One of the questions on the minds of Zelda fans is what actually happened to the Sheikh Towers and Guardians from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as they weren’t present in the excellent follow up, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Mr. Fujibayashi says that the Sheikah technology simply disappeared and the disappearance was witnessed by the people of Hyrule and it is considered an unexplained mystery. Here’s what was said by Hidemaro Fujibayashi:
Players have remarked in some cases on the lack of in-universe explanations for some of the changes to Hyrule. Notably that the Sheikah Towers and Guardians which were a central part of the Breath Of The Wild have disappeared entirely. Nintendo has its own internal explanations about what happened: “They disappeared after the Calamity was defeated (sealed),” Fujibayashi explains. “All of the people of Hyrule also witnessed this, but there is no one who knows the mechanism or reason why they disappeared, and it is considered a mystery. It is believed that since the Calamity disappeared, they also disappeared as their role had been fulfilled.
“It is, anyway, commonplace for mysterious events and strange phenomena to occur in Hyrule,” he offers, mischievously. “Thus, people have simply assumed the reason behind the disappearance to likely be related to ancient Sheikah technology and it seems there is no one who has tried to explore the matter further. The main civilizations in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are completely different, so we thought about the game based on concepts that match each of these civilizations.” The short answer? Don’t worry about it.
Seems to me, they didn’t actually bother coming up with an explanation for those 120+ shrines and skyscraper-sized superweapons suddenly vanishing and were hoping we wouldn’t notice they were gone.
I see there is already complaints about this. This is one of the many mysteries of the series, like what happened to the 3 Goddesses that never appeared on-screen again and what happened to every incarnation of Link and Zelda after each game’s stories. It is supposed for us to imagine and think about the mythos. Fans don’t need to get angry at things like this, not everything needs a full fledged explanation. We are meant to relax and enjoy the games.
Either way, it was implied that after the Sheikah tech served its purpose, to protect Hyrule from the Calamity, it simply went away, Shrines, Towers and the Divine Beasts returned to the ground. Probably to prevent that they would be corrupted and fall into the wrong hands again. Fujibayashi supports this as he says on the interview: “It is believed that since the Calamity disappeared, they also disappeared as their role had been fulfilled.”
I like to think that they all just converted into pure energy and just dispersed.
It once again proves Tears of the Kingdom isn’t a very polished game.
It doesn’t “prove” that in the slightest lmao
Still there’s the Guardian remains atop the Hateno Lab, as well as the Ancient Blades spread throughout the game, so not all Sheikah tech has vanished in Tears of the Kingdom.
Which is in my eyes inconsistent game design. But that’s about the only complaint I have about how they designed the game.
“Somehow Palpatine Returned
I assumed their parts were used to make the skyview towers.
Man, they could have easily just said that Purah and Robbie deconstructed them in order to build the new Sheikah tech (like the Purah pad and the sky towers). Breaking them down to understand how they work, using the remaining pieces in order to build newer, sleeker designs-
They could have said that the Divine Beasts mysteriously vanished, but when you say that every single piece of technology disappeared suddenly, that sounds far less like an in universe mystery and more like a lazy excuse to move on from them.
I love TotK and I’m glad that the Sheikah tech didn’t get the full focus of the game, but the lack of acknowledgment about the whereabouts of the tech always stuck out as very odd to me.
Let’s face it… Tears of the Kingdom doesn’t feel polished. A lot of the story and side missions have plot holes and the new game machanics like making vehicles can easily break the game to be way to EASY.
Like the fact that Rauru knew Ganon had evil intentions but literally did nothing? Like… He knew he was evil
The game is highly polished, probably one of the most polished games that has come out in recent years, the fact that the game works as intended without massive crashes, and that the updates it had recieves were barely megabytes in size as oppose to so many “AAA” games having literally first day GB sized patch to fix half the game shows the ammount of polish Totk had, that the story or some sidequests have plotholes it’s merely the fault of the developers not wanting to make Botw a “neccesary” play to understand Totk.
Tell me you couldn’t come up with a creative reason for their absence without telling me. … Is that what the kids say now?
“…attempt to explain…” yup, sums it up perfectly.
I’m gonna tell you the real reason why there’s no explanation, because Totk’s story suffers from the “no need to play the first game” syndrome so many developers are doing when making a sequel. This is because they fear people that might wanna play THE SEQUEL would be thrown off having to play the previous game to understand the story and not buy the game until they play the first, so to “fix” that, they just make up a new story that has nothing to do with the previous entry and just vaguely referencing some stuff here and there, in fact, there’s almost no mention of the divine beasts other than the helmets, just look at the zora murals that talk about the indicent with Vah Ruta, it literally never mentions the divine beast, only that the region “suffered a big catastrophe”. No way the event that almost destroyed the entirety of Hyrule is now shrugged off by almost anyone, let alone that not even connecting the dots that Ganondorf is the source of Calamity Ganon.
And yes, I’m sure the developers don’t really have an answer themselves and just resort to the lame “leave it to fan’s intepretation”, that’s why the “don’t worry about it” comment at the end, which I don’t get it, it’s actually pretty easy to keep a story consistent while having enough freedom to explore new stories and themes.