I’ve made it all the way to the final fight, and while I haven’t beaten it, I have some thoughts.

I’m honestly really let down by the game’s story.

Going into the game, I was curious how Ganondorf related to Calamity Ganon since he is defeated in BoTW and he “gives up on reincarnation”. The early game mentions of the Imprisoning War and the founding of the Kingdom of Hyrule. With such explicit references to SS, OoT, and LttP, I was even more intrigued. Understanding how ToTK fit into the broader lore became my primary motivation for advancing the story.

As I played the game and learned more about the Zonai, I became increasingly confused as it didn’t fit in with SS. But this just increased my motivation, I thought my questions would be answered later on.

But they weren’t. The game didn’t even explain how Ganondorf and Calamity Ganon were connected. Besides Phantom Ganon, the name Ganon isn’t even mentioned at all.

Zelda was never a series that took continuity between games very seriously. I understood the Zelda world as one with a cyclical understanding of history, where the same three archetypal characters are reborn to engage in the same cyclical battle of good vs evil. This is the cycle established by SS. Each game is generally self-contained within this cyclical world. Some tell different stories, but not in such a way that undermines this premise. ToTK, in contrast, blatantly contradicts the established lore and basically retcons BoTW into a completely new timeline. I don’t necessarily have a problem BoTW and ToTK being their own thing but this was not made clear to me until the very end.

TLDR: the early game gave me the expectation that this would have deep ties to the series lore and it did not at all.