How The Legend of Zeldas Kokiri Became BOTWs Koroks

How The Legend of Zelda’s Kokiri Became BOTW’s Koroks

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The story of how Ocarina of Time’s Kokiri became Breath of the Wild’s Koroks goes deep in the lore of the infamous Legend of Zelda timeline.

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How The Legend of Zeldas Kokiri Became BOTWs Koroks

The official The Legend of Zelda timeline is infamous for its complexity. Ocarina of Time causes the timeline to split into three branches, which may-or-may-not ultimately unite with Breath of the Wild. The events of one branch, the Adult Timeline, have major ramifications not just for Hyrule’s geography, but for its citizens. In this timeline, the water-bound Zora evolve into the birdlike Rito, and the humanoid Kokiri evolve into adorable Koroks.

The Kokiri themselves evolved from Hylians. Sometime after Hyrule’s founding, likely during the Era of Prosperity which precedes The Minish Cap, the city began developing and industrializing. However, a small group of Hylians preferred nature to the growing city, and they moved from Hyrule to its nearby forest. These Hylians become the Kokiri, with their child-like appearance and woodsy charms. The Kokiri keep to themselves in the forest, and they don’t interact much with Hylians or anyone else.

The forest in which the Kokiri live comes to be known as the Kokiri Forest. The guardian deity of this forest is The Great Deku Tree, who also protects one of the three Spiritual Stones. At the outset of Ocarina of Time, a Hylian child named Link is being hidden and kept safe by the Kokiri and the Deku Tree. Eventually, Ganondorf asks the Deku Tree to hand over its Spiritual Stone. It refuses, and Ganondorf places a curse on the Deku Tree which will eventually kill it. The Tree’s death results in Kokiri Forest becoming overrun by monsters.

How Zelda’s Timeline Split Affects the Kokiri

How The Legend of Zeldas Kokiri Became BOTWs Koroks

What happens to the Kokiri next varies differs dramatically in one of the three splintered timelines. In the Fallen Hero Timeline and Adult Zelda Timeline, Link helps the Kokiri Saria awaken as a Sage, which causes a new Deku Tree sprout to take root. In the Child Era, Ganondorf is apprehended before his schemes can begin, which likely includes his curse on the Deku Tree. No Zelda game on either the Child or Fallen Hero timelines ever mention the Kokiri or the Great Deku Tree again. Even though Hyrule goes into dramatic decline in the Fallen Hero timeline, hopefully the lack of mention means the Kokiri are able to maintain their quiet lives, removed from society.

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The Adult Timeline is an entirely different story. The Adult Timeline is the one in which Link defeats Ganondorf, and Zelda seals him away in the Sacred Realm. Zelda sends Link back in time to properly live out his childhood, which creates the Era Without a Hero. The Kokiri keep their representation among the Sages, who are now responsible for maintaining the Master Sword’s power to repel evil. To do this, the Sages play a song to the gods while the King conducts them with the Wind Waker.

Ganondorf creeps out of the seal, yet no one comes to rescue Hyrule. Desperate for help, the citizens pray to the three Goddesses. The Goddesses instruct them to flee to the mountaintops and proceed to flood Hyrule, sealing Ganondorf at the bottom of the new Great Sea.

Before the Great Flood, the current Kokiri Wind Sage, Fado, had been inside the Wind Temple, where he remained for hundreds of years, praying to retain the power of the Master Sword. The rest of the Kokiri found themselves in an entirely new environment: a vast, hostile sea dotted with occasional islands. Over time, the Kokiri evolved in order to fly over the Great Sea. The final form of their evolution were the Koroks, who maintain the Kokiri’s childish nature.

The Kokiri weren’t the only species to evolve specifically to enable flight. The Zora, too, evolved into the Rito so they could fly over the Great Sea. One would think that a species which thrives in water, like the Zora, would have an excellent time in The Era of the Great Sea. The leading theory for their Rito evolution is that, because the Great Sea was created to seal Ganondorf and his monsters, it wasn’t a hospitable living environment. The Great Sea is notably full of monsters, not fish or other sea creatures.

Koroks can fly using Deku Leaves as propellers, which sprout from their own bodies. The Kokiri Forest becomes the island of Forest Haven, where the Koroks and Deku Tree continue to live. Using the power of flight, Koroks adopt the important job of spreading seeds across the islands of the Great Sea, aiding the growth of new forests.

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But there’s still one Kokiri left – Fado, who remains praying in the Wind Temple. How Fado is still alive after hundreds of years is canonically unaddressed, though perhaps being very involved in prayer while a Sage in the Zelda universe expands one’s lifetime. Unfortunately, when Ganon breaks out of the Goddesses’ seal hundreds years later, the first thing he does is kill Fado. The spirit of the last Kokiri then waits in the Wind Temple for his successor. Link eventually finds Fado’s spirit and brings the Korok Makar to replace him, setting Fado’s spirit free and completing the transition from the Kokiri to the Koroks.

The next time Koroks show up is in Breath of the Wild, which takes place thousands of years after Wind Waker’s Link and Zelda go off to found New Hyrule. Koroks now live in the Korok Forest, which is at the heart of the labyrinthine, enchanted Lost Woods. They’ve also evolved so that the vast majority of people either don’t see them at all or simply believe them to be trees. This explains why Koroks revel in playing hide-and-seek with Link for Korok Seeds so much.

How these Koroks came to be in the Korok Forest remains unanswered. Breath of the Wild’s placement on the timeline is still debated, with one theory holding it’s so far in the future that the game unifies all three branches. The events leading to Saria awakening as a Sage do not happen in the Child Timeline, which includes a game suspected to contribute lore to BOTW2: Twilight Princess. It’s unknown whether the absence of a Kokiri Sage would affect the development of Koroks. On the other hand, one Breath of the Wild easter egg ties the game to at least the Adult Timeline. Sea salt is said to be the relic of an “ancient sea.”

The fate of the Kokiri in the Child and Fallen Hero timelines is one of the many mysteries of The Legend of Zelda franchise. It’s entirely possible that the Kokiri end up as Koroks on all timelines, albeit for different reasons. The presence of both the Rito and the Zora in BOTW is a related, yet unsolved mystery.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/zelda-kokiri-breath-wild-korok-evolution-change-timeline/

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