Daily Debate: How Satisfied are You with the Tears of the Kingdom Director’s Explanation on Missing Sheikah Technology?
Posted on October 14 2023 by Kristen G. Rosario
Since its release, fans have borne witness to the critical praise of Tears of the Kingdom. Regardless of whatever releases this October — the busiest (and spookiest) season of the video game year — the latest Zelda instalment is going to be acknowledged as a standout title of 2023. Unfortunately, the game isn’t as perfect as one might hope around these parts, though. One of its bigger criticisms is the fact that it has certain discontinuity issues with Breath of the Wild, and more specifically, the Sheikah technology scattered throughout that game.
We go from having Sheikah Towers, Shrines, Rune abilities, and Divine Beasts, to all of that being gone by the time you start up the beginning of Tears of the Kingdom. There is no definitive explanation as to where every piece of Sheikah tech went after the events of Breath of the Wild. Did they go back into the ground? Was it all upgraded thanks to the Zonai technology that shows up? After all the theorizing about what truly happened, you would think the recent comments made by Tears of the Kingdom director Hidemaro Fujibayashi would help with this debate.
In a recent interview with the UK publication The Telegraph, Fujibayashi gave an explanation about the disappearance of Sheikah technology…sort of. His reasoning basically boils down to the tech just disappeared, and the citizens just accepted that it happened because strange stuff happens in Hyrule all the time.
“They disappeared after the Calamity was defeated (sealed)… 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… 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.”
While this is some form of a response to the questions coming from Zelda fans, it really doesn’t give a definitive answer. The biggest Vah Ruta in the room is that it feels like such a small band-aid kind of response. Some kind of in-game cutscene, or discussion with Impa in the game would’ve helped quell the fiery discussions online. The director of Tears of the Kingdom just telling us the equivalent of “stuff happens” doesn’t help anything.
I get that back in the day, the average Zelda title didn’t necessarily require an explanation for games in the series following up previous instalments. Fans grew up with the franchise for so long that they started to realize how non-direct new titles could be. In fact, I still remember when content creator James Rolfe (AKA The Angry Video Game Nerd) released a video about how ridiculous the connections started to get with Zelda. Of course, Nintendo would eventually release a full timeline during the 25th anniversary of Zelda, displaying when all the games took place up until that point. It helped explain so much that gamers were dying to know.
With this Tears of the Kingdom explanation though, not a lot of fans are looking for a novel’s length equivalent of what happened to the Sheikah technology. However we’re looking for better answers from the people who give us a video game series we absolutely love to praise. Do not think that we’re all satisfied with “stuff happens” because I’m certainly not.
How satisfied are you with the Tears of the Kingdom director’s comments on Sheikah tech? Do you think a better explanation needs to be given considering the significance of said tech from Breath of the Wild? Let us know in the comments below!
Kristen G. Rosario is an Editor who joined Zelda Dungeon back in September of 2015. His current goal is to become a full-time video game journalist, hoping to eventually gain a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism. While he pursues that dream, he not only takes care of his adorable dachshund Angel, but also helps run a YouTube channel with his brother. The Zelda series is a quest he hasn’t fully completed yet, but hopes to get there one day.
