ToTK and how it contradicts the lore of the series along with thinking about how complicated the lore the series already was post WW had me thinking:

Zelda really had some charm that was lost in Ocarina of Time and even more by the time of The Wind Waker. The first four games prioritized gameplay over story, and the story that was there wasn't some over convoluted mess of a lore like it is now. And while there were technically multiple Links in those games, it wasn't apparent at the time. For all we knew, the series was about a single hero and his multiple adventures in Hyrule and surrounding regions.

Part of me wishes that the series stayed simple. None of this convoluted lore, half-baked story over gameplay, ship-bait female characters, etc. Just fun, top-down, action-adventures with RPG and Metroidvania elements, and just have it be about a single hero and his many adventures.

Seriously, just looking at modern Zelda and it's fanbase, it's mostly just shipping and debating about the lore of the series. The latter isn't bad by any means. The former is, however, and even then, it feels like most people don't even care about the gameplay. Like all the praise that OOT gets is just how "emotionally impactful" the story is when it is really just the same "coming of age" story where a character realizes that they are not who they thought they were, and the gameplay is just ALTTP in 3D.

@xianc78 dude I hated Zelda games around Skyward Sword when they 1) made a “””real””” timeline where some games only “”happen””” if Link “”fails”” in a previous game. It was so stupid and killed the series for me (I didn’t even play BotW until recently, I was so incensed).

all that was to validate their prequel where the Master Sword has a cringy character inside it (the Solo Star Wars movie did this too, by putting the brain of a loud mouthed, activist, feminist robot into the fans’ beloved Millennium Falcon, ruining all its previous appearances)

And 3) they invalidate Ganon as a villain by making him some genetic offspring of a generic Satan demon villain instead of some reoccurring soul reincarnated cursed with the Triforce of Power.

The idea that Ganon used a power not inherently evil, left behind by the goddesses at the point they left the world, was poignant. The Triforce pieces by itself practically finds the soul that most embodies its essence, and the lone man of the Gerudo embodies power and ambition and wholly. Only when all three are unified is balance restored. They threw away all of that with the demonic heredity of “”Demise””, and now Ganon is some annoying bitch of a true evil instead of THE true evil himself.

@RehnSturm256 @xianc78 alright so i hate the downfall timeline's existence too, but i think it is worth noting that with the development of ocarina of time, that's when they had kicked the whole timeline thing into motion. we just didn't know about it until the hyrule historia came out. it was in the works for a while, although nothing super solid was planned out they knew pretty early that there would be a timeline split after ocarina of time and how those pieces would fall.

and that's not true about ganondorf and demise's relationship at all. the english translation makes it seem like it is demise reincarnating into ganondorf, but in actuality the curse just ties demonkind to hylia's reincarnation (zelda) and whoever possesses the hero's spirit at the time (link). it's not even necessarily a curse, but more of a promise. hylia was already going to be passed down throughout zelda's bloodline, and the hero is more of an archetype than an actual reincarnation or anything, so demise is just promising that demonkind will always plague hyrule, with his defeat.

this is why there are games that feature a villain that isn't ganondorf but is still a demon of some kind, or use demonic powers, including trying to bring back ganon (who is ganondorf, just in demon form, and it's always been that way).

ganondorf is a super evil dude, but he is also a demon. the demon king, in fact. he is, for the vast majority of the games, NOT a recurring soul and never was. he's the same dude from ocarina of time all through twilight princess, to wind waker, and in every single game in the downfall timeline he appears in. always the same guy. the only ones that are different are four swords adventures and, probably, tears of the kingdom (unless FSA and BOTW are more connected than we think, because the dark world and shadow link are a result of that ganondorf's malice funny enough). those both turn into ganon at some point though too, being literally referred to as the demon king in tears of the kingdom, so he is a recurring character but i think it's more of a brand familiarity thing for the most part, than it is a serious reincarnation thing going on, especially because there are probably countless other gerudo guys that weren't evil and many that were probably named ganondorf. it's like zelda being named zelda all the time, like there have to be some princesses that aren't named zelda but then wtf would you call the game? legend of anise?