Cfrock
Keep it strong
TP's entire castle town has a moat just like OoT's. Not every little detail is going to be the same. This is a game, not the real world. The developers don't really care that much for symmetry between the two titles. That's why the entrance to Zora's domain is found north rather than east.
This is a point you mention many times here and I want to address it right away. Ocarina of Time's Town does not have a moat surrounding it. Look at the map. It shows that a tributary of the Zora's River flows past the entrance. It does not encircle the entire town. The tributary isn't even man made, it is a natural course taken by the river. That means the Hylians did not purposefully redirect the flow of water towards the town. I don't think it is acurate to describe the river in Ocarina of Time as a moat.
TP's castle is built as a huge circular structure, OoT's is a conventional castle, fact is, they are more similarities between TP's castle town and ST's castle town than between TP's castle town and OoT's castle town
Are you saying that Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess's Towns show differences? Earlier you claimed they "have the same design."
It wasn't. I know that for fact. How do I know that for fact? Because the game didn't blatantly say it. And that's all you can rely on with the Zelda series. Zelda isn't complex enough for the idea of Castle Town to slide without clear spoken hints or confirmation in game. The developers don't place stuff like that for you to figure out. Everything is either spelled out for you or extremely hinted by in-game dialogue.
This is the part which confuses me the most. Here, you say that you know "for a fact" that the Temple of Time was not moved. Yet, you also state that the Town surrounding the Temple did not move either. I don't understand how this can be the case. Whichever way we go, one of them must have moved at some point. Now, I see from reading the rest of your post that you believe the Temple of Time that was found in Skyward Sword to be the one in Ocarina of Time. That is confirmed to not be true.
- Page 77 of Hyrule HistoriaThe only enterance to the Temple of Light, which is in the Holy Land. In ancient times, there was a temple which had the same name; but the location in which Rauru built the temple was where the temple of the seal was thought to be.
This confirms that the open Temple of Time found in Skyward Sword, the one where Impa destroyed the Gate of Time, is not the Temple of Time found throughout the rest of the series. The only connection is by name, outside that, the Temple found in Lanayru Province has no significance and is never seen again.
I can buy Ordon not being a part of Hyrule, but if you click your in-game map for the Lanayru province, the desert is clearly included.
If you click the map you will find that Lanyaru does not include the Gerudo Desert. The Desert is it's own portion of the map. You can go check if you like. This is true on both GCN and Wii versions of the game. It also fits with in-game quotes, specifically this one: "[Ganondorf] was the leader of a band of thieves who invaded Hyrule in the hopes of establishing dominion over the Sacred Realm." If the Gerudo Desert was a part of Hyrule then Ganondorf and his thieves would not have been able to "invade". It would have been a civil war, not an invasion.
The Gerudo Desert in Twilight Princess is not part of Lanayru Province.
Exactly the same in TP, but the dirt path is smaller.
There is no dirt path in Twilight Princess. The Castle is connected to Town by a stone street with buildings on either side leading to a grand gateway. The Castle approaches are completely different in both games.
That's part of the Castle Town. OoT didn't have the power to make something so big.
The Market is not just one part of the Town, it is the whole Town. We know this becaus it is described both in-game and on the official map as simply "The Market". It is not a case of them being limited by technology, since they Market was presented as pre-rendered backgrounds. They could easily have used many more to make a larger location. The Market is all there is to it besides that one alleyway.
Again, this is a game. Not the real world. Tiny little differences like these aren't because the game developers wanted us to realize they had moved towns. It's because the game developers are human and are under the belief that continuity and story really isn't that important and that gameplay is. Fact is, making a replica of OoT's castle town would have been far too tiny and below what TP could achieve. They'd only only be hurting themselves.
I wouldn't describe the differences as "Tiny little" ones. The Castles are entirely different, as are the Towns. Even if we did say the Towns were the same, it would still be clear that the Town expanded at least between games. They are completely different. I also don't think everything can just be put down to 'the developers needed a bigger place because the console had more power'. They clearly pay attention to some degree of continuity in a large number of other areas, so why would they totally ignore it elsewhere? Just because we aren't explicitly shown a part of the story doesn't mean nothing happened.
In the adult timeline...
It's unfair to take issue with half a sentence, especially when the rest of the sentence address this specific concern. Please read the whole thing to get the conext before presenting it as a fault in my logic.
If this was the case, they would be in Kakariko. Also, this is Zelda, not real world history. If it happened, we would have gotten a clear in-game say so that it did.
Why would they be in Kakariko? Because they moved there in Ocarina of Time? Yes, that makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the Hylians saying 'Well, that's that then. Better get used to life in the village.' I agree that people would have fled to Kakariko for safety but once Ganondorf was executed it makes sense that they would build a new city (or restore the old one). Factor in the evident population increase and you have another reason why Kakariko couldn't have remained a permanent settlement for the entire Hylian population of Hyrule.
...At best it moved a couple of feet north.
And a few hundred feet west. Look at the maps again and take note of the distance between the two locations in Twilight Princess compared to their close proximity in Ocarina of Time.
They're both surrounded by moats. From there, it's green grassland infested by monsters.
Ocarina of Time does not feature a moat and it is walled in on the east and west by high cliffs. Look at the map. Look at it in-game. Castle Town in Twilight Princess has open grassland on all sides, Ocarina of Time's Market does not.
Because it had no purpose in TP.
The Temple of Time had a pretty significant purpose in Twilight Princess.
Even if I accepted that the Castle Town moved, there's no way it was ever in the Faron province. I could buy Eldin province it's close to Death Mountain, but it's as far away from faron province as humanly possible. The Faron province is in a forest in the south eastern area (Kokori Forest, Lost Woods, Sacred Grove). The Castle Town is slightly west and as far north as the map will allow.
All I can say is what I have said before. We do not know the boundaries of Faron Province during Ocarina of Time and the Provinces we do know the boundaries of throughout the series change their landscape and geographical features enough for the mere presence of a forest to not be confirmation of which Province is where.
In Twilight Princess, Castle Town is actually closer to Faron Province that it is to Death Mountain. In Twilight Princess, the actual Faron Woods are directly south of the Castle, not south east, and the Sacred Grove is over to the west. Check the map to see for yourself. If the Town did not move, then the forest must have for this to be the case.
Sealed Temple.
I honestly do not know what you mean by this. I had established earlier in my post that the Sealed Temple is what becomes the Temple of Time that Rauru built. This means that, since the Sealed Temple was at the centre of the world, the Temple of Time Rauru built is also at the centre of the world. So the sentence you quoted follows a logical progression. I do not understand your issue with it.
Follow the moat in OoT's castle town and tell me where it leads you.
What moat? I can follow the tributary that passes in front of the Market back to the Zora's River via a natural course but there is no moat to follow. The crucial difference here is that in Ocarina of Time the river naturally flows past the Market while in Twilight Princess it had to be manipulated. This would be unecessary if the two Towns were one and the same.
You give Zelda's story and continuity too much credit.
I personally feel you give it too little. To each his own, I suppose.
It wasn't moved (though that does sound more reasonable). There's just two Temple of Times. And the one in the Lanayru region is easier to access and in the right province of the CONFIRMED castle town.
Again, Hyrule Historia does confirm that the Temple of Time in Skyward Sword's Lanayru Province is not seen again and has no connection with the Temple built by Rauru beyond sharing the same name.