When the Silliest Zelda Game Drops the BIGGEST LORE BOMB EVER

[@ArloStuff]

WHEN THE PINNED-EST COMMENT REMAINS PINNED AND EVERYTHING IS NORMAL Go to buyraycon.com/arlo for 20%-50% off sitewide! Brought to you by Raycon.

[@Gerardmenvuca413]

Boards of Canada 😮 didn't know you're that cool 😅 much love arlo

[@rosestrohm7986]

How do you use the earbuds if you don't have ears?

[@zephusdragon]

I literally dropped what I did when you said "Boards of Canada". A fuzzy beast of culture I see.

[@Gerardmenvuca413]

@@rosestrohm7986 his ears might not be in is face

[@ace0135]

This is the sort of lore expansion I’d expect from Kirby games

[@retroransom]

When it says the goddesses ‘created the skies and the land to contain Null,’ I sort of read that as being in a 4th dimensional sense. Like it’s not that Null is underground or in the center of the earth/world, but rather the existence of Something overlays Nothing and keeps it at bay.

[@tatltails3923]

I think there's also a layer of like- life that naturally forms is immediately consumed, so we will surround you in a complete layer of Intentionally Created Life that you will not have time or capability to consume before it completely entraps you. And anything you do consume, we will pull an Uno Reverse on your schtick and have the Tris immediately rebuild the life you took.

[@CrashDunning]

That's probably it, but it reminds me of how in Spirit Tracks, they literally lock Malladus underground with the tracks and tower, so maybe it could be taken either way.

[@pickedceasar1216]

Plus we know space and other planetary bodies exist as well as aliens so it’s plausible that the center of creation in the Zelda universe is Earth and in particular Hyrule Though it would be interesting to see another kingdoms perspective on the crazy stuff happening in Hyrule

[@lianaverwood9810]

Sounds like it's Exactly as Arlo said: the Goddesses couldn't create Anything without Null devouring it, so they somehow created something it _couldn't_ easily devour, and sealed Null within a Core made of the stuff, allowing them to build the rest of the Planet around it! And over Millions of Years Null finally chewed through a point in the walls of its Prison, with the help of Ganon striking that place from Outside - the Tri Spirits trying to maintain the seal weren't prepared for this sudden expidiation of the Seal's Breach, and were caught unaware when Null broke out...

[@LashknifeTalon]

@@lianaverwood9810 I kind of interpreted it as the Tri spirits are always fixing rifts, and Might Crystals have been just lying around in Hyrule in random places, unremarkable rocks until Lueberry and Link discovered they could use them to beat up echo monsters. They didn't really explain what allowed Null to suddenly surge in power and break free of its prison so effectively; I wonder if maybe Shadow Link might have been it: Null finally managed to copy something super special that allowed it to ramp up how often it was making rifts beyond what the Tri spirits could handle without Zelda's help.

[@melofelo4484]

My favorite part of the story is that it’s very clear both link AND Zelda have contributed a lot to trying to save Hyrule in their own way. I love that the game starts out with Zelda not even knowing his name, but as she learns more about him, saving him becomes a top priority. Seeing the world through the eyes of Zelda was so interesting because it was like seeing the world after link had saved it, in a way. Hearing people talk about his heroics and how he’s helped them was so refreshing.

[@ariwl1]

Agreed. When you start the game as maxed out Link it's clear he already went through a whole adventure himself. In a way Zelda's walking through and post-game LoZ world.

[@Zelink108]

Still disappointed there wasn’t heavy Zelink romance in it, not even from the ending.

[@diseasedwombat5611]

@@Zelink108 I was about to go on about how just because Link and Zelda are in the game doesn’t mean they have to be in a relationship, but then I saw your name lol. While I don’t ship ZeLink in Echoes, I’m a hard TotK ZeLink shipper.

[@ALunarLight]

​@@diseasedwombat5611me too sws, WW, ST and totk yes. Oot /mm no Tp no

[@k2geekd]

@@diseasedwombat5611yesss skyward sword md botw era i definitely ship them

[@therealslimweegee]

I love how this game just went full on Kirby by starting out all cute and charming and then ending with an elder god as the main evil/final boss.

[@Glitchyy07]

And by having an incredible final boss theme

[@jameslawrenson1208]

No complaints here!

[@psuedonym9999]

See also: Earthbound

[@rpgcraftsman520]

Holy crap you're right, TOP KEK

[@ultraspinalki11]

Cthulu/Eldritch-horror boss.

[@matthewmuir8884]

Perhaps the scariest thing about Null is that, despite being a primordial being of nothingness, it is neither mindless nor animalistic. It schemes, it plots (to the point of having almost Ganondorf-level cunning), and it expresses a deep hatred of the goddesses for creating Hyrule to imprison it. The developers could've gotten away with making it an animalistic parasite like Bellum, but they went the extra mile and made Null a character with actual personality.

[@thebaseandtriflingcreature174]

oh no, that's even worse! not only was the world a prison for the demon core at the center of it, demon in question HATES you

[@gerrysnk]

I think that null doesn't have an actual personality but mimics others to keep consuming like the tri species, even the same Zelda. It's like a big cosmic baby.

[@TrueBladeSoul]

⁠@@gerrysnk which is more terrifying because that implies that its strength is still growing that it will take longer than the universe to grow up…….. oh my god it’s literally a baby outer god

[@OurHourglass]

I now kinda see the Goddesses as ideas that existed solidly enough not to be devoured by Null, and they created the world as a foothold for more ideas to take shape free of Null's reach, like a barrier against which he would have to relentlessly claw, as he put it just before the final fight.

[@twotimesj6478]

Imo it probably developed a mind to respond to a problem it couldn’t solve just by devouring things. Null doesn’t really strike me as the type of being who LIKES to scheme.

[@vivipiresinacio]

Even better! In french Demise is called “avatar du néant“ or avatar of the void/nothingness! It’s also said that Demise came out of a rift to conquer the world. If demise is just an avatar of null/nihil than ganon only embodies null’s rage and wrath wich leaves a lot for future enemies!

[@elias.t]

We don't even need to look at the French translation. His Japanese name is Shuuen no Mono, or "Being of the End"

[@cartoonishidealism582]

So Ganon is the incarnation of Ganondorf's evil, and Ganondorf is the reincarnation of the rage of the Dhemise, and Dhemise is an avatar of Null

[@elias.t]

@@cartoonishidealism582 It's evil all the way down.

[@ikagura]

Demise sounds cool but Void's Avatar sounds cooler.

[@Pikachu084]

This even changes the lore of Fii, the spirit of the Master Sword. What if her purpose was not to be the bane of evil, aka Demise, but the bane of NULL?! She is the blade of evil's bane, the sword that seals the darkness. What is darkness but a void with no light?!

[@alfasilverblade]

You want the dark inverted triangle at the center of the triforce to represent an ancient demon far more powerful than Ganon who was sealed by the 3 goddess before the planet was created, and the planet is the prison of that demon? YES PLEASE! Oh and hes the metaphisical representation of nothingness, and he is the nothing at the center of the triforce, and hes at the center of the world created by the goddess.

[@Its_justa_Leonard]

holy shit

[@byronsmothers8064]

They inadvertently canonized the tetraforce theory!

[@Marandahir]

Or he could represent the dark Lorule Triforce too!

[@Max.Paprika]

Please stop. It's too late in the day to have my mind blown like that.

[@Dragoryu3000]

Tetraforce Real 2024

[@wantedbird55srandomchannel28]

I imagine they just got carried away when they made Hyrule, like- "Alright, we locked Null away..." "Hey Din, what if me and Farore decorated this thing with life and stuff?" "What? Why?" "Ehhhhhit's seems fun."

[@PerfectKirby]

My friend and I came up with a similar headcanon that in Wind Waker’s backstory, Din and Farore flooded the world while Nayru was asleep lol

[@hebercluff1665]

I think it was just Farore that decorated the world with life stuff. Nayru made the natural laws.

[@ravenebony2267]

😂

[@k9commander]

It seems to me that The first goddess created the prison. The second created life to act as guards to the prison. The third gave those guards the tools necessary to fight the prisoner should it escape.

[@ravenebony2267]

@@k9commander that's actually a really interesting take on it. I like it

[@klop4228]

I mean, the world wasn't _just_ created to seal away Null. It does say the Goddesses "could not abide" his desctructiveness of the newly-forming world. They wasnted to see the world form, but it couldn't when Null was still free, so they killed two birds with one stone and created a world that was also a cage.

[@salsichalivre5401]

That is the proper vision. They were seeing that life and whatever could not exist long enough to turn into something like we acknowledge as physical world. So they went miles to both create stuff and imprison. The thing is that there is a separation: life and works created by the goddess and life and matter being casually created and Null eliminating…

[@Grizabeebles]

My take for why the world is full of life is more cynical: "prisons need guards".

[@klop4228]

@@Grizabeebles I guess that could make sense, though that's kind of what the Tris are for, no?

[@Grizabeebles]

@@klop4228 -- I'm not sure what the Triforce is for, honestly. The lore I'm aware of says that the Triforce is like a magic genie lamp -- if a person with a balance of all three divine attributes touches it, it can grant perfect wishes. Now that Null is in the picture, it also sounds like the ultimate weapon of last resort against Null because the Triforce has the power to reshape and rebuild the entire world. All of a sudden the Triforce looks a lot more like a Doomsday device with three "keys". Which honestly could simplify the Zelda timeline immensely -- It may not be one world with a continuous history at all. The reason the games have virtually zero continuity could be that most every time the Triforce is used to rebuild the world it's rebuilt different to try to keep Null in check for longer. Which I guess makrs Null kind of an "anti-player"

[@klop4228]

@Grizabeebles reminds me slightly of the "wish" theory regarding A Link to the Past, where the "original" timeline is Downfall, and the wish Link makes at the end rebuilds the world from OoT to let the hero win (and then Zelda accidentally splits the timeline again by sending Link back to the past). Obviously the theory is nonsense - how does creating timelines where things go better fix the world that aLttP Link is in, especially since we know that Link has more adventures? But it does seem to be something of the type which you describe.

[@johnsonhansen233]

I think Null is a great antagonist for Zelda specifically. Zelda is a reincarnated form of thr Goddess Hylia (or at least a descendant). It makes sense for her villain to be another divine being pulling cosmic strings. In this light, Link and Ganon are good enemies for one another as well. They are both spirits that have been selected by an ancient more powerful being to carry on their mission.

[@thebaseandtriflingcreature174]

Link and Ganon are the stands of Zelda and Null

[@Akrilloth]

@@thebaseandtriflingcreature174 Another zelda game where Link was just this OP badass that followed zelda around would be peak tbh.

[@thebaseandtriflingcreature174]

@@Akrilloth Zelda simply points at a Moblin and Link jumps on the poor thing like a rabid dog

[@netweed09]

Null is Tri's antagonist, just as Ghirahim was Fi's antagonist. Zelda is just the next line of inheritance that they would naturally hate.

[@5-Volt]

What blew my mind is after I beat Faron temple (my first of the last 3 dungeons) & a green spotlight & speech bubble popped up, I was thinking "Is Farore literally about to talk to Zelda!?" The first time the godesses have EVER directly talked, let alone interacted with the characters at all. Blew my mind. Mainly because Skyward Sword, BotW & TotK seemed to be moving away from the 3 goddesses in favor of focusing on Hylia. Which is something I personally don't like... I've always preferred the 3 goddesses & have been waiting for them to be relevant again. So cool!

[@edwxx20001]

If the goddesses should talk to anyone, its Zelda. she is their sister Afterall. Since she is in all the ways that matter the goddess hylia. which is also why hylia wouldn't talk to her in botw, hylia just doesn't talk to herself.

[@ariwl1]

That surprised (and delighted) me as well. Definitely felt like the stakes just jumped several notches.

[@DarkMirria1]

@@edwxx20001 Almost all Zeldas are Hylia’s human/Hylian reincarnation’s descendants. Only SS Zelda is Hylia.

[@tatltails3923]

I did Eldin Temple first, and I freaked the fuck OUT when Din started talking to me. I really wasn't expecting it but it made me so happy. Plus it's the most direct communication the three goddesses in their fullest proper form have ever given *anyone* in the series... and it was to Zelda. The Priestess. The distant descendant of their little sister (or whatever Hylia was to them). Which felt like the most *perfect* scenario to do all of this with.

[@5-Volt]

@@tatltails3923 Yeah. It does make the most sense that it would be to Zelda. The only thing I wish is that the 3 goddesses had different personalities. Maybe it's just my head-canon but I imagine Din being stern & authoritative, Nayru being somber & insightful and Farore being playful & mischievous.

[@rahumor7556]

If you think about it, it kind of puts a lot of other zelda games into perspective. Most enemies vanish into a cloud of void, maybe they were just echoes, and null was never truly defeated.

[@michaelmcfarland5903]

This is reaching almost as much as Nulls claws

[@Leonkennedy19992]

Nah i doubt it. If that was the case we wouldn't get monster guts or other body parts they leave behind. Its like how if you kill a deer it just poofs and leaves meat

[@klop4228]

I mean, Echoes of Wisdom takes place some way down the Downfall timeline. Possibly the only games after it are thr NES games. Before then, Null has, well, not been truly defeated.

[@JediMB]

​@@klop4228 The Desert Palace/Temple being in ruins and Link's ALttP house being gone, among other things, leads me to believe that it takes place a long while after A Link Between Worlds, so... yeah, the NES games are the only ones that can fit later on. That does make the situation with Lake Hylia pretty funny, though. After ALttP, Venus' Pond of Happiness got torn down and replaced with the House of Gales, only to eventually be restored with a new Great Fairy pond.

[@Sponsie1000]

But in this game you also get loot from killing echoes incl stuff like monster stones right?, so that doesnt necessarily debunk the idea that enemies in other games could be echoes too right?

[@owenmagee9950]

You know, if the Tri are connected to the triforce in some way (which I'm willing to bet they are), it suddenly makes a lot more sense why Lorule started falling apart once their triforce was destroyed, since the Tri weren't able to fix the damage caused by Null

[@Iffondrel]

It drives me wild how certain key elements across games feel like they fit together but there's never quite enough Canon material to confirm it. But I guess that's why lore theorists get so much from these games.

[@michaelmcfarland5903]

This seems like a bit of a stretch. If they intended that, lorule probably would have been swallowed by rifts, not just fallen into dark

[@Doodle1678]

@@michaelmcfarland5903 yeah I agree. I guess after a certain amount of time due to Lorules condition Null could have easily broken out and swallowed everything but Lorules condition is just a result of the foundation of the world being destroyed.

[@javiervasquez625]

​@@Doodle1678 Do remember that Lorule is a _parallel dimension_ to Hyrule's dimension, meaning it's possible there's a parallel Null who was already vanquished by incarnations of Ravio and Hilda or there may be no Null whatsoever hence why it didn't took advantage of Lorule's Triforce no longer existing.

[@Doodle1678]

@@javiervasquez625 that is a possibility. But to me Lorules history diverges from Hyrule during the imprisoning war when they destroyed the triforce rather than sealing it. Prior to that it’s identical to Hyrule but I guess Null could have broken out sooner in Lorules timeline

[@braunstein5645]

If I remember correctly, the co-developers of this game, Grezzo, are big Zelda fans. If they had any say in the story, I wouldn't be surprised if this actual solid and meaningful extension of the story came from them, rather than from the core Zelda team.

[@ikagura]

I like when devs care about the franchise. Even Flagship made great fan service with stuff like the Japanese Zelda II battle theme for the miniboss one in Minish Cap.

[@tamanakio7552]

"How about some triforce creatures that we've never seen before because they weren't needed yet?" Keep in mind that aside from zelda and people who entered rifts, no one can see the tri, meaning it's likely they were hard at work repairing rifts in other games without anyone noticing

[@tatltails3923]

Like the Minish, kinda! There's nothing saying they're *not* in other Zelda games where Link's a little older or just doesn't know to look for them. The rupees and items have to get in the grass *somehow.*

[@DragonKnightJin]

@@tatltails3923 I believe Minish Cap established that the Picori (the Minish you speak of) are responsible for putting those Hearts and Rupees in random pots and patches of grass. To be found by people, and give them a bit of happiness for finding the gift left for them. Which is why people were sad with BotW, when there were no longer random Rupees and Hearts in the grass. It implied that the Picori were also gone.

[@catdownthestreet]

​@@DragonKnightJin Aww... That's really sad. Ganon really did a number on Hyrule.

[@catdownthestreet]

Do you think it's possible that they were around during Twilight Princess? I feel like the Tri would fit perfectly with that game.

[@sterenn726]

​@@catdownthestreet There is no real canon in Zelda. If you want it to be link to TP you can. That's the force when game have reference but no canon (so you can head canon the games YOU want). It's far better in long saga like these.

[@fangchick93]

Null is basically Tlaltecuhtli, an Aztec beast that is the earth we walk on. According to Aztec myth, Quetzalcoatl killed him to make the land and to keep him from eating what he was creating, but he still can resurrect to eat everything if he gets too hungry, so he requires blood sacrifice to keep him from devouring everything. I did not expect an eldritch entity that shares a similar backstory to an Aztec monster from Nintendo, but I'm happy to be surprised

[@javiervasquez625]

So i take it you've never played a Kirby game? (with some Pokemon on the side).

[@fangchick93]

@@javiervasquez625 I've played all pokemon game series. But not Kirby. Pokemon is from gamefreak, Nintendo pays to use their games

[@Awesomeflame16]

​@@javiervasquez625 Kirby is technically from Hal, but I get what you mean.

[@gameinsane4718]

Ever read Venom? Knull is the symbiote god. When universe was new there was nothing except Knull and he was happy… then these Celestials popped into his void, started making stuff, and Knull took it personally and waged war on the Celestials and their creations until eventually he was trapped in a planet of Knull’s own creation (the planet Klyntar which means “cage” in the symbiote language)

[@javiervasquez625]

@@fangchick93 Doesn't matter guys, they're still franchises specifically made for Nintendo consoles.

[@braedonallen4291]

What always amuses me about people saying that Ganon was getting stale (though regarding Ganon specifically I would say the monster was never very interesting) is that, before Tears of the Kingdom, it had been 17 YEARS since Ganondorf's last appearance in a mainline Zelda game, and Ganondorf as a Gerudo has only appeared in a total of 4 games. It had also been 17 years since Ganon appeared as anything more than a plot device rather than a character, and people tend to forget that. I don't think the problem is necessarily Ganondorf, or even Ganon, it's just that Nintendo took 17 years to put him in a new game and decided to do nothing terribly new or interesting with him. I would personally love to see Ganondorf come back, but have a game more deeply explore his motivations and connections with Link and Zelda, the way that Wind Waker kind of hinted at.

[@youtubeuniversity3638]

Imagine Zelda pulled a Bowser's Inside Story and all three wielders of the triforce all joined forces.

[@GonKillua85]

Ganondorf is not stale. BUT the entire entity Ganon is. A lot of people dont differentiate the two because of OOT, where Ganondorf transforms into Ganon as the final boss. It's hard for casuals to draw that distinction.

[@evanhenderson9461]

@@GonKillua85i've been a fan my entire life and i still don't fully "get" the distinction lol

[@Artista_Frustrado]

@@GonKillua85 Ok, what even IS the Distinction between Ganon & Ganondorf? as in Narrative-wise what difference does it make that he's in Gerudo or Demon form?

[@javiervasquez625]

​@@Artista_Frustrado Dorf is scheming and machiavellian, Ganon is (usually) a mindless monster who attacks anything it sees with little signs of intelligence.

[@NintendoCapriSun]

I guess we can't be too surprised that a Zelda game's story is null and void.

[@poenpotzu2865]

Great seeing you here loved your TOTK playthrough.

[@redduck6483]

@@NintendoCapriSun yo what’s up Tim

[@MystiInferno]

+2

[@sunfeatherX3]

For the last few games yeah 💀

[@catluvr2]

Void Termina.

[@darkmetaknight7]

What I realized is that the usual Ganon hijack basically happened in reverse, this time it's the new villain that took Ganon's place

[@crowsenpai5625]

My theory on how this whole story kicked off was Ganon was doing his usual thing of trying to find something he can use to take over the world. He finds this spear that is able to cut though some seal he didn’t even knew existed, and enters the still world to try to find something to give him an edge. Soon after entering the Still World, the moment he is noticed, Ganon is IMMEDIATELY consumed by Null. This incarnation of Link and Zelda never meet the real Ganon, he’s already *DEAD* and, because for whatever reason Null has the same power of creation the Tri do, now Null can make Echos of Ganon, a Ganon still armed with a spear that can breach the seal containing him and that’s how he starts making rifts fast enough to overpower the Tri, and THATS how this catastrophe begins. With this incarnation of Ganon already dead to a much more primal evil.

[@jordaneiff4862]

That's basically what happened in a link between worlds where the villain literally hijacked Ganon's body.

[@spyr0guy]

It gets even better when you realize that technically, Ganon's not even in this game

[@crowsenpai5625]

@@spyr0guy exactly! He was eaten off camera by an eldritch entity mid evil scheme.

[@Failuigi41]

Hey yknow that drippy effect on the people trapped in the still world? Yeah that's them being actively digested by an elder god

[@DankDrCuck]

Tri does mention they will die if you don't mend the rifts... Thankfully the King didn't get eaten

[@Mr_Darren_Payne]

If Ganon is an echo, where'd Null get it? Is the real Ganon just hanging out somewhere, awaiting his next resurrection? 😄 [Ganon is in the bathtub. Null sneaks up on him] "Yoink! Copied!" [Zoidberg scuttles away] 😁

[@fsemra4575]

Demise is theorized to be an avatar of null of some sort ("he and his army of demons broke through a fissure in the earth"). Well and if that is true, it would be natural for Null to have a Ganon-Echo.

[@ravenebony2267]

😂

[@ryanwong167]

@@fsemra4575yooooooo

[@DarkMirria1]

Null probability observed almost everything that happened in the world and decided to pull out echos of more recent events. Heck, even Volvagia has an echo at it has been dead since OoT and even before that.

[@Pebphiz]

Pretty sure the implication is that Ganon was swallowed by the Still World. Null can make impostors of anyone who falls into a rift.

[@factualtemplar8797]

Something really funny to me is how Nulls entire thing about essentially being buried under the land of he world kinda parallels Spirit Tracks. With the rails being the literal chains that held the dark spirit in place

[@rmsgrey]

And Skyward Sword, with Demise having emerged from the ground with armies of monsters and been sealed back in the ground by Hylia.

[@EvdogMusic]

It seems that Malladus, Demise, Vaati, Dark Link, etc. are all different expressions/forms/abstractions of Null's attempts to break free...

[@poenpotzu2865]

Kinda reminds me how in real world religions classical gods represented civilization if often suppressing or overthrowing ancient gods representing the scary and chaotic natural world.

[@javiervasquez625]

This is also the prologue of The Wind Waker with Ganondorf literally escaping the Sacred Realm from _beneath the ground._ This rises the question of wether the Sacred Realm itself could be the Void in which Null was sealed away and if the Sacred Realm could also be the place where Demise and Malladus got imprisoned.

[@klop4228]

​@@javiervasquez625 Would be odd to hide the Prime Energy in a temple inside the void, though? (Remember, in OoT it was in the Temple of Light, in the Sacred Realm.) Also, remember that in aLttP (which takes place before this game, given you see ruins of aLttP locations in EoW), you spend about 70% of the game running around in the Sacred Realm, rescuing maidens trapped in the Sacred Realm etc. to defeat Ganon. I doubt Null would have let anything so concrete survive in the Void for nearly that long (and longer, given Ganon was supposed to have been there a good while _before_ you ever gain access to the Dark World - which, to be completely clear in case you forgot, _is_ the Sacred Realm).

[@zane1790]

I like the possible other interpretation that at one point there was life and universe and stuff but essentially Null won and devoured EVERYTHING. Then the goddesses stepped in and created everything as a redo

[@sharondornhoff7563]

Hell, maybe the reason why the series' continuity is so freaking confusing is because Null keeps busting loose and devouring everything, so the goddesses box him up again and let the Tri re-stock the universe with echoes. Only the Tri don't always remember all the details or grasp their significance, so every game or two we get a new ZeldaVerse with the same signature themes and play elements, but an altered backstory, cast, and/or geography (Tri 1: "Hey, I forget... did the last version of Zora have frog faces or fins?" Tri 2: "I dunno, let's try some of each just to be on the safe side....").

[@javiervasquez625]

​@@sharondornhoff7563 Nah, i find that way too convoluted and unnecessarily teasing on Nintendo's part if they're attempting to further confuse the fandom with nonsensical lore.

[@Gamelover882]

If only they added two sentences with Null's lore we couldve had an explanation to the entire series and its adaptions

[@tionodese8110]

What happens when x parasite eats a whole planet?

[@sadsongs7731]

Arlo: This is the sillies Zelda ever. Triforce heroes: Am I NOT a joke to you?

[@AnonPer]

"Yeah, so this bully kept kicking down our sandcastle, so my sisters and I buried him."

[@Porygon2ube]

8:42 "The world was trying to establish itself, and was not allowed." Null sounds like Miyamoto when someone hides story in his games

[@thebaseandtriflingcreature174]

or Nintendo when someone wants to make fan works about their IP's

[@ParkHillProjects]

Null is german and means Zero or nill

[@Antasma1]

That Super Mario Galexy thing was misinformation. It wasn’t “snuck in” he saw it before it was published

[@simonO712]

​@@ParkHillProjectsPretty sure it originates from Latin.

[@ParkHillProjects]

@@simonO712 what you mean is nihil

[@jackkemp7256]

12:00 Nah, the reason they created the world was to stop Null from stopping life. So life wasn’t an afterthought.

[@LadyHylia1986]

I could be wrong, but im pretty sure that the fact we get to converse with the golden godesses is its own lore revalation in and of itself. To my knowledge, prior to echoes of wisdom, they had never made their presence known directly, and it was up in the air if they even still existed or had become the triforce after creation. The closest we ever got was entities like the twilight princess light spirits or skyward sword dragons, who had similar names but were very clearly their own beings

[@JaneWombman-fn6ck]

Don't we meet avatars of the goddesses in Oracle of Seasons?

[@LadyHylia1986]

@@JaneWombman-fn6ck thats true, however I've always interpreted them more as mortal reincarnations than direct avatars, akin to skyward Zelda as Hylia reborn. That might be a small distinction, but even so that would suggest to me that they no longer exist in their original forms. Sort of a god/Jesus/holy spirit situation in a sense

[@JaneWombman-fn6ck]

@@LadyHylia1986 avatars can also be seen as mortal incarnations but yeah we never really talk 1v1 with the goddesses in their full ethereal glory, so this is pivotal

[@GreenEyesOrigamiDragon]

I'd previously had a headcanon that when people said the golden goddesses had "departed the world and left behind the triforce", they were just politely referring to their deaths, and the triforce was their remains. The idea no longer holds water, but I'm glad they're still alive!

[@LadyHylia1986]

@@GreenEyesOrigamiDragon that was always my assumption, and I think I preferred it that way. It's cool that we get to talk to them, but I liked how enigmatic they were beforehand, never getting the chance to examine their motivations or even guage they level of sentience. As mortals, their very nature could be outside our realm of comprehension. I'd have preferred if the more dump came in the form of an ancient legend or text so that the info is second hand. Gives the context behind the threat of Null while also letting the goddesses stay dead and mysterious. Their stated motivation in EoW does sorta line up with a theory I've had though, which is nice. Nayru, being the goddess responsible for rule and law, would have theoretically manifested the concept of time as one of the universe's rules. Once time came about, that introduced a problem; what was before that? When the universe had that question posed, the chaos of pre-creation came into being; not as something that always was, strictly speaking, but as a consequence of the laws Nayru created being carried out. Iirc the goddess's accounts of Null somewhat negate the time metaphysics aspect to the theory, but Null fits in so nicely that I'll take it lol. They could have also been dumbing the events down a bit for Zelda, since Null being their fault isn't directly relevant to her job(and could make them look bad) Also this connects to Hylia's association with both time and light, Hylia being the demigod associated with Nayru. Both time and light are properties of existence that are strongly connected to each other, and form the very basis for which existence can, well, exist, at least in the way we know it. It would make sense that the goddess of light would be the goddess of time, they're two sides of the same coin

[@Pau-sp9yp]

DUDE I JUST REALIZED THAT'S WHY THE TRIFORCE HAS A HOLE IN THE MIDDLE, NULL REPRESENTED THE CONTAINED HOLE IN THE TRIFORCE

[@Ninjaananas]

That would be cool symbolism.

[@Adventureruler]

Whoa! Cool! :D

[@ThaguynamedBeto]

DUDE

[@LegendStormcrow]

It makes sense. I doubt that was the plan, but I'm game.

[@Cremotor]

What I find more interesting about Echoes of Wisdom is how it recontextualises Alttp and Albw. A lot of people used to speculate about what happened to the gerudo in the downfall timeline or the gorons or the sea zora. And this game answers that question by going "all the ocarina races were just hanging out slightly off-screen". This is most notable with the Gerudo desert, which includes Alttp's Desert of Mystery as a small beginning area, including the broken down Desert Temple Additionally, it addresses a mistranslation in the original games. "Death Mountain" in the previous alttp games wasn't actually Death Mountain but Hebra in the original japanese (though strangely its Dark World counterpart was called Death Mountain). That's why this game calls it Hebra. Additionally, this game contextualises the split in Alttp's Hebra as two different mountains, the one with Turtle Rock being Lanayru apparently

[@lenlimbo]

To be fair, we already knew that the sea zora and the goron were present in the downfall timeline thanks to Oracles of Ages. Fair enough with the gerudo, though.

[@Cremotor]

@@lenlimbo Yeah but those are in other countries

[@Antasma1]

You didn’t really say how it did

[@lugiamastero13]

If you look at the whole map it also resembles botw and totks hyrule almost exactly except lanayru mountain being somewhere entirely different and hebra and death mountain being swapped

[@Buphido]

I think it’s also kinda poetic how Zelda instead of Link is to be the one to face a villain from the time of the three great goddesses and, for the first time ever, directly commumicates with the three great goddesses in the process. Almost all enemies Link has faced so far were ones that can loosely be traced back to Demise as the antithesis to Hylia and the King of Demonkind, and Link faced them as tbe chosen Champion of Hylia. But in this game, Hylia’s reincarnation herself in the form of Zelda is the one to face the being that gave trouble to HER predecessors, like she is their chosen one. Gives me kinda passing of the torch vibes.

[@yoosergio]

ARLO EATS BEDS?! Biggest Arlo lore bomb dropped casually just like that?!

[@zigaudrey]

Is that an Ed Edd 'n' Eddy reference?

[@godofthecripples1237]

So basically, Zelda if it was made by Kirby developers?

[@chrange9714]

No lol, Kirby isn't the only game in existence to have deep lore or have you fight ancient evil abominations.

[@cheesewrap]

​@chrange9714 To be fair however, it is a Kirby staple at this point to have some dark matter that wants to destroy the world in almost every game. Another game that has a very similar trope is Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon, where spoilers: You also fight Dark Matter.

[@dbass9544]

Void was totally a Kirby villain lol

[@MelodyLumina]

yea null felt so kirby

[@chrange9714]

​@@cheesewrap That's not even true, you fight Dark Matter in three games that's it. You fight a clone of it in PR and Void just takes on the look of one in Star Allies.

[@lens_hunter]

15:29 I disagree. I think they made it pretty clear that Link was doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes while we were playing Zelda going around and doing our thing.

[@TheArcadeLink]

Well, I can't imagine he'd just stand around and wait to be rescued.

[@darcidious99]

Didn't they state he saved a few other kids that got sucked up into the rifts who ALSO lost their voices as a result? Or was that prior to him rescuing zelda? Either way dude definitely was in the fight, just probably elsewhere in hyrule shutting down smaller rifts.

[@waltascher]

@@darcidious99That was prior to rescuing Zelda

[@Marandahir]

@@darcidious99 That was prior. He was trapped in the Stilled Realm from the first bout against Ganon to nearly the end of the game. But before the game began, he had gone on a full adventure leading to the 20 hearts and full Mysterious Crystal powerups on his weapons.

[@Sp33d0n]

@@Marandahir Actually, I don't think he did have the full Mysterious Crystal powerups on his kit, I think they were only level 2. Which makes sense, because you can get Level 2 upgrades from the start, but level 3 upgrades come later. But the general point is right - Link definitely has had an adventure to get to the start of the game.

[@1996Stein]

I love the idea of personifying the void before creation as a villain

[@U-Flame]

I was also pleasantly surprised by so many of the story beats along the way. I expected the king to be rescued at the end of the game, but they got that accomplished much earlier, allowing Zelda to be free from her wanted status. I was expecting the Zora conflict to be a race war of sorts, but it was an entirely personal beef that had nothing to do with species, and didn't affect relations at all. Even if the leaders didn't get along, they never asked the others to stop mingling with each other. I expected the spider web cotton candy to be an evil influence, but while it did cause the Deku to carelessly approach rifts, its only because it was a byproduct they happened to like. No mind control or anything direct like that. I was expecting to fight the Gerudo imposter, but seeing her get killed in one strike was really satisfying too. No hesitation over who was the real or fake either, it was as obvious to them as it was to us. I was expecting the Goron leader's tablet to break incidentally, forcing him to have to make decisions without it. Instead, he broke it of his own accord and was ready to move on without it all by himself. Conde was just delightful the whole way, no notes.

[@poisonedoak6563]

…I’m sure Null’s resemblance to Dark Matter creatures is entirely coincidental and won’t lead to every single lore and theory channel having to rewrite their thesis videos

[@javiervasquez625]

Definetly not "coincidental" considering its a creation of Nintendo (who also created the Kirby series).

[@poisonedoak6563]

Yes that was implied.

[@Awesomeflame16]

​​@@javiervasquez625 Nintendo didn't create the Kirby series, Hal Lab did.

[@javiervasquez625]

@@Awesomeflame16 Which is a Nintendo property.

[@Awesomeflame16]

@@javiervasquez625 uh, no, they're an independent studio closely tied with Nintendo.

[@bbarrett726]

This makes me think about Lorule's triforce. They destroyed theirs. Does this mean Lorule was on the verge of being consumed Null before Link and Zelda wished for a new triforce for them?

[@videoket]

Null didn’t exist as a concept in the creator’s minds when they made Link Between Worlds, so nope.

[@clintonbehrends4659]

@@videoket you do realize that retroactive lore is a thing right? in fact it's one of the main ways storytellers build new stories on pre-existing ones using legend of zelda itself as an example, the original zelda games demise wasn't even remotely in the creators minds, gannon was just the big bad wizard pig thing but then later skyward sword came out and retroactively stated that all instances of gannon came from demise, thus making it retroactively apply to the prior games besides it's fun to speculate (sorry if i sound mean tone is hard to convey in text, and i'm socially inept)

[@DarkMirria1]

Most likely, however Null didn’t need to do anything since the Triforce of Lorule was destroyed and the Triforce is what keeps the world together so the world was falling apart and dying with it’s essential power source gone. It was merely coating towards it’s inevitable end on it’s own. Hence why they tried to steal Hyrule’s version, to fix their dying world with their own power source gone that they themselves destroyed in a attempt to prevent conflicts over the power of the goddesses.

[@CurrentlyDuck1]

​@DarkMirria1 What if the reason the Triforce keeps the world from collapsing is because otherwise it would collapse into Null?

[@dennis141187]

This indeed sounds like a fitting (retroactive) explanation. A world without a triforce (and thus Tri’s?) will fall apart into the Still World by Null. And with a new tri-force there might also be new Tri’s to fix rifts and keep Null locked away.

[@Majo_Ellen]

Nintendo dropping the best Zelda lore in a game about putting beds as bridges, is the most *Nintendocore* thing Nintendo has done. They always just do this where you least expect it. Vaati was mostly a Gameboy Advanced character, but he was essentially an antithesis of the Hero of Time. Majora's Mask was on a time crunch and they just made one of the most memorably somber Zelda games of all time. Just. Silly Nintendo things.

[@laurenvelentzas5044]

I hope null isn’t just a one-off villain, I love the possibilities that come from having an indiscriminate big bad around. Like Ganon wants to take over hyrule sure, but he can’t do that if there’s no hyrule to take over at all! Give me another threat from null that forces Zelda, link, AND ganon to work together to stop it

[@Americanbadashh]

Given this game uses ALTTP's map, this implies it's in that timeline. Which means Null exists in the other two timeline's as well.

[@DJCalliean]

I agree, but not SOON. I don’t want Null to have the Ganon effect where it appears often enough to become boring…. Let’s wait another decade, then put null in a 3D title. THAT would be sick.

[@laurenvelentzas5044]

@@DJCalliean thats fair, im definitely willing to wait

[@mightyinternaational7411]

​@@DJCallieanit'll take a decade for them to come out with the next 3d Zelda.

[@DJCalliean]

@@mightyinternaational7411 OK 2 decades then.

[@Noah-gn2gu]

This also explains why Hyrule looks different from game to game. Maybe some poor tris get a little confused.

[@DarkMirria1]

That’s an interesting idea.

[@dennis141187]

Haha, or some parts had already raided into nothingness and they had to make things up. Create something similar, but without the real thing to echoe.

[@not_anybody_in_particular]

An entity of primordial chaos that pre-exists creation was alluded to by Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom. His goal was to return the universe to that primordial chaos, or at least to move the world back in that direction.

[@javiervasquez625]

Yet the "chaos" TotK Ganondof strived to achieved was one of _social darwinism_ where those who're strong and powerful dictate the fate of those who're weak and powerless, meanwhile Null sought the destruction of *Reality* itself devoid of existence. Their goals are very different from one another.

[@juannaym8488]

​@@javiervasquez625But it kinda makes sense that Ganon would misinterpret Null like this

[@javiervasquez625]

@@juannaym8488 ...Why...? TotK Ganondorf's motivations were fleshed out by his harsh life in Gerudo Desert, plus he has no idea of who Null is to "misinterpret" a being he's never met.

[@Vandreand]

The rifts are the same cracks where demons come from mention in the skyward sword intro!

[@waltascher]

What? Nearly every other game has a villain besides Ganon. Games where Ganon is not the villain: Zelda II, Link’s Awakening, Majora’s Mask, the Oracle games (unless linked), Four Swords, Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks, Skyward Sword, Tri Force Heroes, and Echoes of Wisdom. That’s over half.

[@Novarcharesk]

I think Arlo might have fallen into the trap many of us have, and just been overwhelmed by the major 3D titles. They do tend to suck up the oxygen.

[@RyderDunei]

Technically skyward sword is kinda the origin of the evil that inhabits ganondorf, but apart from that, yeah. In fact, for whatever reason, phantom hourglass and spirit tracks were my only exposure to zelda as a kid, so i didnt actually fight gannon for ages.

[@magnificentmajunior]

...Ehhh including Zelda II, Skyward Sword and the Oracle games in that list feels like getting away with a technicality. Those games still use Ganon as a hugely important narrative device, so they 100% count. The Oracle games especially since playing the linked ending is kind of the whole point.

[@firenze6478]

Ganon was the villian of zelda 2. The whole game is about his resurrection being prevented. Demise is technically Ganon before he was reborn as a gerudo

[@davidd9976]

I think it's more that the dynamic between Zelda Link and Ganon is such a main part of the overall Lore of Hyrule that it's very hard to expand or flesh out the world or explore other story threads without it just feeling like a fun side story with no consequences. BotW and TotK as much as I loved them as games got away with retreading that main story twice in a row.

[@austinwilburn1772]

“What is in the center of the Triforce?” “Nothing?” “Exactly.”

[@ryanwong167]

I love that the one Zelda game that I was just expecting to be fun gameplay dropped more bombshells than the sequel I waited like 5 years for. Honestly Echoes might be one of my new favorites of the series.

[@just0chris]

What seemed a bigger issue to me was when Tri was like, "Me and my friends will use the power of echoes to restore the world." Wait...so you're not taking things out of the rifts, you're just making echoes of everything and discarding the originals!???!?!?!

[@Artista_Frustrado]

yeah Null simply devoured everything that falls into the void

[@Yobikir]

My theory is that the entire world is made out of echos to begin with.

[@AndyKennett]

Well they DO properly rescue people that fall into rifts, it's just objects they make echoes of.

[@rangedweevil6150]

The Still World isn't just a series of pocket dimensions, but rather an entire separate world that is only accessible when Null attacks Hyrule and creates a rift, destroying the barrier between the two worlds. Although when Zelda and Tri release the other tri and seal that rift and restore the barrier all of the living things that fell within are retrieved, the inanimate matter remains suspended in the Still World, and it is probably easier for the tri to just make perfect copies of everything and replace what was swallowed than retrieve every single brick and grain of sand. The echoes that the tri make aren't like the echoes that Zelda creates by channeling Tri's abilities, they are perfect, permanent replicas

[@aydenrozzelle7691]

​@@YobikirWhat if the tri's have been copying people and places since the beginning and that's why certain things like impa or beetle, or places like death mountain and hylia lake keep coming back.

[@Anths_art]

I literally screamed so loud when that wall broke and i saw a pair of creepy looking arms reaching out😭 interesting zelda lore is so back

[@MatthiasW97]

Oh yes!! How long did we have to wait to get a unforseen and cool twist in a new Zelda game

[@Anths_art]

@@MatthiasW97 It's definitely been a long time man! I'm so glad to see it happen again

[@benetheridge5242]

I'm glad arlo's talking about story stuff! He rarely does outside out of Paper Mario and it's nice to see ❤!

[@ThunderBrine]

Isnt it fitting that a descendant of the divine powers is the main character of a game where the main antagonist who has acted as a primordial problem

[@nworder4life]

We never had the goddesses speak to us before.1st time seeing the Triforce split into 3 pieces was pretty damn cool too.

[@libertyjones3799]

Maybe I'm really late to the party here, but... people didn't like the story of ToTK? I thought it was really good for what it was. Also the timeline was never necessary, I really don't care if games fit into it, and everything (besides direct sequels) can be good on its own without respect to any other stories.

[@theivoryguy2476]

3:10 I think the narrator from the Brothership trailer rubbed off on Arlo.

[@thespeedyyoshi]

HAHAHAHA 😂😂

[@Shaes_Projects]

“Jazzy jumps!” To be fair, his narration is so contagious and full of joy🥰

[@jacksonvoet8312]

And I’m all for it, that narrator definitely is having a real good time.

[@montecristosmith2343]

Oh my 😳

[@ninpro188]

BAHAHA bro changed his career and I love it

[@gameinsane4718]

Sounds kinda like Knull the Symbiote God who existed in the primordial nothingness before the Celestials came to our empty universe and started created stuff… and Knull took it personally, started destroying their stuff and killing them until he eventually got locked up inside a planet.

[@RetroGoosen-ux8ty]

And then they have the nerve to sue palworld.

[@crybb3492]

@@RetroGoosen-ux8tyhilarious 😂

[@BonJoviBeatlesLedZep]

As soon as Arlo said "Null" I was like.... that's Knull. And then they basically do his being contained within Klyntar

[@lnsflare1]

@@gameinsane4718 Don't forget the Profound Darkness from the Phantasy Star series... SPOILERS FOR PHANTASY STAR 4 ...the entity of cosmic destruction that was sealed away by its counterpart, The Great Light, after a massive battle, with the Algol solar system that the original series took place in being created as a lock on its prison, which it tries to destroy by sending out tendrils of its consciousness in the form of the Dark Force whenever it weakens every millennium.

[@stwbmc98]

Null is a pretty easy name choice for an endless devourer from the primordial void, Dimension 20 has that too

[@pbgamer115]

When Zelda echo was walking to normal Zelda, I was holding my breath, that is how you do a good villain someone with so much power all you can do is stand back and watch

[@DANBAN119]

Null's origins and the depiction of the void really adds a lot of theory crafting. Like if things can just spontaneously come into existence in the void, does the mean that Demise also originated from the void? I mean he is said to have come from a "fissure" that split the Earth, maybe it was similar to the rifts that Null creates. I highly doubt it's the case that the goddesses created him, he was a threat that could destroy the world and set Null free, why create something like that? If anything it's more likely he is something more primordial that originated outside of the Goddesses power.

[@grunkleg.2934]

4:23 What does this mean Arlo?

[@zacharynovak2180]

Here’s the text for those who can’t pause: IS SUDDENLY IN FRONT OF ME. IT MOVES WITH LIGHTNING SPEED, SETTLED ANEW AND LOOKING STRAIGHT INTO MY EYES BEFORE A SINGLE BREATH PASSES MY LIPS. I HALT, FROZEN IN PLACE AS IT REGARDS ME WITH THAT SHIFTING, UNSEEABLE FACE. I CAN SENSE WITHOUT SEEING AN INTENSITY, AND THIS IS MATCHED IN THE CREATURE'S LOW VOICE. IT TELLS ME THAT IT SOUGHT THE TOWER AS WELL. IT ASKS ME IF REACHING THE TOWER IS TRULY WHAT I SEEK. EVEN IN MY FEAR I TAKE A MOMENT TO FEEL INSIDE MYSELF, PROBING THE QUESTION AND FOLLOWING THE PANGS OF MY OWN HEART...AND IT SEEMS THAT EACH TIME I EXPLORE THE IDEA, MY CONVICTION IS STRONGER STILL. I SAY THAT I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE CERTAIN OF ANYTHING IN MY LIFE. I WILL REACH THE TOWER. THE CREATURE SEEMS TO NOD AND TELLS ME TO FOLLOW. I LOOK BACK AT THE SHADOW FROM WHENCE THIS THING SPRUNG, THAT INKY BLACK ABYSS, AND I KNOW THAT THIS IS WHERE IT IS ABOUT TO BRING ME. I VERY NEARLY SCREAM AND BREAK INTO A SPRINT AT THE VERY THOUGHT OF ENTERING SUCH A FATHOMLESS PLACE...BUT THEN THE WORDS OF THE OLD MAN FLOAT GENTLY OVER MY EARS, THE REALM OF SHADOW. THIS CALMS ME, SOMEHOW. THEN I ONLY NOD, KNOWING INTUITIVELY THAT THIS IS ENOUGH. AND SUDDENLY I AM THERE, SURROUNDED BY PURE BLACK, DARKER THAN ANY PLACE ON THE EARTHLY PLANE, INFINITELY DEEPER THAN THE MERE ABSENCE OF LIGHT. THE CREATURE IS BESIDE ME, SOMEHOW STARK AGAINST THE BLACK, LOOKING FORWARD. I FOLLOW ITS GAZE AND BEGIN TO SEE OTHER CREATURES EMERGE AS THOUGH FROM A CLOUD OF SMOKE. AT THE SIGHT OF THE VERY FIRST I MUST STIFLE A SCREAM, AND EACH I LAY EYES UPON IS MORE SHAPELESS AND HORRIFYING THAN THE LAST. MY MIND STRUGGLES TO COMPREHEND WHAT IT IS SEEING. WHEN I AM SURROUNDED BY THESE THINGS THE FIRST CREATURE TURNS TO ME. IT SAYS THAT EVERY BEING IN THIS PLACE SOUGHT THE TOWER. THIS IS WHAT I WILL FIND AT JOURNEY'S END. AND NOW A NEW AND EVEN DEEPER HORROR GRIPS ME. AS I LOOK UPON THESE THINGS, THESE THINGS I CAN SCARCELY CALL CREATURES, I KNOW WITH CERTAINTY THAT ITS WORDS ARE TRUTH. THIS IS INDEED THE FATE THAT AWAITS ME IF | REACH THE TOWER. AND YET EVEN NOW, GAZING UPON THIS VOID, I CANNOT DIVORCE MYSELF FROM THE NEED TO CONTINUE, TO REACH IT AT ALL COSTS. IN THIS MOMENT I HAVE NEVER FELT MORE LOST OR AFRAID. MY VOICE WEAK, I SAY THAT I NEED TO LEAVE. I LOOK TO THE THING BESIDE ME AND I CANNOT SEE A SMILE BUT SOMEHOW I SENSE ONE. IT SAYS THAT IT ALREADY TOLD ME I WOULDN'T BE GOING ANYWHERE. AND SUDDENLY THE THINGS EMERGING FROM THE IMPOSSIBLE DARK ARE MOVING TOWARD ME. I CAN SENSE MALICE AND GLEE POURING FROM THEM LIKE A RIVER. I WISH TO RUN, BUT THERE IS NOWHERE TO RUN. I WISH TO FIGHT BUT CANNOT MOVE. THE THING THAT BROUGHT ME HERE LAUGHS AND LUNGES FORWARD...AND SUDDENLY THERE IS A FLASH OF BLINDING LIGHT, AS BRIGHT AS THE VOID IS DARK, AND I SHIELD MY EYES. WHEN I CAN MANAGE TO PEAK BETWEEN MY FINGERS I SEE THAT A GREAT SPLIT HAS OPENED UP IN THE REALM ITSELF, BLUE SKY AND DAYLIGHT POURING THROUGH, PURE WHITE AT THE EDGES. SOMETHING MOVES THROUGH THE GAP AND SUDDENLY THE THING BESIDE ME HAS SPLIT IN HALF, BOTH SIDES DISINTEGRATING IN WHITE LIGHT LIKE A THIN PAPER BURNED IN A HOT FIRE. IN ITS PLACE IS A FIGURE WITH FAMILIAR BRONZE ARMOR, HOLDING A SPEAR WITH WISPY WHITE SMOKE TRAILING FROM ITS TIP. BEFORE I CAN EVEN REACT K'LENN THROWS A BALL OF WHITE LIGHT TOWARD THE OTHER CREATURES AND IT EXPLODES IN ANOTHER DAZZLING FLASH. HALF OF THEM DISINTEGRATE, THE OTHERS COWERING AND FLEEING. K'LENN GRABS MY HAND AND ALL AT ONCE WE ARE BACK IN THE WORLD OUTSIDE SHADOW. BLUE SKY AND GREEN GRASS STRETCH IN EVERY DIRECTION. IT TAKES ME SEVERAL MINUTES TO REGAIN MY COMPOSURE, BUT K'LENN IS UNPHASED. EVENTUALLY I CATCH MY BREATH AND THANK HER. SO YOU HAVE SEEN IT, SHE SAYS. SEEN WHERE THE JOURNEY ENDS. I NOD. SHE ASKS IF I WILL RETURN TO HER STRONGHOLD. THE ALTERNATIVE, CONTINUING ON THIS QUEST, IS UNSPOKEN. WHAT I AM FEELING IS BEYOND WORDS. AND SOMEHOW, DESPITE WHAT I HAVE JUST SEEN, JUST SURVIVED.... SHAKE MY HEAD. MY QUEST MUST CONTINUE. I DO NOT KNOW WHY. BUT IT MUST. SHE NODS. HER MOUNT STREAKS DOWN FROM THE BLUE SKY AND SHE JUMPS ON AND SOARS OFF WITHOUT ANOTHER WORD. BEFORE THEY HAVE EVEN DISAPPEARED FROM VIEW I TURN TO LOOK AT THE TOWER OFF IN THE DISTANCE. I CAN SEE NO OTHER LANDMARKS. ONLY GRASS, SKY, AND THE TOWER. I TAKE ONE STEP AND THEN

[@superdunez2479]

It's an excerpt from The Dark Tower by Steven King. Really strange.

[@C_B_Hubbs]

That's the actual lore bomb in this video. Part of the Ray Con multiverse lore.

[@Mykal06]

Yea it’s really strange, does anyone know why he put it there? Is he a fan of the books or something?

[@Mykal06]

Also, I’m just replying here because I felt lead to share the gospel. Please consider the message I write. To anyone reading this, please repent and believe the gospel! There is a loving God who wants to know you and save you. Jesus died on the cross and resurrected so we can be forgiven of our sins and be saved. Please consider the state of your soul. Believe in Jesus, Turn away from your sin and follow Him so you may have salvation. Life is short, please make the right choice today!

[@Seabasstard22]

8:14 ME EITHER!!!!!! I was telling my non video game friends and they didn’t care but it was like WHAAAAAAAAAT!!!!!!!!

[@kevingross6774]

2:54 the weirdest part is that this is closer to Pokémon Platinum’s Distortion World than anything Zelda’s done in the past

[@jaredwalley5692]

That's exactly the vibe I got! So eerie your first time.

[@KaiRubix]

To interpret my opinion on the storytelling. It's called The Legend of Zelda, not the detailed Historical Accourances of Zelda. Legends get twisted and changed and it gives us an opportunity to interpret the story ourselves.

[@Elliemaeggles]

This is exactly how I see it! Each game we play is a legend. We are playing the legend of the ocarina of time…or the legend of the echoes of wisdom…all centered around the triforce, goddesses, and Zelda.

[@elsamarks8477]

I always hated this explanation but post BotW I decided it was fine. I’m older and I don’t need to spend time chronicling the lore of the series that doesn’t care - it’s fine. It’s fine. I’m fine. ITS FINE. I’m fine. I’m fine But then TotK comes out and there is so much story that get thrown out in a direct sequel, and I think… maybe they just don’t care at all.

[@everyany5000]

So glad someone is finally talking about this. Also glad I'm not the only one who noticed the parallel between rifts and the tears of light segments in Twilight Princess (albeit it's heavily refined mechanically).

yeah when I first saw the way Ganon got beat so fast I KNEW something bigger was involved. The intro to the game reminded me so much of how SMRPG began. When they revealed what the inside of the rifts were like, the fact it looked so eerily similar to Pokemon's Distortion World had me like "What the hell is even going on???" I was initially going to give the game a pass but the preview of the rift worlds was ultimately what sold me. I HAD to know what was happening. In the end this was the best thing they could do for Zelda given her bloodline connection to the gods.

[@ng952]

We've seen this a lot recently. The idea that void is the antithesis of everything and it's beyond good and evil. It's a current story line for Warcraft, Guild Wars, and Fortnite. Hell, even Multiverses, the WB smash fighter, has this story line. Which is interesting as such themes would imply the moving away from a 'good vs evil' western dichotomy to a more eastern worldview.

[@SAsaiyajin]

Yes western narratives are moving away from it more but it doesnt always work as is seen with the MCU. They tend to make the protagonist too complex and basically make him immoral(revenge, justifying bad actions), while Eastern philosphy is more so seeking balance within the complexity of life(acceptance, you can't change everything).

[@SystemBD]

That story about "Null" seems surprisingly like something out of a software system. Hear me out... What if three goddesses (Din, Nayru, and Farore) were the developers of a simulation where all Zeldas take place? Because that origin story about "Din creating the land, Nauru creating law and order and Nauru creating life" sounds like a modeller, a systems programmer and an AI programmer comming together to build a videogame. Even the other realms could be seen as previous attempts that were discarded during the development process. And what if, after running the simulation for millions of cycles... the "garbage collector" that is Null has bugged out and starting to destroy reality itself, forcing the three developers to reluctantly interfere with their experiment?

[@Clara_Page]

Bingo!

[@FortyTwoBlades]

I've said for many years that Zelda lore seems to a degree to acknowledge that it's a video game, in that many of the ancient magics/powers have digital theming to them, and being like Fi basically being a digital assistant built into the sword.

[@spirttomb]

​@@FortyTwoBladeslots of people don't talk about this but..in botw, every weapon turns into blue digital themed shards when broken. Even the sticks..

[@EvilEye0]

Null is the D-Reaper?

[@Leopoldshark]

I am Error and I am Bagu were only the beginning

[@Bobby_Corwen]

You mention KINGDOM HEARTS, but KINGDOM HEARTS pretty much reuses the same villain in every game. KINGDOM HEARTS has Ansem (a variation of Xehanort) KINGDOM HEARTS: Chain of Memories has Ansem again (Though Marluxia is technically the main antagonist) KINGDOM HEARTS II has Xemnas (a variation of Ansem) KINGDOM HEARTS: Birth By Sleep has Master Xehanort (The true Xehanort) KINGDOM HEARTS 3D [Dream Drop Distance] has Young Xehanort (pretty self-explanatory.) The only exceptions are the mobile spinoffs, and 358/2 Days (Where you're basically playing as the villains.)

[@arzfan29]

Actually demise never mentions reincarnation or a curse in japanese, he just says "more evil people will do stuff, you can't rest easy"

[@cicadaenthusiast3954]

Man, null realllly feels like a kirby villain, both lore and design-wise. Not that that's at all a bad thing, I'm thrilled to see zelda fighting what's essentially physical manifestation of entropy in the form of a little bell-shaped goober critter

[@mkjjoe]

What shocked me as much as the existence of Null itself is the dynamic with the Goddesses. Ever since they were introduced we could only assume they just took off, only intervening in the prelude of WW, but otherwise delegating godly powers to the Triforce itself and Hylia. In EOW not only do they directly address Zelda personally as a priestess, they are also said to have been "imprisoned" in the rifts. I don't know if there's a translation subtlety yet but that's an even wilder implication for the lore's cosmology. Null was strong enough that he was not just a nuisance to the Goddesses, but he could actually get in their way. Seeing how they still enforce the rules about the Triforce was, to me, the moment that I really felt they didn't merely reuse symbols but were actually motivated to stay true to pre-established lore while expanding it. Echo Zelda first fails to use the Triforce which splits and goes to its most deserving recipients. I love that such a seemingly modest game gets to show a major mythological event so literally. My bet for now is that it doesn't change anything overall for the series. It's comforting to know they're aware of the varied feedback, but it's also likely that they went all out in EOW with the "classic" and old-lore-heavy content. I suppose that having a smaller game helped, by itself it doesn't have a ton of story, but it's how substantial these moments are that makes it good. I still hope that the next big open world will have more of EOW's progressive structure and storytelling, but I also think we shouldn't expect (or even wish?) that they keep one-upping the scope and genesis of the world. It was shocking to grasp what the "Hyrule foundation" in TOTK could imply, and even if many of us go with the "re-founding theory" now, even Master Works did not fully address questions. It doesn't even directly address the Triforce (besides being symbolized several times in both BOTW and TOTK) and instead inserted the secret stones which are said to be created with the Earth. Meanwhile EOW tells us what that Earth was built _for._ So yeah it's very surprising how wildly different the focus of each game can be, but also part of why it keeps interesting. I guess TOTK felt sour because they used so many symbols dear to us and did nothing with them, so if they don't feel like committing too far in a much more detailed game, I agree that an entirely new setting could help.

[@erikfujiyama5651]

Obviously Nintendo wouldn't go for that angle, but I think it would be awesome if Ganon was more in the game as a supporting character and unexpected pragmatic ally. "I hate you, but that null guy is a bigger threat right now" kind of thing

[@SAsaiyajin]

Why not, Demise can also be a rival to Ganondorf. I would like a (3d) game where you can play as Zelda, Link and Ganondorf. Seperately AND simultaneously. But first i rather have a remake of OOT story developed with current technology and maybe with actual dialogue for Link.

[@erikfujiyama5651]

@@SAsaiyajin@SAsaiyajin I think Ganondorf, at this point, is too irredeemable for Nintendo to have a Zelda where he's just an anti-hero that you ally with. Also, I really would like a MM remake also, I don't care about much things, just give me free camera control and I'm happy.

[@edwxx20001]

@@erikfujiyama5651 They could give us a Timeline where he has won, but still has to deal with all the threats to his new kingdom that link would normally take care of. He of course would have to watch out for link and Zelda coming back, which of course they would and they would have to help him to save HIS kingdom from some great threat.

[@Greenlog12]

This has major implications on why the triforce is needed for the worlds stability: its most likely acting as a barrier against null, which would explain why when lorule lost theirr triforce the land started to fall apart, null was eating it from the inside out.

[@Brian0wns]

So when someone asks: "Anything new or interesting about Echoes of Wisdom?" you tell them: "We got Null"

[@ladend99]

6:15 they did make ganon into a big bad dragon. Which is new.

[@llamadrama1090]

But that was only for the climax, the villain of the game is ganondorf not draganon

[@sonicpsycho]

I also love how this game implies that this is kinda the first instance of the triforce being used. They don’t even have a name for it yet it’s just the “prime energy”

[@GonKillua85]

It's not. The first time the Triforce was used was in game was in Skyward Sword, which predates the Kingdom of Hyrule. In Echoes of Wisdom, there are a few things that indicate that this game takes place after A Link Between Worlds at least. It's likely called the "Prime Energy" because the Triforce name has been forgotten in this era.

[@waltascher]

They clearly know about the Triforce already. Link has it on his shield. It could simply be the difference between what the Goddesses call it and what the Hylians call it.

[@protol5683]

I kinda took it in the opposite direction. That this game takes place so far past any other Zelda game that everyone’s forgotten what the Triforce was called! We see ruins of old Link To The Past dungeons and there’s a wide variety of races living together, so this game can’t take place SUPER early in the timeline, even if Null and the creation of Hyrule still outline the very beginning.

[@Doodle1678]

In the Japanese version it’s called something more like ultimate power which is similar to how it’s been described in other games. The prime energy thing is just a weird translation..

[@KRP71390]

Well, there is no Master Sword in this game, either. We don’t REALLY know what predated Hylia raising Skyloft and all, right? Do we really know there was no “Kingdom of Hyrule” before Skyward Sword? Also, we’ve never heard anything about rifts, or children being ‘stolen away’ before this game, where it’s implied that that has been a constant thing ever since Null was sealed. There really could be an argument for this game appearing at, or at least near, the beginning of the timeline!

[@songarakram]

Feels almost like a Kirby story.

[@johnleonard9102]

So it's kinda like Odin and his two brothers defeating Ymir and creating Midgard out of his body, or Zeus and his brothers defeating the Titans and making Gaia the land they lived on.

[@Red_Sand]

You know what's funny? Null seems a lot like Lucifer. He looks like the Tri, which are servants of the goddesses, and he can even create echoes like them. I assume he's a failed Tri, or one that betrayed them like how Lucifer is a fallen angel who went against god

[@Marandahir]

One of the thing coolest things about Null is that this game almost certainly takes place on the Downfall Timeline, sometime between Tri Force Heroes and The Legend of Zelda 1 (The Hyrule Fantasy). That means on every other timeline branch, Null could still be a villain. We saw this with Vaati showing up on both the Downfall and Child Timeline branches (leading many to believe if they ever do another Four Swords game, it would be an interquel between Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker - given that the Four Sword and its sanctuary and Vaati's seal would all be lost at the bottom of the ocean in the latter game. It might even become a trope for a while that games with Zelda as the protagonist face Null, given a desire for the Tri Rod and copy mechanics. They could recycle the concept for the Child Timeline, the Adult Timeline, and possibly even the Calamity Timeline, if it is indeed a fourth timeline splitting off instead from the time travel schenanigans at the end of Skyward Sword, given the heavy similarities between the backstory (and backstory Sages) for Tears of the Kingdom and those of Ocarina of Time (and yet their impossibility of equivalence). Like literally, the Sages wearing Vah Ruta, Vah Rudania, and Vah Naboris' ancient Zonaite masks look like they're Ruto, Darunia, and Nabooru, respectively underneath them. And of course then there's this second Rauru, and the idea that the Kingdom of Hyrule didn't exist prior to this story. It seems to me that like how A Link to the Past, Twilight Princess, and The Wind Waker all seem to be parallel events across the three timelines splitting off from Ocarina of Time, Tears of the Kingdom is a parallel story to Ocarina of Time, splitting off earlier. So if that's the case, Null could still become a problem in that timeline too!

[@javiervasquez625]

Mind you, Null exists _outside Time and Space,_ meaning it's possible there can only be ONE Null at all times regardless of the existence of split timelines. When the Null from Echoes of Wisdom was destroyed, that prevented it from threathening any other potential timeline.

[@NintenSegaPlay]

When did Vaati showed up in the downfall timeline???

[@rubberwoody]

Tbh I'm not reading all that

[@Marandahir]

@@rubberwoody Tbh it was for Arlo not for you! ;)

[@Marandahir]

@@NintenSegaPlay Sorry, the fate of the Four Sword did, not Vaati himself. The Four Sword created shadow links at the end of the Palace of the Four Sword bonus dungeon in A Link to the Past & Four Swords. My bad, I misspoke there!

[@seanmcfadden3712]

Huh. Sounds to me like the Zelda developers looked up some Aztec mythology and decided "Yes. That. Good."

[@yggdrasilsaltar]

completely in character too because they LOVE ancient mythology if the botw duology is anything to go off of LMAO

[@javiervasquez625]

​@@yggdrasilsaltar They've been loving ancient mythology since like ever back in Ocarina of Time with all them dungeon architecture referencing cultures from across the world.

[@SAsaiyajin]

Yes, the Gerudo have always been based on middle Eastern cultures, Shika obviously Japanese. Hylians on European culture and Western cultures in general.

[@CurrentlyDuck1]

At this point Hyrule has a more detailed creation story than some actual religions

[@AwesomeRaptor21]

I need a green screen version of you at 9:14 sliding into frame and saying "Come again?" to the camera calmly. This is excellent meme material.

[@ajlucky0076]

Chibi Zelda and Link defeating an eldritch horror who is one of, if not the most powerful and destructive forces the universe has ever seen, even surpassing the very gods.......was not on my bingo card

[@psychokinrazalon]

What TOTK did to make Ganon fresh was add a voice, first off, but also to combine various elements of previous versions together.

[@asherjones5725]

4:23 What is this about???

[@Perigrene101]

6:45 Speak for yourself! I LOVED Skyward Sword's story! ... Mostly just Ghirahim and Zelda... I liked Groose's story. Fi was annoying, but I totally turned around at the end. Now I feel guilty when I look at the Master Sword and remember how rude I was to her and long to see her pop out of the Sword again.

[@BobBurgers1234]

I would LOVE a sequel to Echoes of Wisdom where it explains how and why Zelda got captured and it could explain more about Null and why Ganon’s staff created the rift. I think that would be really cool.

[@LivingBasement]

7:22 REAL. Old bed strats are beaten only by water with how broken they are.

[@linklegend7536]

Glad Im not the only one who was losing his mind when they straight up talk about the creation of the world with completely new context now. They were cooking so hard with the lore in this game. Didnt expect that at all but Im so glad they did especially after totk

[@beezusHrist]

Cooking? Who f@#$ing cares and stop stealing black, American vernacular. That is not how you use that

[@Giggles_iJest]

Funny the one game I didn't buy changes the lore's foundations

[@KGDavis-fi2tq]

If you like 2d Zelda you should definitely play it!

[@Giggles_iJest]

@@KGDavis-fi2tq now I *have* to buy it lol

[@darcidious99]

I'd recommend buying it from a game store, preferably used but even new aint bad. Its a good game, but personally I cant see myself replaying it ever again. If you do wanna keep it, there ya go, but if ya dont you can always return it for some credit or something.

[@Giggles_iJest]

@@darcidious99 Yeah support local mom&pops store

[@L337M4573RK]

Arlo forgot about Nightmare (the villain of Link's Awakening). Odd how the developers who worked on the Link's Awakening Remake also lead the development of EoW, isn't it? Oh, wait...it's not.

[@Glitchyy07]

The entire ending of EoW reminded me of the Windfish egg because of the theme and colors, and I loved it

[@L337M4573RK]

@@Glitchyy07 That wasn't a coincidence either...

[@Glitchyy07]

@@L337M4573RK yeah I know, I just wanted to share how I thought it was cool

[@firenze6478]

It really makes sense that demise came from Null as he came from a fissure in the earth aka a rift. Meaning ganon came from Null, which is also why Null has an echo of Ganon

[@PerfectKirby]

“All this talk of beds is making me…hungry!” I don’t know why such a small, throwaway joke made me laugh so much 😂

[@Aether_Athea]

Ohmygosh was the “before” for the sponsorship in reference to the Brothership trailer Narration?!! Amazing

[@tempest6027]

i feel like the name and design of tri is pretty clever because "tri"s are what people call the triangles that make up 3D models, meaning everything that exists is made of tris

[@aster4jaden]

Given how Demise came from a crack in the Earth I would not be surprised if Demise was an Avatar of Null.

[@dennis141187]

Funny thing then would be that Ganon, Zelda and Link are not necessarily reincarnated but echoes. The evil echoes by Null and the good echoes by the Tri’s. That would also explain a bit why the heroes always appear to be the right age/be there when needed. (Just wouldn’t explain the adult timeline. Or maybe that they couldn’t create an echo of Link as he was no longer there?)

[@catalyst539]

Impossible. Null would not have an Avatar that seeks a completely separate outcome. Null wants oblivion and nothing to exist, whereas Demise desires hell where he and his demons rule.

[@victorthevictorian]

Fun fact: Null's name in the German translation is Nihil! I was positively shocked to finally see a new villain again, much less one that makes actual sense in the lore.

[@uezyteue7690]

Honest to god, when I first saw the scene where Null appears, I thought they were bringing back Vaati. But then they pulled out an embodiment of the void which consumes reality itself as a twisted sentient form of entropy.

[@williamfugimoto8526]

I can't say for everyone else, but I for one liked ToTK's story! I never expected anything ground breaking, and I do as they asked and ignore the continuity, every Zelda game to me is a unique World. And the ending man, fighting Ganondorf was honestly the best fight in the entire series! But even I gotta admit, reusing the SAME flashback for every companion felt very cheap, even by Nintendo's standards. Still a close second best Zelda game to me!

[@ajlucky0076]

I absolutely loved the whole botw/totk story by itself. However, it just made things really confusing in the Zelda lore as a whole

[@wizawhat]

Tears of the Kingdom's story has fantastic individual moments and revelations, but at the same time it does have far too many holes to completely overlook. I do wish the imagery and breath taking story moments got a little more credit than what they commonly receive.

[@Ace_Maus]

For me, it felt like they were going to do a lot of great stuff with the Zonai, and then it was very rushed and whatever, not fleshed out at all. But what made me decide on not buying the game was how they made the story messy by mostly ignoring BoTW happened, but still having very specific characters that do acknowledge and address BoTW. Like, it was a sequel but not. Very dumb and confusing, I felt betrayed after such a long wait. I loved the NPCs, but Nintendo "factory reset" them.

[@videoket]

Thank you for mentioning the flashback reuse. Such a confusing and lazy idea. It wouldn’t have been hard to come up with something else!

[@simonorourke4465]

​@@ajlucky0076To be fair though the whole expanded Zelda timelinenhas been pretty damn confusing for a long time before either TOTK OR BOTW were released The fact that Nintendo themselves decided long ago that the only way that they could make the timeline vaguely work was to literally split the whole thing into three branching timeliness after OOT really does show how confusing and contradictory it has always been. I've been playing theese games for so long now that I remember when there was only one single timeline that flowed pretty well. I love Zelda and have enjoyed and loved most of the games and stories in this amazing series of games including echoes of wisdom which may be on of my favourite top down adventures, but the pretense that ye games fit neatly into a single timeline has never really been real. I like to think of Zelda as a shared universe where certain games are directly connected and share a timeline but some of the games such as the more recent ones are there own thing qnd don't really share with the other titles.

[@redduck6483]

4:23 can we talk about this?

[@CorynSilver]

I'd love to see a zelda game depicting Ganondorf as a hero and friend to Link and Zelda before his decent into darkness and evil. Like, maybe the very first Ganondorf after Demise. Ganon/dorf never appears in any Zelda game prior to OoT on the timeline, so there's room to explore the first ever incarnation of Ganon/dorf, maybe even adopting the Dragmire / Mandrag moniker in-game for once.

[@mikeoxlong3676]

Isn't that Groose?

[@Elliemaeggles]

Yes, me too! Ganondorf grows into hatred, being in a desert devoid of flourishing life and once he becomes king, he sees how bountiful the lands of Hyrule are, like in wind waker. But I would also love an interception of demise, where Link and Zelda meet up somehow early on, and they both understand the reincarnation dealio. So they go to Ganon to help purify him.

[@TheWretchedOwl]

Zelda: “gameplay comes first, and lore comes after” Mario: “you guys get lore?”

[@Natoursofcourse]

Mario lore would kinda suck