teardrops under the eyes are a very explicit sheikah symbol so it’s interesting to see Zelda wearing them

generally i really like the aesthetic so far, it feels actually unique and interesting as opposed to breath of the wild which was extremely generic. the world seems bigger, which i’m sure is partially because i have 0 fast-travel capabilities right now (AND no paraglider [but i do have a dope horse]), but i think also is because they aren’t afraid to make getting places difficult, whereas Breath of the Wild was very “if you can see it, you can get there” as a guiding principle. i like riding along and seeing bokoblins going about their daily business in their bokoblin camps. being able to just chuck a firebomb at an enemy is hella dope.

the beginning is really laden with symbolism which i’m sure goes over everyone’s heads who didn’t spoil themselves. you get the rewind ability in the temple of time from zelda, the sage of time, which makes sense if you know zelda IS the sage of time and travelled to the past and such but like, if you don’t know that you’re just left feeling like “why did i go to this temple just to meet this apparition of zelda which doesn’t even speak and unlocks a new game mechanic?? why wasn’t it just in a shrine like the other ones??” and it feels arbitrary. it’s because she’s the sage of time. that’s why

rauru’s dialogue mostly makes no fucking sense and it’s best not to think too hard about it

it’s very interesting that (a) they went with two Zonai sages and zero Sheikah sages, and (b) they replaced the Shadow and Forest sages with Lightning and Wind. this brings the total number of sages ever named in the games all the way up to TEN (including also Earth from Wind Waker)

i think the whole sage situation is bad and kind of messed up. it doesn’t align with the existing affinities from previous games. they retconned out the Gerudo out of being the Spirit people, moved the Rito from Earth to Wind, de-Saged the Sheikah and Koroks, and generally simplified the thing to be about “what element do you control” which i think trivializes the concept.

this poses really annoying problems for me personally in trying to figure out historiographically what the fuck is going on. at the very least it suggests that there are two gerudo tribes (??!), and the situation with the rito and the koroks doesn’t have an obvious answer (although i’m more willing to just discard Wind Waker’s sages tbh).

i already had a running theory that Ganondorf was not actually Gerudo but that theory presumed that he was Yiga instead and associated with Shadow. it doesn’t reconcile the Lightning~Spirit split

Lightning has been associated with the desert before but that was when it was considered a part of LANAYRU province. (Worth noting that Skyward Sword really fucks up the elemental associations in general though.) Lanayru in BotW/TotK is associated with ICE, which, importantly, is an element which still does not have a sage (waiting for the return of the Anouki 🥲)

ALSO HEY GUESS WHAT if Zelda The Light Dragon is descended from Zelda The Sage then that means that the OTHER three dragons could ALSO symbolize sages. You can pretty easily say Naydra is Ice and Dinraal is Earth and Farosh is Forest but this doesn't REALLY line up; Dinraal is pretty strongly Fire-elemental and Farosh is pretty strongly Lightning-elemental. the latter also speaks to a larger problem which is that they split up Storms into Wind and Lightning; Faron has past associations primarily with Wind (but they pushed that onto the Rito) and Lightning USED to go along with it (but not anymore??)