet his ends, never quite doing all the during work himself. In Twilight Princess, he used the twilight king Zant to pave the way for his eventual entrance, and in Ocarina of Time Ganon follows on Link's tail, waiting for the boy to clear the way for him. It's entirely possible the Old Man is monitoring Link's collection of power in Breath of the Wild, waiting for a moment to strike and take it for himself before breaking free of his bonds.

So a Goddess and Some Robots Walk Into Hyrule...

The goddess Hylia is mentioned in only one other Zelda game: Skyward Sword. So it's surprising to see her make a return in Breath of the Wild. A statue of Hylia can be found in the ruins on the Great Plateau, and when you encounter monks in shrines they invoke her name. Hylia's presence could suggest that Breath of the Wild takes place chronologically immediately after Skyward Sword, since other goddesses reign in the rest of the Zelda games. But also, she could just be present because Breath of the Wild is the next game to be made after Skyward Sword.

Invoking Hylia comes with some significance. In Skyward Sword we learned that the first Zelda is the human incarnation of Hylia, the goddess having abandoned her divinity and memories to help protect the world. If we accept the theory that all Zeldas are descendants or reincarnations of one another, then it means that every Zelda has a spiritual connection to the goddess Hylia. In Ocarina of Time, Zelda and others call upon a goddess of time to assist them--could this same goddess be Hylia? And if Hylia possessed such time-bending powers, her presence in Breath of the Wild could mean that there will be some sort of tampering with time in this new game. I do believe Hylia's presence means something important to the game's plot.

Another element of Breath of the Wild that links it directly to Skyward Sword is the presence of so much technology. Whatever you believe about the ruined Hyrule shown in gameplay footage--whether it be the lands revealed from Wind Waker's sea draining or simply a longtime-abandoned territory--the area hosts the remains of a more advanced civilization than the one living there. The shrines, the Shrine of Resurrection where Link awakens and his Sheikah Slate are reminiscent of the ancient robots in Skyward Sword. These robots, following the goddess Hylia removing her people from the land and placing them on Skyloft, assisted the remaining races on the grounds below in sealing away the demonic presence Demise. These robots are found in the Lanaryu Mining Facility and in the adjacent Gorge, small mechanical creatures with large hands free-floating from their bodies.

An ancient robot from Skyward Sword.
An ancient robot from Skyward Sword.
Gohdan in Wind Waker's Tower of the Gods.
Gohdan in Wind Waker's Tower of the Gods.

We've seen only one other being that resembles these small robots: Gohdan, the final boss in Wind Waker's Tower of the Gods. Like the robots, he is a giant floating head of similar shape with hands floating away from his body. In Wind Waker, Hyrule Castle is directly beneath the Tower of the Gods, suggesting that this tower is in fact the Temple of Time, the same Temple of Time shown first in Ocarina of Time and then in Twilight Princess. But there is one more instance in which Link spends time in this Temple: Skyward Sword. And where is the Temple of Time in Skyward Sword? In Lanaryu Desert, where all the robots are.

Maybe it's a little far-fetched to suggest the ancient robots of Skyward Sword buried their technology near the Temple of Time, or even utilized the temple's powers to send their technology into the future--but Zelda has never been shy about tampering with timelines and time travel, so I'm not ruling out a connection between Breath of the Wild's Guardians and Skyward Swords' robotic miners. Those same little robots were also mining Lanaryu Desert for Timeshift Stones, crystals with the power to rewind time in a small specific area. It could be that in Breath of the Wild, the ancient, deep-buried technology of the pre-Skyward Sword era is waking up, and that's where the Guardians are coming from. And the fact that so many defective Guardians are clustered around the Temple of Time in the Great Plateau implies that the area could be soaked in the same time magic, and home to dormant machines waiting to wake up.

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The Legend Continues

There's a reason myths and legends exist: we love great stories. We love stories that make sense, that we can link together with other stories--we love our history, and we are driven by a need to make sense of our world. I think it's the same for the way we treat The Legend of Zelda's tangled history, the complex lore and sometimes tenuous connections that link the series' scattered games into a coherent timeline. Of course the timeline wasn't deliberate; I doubt Zelda's developers knew when they began their foray into Hyrule that the series would become a worldwide phenomenon, and their hero one of the most iconic video game characters. All this speculation could be for nothing or wrong, but in the wait for Breath of the Wild's release next year, it's hard not to get wrapped up in the infectious theory crafting.

Alexa Ray Corriea on Google+

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alexarayc

Alexa Ray Corriea

Alexa Ray Corriea is never not covered in glitter at any given time.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

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