Saturday, February 11, 2023

Tears of the Kingdom – Sheikah Tech and Slate?

Link surrounded by Guardian tentacles

So far we hadn't seen any kind of Sheikah technology in the sequel to Breath of the Wild. Link and Zelda seemingly were not carrying the Sheikah Slate while spelunking into the depths of Hyrule, and Link receives his new magic gauntlet gadget to replace it. Meanwhile, in the shots of the overworld we couldn't see any Divine Beasts, Sheikah Shrines, Towers, Guardians, or the pillars that stored the Guardians... it was all gone.

This created quite a mystery, since everything was still in place when we left off at the end of Breath of the Wild, save for a malfunctioning Vah Ruta. We could only speculate, where a simple explanation is that it all wasn't needed any longer with the threat of Calamity Ganon gone. So, it all simply dissolved, having fulfilled their original purpose, much like the Sheikah monks do.

However, the Sheikah, Zelda, and everyone else should be well aware that the threat of Calamity Ganon could return in the future, so maybe they decided to discard of all the technology, considering how it can be taken over by Ganon's Malice and be turned against Hyrule... Alternatively, some unknown event could have led to the disappearance of the Sheikah constructions.

We don't know what happened, but the new trailer now has turned things on the head by revealing that Sheikah technology might be still a thing in the sequel after all. We can see Link standing on a platform made out of Sheikah technology and surrounded by Guardian tentacles:

circle of Guardian tentacles

One of the tentacles hands him some kind of spool with a green glow at the end, indicating that it has something to do with the new magic system. The rest of the room seems to be inside a Sheikah house and it all looks hastily cobbled together, where it's likely that this was all done by Robbie. According to Zeltik's analysis the letters on the platform spell "transport", where this could be an elevator that leads underground. Maybe Robbie is also using Sheikah technology to dig into the earth.

We also see new towers in the trailer, which can have either a red or blue glow, where these might be new Sheikah Towers, but we can't say for sure. It may be something else entirely and they certainly don't look the same, but like the "elevator" made out of Guardian parts it may be something improvised by the Sheikah, basically as a replacement for the old towers that have disappeared.

What's Sheikah technology for sure is what Zelda holds in her hand in her official artwork:

artwork of Zelda with a torch in her right hand and a Sheikah Slate in her left

That's a Sheikah Slate, but not the Sheikah Slate from Breath of the Wild. This one looks a lot more like a Nintendo Switch, which is certainly a nod to how the original Sheikah Slate was going to represent the Wii U GamePad. But what happened to the it? Does Link still have it in the beginning of the game? Or was it also lost, together with the Divine Beasts, Shrines, and so on? In any case, either Zelda has found a second Sheikah Slate, or someone made her one, most likely Purah.

It's of note how the back of device looks more sophisticated, almost like the Sheikah symbol is a device of its own attached to the slate. This could be a new function, where in the concept arts for Sheikah Slate you can find the idea of a mechanical dragonfly, which was going to work like the Beetle in Skyward Sword.

Ultimately, they decided against including it, just like the Hookshot, but the changed environments with the sky and underground, which will certainly be much more difficult to traverse, it could have made the development team reconsider these items...

But why introduce a new Sheikah Slate, with potentially new abilities, if we're not going to use it? Well, it could indicate that Zelda is playable in the game after all and the Sheikah Slate will be her main tool, much like in Age of Calamity, while Link gets the new magic hand. For the early game, where they are spelunking, I could easily see how there is a coop mechanic, similar to Spirit Tracks, which lets you swap between Link, who uses weapons, and Zelda, who uses the Sheikah Slate.

But let's not get our hopes up just yet, because it could also be just a mere design choice and the slate gets destroyed by Malice within the game's prologue, much like the Master Sword, while Zelda just disappears into the darkness for the rest of the game.

In any case, it's interesting that we will be dealing with Sheikah technology to some capacity in the sequel. In the very least we will get an explanation as to what happened to most of it.

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