Tears of the Kingdom – Catastrophes & Dungeons

Nintendo of Japan has released a couple of TV commercials, which are based on the epic final trailer for Tears of the Kingdom, but also show a couple of new scenes. In the first spot, for example, you get a better view on Gerudo Desert, which is plagued by sandstorms and giant sinkholes in the sand.

This is certainly an important theme with Tears of the Kingdom. In Breath of the Wild the four Divine Beasts have caused trouble in their respective regions, some more so than others, and you had to free them to stop these disasters. Now, the "Upheaval", which presumably is Ganondorf's doing, has caused these disasters all around Hyrule:

• Zora's Domain is sunken in black goo, which is flowing down from the skies.
  
• Death Mountain is sprawling Malice, where there are these weird looking "organic" rocks everywhere, which could be infected with Malice.
• There is a giant Tornado above the Hebra Mountains.
• The Gerudo Desert has sandstorms and sinkholes everywhere.
  

Mirroring the events of Breath of the Wild, you will most likely partner up with someone from these regions again to fight these catastrophes. There are Riju, Sidon, Tulin, and an unknown Goron, but most likely Yunobo. There seems to be a boss hidden within these catastrophes and they could be what's causing them. We saw the huge ice boss inside the tornado. And we saw this thing in the Zora-themed sky dungeon:

It could just be a bigger enemy, but it's possible that they've shown us the boss there, which is also the source of the black goo raining down on Zora's Domain. And this would be thematically very similar to the first half of Ocarina of Time, where Ganondorf had caused disasters for the different tribes in Hyrule in his quest to obtain the Spiritual Stones, and you had to defeat bosses inside dungeons, like Gohma and King Dodongo, to bring back peace to these areas.

Now, Sidon's and Tulin's dungeons are found in the sky, while Death Mountain and the desert will lead you into the underground. So, there would be two major sky dungeons and two major underground dungeons if all of this were to add up.

We know, however, that there are more than four tears. And I was getting quite excited about this, because with seven tears in total it could mean that we get to see the "Seven Sages" and with each sage a dungeon. But the symbols on the tears are also featured as pins within the Collector's Edition of the game, where there are only four pins. This could mean that four of the tears are more special than the others, which most likely would be the four tears that you get via the main dungeons.

You will already receive the first tear, the one from Zelda with the Recall ability, at the beginning of the game. And Ganondorf is in possession of one of the tears as well, though we don't know which one. He could have stolen it from the Gorons, for example. But if it's a tears of its own and it's not to be obtained until the end of the game, then this will only leave one more tear... (Update: the events with Ganondorf all seem to take place in the past, where he likely doesn't the tear anymore.)

Of course the tribes of the Champions are not the only ones who got affected by the Upheaval. Kakariko was hit by ruins fallen from the sky. And the Great Deku Tree seems to have disappeared. But these don't look like ongoing catastrophes, where you have to stop them before it gets worse (not that it ever gets worse).

I could even imagine that the tears with the kanji for "look" or "see" on it will be received from the Sheikah, also early in the game. It might be something on the lines of the Eye of Truth or Mask of Truth, revealing things that otherwise would be hidden to you. Or it could simply be a replacement for Stasis+, something that lets you highlight enemies and interactable objects in the environment.

However, this would be a bit of a letdown if the Sheikah got downplayed this way, even though they were quite important to the backstory of Breath of the Wild. But the Sheikah of the present only really were good for side quests and nothing more. Which is also true for the Koroks. And these tribes have been part of the Sages in the past...

So, let's see, but I'm not getting my hopes up for more than four main dungeons with this, where it would be the same as in Breath of the Wild, only with more visual variety and more interactions with your companions. With that in mind, you can also probably ignore my post about additional base weapon types, because those might not become a thing.