When it comes to entries in The Legend of Zelda series, the games’ plots are typically rather straightforward. But with the last two entries, interweaving moments within the past and present helped shape the story, especially for characters like Link and Zelda. In Tears of the Kingdom (read our review!), more characters helped make the game special, including the first ruler of Hyrule, Rauru. There was so much going on in the game at times that you might have missed certain things that helped expand the world’s history. Thankfully, Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Eiji Aonuma, who directed and produced the game respectively, did an interview to help reveal these hidden story points.
The interview, translated by Nintendo Everything, highlighted many facts about Tears of the Kingdom, such as how Rauru was able to imprison Ganondorf in the first place:
In that cutscene, Rauru used his sealing powers to draw out Ganondorf’s magic from his heart and purify it. The released purified magic became a spiral of light. Also, this has to do with the lore of Hyrule Castle, but the original Hyrule Castle was not at that location. We see Ganondorf sealed right under the place of Hyrule Castle in our heroes’ time, which was the best location to keep him sealed. It is like a “dragon vein”*. And Hyrule Castle is one part of the barrier that helps release Rauru’s purification of the evil magic.
And if you think about it, when Zelda goes back to the early days of Hyrule, the castle is not where it was in the present. The duo noted that after Ganondorf’s defeat, the people of Hyrule moved things around, including the castle, to help create barriers of protection to keep the Demon King sealed. However, thanks to Calamity Ganon, the castle was wrecked, and that led to the magic fading until Ganondorf could resurrect.
Oh, and did you ever wonder where those shrines came from?
“The shrines themselves were built before Rauru founded Hyrule – before the Demon King Ganondorf appeared there were still a lot of evil beings, so Rauru and Sonia went around various places to calm things down. Shrines are placed above where a demon was destroyed so it will not reappear. This is why that spiral of light emerges from the shrine. Therefore, bathing in the remaining power of the shrines slightly cleanses Link of the demon magic.”
As you can see, the Tears of the Kingdom crew thought of everything when they fleshed out this world.
