Zelda fans pleasantly surprised by Tears of the Kingdom theory that actually makes sense

gamesradar.com:

We're in the part of the hype cycle for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom where longtime series fans take the absence of regularly distributed information about the game as a chance to start spinning up increasingly absurd theories about the content of the game - and now everybody's been pleasantly surprised by one theory that actually makes a lot of sense.

We know that in Tears of the Kingdom, Link is going to lose most of the abilities and power-ups he collected in Breath of the Wild because, well, that's how video games work. Many of the Tears of the Kingdom trailers prominently feature a sequence where Link is attacked by the corrupted energy pouring out of what appears to be Ganondorf's corpse. It engulfs Link's right arm, and is likely the reason he ends up with that weird, inhuman limb throughout the rest of the game.

"Okay theory time," one top post in the Tears of the Kingdom subreddit begins, citing the moment Link's arm is engulfed. "This is when all that we collected in BotW is taken away. The hearts, stamina wheels and champion abilities. It would also be very cool to see Ganondorf use something like Urbosa's Fury or Daruk's Protection!"

Broadly, everyone's onboard with that idea. "Number 1 most sane and probable theory on this whole sub," as one commentor (opens in new tab) calls it. "This is the most believable theory I’ve seen yet," another says (opens in new tab). There's some debate about the champion abilities, though - as yet another commentor notes (opens in new tab), "The champion abilities left when the champions left. That's at the end of BotW, you see them look on with King Rhoam and then they all twinkle away."

You might detect a note of exhaustion with the state of Zelda theorycrafting