Saturday, January 14, 2017

Breath of the Wild: The 4 Giant Guardians

Let's start digging a little bit deeper. Yesterday Nintendo showed us more glimpses at the story of Breath of the Wild and the "Legend of Calamity Ganon", where we can put certain things together to understand what the main goals of the game might might be. Some of the mysteries from last year could even be solved now.

For example we have seen this huge flying thing in the air and the big monster climbing over Death Mountain several times during E3. You can see both of them from a great distance and it now seems that these are in fact Giant Guardians... In the new trailer you can spot the one from Death Mountain:


Now, in the Treehouse Live stream Nintendo then showed the map that comes with the Master Edition of the game. And on the back of said map there is an interesting illustration that shows the "Legend of the Calamity Ganon":


Take a good look here. In the center, below Hyrule Castle, you can spot Ganon surrounded by dozens and dozens of Guardians (I wonder, if this represents the actual number in the game). In the corners you can see what appears to be four giant guardians: a bird, a gecko, an elephant and a camel. The bird we have also seen before in the Life in the Ruins trailer, where it is shown in both a blue and a purple red state. In the new trailer we can also spot the other three, you can see the feet of the moving elephant guardian, the camel guardian sunken in the desert and the "gecko" making a fiery climb through the mountains. They are all there.

Additionally, in the artwork they all have someone, who rides and commands them. Here it looks like the Sheikah technology was used to banish Calamity Ganon into Hyrule Castle and that makes a lot of sense from what we already know. But in the present the technology was corrupted by Ganon. You have the Guardians in their purple red state running around, wreaking havoc. And the four giant guardians also seem to be corrupted.

Link's mission probably will be to undo the corruption and bring them back into control of their riders. These riders will essentially be the "Seven Sages" of this game and we've potentially seen them all in the trailer. There is one of each race: the flying guardian is guided by the Rito, the gecko by the Gorons, the camel by the Gerudo and the elephant by the Zora.

It's still not sure, whether the new bird people really are the Rito, but looking at the new evolved Zora designs, it's entirely possible. There are Zora based on different species of fish (which is yet another thing that reminds me of One Piece next to Arms, because the new Zora seem a lot closer to the Fishmen from that saga) and similar there could be Rito based on different types of birds. Anyway, the "Bird Link" is guiding the flying guardian, we've even seen him fly up to it in the previous trailer, and the "Here it comes!!!" Goron guy is probably in charge of the gecko guardian.


And all this could relate to the rumors from last year that the game will have four main dungeons and one hundred minidungeons. The part about the minidungeons came true with the Sheikah shrines, but so far we haven't seen or heard anything about the other four dungeons.

Until now. Those four giant guardians might be the four main dungeons! It's not as apparent with the flying bird and the climbing gecko, because they don't look as big at first glance, but take a look at the scene from the new trailer, where Link and the Gerudo girl stand in front of what seems to be the entrance of a dungeon:


That's the camel giant!

So, this means that the game might offer four dungeons that are actually giant creatures moving through the world. That's quite impressive and it's certainly a lot more original than having yet another set of Forest, Fire, Water and Desert Temples.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

We actually haven't seen the Elephant yet. Take another look at the thing we see moving. The legs long, thin, and ridged, and the feet are muffin-shaped. If we compare those to the Elephant shown on the map, they don't match. However, if you compare them to the Camel on the map, they line up perfectly. It's also worth nothing that the thing we see is moving through a sandstorm/desert, which is where we also see the sunken Camel. So I guess Link must do something to sink the Camel before gaining access to it's dungeon.

TourianTourist said...

Good points. Since the camel was sunken, I automatically assumed that the thing with the giant moving legs was the elephant...