 Now one thing I wanna warn before I get in knee deeper into this is it's pretty obvious from the title and the thumbnail, we're going to be talking about spoilers with Tears of the Kingdom. This is the first video I have made since beating Tears of the Kingdom and about Tears of the Kingdom. And I just wanna make sure that those that don't want story spoilers or anything else stay away from this video because we're talking about something that I think needs to have a really big conversation and to be fair, we're gonna be having that very conversation coming up here on our spoiler podcast next week's Wednesday but I don't wanna wait till Wednesday to have that conversation with all of you. So I'm very curious, watch this video, tell me what you think and give me your reasoning and your thoughts down in the comments below because I'm firmly planted in one spot when it comes to this video. Tears of the Kingdom has a lot of amazing things happening. I also think Tears of the Kingdom solidifies that Nintendo has rebooted the franchise. Now, look, I had some thoughts about this with Breath of the Wild to be clear when you play through the story of Breath of the Wilds got all these references and yes, Aji Hanuma did say it's on the timeline somewhere but he will never tell us where and that it takes place 10,000 years after any of the events in the prior games which in theory can make all of those prior games sound like legends, Legend of Zelda anyone but also it never really saying, oh, is it in the downfall timeline? Is it in the child timeline, the adult timeline? There's theories out there that it reconverges the timelines back together like a dragon break which is something that happened in the Elder Scrolls series and frankly, I've sort of been on that dragon break train for a long time until Tears of the Kingdom happened because Tears of the Kingdom introduced a lot of elements that we weren't aware of in Breath of the Wild and those elements are as follows. Hey, Ganondorf, he's just been literally since the foundation of Hyrule stuck underneath Hyrule Castle. Yeah, that is a thing. Rauru is the first king of Hyrule. It's literally stated out loud that Rauru and Queen Sonia are the first king and queen of Hyrule and they were the first ones to fight Ganondorf who yes, was a Gerudo, is a Gerudo I suppose and they defeated him by keeping him buried underneath Hyrule Castle because Rauru sacrificed himself. It was only to get into all of the nitty gritty details on all of the sacrifices made in this game but the point is that that is supposedly the foundation of Hyrule. Now, Hyrule has been founded again a few times. You can argue there was a period before Skyward Sword that was founded. You can argue after Skyward Sword, Hyrule was founded again. You could also make some arguments about things like Spirit Tracks, right? Where Spirit Tracks introduced a new Hyrule and at some point that Hyrule had to be founded. Well, one thing that's been consistent in the old Zelda games is that Ganon slash Ganondorf is the same thing, the same creature resurrected, not resurrected, whatever, it's the same character. They have, well, they're supposed to be, what is it, a new male Gerudo every 100 years, every 1,000 years or whatever the lore setting. Oh no, it keeps changing all the time. The point is that Ganon slash Ganondorf is supposed to have been the same person this whole time. We learned this in Hyrule Historia and how much you really wanna put into what Hyrule Historia means is, you know, that's up to you guys. But for me personally, I have always viewed this as it's the same Ganon slash Ganondorf. But then if Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom was the sealed this entire time, then none of that other stuff happened. And this past was so long ago and it would even predate a lot of the runes we see in Hyrule. So I think after beating the game, a lot of things were solidified for me. For starters, Ganondorf appears to blow up like a nuclear bomb at the end of the game. I don't know what's up with that, but that's what happens there after the whole victory lap. But what is interesting to me is looking at this as a reboot. And I've wondered for a while if the Zelda team would ever dare consider rebooting the franchise because that felt dangerous. So many people invested in the timeline. So many people invested in the stories and interconnecting all the games. And then all of a sudden you reboot all of that? Would they dare do that? And I think that they've done it in a very clever way. One, where they never need to acknowledge that they rebooted the game. Remember, Breath of the Wild takes place so far after any other Zelda game has ever happened that literally all those prior Zelda games would be legends. Now I know you're gonna say, but we have literal runes. We have runes of La La Ranch and Temple of Time and blah, blah, blah. We have all these connections we can draw to all the other games. Yes, and some of that could just be Easter eggs because again, Easter eggs, it also could, maybe it happened in some bygone era. Remember, we're talking about a 10,000 year period. It's entirely possible that maybe those games still happened but they're so far gone. It's like the era of the dinosaurs for us, right? Like we know dinosaurs existed. We have their bones. We have some historical evidence of dinosaurs but it's so long ago. We have a hard time even imagining a world where dinosaurs exist. We try in movies and stuff, Jurassic Park, Jurassic World but we have a hard time imagining that time and I think that's kind of here. Yeah, maybe some stuff happens way long ago but it was so long ago, nobody really talks about it. Give you an example, a big theme of all the old Zelda games is the Triforce and while the Triforce is still present in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom or at least references to it and clear indications that Zelda and Link have it, also it's not as prevalent. People aren't talking about it as much. It's not being treated as this big massive deal. In fact, now the tears seem to supersede. In fact, there's probably debate out there right now if the tears from Tears of the Kingdom, those powerful gems that were brought by the Zonai, there's probably a lot of debate right now if those are actually more powerful than the Triforce. And on top of that, the Zonai themselves are still pretty mysterious. They admit it in all of those memories with Zelda that they came down from the heavens or above the sky. But where do they come from? Are they aliens? Are they gods? The game doesn't really clarify that. It leaves it open for interpretation as the Zelda team often does but the reason that I feel like this is mostly a reboot are all the obvious ones. With it being so far after the old games, Nintendo never has to call it a reboot. They're playing it safe, right? We don't have to say we rebooted the franchise, yet we put in all the elements needed to reboot the franchise. As an example, well, we could talk about Demon King Ganondorf and if it's connected to demise, there's no direct references to demise and the curse. There's no direct references. We could talk about the sword glowing and his thigh there and we know that thigh talked in Breath of the Wild but also since it's never really directly been like, oh, there's thigh, oh, master, your batteries are depleted. But since it's not directly brought forward, they can sort of ignore a lot of the history moving forward. The reason I feel like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is a reboot is because the Zelda team wanted to reboot Zelda. After a while, you wonder why is there this three-way split timeline? They seemingly made one up on the fly because I think the Zelda team felt like they were held back. If you think about the last big 3D Zelda game before we got Breath of the Wild, it was Skyward Sword and what did they do with Skyward Sword? They went so far in the past that they couldn't be held back by the future. So all those events that happened after Skyward Sword in the timeline don't really have to impact what's happening in Skyward Sword. It became obvious to me when they made Skyward Sword that they were tired of having to work within a set of rules and a set story that is so convoluted and so hard to connect at times that it starts to make things feel weird. Like, oh, what if you wanna make a game that's in the child timeline but has Rito? Like, there are certain races that only exist in certain timelines and in Breath of the Wild, it already muddled all that by, hey, we have these races in the same timeline now. I didn't toy around with this enough after Breath of the Wild, but Tears of the Kingdom just feels like to me, they decided this is a reboot and I'm good with that. By the way, I'm very good with this being a reboot to the franchise. Again, they'll never say the word reboot out loud, at least not for a long time. If you think about what Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom has set up for future Zelda games to come after it, they've really given it a clean slate. Even dealing with Ganondorf, right? Ganondorf just got nuked. I mean, literally exploding at the end of the game kind of just reset them to do anything they want. The Secret Stones, as far as we're aware, is Zelda's Secret Stone and all the ones that the new, quote unquote, new champions have, the Tolans and they still, technically, as far as we're aware, exist in this Hyrule in what is supposedly now peaceful Hyrule because there is no more Calamity Ganon. There's no great Calamity anymore. The Zonai are now all gone and it's just left to the Hylians and the Ritos and the Zora and the Gorons and the Gerudo to do with what they please. And what I find interesting in resetting things there is that now they can come up with fresh and new ideas. They don't have to be beholden to Ganondorf. They don't have to be beholden to this supposed curse from Skyward Sword from Demise. But if you think about that curse from Demise, you could argue any evil that surfaces in the future could be because of that curse, right? If you want to argue the connection still there, the curse never said it had to be Ganondorf, Vati or someone new. The point is we can't definitively prove that this is a reboot or not. We could talk about the individual story elements. We could talk about Princess Zelda coming back at the end. We could talk about a lot of little things. And you could also go the opposite direction and try to reconnect it to the timeline. But I think the idea from the developers is they wanted these games so far in the future so they could disconnect from the shackles they felt the franchise was holding them to. Even through these two games, possibly even wrap up the story of Ganondorf. Like, hey, maybe we're done with Ganondorf moving forward. Maybe they have a lot of new fresh ideas they've always wanted to do, but they felt so beholden to Ganondorf and Demise. Now they can just do whatever they want. And I like that. Obviously we're not gonna know if my theory on this is correct until we get the next Zelda game. But for right now, I wanna hear your arguments for and against a reboot down in the comments below. Thank you guys so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next video.