While having both is ideal, I care more that a game is fun and interesting over it following lore and crippling itself to stay in line. Of course failing both is bad.
IDK, it depends on the game for me. I can forgive mediocre gameplay if the story is really good.
For example, I got a bit bored with the fighting in Yakuza 0, so once I finished most of the side content, the story kept me engaged. I remember pushing through the last few segments to get to the cutscenes.
But Zelda games aren’t that, I play them for the gameplay, not the story.
Nobody really should. Just take the games that are directly tied and who cares about the rest. They are their own stories, not everything has to be serialized.
Even the ones that are directly tied don’t really have consistency. E.g. what happened to the divine beasts and sheikah tech in TotK? There are tons of theories by fans, but here’s the official explanation:
“They disappeared after the Calamity was defeated,” explains Fujibayashi. “All of the people of Hyrule also witnessed this, but there is no one who knows the mechanism or reason why they disappeared, and it is considered a mystery. It is believed that since the Calamity disappeared, they also disappeared as their role had been fulfilled.
People have simply assumed the reason behind the disappearance to likely be related to ancient Sheikah technology and it seems there is no one who has tried to explore the matter further. The main civilizations in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are completely different, so we thought about the game based on concepts that match each of these civilizations.”
Basically, “I don’t care, TotK is a new game with new plot. But since you insist, here’s something I just made up.”
I guess thats kind of glaring. But like who cares where Oracle of Seasons is placed? The first game? LoZ 2? Most of these games, it doesnt really matter how consistent they are. But damn, I thought TotK was a sequel to BotW. Kinda like Ocarina and Majora.
… except, conveniently, for the Guardian parts used in the Skyview Towers (the “arms” that grab Link, the control units, etc.), or the dead Guardian atop the Hateno Tech Lab, or the Guardian “daggers” that were formerly turned into Ancient Arrows (which Link can DIY now), or the Purah Pad which is basically a rebranded Sheikah Slate, or the telescope atop Purah’s little lab at Lookout Landing …
Oh and of course the after-credits scene in BotW, where Zelda states that she wants to go investigate Vah Ruta to find out why the Divine Beast stopped working and check whether it can be repaired. The “Calamity” was dead by then as the scene takes place days or even weeks after the final battle, but I guess noone had told the Divine Beasts yet that they were meant to inexplicably go poof along with the main antagonist.
IMHO it would have made a lot more sense to say that the people of Hyrule actively dismantled and destroyed most Sheikah Tech they could find so it would be impossible for Ganon to possess them again. That would explain why there is still some of it left in remote corners of the Kingdom, and it is a more down-to-earth explanation than “it just vanished”.
All in all, it really DOES sound like a lazy “I don’t care” explanation.
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