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Spoiler Major plot mistake revolved around Demise!

Spiritual Mask Salesman

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Now before I go into detail remember this fact - whatever one does in the past it should change the course of things afterward.

Now apply that to Skyward Sword. Link kills Demise in the present by crashing the Goddess statue over the sealed grounds it kills Demise in the present.Then Link goes into the past and kills Demise in the past (Ghirahim revived him in that era as a last resort) When Link goes back to the present (by crossing through the Gate of Time) it should be an alternate present were Demise was already killed in the past so there would be no point in the Goddess statue being on the sealed grounds. Link killed him in the past which nullifys the need of the entire quest that Skyward Sword is based around (Getting the Triforce and killing Demise). I believe this is something like a grandfather paradox, Link's actions in the past basically should eradicate himself, Zelda, and Groose because in the alternate reality there really would be no quest to drive them to the surface.

It's almost as if the game developers didn't take any of this in mind, theoretically it should happen but it didn't. The game proceeds as if there is no major paradox issue, but there should be one.

Do you think it was a flaw in the game that wasn't really thought through (or rather too complicated for even the game developers to explain so they simply avoided the headache)? Is there even a way to explain any of this rationally? Please share your thoughts.
 
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MOTOVRES

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I touched on this in my rather unpopular thread here:

http://zeldadungeon.net/forum/showthread.php?27777-Skyward-Sword-Split-Timeline-Placement

I will say that i think it clumsy and irresponsible for Nintendo to place so much importance on TIME in Ocarina to the extent that it creates 3 separate TIMELINES, yet the changes you make in the past in Skyward (Killing Demise, Master Sword left in the past, Thunder Dragon saved etc.) don't have any supposed repercussions.....

also a commenter on Kotaku shares this frustration well:

Good lord what a messy timeline!!!

At the beginning (by which I mean, after getting the last sacred flame and completing the time gate) it looked like a stable time loop. Zelda went to the past, but she was actually there in that crystal the whole time anyway because she had already gone to the past.

Then you go to the past and plant a tree there..... WTF was that like on Groose's end? Did he see Link enter the time gate and then suddenly a fully grown tree appeared in front of him? Was it like it had always been there in his memory or.... what?

And then.... the big one... Demise is revived, and then killed and sealed in the master sword, IN THE PAST, does that mean that... in a manner of speaking, the whole finding the Triforce and dropping an island on the abomination was completely unnecessary? Because why would you need to stop him in the future if he was already killed in the past? When you return to the future (after having put the master sword there in the past so it was also always there the whole time even when it wasn't before) had Demise always been dead the whole time?

That was... it was all really weird... I wish they'd done a little more to explain how this changing the past nonsense works, especially when the official timeline includes three separate, parallel branches. Why did this past-changing craziness not create any branches?
 
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Ninten*

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That's what I was thinking too. But maybe part of Demise's soul was still in Sealed Grounds, and maybe the Goddess statue returned to the Sky eventually. It's really confusing.
 
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I think that this theory is unbased, because when link comes back to te present after killing demise, the statue still is there because link didnt stay in the past to change future, or present, when he comes back the statue still should be there because its "descending" already had happened in the present.
 

Ninten*

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^ Yeah, but when Link got the Triforce, he wished that Demise would be destroyed. So the statue went to the surface. After defeating Demise in the past, he was already sealed into the sword and defeated. So in the present, the statue wouldn't need to come down to the surface. Just saying right now as a piece of advice, if you ever successfully build a time machine, never mess time up. Stuff like this could happen.
 
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I have seen this explained before, and I know I will not do the explanation justice so I will keep it short and sweet. Demise conquered time, time has no affect on him so therefore what he does, has no affect on the future when hes in the past.
 

-KingJason

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How about we say, so nintendo doesn't look bad, once you kill Demise in the past, the gods send the goddess statue back to earth because it has played it's part in the destiny and is no longer needed in the sky. Also even more proof that Demise lives out of time, when you go back battle him in the past, he says hes been waiting for eons, he can wait a bit longer for link to make up his mind. But when you see Zelda being sealed away it is stated this is right after the sealing of Demise, and since the time gate goes back to where you left, it should only be a few hours not a few eons, but the proposed theory is that while our timeline is going from present to past to present to past, etc. Demises staying straight, he gets crushed by the goddess statue then he gets defeated by link, not the other way around, this is possible because he does live out of time.
 

Vanessa28

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The only explanation of this in my opinion could be the Goddess Statue used to be on the Sealed Grounds prevending Demise from escaping but somehow has been removed to the sky for later purpose. And when Link activated the Statue to return to the Sealed Grounds it landed on the spot where it used to be. So if Link went back in time and killed Demise off and returned to his present the Statue was where it was supposed to be so this means everything stayed the way it used to be long before. At least that is my opinion.
 
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The only element of this that is a potential paradox is that Demise has to be defeated in both time periods and defeating him in the past doesn't change the future, but yeah, that's completely explained by him "conquering time", which I take to mean he exists in all times. This is further proven by his line when, in the past (where he's only just been sealed) he says something along the lines of "being sealed all these years". Clearly he's aware of his time being sealed even into the future. So yeah, time's meaningless for him.

I kind of figure they created the "Demise has conquered time" thing as a cover to fix their time mishaps, but it actually fits really well with what Demise is. Hylia, Link, and other Links later across the timeline all manipulate time to stop evil. If Demise is this horrible Demon King, the first Demon King, then it makes sense that as the ultimate adversary, he has the same powers.

Regardless, Skyward Sword's ending has no plot holes. It's explained perfectly by Demise's nature.
 
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Demise is NOT a "he", he is it. This is brought up in Skyward Sword and many other credible sources. "It" is essentially the corporeal manifestation of the real-world abstract concept of evil. Remember when Fi explains how evil (Demise) appears differently to whoever lays their eyes on him? This correlates to what has been said about the abstract concept of evil (here in the real-world.) This may not be easy to comprehend to many of us, seeing as how this sort of thing pertains to philosophical concepts that are not as common [here] in the Western world. It has been found that Skyward Sword draws much of its influence from Eastern world philosophies, religions, and mythoi - like Shintoism; keep this in mind. In fact, Demise itself seems to be based on the obscure Shinto god of evil, Amatsu-Mikaboshi. I guess it'd be easier to say that abstract concepts like love, hate, and evil have the ability to transcend time itself; such abstract concepts are said to conquer time itself (even in the Western world)... I'm sure many of you have heard this before, no?

Demise = evil itself

Now, don't make me say this again.
 
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I thought it was commonly accepted by now that Demise wasn't killed in the past at all, only resealed...
We're referring to when Link follows Ghirahim and Zelda into the past to kill him at the end of the game... He was absolutely killed. He was "sealed" within the Master Sword, but only to be dissolved within; Demise is dead.


Demise is NOT a "he", he is it. This is brought up in Skyward Sword and many other credible sources. "It" is essentially the corporeal manifestation of the real-world abstract concept of evil. Remember when Fi explains how evil (Demise) appears differently to whoever lays their eyes on him? This correlates to what has been said about the abstract concept of evil (here in the real-world.) This may not be easy to comprehend to many of us, seeing as how this sort of thing pertains to philosophical concepts that are not as common [here] in the Western world. It has been found that Skyward Sword draws much of its influence from Eastern world philosophies, religions, and mythoi - like Shintoism; keep this in mind. In fact, Demise itself seems to be based on the obscure Shinto god of evil, Amatsu-Mikaboshi. I guess it'd be easier to say that abstract concepts like love, hate, and evil have the ability to transcend time itself; such abstract concepts are said to conquer time itself (even in the Western world)... I'm sure many of you have heard this before, no?

Demise = evil itself

Now, don't make me say this again.
Yeah I have the same interpretation of Demise as you, for sure. I interpreted him, in his role as the Demon King and the origin of Ganon and "all monsters", as basically the Devil himself. He's evil incarnate for sure. He still takes a masculine form, so I call him a he, and even if he didn't, "he" is typically used as the generic pronoun anyway.
 

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How Demise conquered time isn't all that important in this story. It really only matters that he was able to exist in the Present time and the Past time. And even after the Goddess Statue fell on his Imprisoned form, he lived in the Past. This makes pretty much all arguments irrelevant of how he lived in a later era, because of my aforementioned fact. His Present body was destroyed, yes, but even then that wouldn't stop him from returning, because Demise was still alive in the Past. Link was needed to go back in time so that he could terminate all chances, once and for all, of the evil from rising again.

I love how Skyward Sword made use of this timeline. It takes one a moment to sit back and reflect on the true events of things, but just looking at the outline of it alone develops an understanding that's simple and not entirely convoluted. Trying to explain it step-by-step is what rattles the brain. However, only certain circumstances are necessary in this case to almost fully comprehend how Demise survived through it all. I touched on these above, and others before me added their own insights to just about make it complete, or at least in my line of understanding.
 

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