u/TheSceptileen

So i'm looking to expand my switch/switch 2 game library and I thought I could finally give those games an opportunity, but since I've read they are in some aspects pretty different to the original Hyrule Warriors i'm afraid of not liking them as much and feel I wasted money on them.

I know close to nothing about AoI other than its setting in relation to ToTK, but from AoC I've heard that even if it's non-canon and has weird fanfic-like twists on it, it's main story makes an honest attempt to build upon BotW backstory. If it has some good story beats and cool moments with decent writting i'll be satisfied. I never cared that much for the first game's Legend mode so if this one makes me more invested i'll be happy. I've also read the combat is in general more refined compared to the first game which is good.

What concerns me the most is side content. The most enjoyement I had (and i'm still having) from Hyrule Warriosr was grinding Adventure Mode, collecting tons of skins, weapons and fairies while triying and mastering all the different characters in the roster.

However I heard that AoC has less gameplay variety between characters (which I don't think it's the end of the world) and that its side content doesn't compare to Hyrule Warriors. So I really want to know if I'm gonna have an excuse to spend time learning the characters movesets in AoC and AoI or if it isn't a lot of stuff to do outside of the main story mode. I don't expect the gameplay of these games to have more longevity than the first game had, but I do want a game I can pour a lot of hours in.

"Because Zelda sent Link to the Child Timeline" Yeah I understand that, but acording to the info I was able to gather, Ganon broke his seal several generations after his imprisionment, so the Hero of Time would be dead anyways at that point.

The way I always understood the spirit of the hero is that it is a metaphysical force or "mechanism" that manifest on a hero (Link) in order to protect the descendant of the Goddess (Zelda) whenever she and the kingdom are threatened by evil (usually but not exclusivelly Ganon).

It's implied that the different Links aren't necessarely descendants of eachother (except TP's Link and the Hero of Time) so Link leaving the timeline without descendence should not prevent another Link carrying the spirit of the hero, yet WW's Link is commonly agreed by the fanbase to not carry the spirit of the hero and instead just being a guy that became one by chance and circustances without divine intervention. However if that's the case it's weird that not that many years later the Hero of Trains showed up too.

So this leaves me with a few different possible conclusions:

1. The Hero of Winds DOES carry the spirit of the hero and there is an unknown reason for why a hero didn't show up when Ganon escaped.
2. The Spirit of the Hero wasn't made to be time travel-proof and Zelda just glitched it out of existence when he removed OOT Link from the timeline (always do extensive testing for your software folks).
3. Ganon actually broke the seal only a few years after OOT so there was not enough time for another hero to manifest. (I can't find official sources of how many time actually passed until Ganon escaped but it's seem to be well agreed upon that it took at least 100 years)
4. Number 2 and 1 are both correct and the Hero of Winds made the spirit materialize again by exhibiting a hero's traits and being chosen by the triforce of courage and the Master Sword
5. The spirit of the Hero is bound specifically to the Triforce of Courage, and the Hero of Time leaving the timeline and making the triforce shatter into 8 pieces also removed the spirit, and it showed up again when Link reunited the fragments in WW.
6. We have too little information about what the Spirit of the Hero actually is or how it works to really know the answer.

So what are your thoughts about this topic?

Since I heard the rummors about the posible OoT full remake and the growing involvement of Monolith Soft in the Zelda IP I've been thinking a lot on the future of the franchise. Thing is, due to how the industry is evolving and due to how Nintendo's dev teams work it seems like the wait between mainline 3D Zelda games will keep getting longer and longer.

Breath of the wild took about 5 years to make for a team of 300+ devs, which I find fairly impresive, even if they have been slowly progressing to the formula since SS and they have a clear idea of what they wanted to do. Tears of the Kingdom took about 6, but it was in development during the covid pandemic which slowed things down and had one full year focused only on testing and QA.

The thing with Nintendo is that they aren't the kind of devs that like to develop simple or underwhelming games just because they want or need to send games into the market. DK Bananza was said to be the result of the development of a 3D Mario game that they turned into a DK game since they thought it's gameplay and mechanics fit the character more. Mind you the last 3D Mario game released on 2017, with Mario Wonder releasing in 2023, which means they have been producing ideas for a mario 3D game for almost a decade.

Now with Breath of The Wild being the culmination of the evolution to the Zelda formula they've been chasing for so long and Tears of the Kingdom being the ultimate expansion of it, I'm pretty sure that they won't drop a new 3D Zelda game until they feel they have cooked a big, innovative game up to the high standards of the franchise and the company, and that can (and should) take them a lot of time. I'm sure the creative minds of Nintendo don't really care if they have to take a full decade to develop a new game, but I don't think the same applies to the directives, investors and part of the fanbase.

So I believe that bringing in studios like Monolith Soft and Grezzo to make smaller scale projects to fill the gaps between releases is a very healthy direction to take for the future of the franchise. And this isn't even something new, they had Capcom develop the oracle games and Minish Cap in the past, and Monolith already helped them with games like A Link Between Worlds. I personally also enjoy spin-offs like the Hyrule Warriors games and even Cadence of Hyrule quite a lot and wouldn't be mad if we got more games like those from third party studios while the main Zelda team focused on the next big projects.