[ID: A digital illustration of Prince Sidon from The Legend of Zelda. He is stood facing to the left, looking down and towards the viewer with a neutral expression. End description.]
Finished up an old Sidon drawing!
By Your Side
This game has ruined my life
Well it was working fine for him!
Throwback to this dark souls moment that I had in BotW.
A Minor Test of Strength
The main reason I love this interpretation of Zelda is because her agency is tied to her growth as a character.
In Breath of the Wild her agency was taken away from her by her dad. She wanted to go out and explore and make plans, but her dad refused and forced her (at an extremely young age I might add) to focus all her energies on unlocking her sage powers. All of the time she could’ve been spending on creating plans to defeat Calamity Ganon were wasted on pointless trips to the goddess springs and only contributed to making her feel like she was an abject failure. And even when she does unlock her powers she isn’t able to enact a plan and can only force a 100 year stalemate with Ganon.
But in Tears of the Kingdom she is allowed to just enjoy looking up old information and trying to come up with solutions to really abstract problems. She’s allowed to concoct a crazy ass plan to save the world and she chooses to sacrifice herself to enact it. Ganon doesn’t force her to become the light dragon, she does that on her own. Ganon doesn’t send her to the past, she does that in her own. She is not kidnapped or locked in a cage against her will, and when she does finally sacrifice herself she is in full control of her agency. And she succeeds! Her plan works and she helps Link defeat Ganon!
Breath of the Wild was a great game for imbuing Zelda with much needed depth and personality, but it works even better in conjunction with the events of Tears of the Kingdom.
BotW is the setup, TotK is the payoff.
