Skyward Sword and The Founding of Hyrule
Posted on June 30 2011 by Nathanial Rumphol-Janc
 
Yesterday was a big day in terms of news. The comments are still in an uproar over Nintendo of America’s response to Operation Rainfall. However, while this could be considered bad news, let’s not forget that yesterday was a good news day as well. In case you missed it, let me point you towards Eiji Aonuma’s interview.
 
We learned a lot more about Skyward Sword yesterday, and now that I’ve had the night to sleep on it, I’m ready to talk about it.
 
Up until now we have received enough information from press conferences, interviews and demos to gather a general idea for the plot of the game. Link lives in Skyloft, a city in the sky. Zelda is kidnapped and Link follows after in an attempt to rescue her. Throughout the game he travels between the land above the clouds and the land below. The land below is full of monsters and all sorts of baddies. And somehow, the Skyward Sword, who becomes the Master Sword, is involved in all of this.
 
This year’s E3 provided a lot of clarification concerning the overall plot of the game, something we hardly got a glimpse at last year, and yesterday’s comments from Aonuma have unleashed a fresh round of theorizing and speculation.
 
While gameplay is very very very very very important for a video game, when it comes to action adventure games, like Zelda, story is equally as important. Not only do Zelda fans want to have a fun time playing the game, but they also want to make an emotional attachment to the world and its characters. The best way to do this is to have a solid plot with conflict that puts good characters into interesting, and ultimately entertaining, situations.
 
So after all the tidbits we’ve heard throughout June, here’s my take on what story we’ll be presented with later this fall.
 
Let’s start with Skyloft. When we first heard about the Laputa-esque city, everyone’s thoughts immediately jumped to the Sky Temple in Twilight Princess. So let’s start off with what we learned about this City in the Sky back in 2006. According to Shad (everyone’s favorite spectacle-wearing Hylian):
 
But also according to legend, long ago there was a race even closer to the gods, and some say these creatures made the Hylians. When they created the people of Hylia, they simultaneously created a new capital, a city that floated in the heavens. They dwelt there…and some scholars believe that this race lives there still, somewhere in the great sky.
 
The whole concept of Hylians, as we heard before, is that they were a chosen race by the gods. Their ears are pointy so that they have higher sensitivity to hearing messages from these Gods. As the games progress, more humans (rounded ears) appear as a symbol of the people of Hyrule losing their connection to their roots.
 
So with this in mind let’s think about the state of the world in Skyward. Hylians live in Skyloft, Lord Demon Ghirahim’s tribe appears to be from below the clouds (we don’t know enough about their origin to make assumptions just yet), and the general Moblin monsters live on the earth. There are no signs of humans, so we can ignore them in this article. The Hylians only exist in Skyloft; they haven’t ventured to Hyrule yet.
 
According to the creation story featured in Ocarina of Time, Din made the earth, Nayru made the skies and the laws (these could be civil laws and/or physical laws), and Farore “with her rich soul, produced all life forms who would uphold the law.” I always assumed that this meant the Hylians, but according the Shad someone else did: a race that was even closer to the goddesses.
 
All Hyrulian origin stories up to this point have the three goddesses at top tier of the supernatural. Light spirits, sages, and entities like the Wind Fish and the Deku Tree lie somewhere in between the Hyrulians and the goddesses. The Deku Tree made the Kokiri, so its possible that someone besides Farore made the Hylians. Perhaps she just created the spark of life, and let it grow as it would on the earth, the land below the clouds. This brings me to the following:
 
 
When I first saw the statue above I was confused on why there was only one of the three goddesses represented in Skyloft. I wondered if perhaps there were three separate statues spread out over Skyloft, but then I wondered if it was someone else entirely. Whoever they are, they clearly have some religious importance and so, apparently, does Zelda.
 
In the trailer we see her standing right below this statue, which features the bird feature of the Hylian crest on its base (By the way, can I just express now how happy I am that we know why there’s a bird on that crest now?). She also has this image from the crest on her attire. Coincidently, just like the bird crest on the statue, we see the same image on the door in the room where we first meet/battle Ghirahim.
 
Firstly, this makes me wonder if the image on the statue is a door as well. Secondly, why is this crest down in this temple? Where did this temple even come from? All evidence would suggest that the Hylians of Skyloft built it, but this Sky Temple is below the clouds, and is doesn’t show signs of habitation (it’s overgrown with plants). Perhaps whoever created the Hylians also created this temple. After all, according to Shad, whoever created the Hylians also created Skyloft. Is this temple part of the one we saw in Twilight Princess, or is what we saw in Twilight Princess part of Skyloft? Or perhaps this is just an older part of Skyloft that has sunk down below the clouds? Or perhaps it was stolen? We know it’s important enough that we visit the Sky Temple multiple times throughout the course of Skyward Sword.
 
But returning to Zelda, and her potential religious importance, when we first meet Ghirahim, he says the following:
 
It’s just the girl that matter now, and I can sense her here… just beyond this door. Yes, we plucked her holiness from her perch in the clouds and now she’s ours…
 
She maters now, as in she didn’t before? Or maybe they had multiple targets in the beginning? He refers to her as her “holiness.” We know that Zelda is not a princess in this game, and it safe to say that there is no royal family, at least not in the beginning of the game. Yet Zelda still has some importance in Skyloft, enough to make her the prize of the bird game, where Link wins a date with her. I believe she’s a priestess of sorts, but I don’t believe this is why Zelda she is important to Ghirahim.
 
 
Zelda was important enough for the Gods to send, what I believe from the picture above, the Wind Fish. They took her to closest safe place, the Sky Temple, where she is protected behind the door from which Ghirahim senses her. He can’t get to her now.
 
The Triforce is conspicuously absent from the Hylian crest at this point in Hyrule’s history, and, based on everything we’ve heard about Skyward Sword, I believe that this game is a story about the founding of the Royal Family upon the earth, where they tame the earth and establish Hyrule. Additionally, it is a story about the origins of the Master Sword, and we know that game relates back to Ocarina of Time.
 
It is my theory that Link and Zelda discover the Triforce in this game. And whatever connection Zelda has to the Triforce is why she’s so important to Ghirahim. Furthermore, I believe Ghirahim’s tribe is the tribe of interlopers, or the tribe that becomes the interlopers, who were sequentially banished to the Twilight Realm.
 
Ghirahim looks like a Twili. Not only does he have the blue skin, but also he uses magic that has a near-identical (diamonds rather than squares) visual effect as Midna’s. Furthermore, the interlopers were banished because they wished to claim the Triforce for themselves. They were stopped only because the Gods intervened, and the gods are certainly involved in Skyward Sword.
 
Afterwards, the Sacred Realm and the Triforce were sealed away. The Master Sword became the key, and the Temple of Time was built around the Master Sword. Additionally, the sages created the seal, and fans have already made comparisons between the man in orange robes in Skyloft and Rauru. The Royal Family also built their castle and established their rule over Hyrule nearby. Looking at the next game in series’ timeline, The Minish Cap, we see a young Hyrule Castle amongst a still very untamed earth.
 
I could also see the founding of the Sheikah in this game since not only is Sheik’s lyre in the game, but there have been numerous theorized Sheikah connections between the interlopers, the Twili, and the Majora’s Mask, which many believe to have been made by the interlopers.
 
Even with all this said, I still believe that Skyward Sword is going to be more than this. There’s no way Nintendo has spilled all their secrets to us, and Skyward Sword will no doubt have twists and turns that none of us will expect. And judging from Aonuma’s comments about how neither he nor Miyamoto has had a chance to play the whole game through yet, the game certainly had a decent level of depth.
 
But out of all of Aonuma’s comments yesterday, the one that proves that this game is more than what is appears is that confirmation that while Ganondorf may not be directly involved in the game, and that it touches upon his origins:
 
This game talks about the birth of the Master Sword, and it touches on why Ganondorf showed up. If you play it, I think you’ll get some understanding on that. It connects to Ocarina, so if you play Ocarina of Time 3D and move on to this game, I think you’ll catch on to a lot of things.
 
So far I have had no real evidence to suggest that Ganondorf would be involved in this game at all. So this was certainly a surprise (well it would have been a surprise if he wasn’t in nearly every game).
 
 
This game’s plot is something like a school drama, you could say. The flying sequence at the E3 demo is Link competing against his classmates. One of them looks kind of a like a bad guy, as you saw, and he shows up in other ways in the game too, since he has a major thing for Zelda.
 
Because of above quote, many fans are theorizing that the red-haired kid, that one of Link’s Skyloft classmates is an early incarnation of Ganondorf.
 
While I may not 100% agree with this idea, I find it extremely interesting, especially since Anouma decided to sum up the game’s plot with this love triangle. Though he could have just been summing up the Skyloft characters’ arc.
 
Others are theorizing that Twinrova (she/they did raise Ganondorf after all) might make an appearance because the game’s director, Hidemaro Fujibayashi, also directed the Oracle games, where the villainess makes an appearance. I’m not sold on this either because I don’t see how Twinrova could be connected to the story as it is currently laid out.
 
If, as I’ve already theorized in this article, Link and Zelda do find the Triforce, and if Ganondorf is in this game (please be a good guy if you are), then I’d want for Ganondorf to be there as well when they discover it.
 
Overall, yesterday’s interview has made me even more excited for the game, and I can’t wait to play it.
 
Readers, what are your big Skyward Sword theories?
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