Calamity Ganon - A Deconstruction of Villainy

with Calamity Ganon it felt to me like the developers had compressed every single villain from the entire series into this pure concentrated form of evil Calamity Ganon is evil in its purest form not a man not a monster but instead something more like a force of nature a natural disaster the destruction that Calamity Ganon rot feels more like the destruction of a flood or an earthquake or a fire than the kind of Destruction any lone man can inflict but Calamity Ganon is not totally mindless he is not actually a natural disaster Calamity Ganon is capable of thought he is capable of scheming he saw the preparations that the people of Hyrule were making to prevent his return and in response he made preparations of his own Calamity Ganon is capable of biting his time of working quietly of working in secret he's not just this massive booming destructive force Calamity Ganon spent years perhaps even centuries learning how to corrupt the Guardians and the Divine beasts the very tools the ancient chica had created to destroy him which had successfully sealed him away ten thousand years in breath of the Wild's past he must have spent years devising strategies to corrupt these creations to master them to turn them against those they were meant to protect Princess Zelda and the sheikah tribe in Hyrule Kingdom all poured years of work into unearthing restoring and learning to control these same ancient Creations but in doing so they were actually aiding Calamity Ganon all along the more Princess Zelda and the rest of the characters worked with these Guardians and trusted them and relied on them for protection the more they were unwittingly inviting Calamity ganon's influence into their domains in their attempts to stop him they were instead aiding him sealing their own Fates this is a type of villainy that Nintendo has returned to again and again with ganon's character over the years Gannon is a kind of villain who is very happy to let Our Heroes do his work for him he loves to use the work you've done to stop him against you for example back in Ocarina of Time Princess Zelda and Link gathered the three spiritual stones in order to unseal the sacred realm and claim the power of the Triforce before Ganondorf could but when link finally does unseal the sacred realm Ganondorf follows him and claims the Triforce anyway link did all of ganondorf's work for him if link had not ever collected those spiritual Stones Ganondorf may never have gotten in at all something similar happens in the Wind Waker in that game the Triforce of Courage has been shattered and its shards hidden specifically to prevent Ganondorf from claiming them in order to defeat Ganondorf link gathers all those shards and restores the Triforce of Courage but this plays right into ganondorf's hands because with all three parts of the Triforce hole again and gathered in the same spot he can use their power to dispel the flood waters and bring his beloved Hyrule back to the surface again and again n in the series The Writers pull the same twist whatever work you've done whatever progress you've made somehow the villain turns that against you uses it to further their own schemes and that's exactly what's happening in breath of the wild story too the sheikah created all this incredibly powerful technology to destroy Calamity Ganon and instead Calamity Ganon uses that technology to destroy Hyrule Kingdom there's a recurring theme of unintended consequences in these games our heroes are good and courageous but also rash they don't think all the way through the consequences of their actions the ways in which they might be serving their enemy this creates villains who feel like they are always one step ahead Master strategists Master thinkers even when we feel like we're winning we're actually losing because the villain has already thought three moves ahead of our plans it makes the villains feel powerful intimidating intelligent like a true danger it raises the stakes the reason Nintendo keeps reusing this plot twist is because it's is an easy way to make the villains seem threatening in breath of the wild Calamity Ganon is also a corrupting Force he corrupts the Guardians and the Divine beasts takes what should have been good machines and turns them evil this is actually a relatively unique trait for a villain in the Zelda series in most of the games the good characters are always good and the bad characters are always bad and there's no switching sides Ganondorf isn't usually able to corrupt the good characters or lure them to his side I think the reason why breath of the wild is different is because its World includes a lot of advanced technology which is also pretty unique for the series most of the games are strictly medieval fantasy they don't usually have giant battle mechs or robots the villains in this series cannot corrupt a human heart if deep down in the core of your being you are a good person then in the Zelda series The Villain will never be able to affect you even something like Majora's Mask is only able to manipulate Skull Kid Because deep down his heart was bitter and resentful Ganondorf is only able to manipulate Zant in Twilight Princess for the same reason you have to already have Darkness hidden in your heart in order for the villain to manipulate you but the villain can freely corrupt technology technology is morally neutral it is as good or as evil as the person who is wielding it which you can see with the Divine beasts under Calamity ganon's influence they are forces for Destruction under the influence of the Champions they become forces for purification for the eradication of evil this is another theme that has appeared in many other Zelda games the moral neutrality of power morality determined by who wields that power the Triforce is a common recurring McGuffin in The Legend of Zelda series something all the characters are searching for and attempting to possess a magical artifact of great power but like the Divine beasts the triforce's power is truly morally neutral its effects will be as good or evil as the person who wields it if a good person claims the Triforce the world will be made good if an evil person claims it then the world will be shrouded in darkness in The Legend of Zelda series the only true evil in the world can be found within the hearts of man not in power or technology and this remains basically true in breath of the wild because Calamity Ganon is fundamentally despite what I said earlier still a man I know he looks like a giant swirling mass of purple energy and also later like a weird giant spider creature with a laser gun and a fantastic beard and then after that a giant pig with laser breath but I swear at his core he is actually just a dude breath of the wild seems to me like the first game in the series that has really embraced the convoluted Legend of Zelda Timeline just about every other Zelda game with a couple exceptions have felt like self-contained Stories the connections between games were interesting but unessential to the plot but not in breath of the wild in this game it really feels like it matters that these characters have been getting resurrected for tens of thousands if not for hundreds of thousands of years and particularly in the case of Calamity Ganon because I think those countless repeated Cycles explain why Calamity Ganon looks the way he does why he acts the way he does in this game so let's very briefly discuss the Legend of Zelda Timeline because I think it will help us understand exactly what calamity Ganon is the timeline begins with Skyward Sword in that game there were three key characters first was an evil demon Lord who sought total power total control and total Destruction second there was a benevolent goddess who sacrificed most of her power to protect the people she cared about and who was reborn as a human girl and finally there was the humble but courageous human Warrior who Against All Odds defeated the Demon Lord in battle in every Zelda game the spirits of these three characters are being reborn again and again a countless number of times to reenact their old struggle in a Timeless battle between good and evil the three characters are always some version of Ganondorf Princess Zelda and Link Ganondorf always seeks control and destruction Zelda always manifests a fragment of her ancient holy power and make sacrifices to protect others and Link always emerges from a humble background to defeat the bad guy in battle breath of the wild is for now the last game in the timeline by the time of breath of the wild these characters have been Reviving and reconfronting each other for Millennia and I think this explains why Calamity Ganon is in the state that he is while Zelda and Link still appear in human forms Calamity Ganon is Ganondorf he is every version of Ganondorf and Ganon we have ever seen in every single game time after time Gannon has arisen struggled bled fought for power and failed again and again and again he has failed these humiliate dating failures repeated countless times over the course of Millennia locked into this pitiful fate where he must always fight and always lose and always be angry and always be evil and always be a loser that cycle has decayed him degenerated him his Spirit has corroded rotted and Fallen apart he has decayed so much that he no longer has the form of a man he is barely even a beast or a monster for most of the game he is simply the swirling energy evil and hatred given pure form or he is malice this corroding acidic goop spreading across the land but again Zelda and Link are still being reborn as humans they still have human form why is that why do they get to be humans while Ganon has degenerated into this monstrous inhuman form their Spirits have been resurrected just as many times as ganons has they should be decayed too right I think there are two reasons for this firstly Zelda and Link are fight waiting for good and good acts should be spiritually enriching spiritually nourishing instead of being ground down every cycle by hateful thoughts and evil acts their Spirits are restored every cycle by their integrity and their virtue whereas Ganondorf every single cycle his soul is filled with anger and bitterness and those are corrosive emotions when you get really really angry it can tear you up inside anger can be like a physical force in your body making you sick making you hurt Ganondorf has been angry for a very long time for tens of thousands of years through thousands of lives and by the time of breath of the wild that anger has literally torn him apart he can't even maintain a human form anymore secondly Zelda and Link are winning every cycle they are successful every cycle after defeating Ganon they go on to live peaceful and enriching lives for decades they have years to heal from their conflict whereas Ganon dwarf is just dead every cycle he struggles and then he fails he has been failing for a long time he has been failing for just as long as he has been angry and failure can tear you up inside the same way anger does sometimes failure can be healthy can be teachable can be an opportunity for growth but when failure is repeated without progress when you fail and fail and fail without any hope of success that can make you sick too and it has made Calamity Ganon sick you can see it in that malice that corrosive ooze that spreads out from his body like it's infecting the Earth itself of course this is just a personal Theory as to why Calamity Ganon appears this way in breath of the wild Ganondorf will be returning with a human body in tears of the kingdom and I'm very curious to see how that Resurrection is going to happen and what the explanation for why it can happen at all is going to be maybe there will be some new lore explanation for these differences between Calamity Ganon and Ganondorf moving away from the Lord itself and instead examining Calamity Ganon from a writing perspective it seems to me that the writers of breath of the wild cut Ganon down to his most basic possible role as a villain all of the Legend of Zelda games are fundamentally stories about this epic Clash between good and evil Ganon or Ganondorf always serves as the representative for evil the character has appeared in a lot of different ways over the years in different games he will have different motivations a slightly different personality different powers Ganondorf and Ocarina of Time was this trickster King who is Conquering Hyrule for the sake of power in the Wind Waker he was an old man trying to revive his past in Twilight Princess he was a Condemned criminal taking revenge on the world that had cursed him but despite these pretty significant surface level differences between each character's motivations and circumstances underneath that surface they all served the same role in the story they were forces of Destruction misery and Chaos they were the source of all their world's worst problems they were the evil that our heroes had to defeat the obstacle to be overcome in breath of the wild the writers didn't bother with any of these surface level differences Calamity Ganon doesn't have any motivations or personality the writers cut him down to his most basic role in the story he is simply the villain he is evil he is a force for Destruction which must be stopped and nothing else it doesn't get any more basic than that I've wondered a lot about why the writers chose to do this I think pretty much everyone prefers a villain with a lot of character a lot of Personality who has complex motivations and a compelling story my favorite version of Ganondorf was in the Wind Waker when his motivations were a little more interesting than just an evil guy trying to violently seize power instead he seemed much more like a man clinging to the Past desperately doing everything he could to restore that past so he could live in that past again that's a villain with some complex and compelling motivation patients that's the kind of villain that I like Calamity Ganon is the exact opposite of that he has no motivation Beyond destruction so again the question on the floor is why did the writers of breath of the wild choose to depict him in this way they are definitely capable of creating compelling villains with a lot of personality if that's what they choose to do gear Raheem from Skyward Sword is another one of my favorite villains in the series because he has so much personality he was so outrageous and Theatrical but Calamity Ganon has none at all the writers made a different Choice here I think the explanation probably lies in the way Nintendo makes their games my understanding is that Nintendo typically makes the game first they create the gameplay the mechanics the physical levels first and then they write a story to match the gameplay afterwards for example back in Twilight Princess the developers chose to make a game where link transformed into a wolf and then they came up with a story to fit that gameplay just decision afterwards with breath of the wild the developers created this massive open world where the player can go anywhere they want right from the start and then afterwards they needed to write a story that fit this style of gameplay which must have been a really interesting challenge how do you write a traditional linear narrative when the players aren't going to experience the game in a linear way every player's Journey will follow a different path how do you write a story to match that I think I'm going to do a video that deep dives into that question later discussing how these writers crafted this game's story considering these challenges but for now I just want to focus on the villain I think the writers or developers must have felt that there was something about Calamity Ganon that worked well with this open-ended gameplay formula Calamity Ganon being an antagonist without personality or character or complex emotions solves certain story problems breath of the wild gameplay is all about wandering around in random directions and wasting time if Gannon had been a fully fleshed out character how would he fit into that style of gameplay Calamity Ganon can just sit in Hyrule castle for however long the player farts around the map because Calamity Ganon is just a simple force of evil contained within the castle if Ganon were an actual character though there would need to be some explanation for why he spends the whole game sitting around and doing nothing as a writer how could you make a Villain Like That compelling in previous games even though Ganondorf does spend a lot of time sitting around and waiting for link to reach him he does always interact with the player at various points during the story but that's because those were linear narratives where the developers could control exactly when and where the player would meet Ganondorf in breath of the wild where the developers have almost no control over when and where the player will do anything that's a more difficult challenge so cutting the villain down to his most basic possible role no character no personality no human form saw solves all of those problems Calamity Ganon can't interact with the player he can't do anything he's a magical source of evil and destruction that's currently contained within the castle it doesn't matter when and where the player does anything because Calamity Ganon will always be doing the same thing in the same place of course tears of the Kingdom will have the same style of open gameplay as breath of the wild but in the sequel the writers are bringing back a Ganondorf with a human form he's going to be an actual character again he's going to have a personality backstory motivations to accomplish this the writers must have found some other solution to that problem of how to make a villain work with this style of gameplay and I'm personally very very interested to see what that solution looks like moving on Calamity Ganon reminds me a lot of the old one in the game Demon Souls demon Soul's story was actually very similar to breath of the Wilds in both of these games you are exploring worlds that were nearly destroyed in the past by a calamitous immense being of incredible power at Great cost that destructive being was successfully contained but now it has awoken again the world is under new threat of Destruction it's up to the player character to explore this broken world and gather enough strength to seal that destructive being away again in Demon Souls that destructive being was called the old one the old one was this mysterious primeval life form whose only purpose was destruction it didn't seem to have any thought or motivation or personality it was this totally inhuman creature this totally other kind of life form which was the antithesis of all reality it didn't destroy for any particular reason it's being simply was destruction it couldn't choose to do anything else that was its nature and I think Calamity Ganon is really similar that's what calamity ganon's nature is too however when playing demons Souls I actually found the old one to be a much more compelling antagonist than Calamity Ganon even though they're basically identical to each other they serve the exact same role in their respective stories neither of them really has more character or lore than the other I think the reason I found the old one more compelling is because there was this mystery at the core of the old one the game doesn't tell you what it is the story doesn't tell you what its motivations or nature or origin are it doesn't even really tell you what sort of life form it is you have to figure all that out for yourself that mystery led me to study the old one its design its environment any little mention the characters made of it I was engaged with the story I was investigating I was putting pieces together on my own but that's not at all what the writers of breath of the wild do there is no mystery to Calamity Ganon you know everything there is to know about him right from the beginning of the game to be honest I find the storytelling in breath of the wild to be very uneven there are parts of its story that are told really well and there are other parts that aren't told as well I think Calamity Ganon is a much more interesting antagonist than he was written to be I think if the writers had presented him differently he could have been one of the most compelling antagonists in the entire series to explain what I mean and how they could have written him differently I want to follow Calamity ganon's Story from beginning to end starting with how he is first introduced to the player and ending with his final boss fight when you start playing breath of the wild your first introduction to Calamity Ganon is actually going to be in the environment itself breath of the wild setting is one that has experienced terrible devastation and you can see the lasting ugly scars of that Devastation everywhere you look and this is where I think the game's storytelling is really effective it tells a story through the environment without any cutscenes without any Exposition when you see the Temple of Time abandoned and in Ruins when you see the craters and pockmarks in the landscape as if the battle were so destructive that the Earth itself was torn into pieces when you see the dead husks of these ancient Guardians now covered in moths never removed from the places where they were broken during that final battle you are seeing the story you are seeing the Epic tale of this horrific battle between man and machine which destroyed Hyrule Kingdom it's a really effective way to tell this story I do have a lot more I want to say about the environmental storytelling of breath of the wild but I'll save that for a different video for now let's stay focused on Calamity Ganon because the environment is also telling his story he is the source of all this Devastation after you ascend the first sheikah Tower in the game you will see Calamity Ganon for the first time in a cutscene so let's watch that try try to remember you have been asleep for the past 100 years regains its this world will face its end now then you must hurry link before it's too late okay so far I think the writers are completely nailing the introduction to Calamity Ganon first the environmental storytelling and then this awesome initial look at him there is the shaking of the ground Like An Earthquake and then you look at the distant profile of the ruined Hyrule Castle on the horizon and you see this massive monster Rising into the air almost like a dragon and all around it is this menacing swirling energy I love this design I think it looks so cool in the voice you hear whose identity you won't know yet only calls it the Beast I think this is a brilliant way to introduce Calamity Ganon and I really wish the writers had kept just calling him the Beast I never watched a single trailer or any gameplay or read a single review before playing breath of the wild so I had no idea what this swirling purple monster was I was like what the heck is the Beast that sounds so mysterious and cool I cannot wait to investigate it and find out what this monster is and what the source of all this Devastation was unfortunately I was bound to be disappointed because unlike the old one in Demon Souls the writers of breath of the wild spoil all these Mysteries almost immediately they don't really let you investigate them at all as soon as you reach the bottom of the tower This Old Man shows up and he outright tells you that's Calamity Gammon 100 years ago it destroyed Hyrule Kingdom and I was like dude what the heck I wanted to find that out on my own the name Calamity Ganon is really what spoils the mystery because as soon as I knew that this purple swirling Dragon monster was named Ganon I knew exactly who and what he was okay whatever it's Gannon again just in a different form this time what if no character in the entire game had ever called him Ganon what if this monster was only ever referred to as the Beast or the Calamity in its true nature remained a mystery what if you had to investigate and the developers had left Clues throughout the environment as to what the beast's true nature was that you had to piece together on your own what if you had to figure out the connection between the Calamity and the character Ganon from all the previous games on your own instead of the game just telling you wouldn't that have been more compelling wouldn't that have been a thousand times more interesting the confusing thing is in previous games the writers did a really good job at writing mysterious villains back in Skyward Sword you have no clue who kirahim is or where he came from or what his motivations are for most of the game in Twilight Princess initially Zant is this total mystery at the start you have no idea where this guy came from or why he is Conquering Hyrule even back in the Wind Waker the first time you meet Ganondorf you don't know who he is all you know is that he's the leader of a group of dangerous Pirates who have taken control of the 4 forsaken Fortress and kidnapped your sister but in breath of the wild the writers didn't allow for any mystery at all it actually gets even worse the next cut scene is a huge Exposition dump that spoils even more of the mystery so let's watch that too the great Calamity was merciless devastated everything in its path low a century ago it was then that my life was taken away from me and since that time here I have remained in spirit form I did not think it wise to overwhelm you while your memory was still fragile so rather than that I thought it best to assume a temporary form forgive me I think you are now ready to hear what happened one hundred years ago to new Calamity ganon's True Form one must know the story from an age-long past the demon king was born into this Kingdom but his transformation into malice created the horror you see now [Music] stories of ganim were passed from generation to generation in the form of Legends and fairy tales [Music] but there was also prophecy the signs of a resurrection of Calamity Ganon are clear and the power to oppose it lies dormant beneath we decided to heed the prophecy and began Excavating large areas of land it wasn't long before we discovered several ancient relics made by the hands of our distant ancestors these relics the Divine beasts were giant machines piloted by Warriors we also found the Guardians an army of mechanical soldiers who fought autonomously this coincided with ancient legends oft repeated throughout our land [Music] we also learned of a princess with a sacred power and her appointed Knight chosen by the sword that seals the darkness it was they who sealed Ganon away using the power of these ancient relics 100 years ago there was a princess set to inherit a sacred power and a skilled night at her side it was clear that we must follow our ancestors path we selected four skilled individuals from across Hyrule and tasked them with the duty of piloting the Divine beasts with the princesses there Commander we dubbed these Pilots Champions a name that would solidify their unique Bond the princess her appointed Knight and the rest of the Champions were on the brink of sealing away Ganon but now Gannon was cunning and he responded with a plan beyond our imagining [Music] he appeared from deep below Hyrule Castle of the Guardians and the Divine beasts against us the Champions lost their lives [Music] while defending a princess thus the kingdom of Hyrule was devastated absolutely by Calamity Gannon however the princess survived to face Ganon alone [Music] Hyrule rests with you [Music] this cutscene tells you basically everything you need to know about Calamity Ganon it tells you exactly what calamity Ganon is and what he has done and what he is going to do if you don't stop him in a future video I'm going to discuss more about why these early cutscenes are so Exposition heavy and the history of this kind of heavy-handed exposition in the Zelda series but for now I still want to stay focused on the villain at this point you basically already know everything you will ever know about Calamity Ganon he was once a demon king who then transformed into malice this form of pure evil evil concentrated into a kind of corrosive liquid energy how that Demon King transformed into malice is never explained but I've already told you my theory that it was the result of many failed reincarnations which gradually eroded his physical form but that is only speculation I've seen other fan theories that compare this malice with the curse in the film Princess Mononoke there was even an early Trail of breath of the wild that very closely resemble the scene from that film actually a lot of breath of the Wild's World design has a sort of Studio Ghibli feel to it in Princess Mononoke the main character is infected by a curse this dark swirling corrosive power that has a lot of similarities to malice as it appears in breath of the wild the source of this curse lies within the conflict between man and nature people are tearing apart the natural world both for survival and for personal enrichment nature in the form of animals and Spirits fights back and in this conflict the curse spontaneously emerges corroding everything it touches it was a story about the importance of Harmony and respect between man and nature of taking care of our environment and of the Natural Life which surrounds Us in the horrific consequences of disrupting that Harmony if malice in breath of the wild is something similar then it should be a sort of curse that appeared spontaneously as result of man's actions in that vein perhaps malice is man's greed or capacity for evil take in physical form or perhaps The Demon King was so greedy and so evil that it actually degenerated his body until he was nothing but pure malice but let's get back to that cutscene there are some Mysteries to investigate within this story as it has been presented by recovering memories you will learn about each of those Fallen Champions about Princess Zelda and about Link's own role in this story but Calamity Ganon himself is not one of those Mysteries I will admit that this cutscene does do an excellent job of building up Calamity Ganon as a threat it makes his power seem almost Unstoppable this is probably the most powerful form of Ganon we've ever seen in any game I don't think he's ever actually succeeded in completely destroying Hyrule Kingdom before as a villain as an antagonist this cutscene makes him seem really scary it establishes very high stakes it either you succeed in your quest or Zelda and then the rest of the world will be destroyed this cutscene also explicitly ties the Calamity Ganon we see here with all those other versions of Ganon and Ganondorf we've seen throughout the series with that line stories of Ganon were passed down from generation to generation in the form of Legends and fairy tales which is something previous games have not done after this there is one more Exposition heavy cut scene which tells the backstory of Calamity Ganon we need to look at when you reach kakariko Village in the game and she'll tell you the ancient history of this Kingdom and Calamity Ganon here it is the history of the royal family of Hyrule is also the history of Calamity Ganon a primal evil that has endured over the ages this evil has been turned back Time and Time Again by a warrior wielding the soul of a hero and a princess who carries the blood of the goddess with the passage of Time Each conflict with Ganon faded into Legend so listen closely as I tell you of this legend that occurred ten thousand years ago [Music] Hyrule was then blossoming as a highly Advanced civilization even the most powerful monsters posed little threat to the denizens of the realm the people thought it wise to utilize their technological prowess to ensure the safety of the land should Calamity Ganon ever return [Music] foreign Ted four mechanical Wonders that came to be known as the Divine beasts they also built of legion of autonomous weapons called Guardians the Divine beasts were piloted by four individuals of exceptional skill from across the land thus the plan to neutralize Ganon was forged [Music] upon gannon's inevitable return to Hyrule The Princess and the hero fought alongside these four Champions against this ancient evil the Guardians were tasked with protecting the hero as the Divine beasts Unleashed a furious attack upon their terrible foe and when the hero wielding the sword that seals the darkness delivered his final blow the princess used Her Sacred power to seal away Calamity Ghana foreign once again this game's story is drawing a lot of attention to the Legend of Zelda Timeline a lot of focus is given to the idea that this story has been repeated many times before also ten thousand years is an absolutely crazy amount of time ten thousand years of our own history would not only cover literally all of recorded human history but would go thousands of years back into pre-history 10 000 years ago most humans were still living in caves I just looked it up and ten thousand years ago it's estimated that there were no more than 4 million humans living on the entire planet nowadays there are 8 billion of us that's how much can change in ten thousand years in breath of the wild setting Ganon has been dormant for 10 000 years imagine how many kingdoms must have risen fallen and been forgotten in Ten Thousand Years imagine how many climactic War was in Epic Adventures and incredible discoveries would be made in Ten Thousand Years imagine how much literature and music and the food people eat and the clothes they wear in the architecture and the Sciences in the Arts and everything would change in Ten Thousand Years imagine how much the surface of the world would change in Ten Thousand Years ten thousand years is long enough for rivers to change their courses for Lakes to dry up for the shoreline to move when Calamity Ganon awoke and Hyrule he was awaking in a world utterly different from the one he had once lived in you can see those changes in the visual design of the old chica technology the Guardians and the Divine beasts and the sheikah towers all have visual designs that are utterly different from anything else we see in the game the ancient chica technology looks so different it might as well be from outer space Calamity Ganon is attempting to destroy what might as well be a new world that has no connection to the one he he lived in something interesting to me is that even ten thousand years ago Calamity Gannon was Calamity Gammon his human form had already dissolved into malice even all the way back then Ganondorf hasn't had a human form for at least 10 000 years and maybe much longer than that which makes his resurrection in tears of the Kingdom even more mysterious and exciting this is the first time Ganondorf has taken the shape of a man in literally Millennia how was he able to do this what does it mean for the history and future of Hyrule I honestly cannot wait to find out but let's get back to Calamity Ganon Calamity Ganon doesn't appear much in cut scenes from here on out after these first three cut scenes you basically know everything about him that you'll ever know going forward you'll mostly confront Calamity Ganon in the form of either the corrupted guardians or in his oozing corrosive malice which has infected parts of the land I believe all the malice you see in the game is somehow directly connected to his body his physical body has oozed out all across the world emerging from underground burning everything it touches in this way the villain becomes a physical obstacle which he must overcome throughout your adventure Calamity Ganon isn't only just sitting around in the castle waiting for you to come destroy him he is out there in the world trying to stop you from achieving your objectives much of the time malice will appear in places critical to your adventure like near shika Towers that's Calamity Ganon attempting to stop you in the only way he can by physically placing parts of himself between you and your goals you will also confront Calamity Ganon in each of the four Divine beasts in order to possess these powerful machines Calamity Ganon crafted four Monsters by combining parts of himself with dark magic and then imbuing them with his hateful will these monsters are the blight ganons which you'd battle in the depths of each Divine beast and only after destroying them can the machines be cleansed Blake ganons are Phantoms of Ganon Phantom Ganon is a recurring enemy in the Zelda series he first appeared in Ocarina of Time as the boss of the Forest Temple and then again in the Wind Waker where link faced off against him multiple times Phantom Ganon is always a sort of magical puppet more mechanism than man which Ganondorf creates to serve as a powerful minion to spread his will to fight in his place and to test the hero's abilities Phantom Ganon is a dark reflection of ganondorf's own power much weaker than his creator in possessing no independent will of his own they are just Shadows of a greater evil the blight ganons of breath of the wild are probably the most complex and most powerful Phantoms of Ganon we've ever encountered in the series but at the end of the day they are still just his tools his weapons and when you defeat them it's more like breaking one of his favorite toys than actually doing any damage to Ganon himself the blight ganons are further evidence of Calamity ganon's intelligence crafting marionettes this complicated and this powerful would require great intelligence great Ingenuity and great knowledge of dark magic it would have taken a lot of time again Calamity Ganon is not just a Mindless force of Destruction he is not a force of nature at his core he is a man with a man's intelligence and a man's cunning after cleansing each of the Divine beasts you'll eventually Journey to the Center of Hyrule to the castle in the town that surrounds it The Fountainhead of all malice in the land to destroy Calamity Ganon once and for all in Castle town and the castle itself I think you see a potential future for Hyrule if you fail what a world destroyed by Calamity Ganon would look like it would be a gray Wasteland a place without life or color where rivers of oozing malice would Scar the Earth where the only intelligence that exists would be calamity Gannon himself alone with his bitterness and his hatred for all eternity it would be a hideous place after battling or sneaking your way to the inner sanctum of Hyrule Castle you'll finally confront Calamity Ganon himself foreign [Music] I'm sorry but my power isn't strong enough [Music] [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] I find this egg or cocoon that Calamity Ganon starts off inside very interesting its design is bizarre and there's really nothing else like it anywhere in the game while the visual design of the Cocoon looks like something Calamity Ganon might have crafted himself the Cocoon is actually a prison Princess Zelda is using her power to keep him trapped inside of this at the very moment link arrives her power fails when those blue lasers shoot out from inside the Cocoon that's calamitygan and violently tearing his way out of his prison before you ever actually see Calamity Ganon from those explosive laser shots he already feels really powerful it sets the stage for a climactic and exciting battle when Calamity Ganon does emerge notice the way he just sort of flops out falling right onto his back he looks unconscious I think just like link was sleeping for a hundred years so was Calamity Ganon they've both woken up at almost the exact same time to contain continue their fight right where they left off a hundred years prior I also absolutely love the visual design of Calamity Ganon here we've seen a lot of Beast forms of Ganon over the years but never anything like this Calamity Ganon looks like some kind of giant deformed or mutated spider notice how there is nothing symmetrical or uniform about his body his arms and legs are placed at random spots across his warped torso all of his limbs are of different sizes he has advanced chica weapons that have seemingly been grafted to his flesh his whole body glows with malevolent energy his design actually reminds me a lot of godric the grafted in Elden ring they're both these horrific crab-like creatures with misshapen Limbs and weapons grafted to their bodies their animations are even kind of similar it makes me wonder if they were both inspired by the same Source material both of their designs achieve the same purpose which is that their horrific outward appear Insurance they're deformed in mangled bodies reflect in inner horror a spiritual rot in deformity by seeing just how misshapen and grotesque their bodies are you can see how evil or depraved they are inside the only little bit of humanity left in Calamity of ganon's design the only thing that looks anything like the human Ganondorf we are familiar with is that brilliant red Mane of hair in his equally Red Beard which are memorable features of many of ganondorf's previous designs the boss fight itself is fantastic I think it's one of the best in the entire franchise it does a great job of mixing attacks from both the Guardians and all of the blight ganons while also still feeling uniquely dangerous next let's watch what happens when you defeat him laughs foreign ancient evil that is reborn time and time good enough animation and as soon if set free Upon Our World the destruction will be unlike anything ever seen before Calamity ganon's bodies use Liquid mouths in all directions like pus getting injected from an ulcer and then he explodes into a cloud of sparkling black violet Vapor which converges outside the castle where he materializes as dark beastganum and this will be a much more familiar design to fans of the series dark Beast Ganon takes the form of a giant boar or Pig and this is a common appearance for Ganon in almost every game at some point he takes the form of this pig-like Beast which makes a certain sense for a villain we often associate pigs with slop or mud things that are gross or unpleasant and Ganon is a gross and unpleasant figure it's also very interesting that Zelda says that Ganon has given up on reincarnation which made me assume that this would be his final form forever if he is destroyed here then he will be destroyed forever however since Ganondorf is reappearing in tears of the Kingdom that means he must not have really given up on reincarn Nation or else the Ganondorf in tears of the kingdom is somehow a totally separate Incarnation from Calamity Ganon like somehow there were two different versions of Ganon coexisting within Hyrule but I guess we'll all find out the explanation for ourselves in a couple weeks Zelda also describes this Beast form as his pure enraged form which is also surprising to me because I thought Calamity Ganon already seemed like a pretty pure form of evil but apparently I was wrong this Beast is actually the purest form of evil to be seen in the game I liked this boss fight a lot too it's a lot simpler than the previous one but I loved the scale of this stage in the fight it feels so epic and huge this must be the physically biggest enemy in the entire series I can't remember another Zelda boss that was this large before anyway let's watch Calamity ganon's final scene thank you [Music] foreign [Music] when Calamity Ganon realizes that he has been defeated that his ultimate Doom is approaching in the form of Zelda's awoken holy Powers he transforms back into the vaporous dragon form we saw at the beginning of the game and he attempts to flee he fails and is destroyed the stories and Legend of Zelda games are always fundamentally about this clash between good and evil and good always triumphs in the end they're very optimistic stories in this world evil is always destined to fail which I think is at least part of why these game's settings are so appealing I think we would all prefer to live in a world where evil is destined to fail or where evil is so easy to identify it looks like Calamity ganon's Essence is completely obliterated by Zelda's light in this scene afterwards there's absolutely nothing left of him Zelda even implies that he can't be reincarnated again so perhaps this is the true and Final End of at least this version of Ganon he survived from Millennia for at least 10 000 years and now he is gone his end is cowardly and pitiful he dies with his back turned running away in his final moments he wasn't powerful and he wasn't scary he was just another loser in a long line of losers before tears of the Kingdom I wondered if this might be the end of Ganon in The Legend of Zelda games if the developers would introduce some new threat however Ganondorf is returning in tears of the Kingdom I know I'm getting a little off topic here at the end but the mystery I'm most interested in with this new game is what is the connection between Calamity Ganon and this new Ganondorf are they the same being in two different forms did they live the same life The Legend of Zelda's story involves multiple timelines splitting off from each other so could these be two different ganons from two different timelines somehow merging into the same timeline I don't know but I'm excited to find out now [Music] foreign

Channel: FatBrett

Views: 172,788

Keywords: Calamity, Ganon, Ganondorf, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, Zelda, Legend of Zelda, Story, Explained, Lore, Character, Analysis, Villain

Id: cr63nGkWzEY

Length: 55min 46sec (3346 seconds)

Published: Mon May 01 2023