Mystery Of The Zonai | The Leaderboard

Mystery Of The Zonai | The Leaderboard
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With the first anniversary for the Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, having come and gone, and with the upcoming release of the Masterworks behind the scenes book coming this august to Japan, I felt that now was a perfect time to talk about the Golden Joystick Awards’ Game of the year (In Nintendo’s Category). One of the biggest mysteries surrounding this game however are the Zonai. The Zonai, from the launch of Breath of the Wild, have been hotly debated and a source of many fan theories for years. Many predictions believed that the Zonai would be the basis of the sequel to Breath of the Wild, and as it turns out, its true. But the game seemed to offer more questions than answers, and most of the answers we received were severely vague. So let’s take a moment to talk about that.
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Amagi Publishing
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Website: amagipublishing.com/
Producer: ‪@EthanSchulteis‬ (‪@TheAmagiYT‬)
Narrator: @Keegan Hughes
Writer: Noah Barkley
Music: ‪@epidemicsound‬
Thumbnail: @Anibaxter

[@TheLeaderboard]

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[@generaljimmies3429]

I feel like Mineru SHOULD have been your companion ala Midna or Navi. She was in your Purah pad the whole time, there's so much Nintendo could have done for worldbuilding.

[@sboinkthelegday3892]

Review of The Flight of Dragons 1982.

[@user-zk7pf7qj6h]

Personally I think the Zonai were descendants of people who chose to stay behind in Skyloft and simply continued to evolve as they got closer and closer to the gods. Hyrule probably eventually fell as all empires do and the inhabitants became primitive. It was at that point that the Zonai came down to Hyrule and eventually founded a new kingdom thinking it was the first kingdom when unknown to them there was already a previous kingdom that had simply become forgotten.

[@howlroseXI]

I agree with you completely

[@generaljimmies3429]

I feel like Mineru SHOULD have been your companion ala Midna or Navi. She was in your Purah pad the whole time, there's so much Nintendo could have done for worldbuilding.

[@hanburgundy4317]

Sadly, Nintendo has gotten lazy when it comes to lore and story.

[@howlroseXI]

She would have been an incredible ally and throughout the game she could have told us the real origins of them.

[@TomMooreT2S]

Long story short: There are two, if not more, separate realities of Hyrule’s history. Parallel or not. The original founding of Hyrule took place after Skyward Sword (debatably SS’s events were an entire time loop), the people of Skyloft began to settle in the surface. A few generations later, the people turned against each other and the Era of Chaos begins. Senseless violence and magic violations all for the sake of obtaining the Triforce. In the midst of it all, a group of dark interlopers with the Fused Shadows attempted to invade the Sacred Realm. They failed and were banished. Sage Rauru and others built the Temple of Time to seal off the gateway to the Triforce. The Era of Prosperity begins when the Oocca came to help the Hyruleans build and establish their kingdom. Labors completed, the Oocca left and maintained contact until time took its course. Hyrule as a kingdom was founded. The “Zonai” founding of Hyrule is completely different and bears no connection to the known timeline. They were awkwardly and uninterestingly placed THAT far back in Hyrule’s history. How Hyrule was “refounded” is beyond my understanding. So in all seriousness, I never want to associate the Twilight Era with this, I don’t want to associate the events of the Great Sea with that, I don’t associate the Sky Era with anything in BOTW/TOTK despite the references. There are just way too many inconsistencies to make it obviously clear that it’s a separate universe unto itself that basically has the actual timeline as mere reference. Just accept my point. There’s no point to make it more confusing.

[@hanburgundy4317]

What's sad is that Nintendo created all of the interconnected lore that each game was built around; they wove all of these connections to create a beautiful tapestry of stories that each built upon and facilitated each other. They then tied them all together in a concrete manner and explained how the timelines worked. Then they abandoned it all and started gaslighting us that "they were never meant to be connected" and that "we're just being nostalgic" lol Pretty bogus behavior on their part. The Wild duology took over a dozen years of development time, in which they could have given us half a dozen Zelda games as iconic as OoT, MM, TWW, TP, and SS, but instead we got two games (great for what they are) that went so thin and shallow on the lore and story and randomly threw in names, references to, and even items from EVERY game and timeline just because. Many exist in spite of their sources, like the clothes and weapons from other worlds like Termina and Lorule, or from dream worlds like Koholint Island.

[@TomMooreT2S]

@hanburgundy4317 Point exactly. Nintendo HESITATED trying to establish lore that separates the Wild games from the existing titles, but instead were like, “Yes, they still happened but it’s far into the future and time reseted itself…” Just reading that was just out of place. And I never cared for how this correlates to past titles. Like I said, everything Zonai, Sheikah tech, Calamity Ganon… I don’t associate that with my childhood memories.

[@mr.awesome6011]

I think it just makes more sense to put these games in their own universes with sequels placed where they naturally fit. Plus if Zelda is breaking up timelines again then it just lends this theory even further. It also allows games like Skyward Sword to fit in multiple timelines such as before Ocarina of Time, being a timeline where the Zonai never visited and Hyrule is founded by Hylians only and advances more slowly but the tangent where the Zonai do visit leads to BOTW and TOTK with a bigger and more developed Hyrule with Zonai tech and the Sheikah who basically inherit the mechanical knowledge of their predecessors just to a lesser degree. This explains how both timelines have the Master Sword. But then you have the Four Sword games which includes Minish Cap having no mention of the Master Sword, one of the keys leading to Demise's defeat and Hyrule's founding. Instead making the Piccori Blade/ Four Sword the legendary blade to repel evil with it's own backstory of the kingdom's founding being tied to a different foreign tribe.

[@Yorabasura]

I NEED MORE!!! Great video 🎉

[@Kaylee-bi4ny]

I feel like the serect stones are connected to the triforce too, because it states in totk that they are gifts from the gods. It says that they have the ability to ampilify the power of there wielder. So it has to be connected somehow at least thats what I believe.

[@hanburgundy4317]

This is all fun, but the truth is that Nintendo made up this shallow lore at the last minute to facilitate the game mechanics, similar to how they drastically changed the Sheikah lore to facilitate the Shrines and game mechanics in Botw. In Botw, "Zonai" was just the name of that particular set of ruins - like "Thyphlo" and the others. Does that mean that each set of ruins had a race of people to serve as the namesake? Nope. Nintendo implied that it was just ancient warlike Hylians that built these ruins, but fans for some reason started to theorize about "the Zonai people" - seriously, can anyone pinpoint where and why that started? The truth is that Nintendo picked up what fans were speculating and ran with it - but they didn't run very far lol TP introduced the idea of a race of people close to the gods that lived in the sky; well, that'd be Hylians as OoT told us that _Hylians_ were close to the gods and had pointy ears to better hear the voice of the gods. TP introduced the Oocca, but heavily implied that it wasn't really them that created the city in the sky but had just found it (the owl statues and Hylian architecture Aang connection with the Sheikah are hints). Then, SS told us diffinitively that The Goddess Hylia created the city in the sky and the sky islands and her chosen people the Hylians to rule it. These later descended to the earth and built the kingdom of Hyrule. Botw and especially Totk are just anthology games that feature names and likenesses from every other game just because; they can't fit within any of the timelines, and Nintendo knew this so they arbitrarily set them "10,000 years after every timeline". They're filled with plot holes.

[@fatalwaffle1715]

Cool video bro.

[@derperpines]

You have to remember that the interview with the Zelda producers said that Hyrule Kingdom was potentially destroyed before and Rauru and Sonia’s “founding” was basically a second iteration/rebirth of the kingdom itself.

[@kresenmuir953]

1st?