It’s pretty much unanimous that the latest entry in the Zelda franchise is the best yet. While we’ve already received confirmation that Tears of the Kingdom will not be receiving DLC, a new interview with the game’s director answers a different question players have had since its release: where did all the Sheikah technology from Breath of the Wild go?

If you’ll recall, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild featured Sheikah towers riddled across its map. By climbing these towers, the player filled out their in-game map and got to survey the surrounding area. The lore explanation for this mechanic was that the towers were built with ancient Sheikah technology. By tapping the Sheikah slate to the consoles at the top of the tower, the topographical data of the surrounding area downloaded directly to Link’s Sheikah slate.

These towers mysteriously disappeared from Tears of the Kingdom’s game world, and players have been curious as to why. The game itself makes no effort to explain the towers’ disappearances. Now, five months after the game’s initial release, we have an answer. In a recent interview with Telegraph, the game’s director Hidemaro Fujibayashi gave the following explanation:

[The towers] disappeared after the Calamity was defeated (sealed). 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 since the Calamity disappeared, they also disappeared as their role had been fulfilled.

It is, anyway, commonplace for mysterious events and strange phenomena to occur in Hyrule. Thus, 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.

There you have it. Nintendo’s official explanation for the disappearance of Sheikah technology is effectively “we don’t know either.” This is sure to disappoint fans who were looking for a solid lore reason for such a change, but the most likely answer is that Nintendo wanted to change up gameplay and decided story was an afterthought.

While this answer might be a disappointment, the game itself is not. You can check out our Tears of the Kingdom review here. We gave it a 10/10 and said “Just when you think you’ve reached the pinnacle of a series, Nintendo comes out with a bigger, more ambitious, creative, and innovative follow-up to perhaps what was already one of the greatest games ever released.”

Source: Telegraph