I’ve got another theory post about ALBW - specifically, the identities and roles of the Sages, the relationship between Hilda and Yuga, and the ultimate final boss of the game.
A note: there’s been a lot of information released by reviewers over the past few days, and I haven’t paid attention to all of it because there’s enough of it that I’m afraid of bumping into major spoilers, so if some article somewhere has proved or disproved a point I bring up than that’s why.
In the new art released recently, we see depictions of what appear to be a Goron and a Zora woman - and that’s interesting for a lot of reasons! The only appearance of Gorons in any of the Downfall Timeline games is in the Oracle titles, which show them living on mountains in Holodrum and Labrynna, but Gorons have never been shown in Hyrule at any point in the Downfall Timeline. Now we have one showing up in the art for A Link Between Worlds, implying that they will.
It’s a really weird Goron, though - in fact, if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s wearing a belt with the Goron insignia on it, I wouldn’t have thought he was one at all.
Typically, Gorons are depicted as large inhuman rock creatures with yellow skin. They have one of the most consistent appearances in the entire franchises, showing little variation in physical features between games. They rarely dress in human clothes, appear to be an asexually producing species without a gender binary (there has never been a depiction of a female Goron, despite the appearance of multiple Goron children, and they all refer to themselves with male pronouns), and don’t have visible ears.
This guy, on the other hand, has light brown skin, long ears, and red hair; as well as boots and human clothing. He does have a wide mouth and dark eyes like most Gorons, and he has the broad muscular structure of one, but he seems much more like a human than past depictions of the species.
Honestly? I’m starting to think this guy might be half Goron and half Hylian. It feels weird to say that, because I don’t think there’s ever been a Zelda character with parents from two different species and because we don’t have a goddamn clue how Gorons reproduce, but that’s the only explanation I can think of for how bizarre his design is.
I also think he’s a Sage - specifically, the Sage of Fire, and quite possibly a descendant of Darunia.
Early in the game, Yuga’s goal appears to be gathering Sages and trapping them in paintings - we know this from the few websites and reviewers who have thus far been allowed to play the first hour or so of the game. This mysterious Gorony fellow has a file of a painting self, as well as his own frame with inverted Triforce decor, which means Yuga must capture him for some reason. The game is also suggested to be connected to Ocarina of Time somehow, specifically the creation of the Downfall Timeline when Link was defeated and the Sages sealed Ganon in the Sacred Realm - Hyrule Castle, according to one reviewer, is decorated with paintings depicting these events. ALBW is also a sequel to ALTTP, where the seven maidens Agahnim sent to the Dark World were descendants of the Sages who sealed Ganon in the Sacred Realm during the Imprisoning War. Given this, I would argue that the Sages of ALBW will be intended to call back to both the Maidens of ALTTP and the Sages of OoT - there will be seven Sages representing different elements, with at least some of them being descended from Sages of old, and Yuga will capture them and take them to Lorule in order to weaken or break the barrier between worlds.
There are other characters with painting files, too - such as the young boy seen in some of the earliest released art.
This kid greatly resembles Link and is also featured in art alongside two adults who are presumably connected to him somehow. The two strongest prevailing theories among fans right now are that the boy is a younger Link, or that he’s Link’s little brother - either way, the two adults would be Link’s parents and the boy is personally connected to him somehow.
Personally, I’d rule out the kid being a younger Link since he has a trapped painting form, which to me leaves two possibilities - either this kid is Link’s sibling and Yuga captures him to try and ensure cooperation from Link, or he’s unwittingly a Sage and Yuga captures him as part of his plot. Or both!
If he is a Sage, and if the Sages follow the classic designations first used in Ocarina of Time, then I think he’s the Sage of Forest. He may not be a blood descendant of Saria, given that she was a semi-immortal forest spirit in the guise of a child, but his garb and his age bring the Kokiri to mind. He also bears a great deal of resemblance to the Flute Boy from ALTTP, who played an ocarina for woodland animals in his youth and dies by petrifying into a tree after fading away in the Dark World, further indicating a possible connection to the woods.
One of the other new characters revealed in the most recent batch of art was a Zora woman. This is interesting, because there are two different depictions of Zora in the Zelda series - they’re both races of humanoid fish people, but the 2D games usually feature monstrous green scaly Zora who act as enemies and are hostile to the player, and the 3D games usually feature more human-seeming smooth-skinned blue Zora who are your allies. The only time the two contradicting Zora depictions have both appeared in a game is in Oracle of Ages, where the blue Zora refer to themselves as “Sea Zora" and the green ones as "River Zora”, distinguishing them as two separate races.
However, this character appears to be a River Zora who isn’t hostile and isn’t a monster, and in fact is dressed in clothes and ornamentation, something unseen in any River Zora until now. The green Zora aren’t unintelligent - you can take a picture with a friendly one in Link’s Awakening, and often in the 2D games there’s a Zora King who will sell you flippers - but they’re usually depicted as monstrous wild fishmen living on the edge of society in swamps and waterfalls.
Likewise, this Zora woman has her own trapped painting file, suggesting she’s a Sage - like Ruto from Ocarina of Time. And like Ruto, I think she’s a princess of the Zora.
In Nintendo Direct footage of the game, you can see what appears to be a Zora Queen very briefly - she’s much larger than the two cape-adorned River Zora attendants flanking her and appears to be in a “throne” of dark water, in some sort of large opulent chamber. Her similar appearance to this possible Sage and their shared headgear leads me to believe the Sage is her daughter, and her size and obvious high place in society indicates that she is in fact a Zora Queen, much like the many Zora Kings we’ve seen before in Zelda.
What’s interesting about this is that is shows a level of society and culture well beyond what we’ve seen from River Zora in the past; and between this and parallels with the Zora from OoT, I think we may actually see evidence that Hyrule’s River Zora are actually just evolved Zora, and that the Sea and River classification is exclusive to the Zora residing in Labrynna. It’s not the first time the Zora have rapidly changed appearance and demeanor between games - whereas the Gorons are pretty much the same in every title and rarely change appearance, the Zora are constantly shifting. There’s the aforementioned division between the green and blue Zoras, Skyward Sword’s Parellas are heavily implied to be Zora ancestors, and the Rito in Wind Waker are canonically descended from the Zora.
So just as Princess Ruto was the daughter of a Zora King and one of the Sages, I think the Zora woman in this art is a Princess and the daughter of a Zora Queen, as well as one of the Sages - and maybe a descendant of Ruto herself.
But I’m not convinced she’s the Sage of Water. The frame around her painting form is orange, which was used as the color of Nabooru, the Sage of Spirit in Ocarina of Time. A Sage’s race doesn’t necessarily define their element, as we saw in Wind Waker, where the bird girl Medli and the Zora Laruto were Sages of Earth. This princess might come from an aquatic race, but I think she is Nabooru’s spiritual successor as the Sage of Spirit, and someone else is the Sage of Water.
Namely, Seres, whose identity was revealed recently when an early cutscene from the game was uploaded - she’s the daughter of a priest at the Sanctuary, and Yuga captures her in a painting, calling her “perfection”.
Her official art has yet to be released (as well as her painting file) but we know it exists, because her face appears in a larger work of art released a few weeks ago. She’s alongside Princess Zelda, floating over Hyrule Castle.
Seres has also been seen in many of the more recent trailers - Yuga captures her in a painting in what looks to be the Sanctuary from ALTTP, as Link watches.
Both her own outfit and the frame she’s trapped in are blue, and blue is the color associated with Sages of Water.
So that’s my guess - the Zora Princess is the Sage of Spirit, and Seres is the Sage of Water.
The same trailer that shows us the capture of Seres also shows us another presumed Sage getting caught by Yuga - a tall, thin Hylian man in yellow robes whose art was released yesterday.
My gut sense is that this is the Sage of Light, as he bears a similar sense of experience and responsibility as Rauru and since his attire and frame are yellow. Well, yellow-green, but gold is for Zelda.
What’s interesting about his painting is the staff he’s holding - not only does it have purple bunny ears on it, implying a connection to Ravio, but it greatly resembles the new Sand Rod you can rent and use in the game.
According to one reviewer who recently was able to play the first hour or so of the game, when you first meet Ravio, you’re unable to rent the Sand Rod from him because someone else rented it first. That “someone” is presumably the Sage of Light, who perhaps needed to visit a temple that requires the use of the Sand Rod. My guess is that this is a method of making sure you can’t enter a particular temple until you’ve completed others first, as a way of ensuring story-necessary linearity in this otherwise free-form game. This is further supported by the Sage’s Sand Rod having the purple ears atop it, which seems to be a feature of rented items, according to glimpses in the trailers.
Interestingly enough, Link seems to have followed him into the dungeon even without the Sand Rod, as the Sage’s capture appears to happen on-screen in a cutscene.
This image of Yuga imprisoning the Sage comes from one of the recent game trailers, the same one where we first see the blue Sage. But in the “Music of ALBW” trailer released several days later, during the snippet of Yuga’s theme, we see Link fighting the villain in the same room.
Link only has three hearts in this battle, so it must happen fairly early on in the game’s story, again implying that at least part of this dungeon is accessible without the Sand Rod.
And yet another scene is this room is shown later in the first trailer, which appears to be when Link obtains the bracelet that allows him to become a painting - presumably, it’s his reward for defeating Yuga.
Directly after this, Link is shown using the bracelet in what appears to be the very same dungeon, based on the color scheme - it’s clearly just after the fight with Yuga, since he has the bracelet, but he also appears to have earned a Heart Container as well and still isn’t done with the dungeon. There also appears to be a large wall of falling sand blocking something off, indicating that the Sand Rod is in fact necessary to explore the dungeon - at least, the whole dungeon.
My guess is that you enter this dungeon early on in the game to fight Yuga, but fail to stop him from taking the Sage, meaning you can’t use the Sand Rod until you find and free him from his painted prison. Once you have, you return to this dungeon and use the Sand Rod to open up a passage deeper into the temple in order to obtain some kind of plot-necessary information or item - something to do with the Triforce, perhaps?
Returning to the topic of Sages, the final two are easy to identify - Zelda’s attendant (presumably named Impa) is the Sage of Shadow, and Zelda herself is the seventh and final Sage, whose element remains a mystery.
Impa seems to have returned to her classic depiction as Zelda’s elderly nursemaid - since OoT, she’s usually been shown as Zelda’s strong and intimidating bodyguard, but in classic 2D Zelda titles she was a bent old woman who had watched over Zelda since her childhood. Her expression indicates she is as fierce as ever, however, and like her OoT counterpart (and possible ancestor) she is probably a Sheikah and the Sage of Shadow.
What’s interesting about this design of Impa is her hair, which is much more obviously purple than most Skeikah have had in the past - typically, the hair of Sheikah characters is a very light purple or grey or blond, but this Impa has full-on lavender locks. Considering that one of the primary new characters in this game is a princess from another world with dark purple hair and red eyes, this seems not insignificant - perhaps in Lorule, the Sheikah equivalent are the race that makes up the Royal family and the Hylian equivalent are the guardians of the ancient legends and the Royal Family? Or perhaps the Sheikah are the ones who guard the knowledge of travel between the two worlds, the way they protect so many other secrets?
Whatever the case, it’s very possible that this Impa is connected to Lorule in some way, especially given her return to life as a wise old woman likely to guide Link on his quest.
The seventh and final Sage is, of course, Princess Zelda herself.
Zelda’s portrait is of particular importance, as we’ve seen her hanging on a wall in Lorule while Princess Hilda speaks with her multiple times in trailers. Reviewers have already hinted that one of your goals in the game is to rescue Sages or descendants of Sages from dungeons in Lorule, much as Link had to rescue the seven Maidens from dungeons in the Dark World, and Zelda’s place in what appears to be Hilda’s domain may indicate that Lorule Castle is one of the final dungeons in the game. But of greater relevance is the fact that Hilda has somehow managed to come into possession of Zelda’s painting, which is something I touched on in a post I wrote a few weeks ago.
The recent trailer ends with a very well-scored glimpse at Hilda speaking with the trapped painting form of Zelda, staring at her on a dark wall in a cold room. Hilda informs Painting Zelda that her country, Lorule, was “just like Hyrule. So very beautiful. So very… promising.” She then goes on to say that Lorule “is in need of a hero - and your Link is superb.”
Besides being an excellent confidence-booster in the writing quality for the game - seriously, what great timing and dramatic weight - this scene offers an interesting peek into Lorule’s status and Hilda’s role in the game. Hilda has somehow managed to obtain Painting Zelda, despite the fact that earlier in the trailer we saw that Yuga is the one behind the painting transformations, and is talking to her about Lorule.
My interpretation of this scene is that at first, Yuga is working for Hilda, who is trying to save and revitalize Lorule. A currently-unspecified amount of time before the events of the game, Lorule was a mirror of Hyrule in beauty and prosperity, but was overtaken by evil and transformed into a shadowed mockery of its former self - perhaps because Lorule’s Hero failed to defeat a force of evil and was overcome, which in turn is perhaps a nod to the origins of the downfall timeline. Desperate to revive her land and save her people, Princess Hilda pours herself into research and discovers legends about the existence of another world connected to their own, at which point a seemingly-loyal servant of hers called Yuga offers a way to use their paint-based magic to enter this other realm and seek help in saving Lorule. Kidnapping Princess Zelda is believed by Hilda to be the only way to get Link to Lorule, which is why she seems to be explaining her motives to Painting Zelda in what may be an apology, as she’s brought suffering to Zelda in order to alleviate the suffering of her realm.
Unfortunately for Hilda, Yuga is lying to her and instead seeks to enter Hyrule and kidnap the Sages in order to use their power to awaken and revive Ganon, as did Agahnim before them… Eventually, Yuga betrays Hilda, and she comes to Link’s aid in his quest to rescue the Sages to atone for her mistakes and bad judgement.
I no longer think the bold is true, because of a trailer that aired after I wrote this, in which Hilda implies she already has Link but doesn’t show any signs of releasing Zelda.
This scene of Hilda speaking to Zelda’s painting has been featured prominently in multiple trailers, and is extremely important because it suggests a partnership of sorts between Hilda and Yuga - I’ve mentioned before that Hilda’s words here have an air of explanation about them, and I’m positive that what she’s attempting to do here is give Zelda an excuse for why she’s imprisoning Hyrule’s Sages, attempting to alleviate her guilty conscience by appealing to a fellow princess who understands bearing responsibility for a kingdom. But her motive for sending Yuga to capture the Sages now feels like more to me than simply attempting to draw Link into Lorule - now, my belief is that Hilda has her supposed servant Yuga capturing Hyrule’s Sages so she can use their power to strengthen a seal on some great evil poisoning her kingdom.
Here, Hilda is standing in front of some kind of… dark energy webbing, which seems to be supporting a large object bearing Lorule’s version of the Hylian Crest.
My guess is that this is the seal Hilda was hoping to use the power of the Sages to maintain, and that contained within is the dark power corrupting her kingdom - with said power possibly being a shadow of Ganon.
In this shot from one of the trailers, Link is floating in some kind of red void and preparing to face off against a hazy form that bears a great resemblance to ALTTP’s Ganon design and the Ganon featured in official art of ALBW that possibly depicts the events of ALTTP.
I edited the screenshot a little to bring out more of the resemblance, in case you can’t see it.
So, the figure in this shot is pretty clearly Ganon, but how does he end up as the final boss in a game involving another world?
The way I see it, there are three possibilities.
The first is that Ganon is not imprisoned within Lorule - though he may be partially responsible for its darkened state of being - but that his appearance in the game comes about because Hilda and Yuga captured the Hero and the Seven Sages and took them to Lorule, wanting to use their power. Without their power holding him at bay, Ganon is able to manifest once more and terrorizes Hyrule, making it necessary for Link to defeat or appeal to Hilda in order to return home and challenge him once more.
The second possibility is that the scene in the trailers with Ganon is merely a dream sequence or memory of some sort, and that Ganon isn’t actually the final boss in this game. I find this doubtful, however, because ALBW has already been proven to have a story seemingly connected to iconic Zelda lore - Link obtains the Master Sword, the game takes place in Hyrule, there are Sages, and the Triforce is likely to play an important role in the game’s story; these plot ideas are usually indicative of a game with a major contribution to the overall mythology of the franchise, as opposed to a game like Majora’s Mask or Link’s Awakening, where the quality of the title doesn’t change the fact that it’s a rather self-contained installment only relevant to the history of Hyrule because it continues the story of a particular incarnation of Link. If Link gets the Master Sword and the Triforce is involved in the plot, it’s a fair bet that Ganon is going to be the game’s ultimate evil in some way.
The third possibility is that Ganon is the dark power corrupting Lorule from within. I wrote out a possible explanation for his presence a few weeks ago, and like it enough to reference it once again.
The Triforce itself is a relic that was left behind by the Golden Goddesses when they created and then departed the world - a residual trace of their cosmic power that would grant mortals the ability to make their wishes reality. In the backstory of ALTTP (which as we know has in turn become the backstory of ALBW), Ganondorf obtained the Triforce and used it to wish that he could conquer the world. Given that the Triforce itself is residue from the Goddesses’ creation of the world, what if Lorule is a residual manifestation of Ganon’s wish, or even simply a realm influenced by the wishes made on the Triforce in Hyrule?
Whereas the Hylian version of the Triforce is a powerful relic that mortals can use to bend the world to their will, in Lorule the Triforce is an uncontrollable force that shapes the world on its own, because it reacts to and reflects wishes made in the other world. Therefore, because of Ganon’s wish to conquer the world, Lorule is a world that Ganon has conquered! A fragment of his power and consciousness still exists in this world, hungry to return to Hyrule and obtain the influential power of the Triforce instead of being stuck at the mercy of the reactionary one. This explains Hilda’s motivation to influence events in Hyrule to return her kingdom to peace, and Yuga’s motivation to use the Sages to free Ganon and allow him to return to Hyrule.
Of course, since Link used the Triforce at the end of ALTTP to wish that Hyrule was peaceful and safe once again, there would need to be an explanation as to why that wish hasn’t influenced Lorule. But I think this is a solid interpretation of what Lorule might mean, especially since there’s been a lot of shadow imagery with regards to the inverted Triforce - in the game’s logo, it’s a black reflection of the standard golden Triforce, and in the new trailer when the logo whips around for a bit, the inverted Triforce follows the standard one and warps in shape and size just like a shadow does.
Lorule is a shadow of Hyrule influenced by the wishes made on the Triforce, and its princess needs Hyrule’s hero to help her save it.
I’m a little iffy about the bold now, because new information released since - particularly a line of Yuga’s where he refers to “Her Grace” - now has me suspecting that Yuga is a more devoted servant of Hilda’s than I initially assumed, and that Hilda herself is not as innocent as she might appear.
Because Hilda is a parallel to Zelda and a young girl, I feel as though much of the fan community has already decided she’s going to be a sympathetic character who merely has an ambiguous appearance, like Midna. One article I found on the recently-released cutscene introducing Yuga even wrote “Who could ‘Her Grace’ possibly be? Certainly not Hilda” when musing on what master Yuga might be serving - the idea that this wicked and powerful sorcerer might be working for Hilda was never even entertained.
Zelda has more female characters than a lot of other major game franchises, and it’s grown to be better than average when it comes to respecting and giving agency to these characters despite its roots in classic “damsel-in-distress” lore, but typically female humanoid characters in Zelda are almost exclusively on the side of honestly and fairness. The only major exceptions to this rule are Twinrova and Veran - the former a pair of gnarled old witches, the latter a beguiling and underhanded sorceress, both of whom fit classic female villain archetypes.
Hilda, on the other hand, does not. If my current hunch is correct, Princess Hilda is a ruler wholly devoted to protecting and furthering Lorule and its people, whatever the cost. She sends her servant Yuga to capture Hyrule’s Sages in order to use their magic to open a doorway to where the evil power poisoning her kingdom and terrorizing her citizens waits, and sends Hyrule’s hero to defeat him. Reviewers claim Hilda saves you from some unknown peril when you first enter Lorule and from there guides you through Lorule’s dungeons much as Sahasrahla guides you through dungeons in the Light World, and my hunch is that she does this because she’s manipulating Link into doing her bidding, hoping that he can defeat the evil power and save Lorule. She acts for the good of her people and her country, but she chooses to put Hyrule in danger in order to accomplish this - she is entirely and wholeheartedly unconcerned for the fate of the other world, but will do anything for her own.
Whether she still thinks that way at the end of the game after establishing relationships with Link and Zelda remains to be seen, of course, but I find it unwise to immediately dismiss Hilda as a possible villain just because she’s a young princess. People have already begun comparing her to Midna, but I think it’s possible that Hilda is intended to be a contrast to the Twilight Princess - whereas Midna appeared to be wicked and untrustworthy at first but proved herself a good person and loyal friend despite her shadowy affiliations, Hilda is a seemingly lonely and tragic figure in need of help who in fact turns out to be the mastermind of it all and a ruthless tactician.