I Solved the Map of EVERY Zelda Game! [Legend of Zelda Theory]

so Zelda if you're watching this I assume you already know what that is which makes my job in introducing it a lot easier also you probably know that each game features a very different map of the kingdom of Hyrule yeah it's all the same Kingdom but usually and they share a lot of the same landmarks for the most part but it's very inconsistent where they're placed to the point where most online discussion and theories either selectively pick details from the maps or just outright ignore the map altogether there are a couple of times I've seen people trying to draw parallels between the maps of specific games but nothing that tries to go in depth and reconcile every map from the entire series mostly because I feel like people think it's an impossible task but I did it I figured out how all the maps actually fit together it's not 100 perfect so bear with me but I think it's close enough to present as a satisfying starting point for further discussion just to get a quick head count of all the games I'm going to be dealing with we've got Zelda one Zelda 2 linked to the past and Link Between Worlds they basically have the same map Minish Cap four sword four sword Adventures Ocarina of Time Twilight Princess Skyward Sword and breath of the Wild wind waker's kind of a technicality and I'll address that later and hopefully this comes up before tears to the kingdom because I don't want to have to work in a whole nother map oh my goodness although it does seem to be riffing on breath of the wild so maybe not that big of a deal so that's 12 games with 11 maps to analyze so let's not waste any time but before we actually dive into analyzing the maps it is important for us to be on the same page with my reasoning and methodology because there are a few decisions I make that will raise some eyebrows if I don't explain myself let's start with the fact that names aren't sacred in this series just because two locations have the same or similar names in different games that doesn't mean they're the exact same latitude and longitude for example two games may have different towns called kakariko and they could be in different locations because people move towns after they're burned down actually Twilight Princess has two kakarikos in two different locations in the same game they come in both vanilla and hidden village varieties in that same vein towns buildings castles they're not permanent they can be built and destroyed over time in wars or great calamities or monster attacks there are examples of this when it happens in the games but then there's also just in real life that's what happens forests similarly they can grow or Shrink or get cut or burned down and generally just move spread or change shape over thousands of years that these games take place over and again this is both a real life thing and something that we see examples of in the games building further on that it is possible for rivers to cut New Paths and for Lakes to swell or drain or crop up in new areas just depending on the climate and human influence this kind of stuff happens in real life and we see examples of things like this explicitly in the games there are entire seas that dry up into deserts and entire continents that flood into oceans at times the water tables don't need to be perfectly consistent with each other and any number of lakes could be slapped with the name Lake hylia the only landmarks that I am treating as set in stone to be used as anchor points for my map placements are that one constantly active volcanic region and the locations of sacred objects like very few people have ever been able to wield of the master sword and Triforce so if they didn't move them we can assume they haven't moved if other things line up nicely because of that that's great supporting evidence but nothing to base that placement around this next Point could potentially ruffle some feathers but it's the only way I could make some of this work so bear with me I have one simple question for you you see this you see this loading screen this transition between areas my question is this how far did link travel between fading out and fading in is it hey one inch B one meter C one mile or D there's no way to tell I mean seriously he walks it fades out and when it fades in it's a totally different area sure you've got like clock town and Majora's Mask that does a really good job of showing landmarks just beyond the loading zone to give you a really good idea of the spatial relationship between areas but most Hyrule Fields don't have that there's no identifying landmarks to verify how far you've traveled I mean maybe you could try to do some over complicated thing where you do pixel measurements of Link's height relative to Death Mountain of the sky box or some other complex method of attempting to triangulate the positions and distances but if you're gonna hold that one part of the game to that level of scrutiny could you at least be consistent and apply it to the rest of the game and then watch it fall apart as you realize that all the buildings are bigger on the inside than the outside and I mean there are definitely some loading screens in some of these games that are meant to represent greater distances than just being right next to each other or are these a different unit of measurement because they Fade to White or something point is these games can't even be consistent with themselves how can we expect them to be consistent with each other the only two Zelda games in the whole series that don't have loading screens on their Overworld are breath of the wild and Wind Waker and where breath of the wild has its map extracted from hyper accurate scan data from a high-tech Tower with perfect GPS tracking Wind Waker has its map hand-painted by a fish man there's a bit of a discrepancy in the accuracy of those two I would imagine plus Wind Waker in general has an art style with such extreme cartoons proportions that I can't trust any system of measurement to be consistent within itself let alone have any analog in the other games I mean just look at these two guys they're supposed to be the same species if you can believe it so guess which map we're using as a base not only is breath of the wild more recent it's more detailed and accurate while we're on that topic not all in-game art can be taken at face value for example every 2D game is built on a perfect grid and viewed from the top down and if we take the camera in A Link Between Worlds and look at the game from an unintended angle we can see that things in those games can be skewed unrealistically for the sake of clarity in a top-down perspective the general relationship between areas will obviously be pretty close but there will also be plenty of things we can stretch a bit and blame on hardware and art style even the 3D games with similar art styles are kind of inconsistent I mean look at these these are all supposed to be the exact same sword and yet there are still those subtle differences so apologies if I do things like over or under scale some areas because consistency isn't a given fact in this series because it turns out keeping the stories and Maps consistent with each other is secondary to Nintendo's main goal when designing these games if you have an alternate take on this map or wish to add to or subtract from the points I make here then absolutely a thousand percent make that response video start that Reddit thread continue that discussion there are a ton of fun little supporting coincidences that I kind of gloss over or don't acknowledge because there's no time there's also a bunch of detrimental details that I just failed to point out because I don't have time and I think starting a discussion to nail down a generally accepted atlas of Hyrule would be a really cool achievement for fans of this series and now without that out of the way let's get to the actual map analyzing part of this analytical map video why don't we and of course we're going to start with our base breath of the Wild pointing out some general landmarks that are gonna show up later we've got obviously our volcanic death mountain region we have the icy hebra mountain region which is only really relevant for one other game but it's there the gruda desert which stays surprisingly consistent we've got this General Coastline that'll show up in a couple other maps and of course the great Plateau which I'll get into in a bit the rest as I've established before is subject to change the castles the towns the Lakes the rivers bridges that kind of thing and actually on that note something that supports my disregarding Lakes bit is East Reservoir Lake in breath of the wild because it's confirmed in game that East Reservoir lake is an artificial Lake constructed by the hylians to reduce flooding in Zora River meaning what we see here in breath of the wild is not how high rules water tables would naturally fall that gives us plenty of wiggle room that end ten thousand years of climate change obviously circling back around to the great Plateau like I said I would there's something there I'm going to use as our springboard into the rest of the series if you recall the beginning of the game the old man drops our biggest hint according to Legend the great Plateau is the birthplace of Hyrule and if we look at our timeline the birth of Hyrule takes place in Skyward Sword so now moving on to Skyward Sword the first area you explore after descending to the land is the sealed grounds in the sealed grounds is located the sealed Temple this is the first area you meet impa it's where Zelda seals herself away for a time it's where the seal on demise is held and most importantly this is where the master sword and Triforce end up at the end of the game the Hyrule Historia suggests that the sage ra roo from Ocarina of Time built that game's Temple of Time directly over the ruins of the sealed Temple this right here is the birthplace of Hyrule the location of the Triforce the master sword this this is why Hyrule exists as a kingdom and since the master sword presumably went undisturbed between these two points in the timeline and if the old man is to be believed breath of the Wild's great Plateau Skyward Sword sealed Temple and Ocarina of time's Temple of Time are all in the same location so now using that location as an anchor point we can kind of just slap skyward Swords map on top of breath of the wild and it lines up okay I mean this forested Lake area is vaguely where this other forested and laked area is not that those are very consistent as we've established the desert lines up very nicely with where the Gerudo desert is in breath of the wild so that's nice an Elden volcano is a little South and to the left of Death Mountain but if you consider the thing I said about loading screens and the fact that each of these chunks of land is separated from the upper Hub by a loading screen maybe we can just kinda kind of push this you know a little closer so maybe link doesn't fall directly downward maybe there's a bit of a scaling discrepancy as discussed before where this guy's just kind of covers a bigger area than we expect point is the map's disconnected enough that I don't think anybody's going to get too mad if I just slightly bump this to where it fits better for literally every other game speaking of the rest of the series transitions are on point today we already have a great starting point for Ocarina of Time so let's build on it but uh here's the thing about Ocarina it's got probably the most unreliable map of any 3D Zelda not of any Zelda those ones come later but you know this one might just be the reason I decided to Institute that little rule about loading zones looking at the in-game world atlas the proportions are kind of wonky I mean big surprise when you buy your maps from a delusional fairy man in a balloon the end result might not be the most scientifically accurate cartography ever made but I mean real life maps of historical medieval England are kind of like that too they're more like artistic interpretations to use as vague guidelines not a measurement to be seen I could and have tried to use fan compiled reconstructions of the world using the mini maps in the bottom right corner but that effort has led to inconsistent and unhelpful results so I'm just gonna stick with what we're presented with in game assume it's a bit off and then kind of massage it to fit my needs here so if we line up castletown with the great Plateau things line up okay with what we see in breath of the wild cut off and move Death Mountain at the loading zones and suddenly it works a lot better if we further divide the forest and the desert and the lake things get even more a bit better that's how puzzles work right if the pieces don't fit we make them fit this is the part where I make enemies isn't it I'm ruining Ocarina of Time but I bet some of you are yelling at me right now because you notice some things one of the things you might have noticed is that Lake hylia overlaps the ocean which yeah that's weird I noticed and I may have an explanation so please don't leave an angry comment maybe over the course of like what 12 000 years worth of erosion and sea level rise it was just kind of absorbed into the sea that that's not the best I have actually if that's not good enough maybe I can prove that it's a saltwater lake that could be connected to the ocean to begin with you know that um depth gauge at the bottom of the lake scientists diving pool the one that everyone uses to measure Link's height and stuff you know the one with a cage with the shark in the bottom speaking of sharks most of them are salt water dwellers that is true both in real life and in every other Zelda game they appear in except for that one time there were sand sharks yeah that was weird another point a lot of the enemies in ocarina's water temple are reused in the Great Bay Temple of Majora's Mask which by the way is another saltwater environment obviously all this is circumstantial evidence but hopefully it opens up the possibility for you that Lake hylia from Ocarina of Time could be filled with salt water and connected to the ocean somehow another point that some of you might be raising is how the Lost Woods doesn't line up with the Lost Woods of breath of the wild I do have an explanation for this but we need to talk about a different game before I can explain it and because I'm good at Segways let's talk about Twilight Princess if we just kind of slap Twilight Princess on top of breath of the Wild Things line up pretty nicely move Death Mountain at the loading zone adjust the desert and snow peak and it fits nearly perfectly I kind of think they use Twilight princess's map as a base when designing breath of the wild actually one thing that is weird to me is their relative placements of Zora's domain but I mean there is a river surrounding this Dark Island up here and there's still like 11 000 years removed from each other and everything else just fits too nicely for that to bother me at least too much another thing that kind of strikes me as odd is that neither of Twilight princesses major Bridges line up with either ruins of bridges or existing bridges in breath of the wild it is ten thousand plus years removed in the future but these are also very large stone structures so I just kind of think it's odd that there's no remnants that we see at all but again everything else lines up a little too nicely for that to be a major concern breath of the Wild's Bridge of hylia does interestingly line up approximately with that suspension bridge between Orton and Farren so there's that but now to the point you've been waiting for because I teased it in the transition and this game's Lost Woods is in a third completely different location how does that help us well it helps us because this time we know this area wasn't always the Lost Woods we see the remains of the Temple of Time complete with the master sword where we left it in Ocarina of time's child timeline cause timelines are you know anyway and the ruins around it are presumably what's left of old castletown it just has now been overgrown with the Lost Woods now I do realize that this Forest Area is never called The Lost Woods and Twilight Princess it is in fact called the sacred grove but the presence of a skull kid the use of zarya's song the ever-changing maze-like structure it all obviously points to the fact they're related and what this shows is that either of the Lost Woods themselves or at least it's magic or spirit that makes people get lost can move or spread over time why does it move how does it move who moves it I don't know that's a theory for another day the point is we know that it can and does move so we can just ignore inconsistencies and lost wood placement cool cool now let's move on to the 2D games starting with Zelda 2 The Adventure of Link sounds like a weird choice at first but it might just be the largest map in the series although that is kind of a difficult claim to back up because the scaling in this game can be a bit whack and probably inconsistent but that's the NES for you I mean look look at that this is also perhaps the most unique map of Hyrule the series has seen and it's missing a whole lot of landmarks that would go on to be series Staples but fortunately for us there's one Landmark it does share with other maps and it's one of the ones we've been using as an anchor point this whole time this area right here at the South End of the map is Death Mountain and if you've ever played Zelda 2 before I've just triggered your PTSD I apologize looking at breath of the wild this General Coastline actually lines up pretty nicely and this river that separates Death Mountain from the northern continent lines up great with that Chasm at the top of breath of the Wilds map especially considering these were released 30 years apart and are set 10 000 years apart now the real reason I started by giving Zelda 2 a solid placement is because of this region directly south of Death Mountain it looks remarkably similar to the map of Zelda 1 doesn't it because it is the map of Zelda 1. it is a canonical fact called out and confirmed directly in the Hyrule Historia so that saves me the trouble of having to prove it in fact this region is given its own name it's called lesser Hyrule and it goes on to describe how it's a kingdom in Decline you know downfall timeline stuff actually while we're on the topic of lesser Hyrule let's take this opportunity to give specific names to the other regions of Hyrule based on their Castle placement just for the sake of having something consistent to refer to them as since Zelda ones is already called Lester hide rule how about we call breath of the wild and Twilight princesses general areas greater High rule because they take up the largest area and are the most prosperous versions of the Kingdom we've seen then since Ocarina and skyward Swords share a lot of the same areas and they're also both very early in the timeline let's call that old Hyrule it also contrasts Phantom hourglass's new hide rule nicely so that's similar to how we have a greater and lesser we have an old and a new finally Zelda 2's unique continent we can just call that North High rule I guess that works I mean all the other games take place in South High rule anyway not that important now with that established let's move on to our next 2D game in the series linked to the past which also takes place in lesser Hyrule for one Death Mountain is directly to the north and Zelda one's graveyard's even vaguely line up with the sanctuary graveyard and kakariko Village which has since become associated with graveyards and even the lakes and rivers are similar this time certainly helps that they're close in the timeline and in terms of timeline and lore this is the downfall timeline Hyrule castle and town have been destroyed by Gannon in Ocarina of Time and since all the refugees moved to kakariko it would make sense for the New Castle that they have to build because ganon's Tower was there they would move that closer to where the people are after the ceiling War and since link dies in the battlefield in that timeline he never gets to put the master sword away in the Temple of Time that frees it up for Zelda or the sages or whoever to move it into the new Lost Woods in the North plus looking at the real life timeline this is only the third ever Zelda game so from my development perspective all they had to go on was the first two games so why not just adapt Zelda one's map to 16 bits the one weirdest thing you might notice with displacement is that the desert area in this game is pretty far removed from any previous desert area in fact the general area it overlaps with in breath of the wild is a flooded Marshland but consider the fact that this isn't the Gerudo desert it is instead called the desert of mystery and the Gerudo are nowhere to be found also consider that both its Dark World and low rule equivalents are swamps further consider that just a bit to the east of this desert in a Marshland is a pump station you know the one that serves as the entrance to the Dark World second dungeon desertification is a real thing that can happen even to Wetlands particularly when humans are involved doing things like pumping water out of a place and if Skyward Sword can have a desert that used to be a sea why can't the war ravaged linked to the Past have a desert that used to be a swamp and now on to the final three Minish Cap for sword and four sword Adventures the four sword Trilogy if you will and These Guys these guys gave me trouble okay so actually not all of them I kind of lied four sword was super easy clearly this is lesser Hyrule mountains directly to the north these frozen lakes line up with the lakes in Zelda one nicely and look at how the coastline meets up with the northern continent of Zelda 2. you've even got a couple islands off to the side that could be the tingle Islands from breath of the wild but the most important thing here is that there are no castles or towns or placements of any religious artifacts that confuse things these areas are just kind of the levels link takes the four sword out of its resting place at the beginning of the game goes over here fights and seals vati away in the four sword and then puts it back in its original resting place in Hyrule Castle this chunk of land isn't or at the very least doesn't need to be where the castle is this is just where the action happens but the thing about this game is since the four sword begins and ends in the same place there's no reason to believe it moved at all between Minish Cap and Adventures like between four sword and Adventures it has vati inside it you don't just move the magic sword with an evil wizard inside that's kind of how the adventure and Adventures starts and since all three games as four Swords are located through a doorway to another realm underneath Hyrule castle that's gotta mean all three games as Hyrule castles are located in the same area meaning this this and this room all have to be the same room located in the same place meaning this map and this map are the same Hyrule and getting that to line up was the hard part so for Minish Cap looking at the game's timeline placement between Skyward Sword and Ocarina alongside the first four sword the natural inclination would be to say that this game takes place in Old Hyrule like those two but comparing the maps it doesn't really line up that well maybe you could force it to work if you squint but it's still a hard sell if you ask me you could also just slap it over link to the past and it works just as well I mean that Mountain's in an awkward place and the swamps where a desert should be but oh no actually I kind of like that the problem with that placement is the timeline placement why would they move Hyrule up here for like two games and then come immediately back down here in the space between these two games I don't get it ah okay we're at that part of the video now time to talk about four sword Adventures can we just take a moment to look at this map and appreciate how truly truly terrible it is this is in no way scientific cartography we can agree on that right I mean look at this it's surrounded on all sides by water Hyrule Castle is as big as Death Mountain it's just none of this can be trusted this is not reliable in the least I kind of hate it for all the pain it's given me this is what you get when you buy maps from tinkle but the map itself isn't even the worst part no the worst part is the timeline placement according to all official sources this takes place after Twilight Princess so it would only be natural to assume it takes place in Greater Hyrule like Twilight Princess did and I mean Landmark wise it kind of fits I suppose but with proportions this just truly atrocious you could convince me it exists just about anywhere thicker is it your Hyrule to be greater High rule 2 as established earlier I mean these mountains fit marginally better I think but it just feels wrong and once again in the space between these two games why would Hyrule move all the way up here and then all the way back down here Adventures could be an old Hyrule 2. again you could interpret anything you want from this mess but then why would Hyrule move down here after Twilight Princess for every problem a given location would hope to solve it just creates several more problems and I kind of hate it I was playing whack-a-mole for way too long with this the biggest thing I needed to pin down exactly what region these games take place in is the location of the four sword if we can tie the four sword to a known Castle location elsewhere in the series I would be willing to completely ignore any other weirdness that location brings up in fact it might be fun to theorize around that weirdness you never know everything hinges on the four Swords location the problem is the four sword only appears in those three games Minish Cap four sword adventures and four sword that is to say Link to the Past for Game Boy Advance which was bundled with four sword and that's when I remembered something in the GBA version of Link to the Past there exists a secret bonus dungeon for players who beat both games on the cartridge inside the dark world's pyramid of power lies the Palace of the four sword inside link must find the shards of the corrupted four sword and fight the dark links inside of them to fuse the shards back into one sword regardless of whether or not the ending you get by doing this is technically Canon this is the only other time we see the four sword in the series and it's located deep within the corrupted sacred Realms equivalent of Hyrule Castle much like how both Minish Cap and Adventures have the four sword Sanctuary under the castle in a sealed off realm this squarely places both Minish Cap and Adventures in lesser Hyrule boom did it let's go Minish Cap still does have that awkward Mountain placement but then again Hyrule Castle is also weirdly large in that game too maybe we can just Chuck those scaling issues up to square map syndrome I mean they also have a section of this world map dedicated to an area miles up in the sky so how trustworthy is this actually I'm also not sure if the desert and Adventures is the actual grudo desert because it has the Gerudo that live there or if it's something more likely to the Past desert of Mystery but with scaling this abysmal I would believe either one honestly still all of this isn't without its migrational weirdatudes when it comes to the timeline but then again this does answer a question I've always had about Minish Cap where's the master sword in those early years when evil swarmed Hyrule why was the hero of men gifted the pcori blade wasn't the master sword available I mean there it is at the end of Skyward Sword waiting for the next hero to pull it if I had sealed herself from The Sword waiting for her next master and he picks a different sword over her if the hero of men was such a great true hero wouldn't he have been Worthy he looks like link he's wearing green we already have one blade of Evil's bane just we really need another one it's like hey Sky people can I get the power to repel evil uh we have the blade of evils Bane at home there should be the blade of evils Bane at home right also uh follow-up question where's the Triforce why isn't that the thing vati was after if he wanted like ultimate power or whatever why settle for the light force that you gotta extract out of Zelda which seems like a little more work again ending of Skyward Sword here it is front and center it is like one of the main things the kingdom of Hyrule was literally built around right it and the master sword should be housed in the Temple of Time by now right so where's the Temple of Time the answer is in Old Hyrule and if Minish Cap happens in lesser Hyrule that would explain a lot of things like why the hero of men needed the Minish to give him a different sword and why vati went for something slightly less ambitious than the literal power of the Gods and with all of that making more sense the rest of the Oddities I can shrug off and shock up to War I guess now you may have noticed that up until now I have neglected to mention the Wind Waker even though it does take place in Hyrule kind of technically asterisk but with all the flooding and civilization fleeing to the mountaintops and the gods reshaping the land and seas and stuff on top of the already dubious proportional consistency of wind waker's art style there's really not any meaningful landmarks in this thing obviously aside from the volcanic mountains that probably used to be Death Mountain then there's also Forest Haven which used to be ocarina's Deku Tree and both of those things squarely place this over the remains of old Hyrule but uh that was pretty obvious from the story and again I don't really think anything cartographically meaningful can be drawn from analyzing Wind Waker the one thing I can think of is that ganon's Tower is still around actually meaning the Hyrule Castle under the waves was probably moved from the original Hyrule Castle location because that one was destroyed and replaced by Canon's Tower in the adult timeline but that's about it I mean it's still a great game just not particularly important to this discussion but there you go that's it this is how all the disparate maps of Hyrule from across the series connect at least according to one dumbass on the internet now I turn it over to you what are your thoughts let's get this conversation rolling I would love for more Zelda theorists to put their hat in the ring and put serious thought into this map even if it's only to create a three hour video debunking everything I just talked about so share it with your friends share it with your favorite creators on the discords and reddits and stuff so video ending time you know what that means you know the anatomy of YouTube at this point do whatever you think you need to I'll talk to you in the comments okay love you bye kind of makes me wonder how uh tears of the kingdom is going to factor into all this whether it reinforces or totally debunks or doesn't really add anything to this Theory I don't know we'll have to see

Channel: Broseph LaCasque Ch.

Views: 298,925

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Id: zz3FbQJXIvk

Length: 33min 51sec (2031 seconds)

Published: Mon May 08 2023