We had assumed that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom would be pretty rich in lore, but we weren't fully prepared for just how much would be thrown our way — think you know the creation of Hyrule? Think again. There is so much packed into this game, in fact, that we are sure we will be discovering more and more about Hyrule for years to come.
Take, for example, the game's Shrines. We know that they got a Zonai makeover in the sudden removal of all Sheikah tech (something that still needs some explanation, we'd say), but did you know that they are actually serving a secret purpose of keeping the demons of Hyrule's past at bay? There's more to these challenges than meets the eye, it seems.
This little tidbit of lore comes from none other than the game's director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi, who, in a recent interview with Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream (translated by Nintendo Everything), expanded on exactly when and why the Shrines appeared across Hyrule:
The shrines themselves were built before Rauru founded Hyrule – before the Demon King Ganondorf appeared there were still a lot of evil beings, so Rauru and Sonia went around various places to calm things down. Shrines are placed above where a demon was destroyed so it will not reappear. This is why that spiral of light emerges from the shrine. Therefore, bathing in the remaining power of the shrines slightly cleanses Link of the demon magic.
The light swirling from the Shrines, the light emanating from dehydrated Ganondorf at the start of the game, Link's purification after completing a Shrine's challenge — it's all connected, see?
According to the game's director, Hyrule Castle serves a similar purpose of keeping Ganondorf under wraps. As it turns out, the castle was built as "one part of the barrier that helps release Rauru’s purification of the evil magic," and not because of the beautiful views of Hyrule Field. Who would have thought it, eh?
For those after a little more lore, the Nintendo Dream interview also sees Fujibayashi and Eiji Aonuma go into detail about Rauru's seal and explain how the team named the Lightroots. Be sure to check out Nintendo Everything's translation for all the lore talk in English.
What do you make of this new information? Did you always assume the Shrines were serving a secret purpose? Let us know in the comments.
[source ndw.jp, via nintendoeverything.com]
Comments 33
Built centuries ago, a direct sequel to Breath of the Wild, but not in Breath of the Wild? Gotcha.
This is making the continuity of Fox's X-Men films look straightforward.
In all seriousness, I'm just playing this as I've played other Zelda games and enjoying it for what it is.
@JohnnyC
It’s surprising how they even start Link out with full hearts and the master sword and then explain their loss when they have this attitude of starting fresh for elements in the world like shrines and towers with no justifications despite being a sequel, it’s probably fully possible for someone to play this game and never realize it’s even a sequel with how little BOTW’s events are referenced in detail.
Why couldn't any of this be explained in the actual game? Why do we need to developers to explain this is in the interviews? TOTK is the weakest game in the series not only Story wise, but even the Lore of the game is lacking.
The beauty of BOTW/TOTK is that the "lore"/story is almost secondary to the gameplay, ultimately leaving it up to the player to experience as much (or as little) of the pre-determined narrative as one pleases.
I don't understand at all why this is considered grounds for criticism as I don't want to spend half my "play" time sitting through tedious cutscenes (which, in most games, tend to be cringe-inducingly hammy).
I think BOTW/TOTK have just the right amount of story, and the cutscenes that we did get did not outstay their welcome.
And I don't care much for pondering a piece of media's "lore" as I doubt that even the game's creators contemplate it nearly as much as the fanbase do.
@NintendoKnight Why must it be explained by developers? Because they are shoehorning nonsense in, now that they've, yet again, realized too late that a lot of people actually really enjoy continuity in a game series.
He's just grasping these explanations out of thin air, because Zelda has never been about any continuity... Which is the one thing I hate most about it, but that's me.
That's probably why I loved the Suikoden series so much.
Would've been cool to hear this specific explanation in game, but I'd say it was already pretty obvious that Shrines served a demon-repelling purpose considering not only the Lights of Blessing, but also their connection with Lightroots.
The lore around Zelda games has always been an afterthought. I'm pretty sure they create that lore just to justify unexplained stuff after players question it.
@NintendoKnight Because 1) he is asked a question during an interview and has to come up with some kind of answer and 2) it's fine to leave some things to the imagination or open to interpretation.
That’s great. Would be nice to have a new map though.
I'm pretty sure half this info was available in game. I don't remember any mention to defeating demons but I think I remember reading they exist for sealing and purifying purposes
"We know that they got a Zonai makeover in the sudden removal of all Sheikah tech (something that still needs some explanation, we'd say)..."
THANK YOU! As much as I enjoyed my time with TotK, this aspect seriously bothered me. I know they had an "explanation" in a similar format as this a little while ago, but I consider that a half-answer. This one is more straightforward, even if I think the seals were doing a poor job by the time BotW and TotK Link rolled around.
That’s really neat and reinforces my thought that Sonia was some sort of Miko/Guji. I wonder if she was inspired by Himiko of Wa. Would make sense as to why she married a “demi-god”. I do hope the team keeps the land mass of Hyrule for a few more games and changes the time period. So they can flesh out the lore. Technically most Zelda games did that from a narrative perspective but they finally have tech to do that now. You could see different towns while keeping certain places as cornerstones of Hyrule’s history. Especially since many are sacred places.
I originally thought the monsters came from Ganon’s Id but I wonder if he just resurrected evil/demon beings. Would explain why they make little camps instead of razing everything to the ground (after the initial destruction) as some relentless malevolent force. I am guessing that Hyrule is being sort of reset to the time before those beings were killed.
I wonder if the Sheikah were using the shrine stones to train their own power and that allowed them to come up with the training for the Champion that bore the master sword. That is so cool!
There definitely was some Shinto/Kojiki influence to the lore. Especially since the map was inspired by Kyoto. I am here for it! I hope they release a design book. The interview is 4 pages long. Lots to unpack.
It would be nice if the game says those details in a cutscene or something instead of doing in a interview. this is a very lazy storytelling
The more I play, the more I feel like TotK is not a sequel to BotW. It looks similar and it starts as if it could be a sequel, but to me it's clearly two different games with two different stories, just like the previous Zelda games. I was initially in shock with the missing Champions and Divine Beasts, but this clears it for me.
Nice that the developers take the time to explain all the little things they've thought about while making the game.
@Sisilly_G Totally agree. Gameplay first, always. All the rest can only ever be a frame, icing on the cake, so to speak.
I still dislike how the Sheikah shrines just disappeared. It felt so jarring to have such a major part of this version of Hyrule just disappear.
I can't recall his name, but there is a YouTuber who suggested that shrines were targeted directly by Ganondorf during the time in which Link was unconscious so that he would have no methods of regaining his strength, and that makes a ton of sense to me. I've got my own theory that weapons in the game aren't decayed because they happened to come into contact with gloom, but that Ganondorf deliberately targeted them for two purposes - leaving Hyrule defenseless, and acquiring raw materials through alchemy for the sake of improving his monsters. This also explains why monsters suddenly gained WEAPONS as body parts. but yeah. Two simple ideas that would explain much.
...anyway...as for the Zonai shrines...history was technically altered in the BOTW timeline. Maybe sky islands and Zonai shrines were securely placed in an alternate dimension in the years following Rauru's death. I can imagine Mineru recognizing the need for secondary measures, and maybe she knew the Zonai shrines would make it possible for Link to gain the strength he needs to face Ganondorf (unknowingly providing an alternative to Sheikah shrines). Maybe it can be said that the sky islands and the Zonai shrines were placed in temporal bubbles that would be unlocked as a reaction to Ganondorf's return.
This reminds me of when a certain author declared a well established character was secretly gay all along ... and this was declared after the multi-title series was already concluded. It also had no bearing on the plot.
There should be a name for this lazy after-the-fact insertion of "lore", but I guess we'll have to settle for just referring to this as "bad writing".
Someone needs to save these works of art from their creators. I blame George Lucas for starting this trend.
@Sisilly_G Dark Souls is as gameplay focused as it gets, yet it crafts an amazing world full of intrigue and wonder. Heck, Elden Ring came out before TotK and after BotW.
There is no excuse for making a game series focused on adventure all while refusing to get some consistent writers and lore down. I can tell you FromSoft has less employees yet better world building. This isn’t Mario, and they seem intent on moving away from linear design with a puzzle focus. These are, for all intents and purposes, open world games with a focus on exploration. They need to give the player mysteries about the world to solve. You can’t tell a story by placing random mysteries WITHOUT an in-game answer. At that point it’s just meaningless fluff ready to be forgotten with the next installment or even in the next area.
That’s really cool, maybe they could have explained that in the actual game.
Zelda went back in time, thus altering the space/time continuum. She created an alternate timeline in which the shrines from BOTW didn’t exist and the new set of shrines existed in their place. There was no way to produce the 1.21 jigowatts of electricity needed to power the flux capacitor in her secret stone at that time, thus needing to turn herself into a dragon to return to her present time, which was the alternate version of that time.
@Lightsiyd "something something story in a porno..." -John Carmack
The worst thing they ever did with this series is try to explain things like this which just opens more questions about continuity which should never have been addressed in the first place. Make every game a standalone. Don't try to explain every mystery. It'd be like Itoi coming out explaining everything about Mani Mani statues. Leave mysteries to titillate us.
@LikelySatan 😂 Precisely!!
@Coalescence I agree with this hard.
The Zelda timeline is really all over the place, there is no sense to be made from it. I'll just keep enjoying the games as though their narratives were completely separated from each other's. Even the links (ha!) between BOTW and TOTK (promoted as its direct sequel) are patchy.
Fan interpretation and developper intention are two different things, and the more devs try to explain, the less plausible it gets.
Fujibayashi seems interested in continuity; Aonuma seems to be more along the lines of Miyamoto in preferring to keep continuity at a minimum and always subject to tossing out the window in service of matching a new game's gameplay concepts.
In any case, the continuity is really not that big of an issue with the Zelda timeline. Rauru the Zonai established the Kingdom of Hyrule sometime after the the fall of the original Hyrule Kingdom (and in my opinion, after a re-merging of the 3 timelines). Rauru's Sages are spiritual revisits of Ocarina of Time's Sages, because history repeats itself and characters with the same name show up throughout the Zelda timeline, often serving the same or very similar roles.
Of course, one could also choose to ignore everything but Skyward Sword - Breath of the Wild - Tears of the Kingdom, and it would work just as well!
I feel the BOTW/TOTK timeline is an alternate, self-contained timeline at this point. I can argue a case for it being near the beginning of Hyrule Historia and also for the end of it, but it just seems to be "where it's at", so that's where I'll leave it for now. Factoring in a sage of time makes it that much easier.
@JohnnyC you silly sausage, they were invisible because of goat magic.
@Banksie Sometimes I think the guys in Nintendo enjoy the same special "ingredients" as the Marvel writers back in the 60s who took nonsense like "bitten by a radioactive spider", "exposed to a lethal dose of gamma radiation and somehow survived" and "shrinks the space between atoms" among other things and turned it into perfectly reasonable pop culture.
Whatever makes the magic happen!
@JohnnyC exactly, real fans dont care a rats ass about the timeline, they just invent things as they go
Nice reference to Queen.
Just wanted to point out that you can discover this in the game as well. During the Messages from an Ancient Era side adventure the stone tablet labeled "A Pilgrimage of Light" tells you the same thing. The only difference I've noticed is that the tablet says the shrines were made shortly after Hyrule's founding, not before.
Not sure if it a secret though. The shrines literally tell you that they imprison and purify evil. Just like any other holy site is supposed to do in mythology .
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