Exploring the Modern Locations of the Ancient Past in Tears of the Kingdom
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
- In this video I take a look at what has become of the location of every memory that takes place in the ancient past of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom! Relive the story of Princess Zelda as she travels back in time to the era of Hyrule's founding and the rise of the Demon King Ganondorf. We explore the setting of each memory, theorize, and make observations about what has become of Hyrule's first Kingdom.
If you enjoyed this exploration of each of Tears of the Kingdoms memory, and you bother reading the description of this video, I sincerely hope you consider subscribing to the channel and letting me know what you'd like to see next.
Thanks for watching!
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0:00 Introduction
0:37 Memory 3
1:41 Memory 4
2:17 Memory 5
2:57 Memory 6
4:04 Memory 7
4:46 Memory 8
5:15 Memory 9
5:50 Memory 10
6:49 Memory 12
7:42 Memory 13
8:33 Memory 14
9:06 Memory 15
10:24 Memory 16
10:52 Memory 17
13:02 Thanks for Watching! - Hry
One thing interesting in memory 6. There are two shrines of light shown that are not there in the present. Their locations do however match the locations of two of the great plateau sheikah shrines from BotW.
Those two became chasms
They may have ascended with the other parts of the great plateau and were the shrines of light by the temple in the sky
Rauru was mining so much Zoanite 😂 IYKYK
My theory is that they were destroyed at some point Alongside 6 others meaning the total was 160 shrines
+ It explains why link is missing 2 hearts by the end of the game
My favorite memory is the one where they’re all having Tea and Zelda gushes about Link, it makes me so happy :)
Couldn’t agree more! It’s so wholesome
The door to the geoglyph room using both Zonai and Hylian architecture despite being an addition to the Forgotten Temple after the events of the memories is not a contradiction. We know that ancient Hylians built in the Zonai architectural style after the Imprisoning War, namely the Thyphlo Ruins were explicitly stated to be made by Hylians. The same is probably the case for the Forgotten Temple geoglyph room, and I’d even venture to assume it was made by the same generation of Hylians as they clearly revered the Zonai so who else would be documenting the geoglyphs and making a renovation in a temple dedicated specifically to them?
i would say that any ruin in the style of the thyphlo, labyrinth, and the faron are the Hylian tribe that lived under zonai protection and were from Sonia's tribe that went on to remain inspired by the zonai, some became the primal sheikah, others such as the soldiers could have formed the primal tribe of faron, and eventually when enough time passed they became the modern hylian.
@@blackreaper2247I personally believe that the Faron style of Zonai architecture is from the period from before the Zonai discovered the Depths, and that the Labyrinths were built at some point during the transition from the Faron Style to the Tears Style, as they have elements of both styles (more blockier like the Totk style, but still have the same design motifs as the Faron style)
@@verycoolperson46 @verycoolperson46 except we see that faron style was built over tears style. look at mineru's underground entrance when you place her mask at to tobio hollow chasm. the pedestal and structure once rising reveal the faron style was built to cover the tears style ruins.
Could the rising of the Sky Islands after Zelda transformed into the Light Dragon have been what caused the Dueling Peaks to split apart? An event like that would've inevitably caused a gigantic earthquake.
It’s possible! In BotW there was a quote from a character named Shay at the Lakeside stable “The legends say a dragon god split the mountain in half to forge a way through, and that's how it went from one to two. “ but it’s merely a legend.
@@hchatnation It's a legend because the people cannot normally see the Dragons. But we can so I had to be one of the 3 Elemental Dragons we find in BotW and TotK.
@@hchatnation Tbf even if it was merely a legend from that NPC’s point of view, the writers were still clearly trying to tell us that that was the case
I remember it saying that it was specifically Farosh that split the mountain. Which suggests that maybe Zelda was the first to become a dragon (chronologically), and the other three came after? There's strong suggestion that the builders of the Lomei labyrinths were the ones who became the dragons. Not sure where that would have happened in the timeline though.
@@jerotoro2021 if zelda is the first then how do people know about dragonification? It must've happened at least once before, but there are only 4 of them left. Unless it happened somewhere else among zonai people
its insane to me how much detail was put in these memory maps in both BOTW and TOTK and yet we have no way of exploring more of it, I hope some day data miners will reveal these maps somehow so we can get a good look
One detail that took me forever to rationalize was the markings that spiraled out from the edges of sky island pieces that had landed on the surface. Then I saw that they matched the markings on Link and Ganondorf's bodies from where Zonai energy had changed them. It seems that spending an enough time in the sky has baked Light or perhaps even the Light Force into the surface of these islands, explaining how their biome is different than the surface. This excess Light then seems to slowly radiate into the terrain around them once they've landed and visually disturb that area.
I had been assuming that the castle of Rauru's era was at the location of the Eastern Palace/Abbey ruins from the present day (the ruins where you find Shrine with the Bomb Trial in BOTW), but it seems that's not the case after all! Nice find.
the name tells you what it is....an abbey
The Eastern Abbey is a callback to Hyrule Castle from OoT...its the garden where you meet Zelda when she's spying on her father/Ganondorf
I have a theory that this is actually the first kingdom and not one after a long time jump. The goddess statues not being there yet really point to this. Maybe Ganon was initially like demises servant before he was his reincarnation, much like how he has a servant in skyward sword. Maybe this is the first ever ganondorf and was a war of a kindgom between the imprisoning war and skyward sword? And then Denise comes back in skyward sword because he’s upset his plan of sending Ganon failed, and then used Ganondorf as inspiration for his future reincarnation because maybe he was the perfect model
Oh and also maybe the ganondorf that was sealed was like underground this whole time acting as a power source for demise to reincarnate into other ganondorfs until he would be reawakened in his true form (ie this game)
I was thinking something similar 🤔
Yes!!! With the Hylians being sky people after the islands were raised! Ive thought about this too
Od wish you could do something similar for age of calamity, would be hella fun to explore 4 verisons of hyrule.
I really wish we got a more detailed look at the Ancient Past. We obviously got the see the Great Plateau. But the map of Hyrule found in the Forgotten Temple shows many more differences, such as Central Hyrule resembling that of the Lanayru Wetlands rather than a plain, with many more rivers and islands jotted around. Also I love the attention to detail with Hebra Peak not having the hole, or the Dueling Peaks being just one. But I wish that if we did get DLC (im still mad about that) we'd be able to explore this Ancient Past. It would just be cool to explore a world that is similar but vastly different.
Damn, that was amazing. In the last scene of this video you can see how the ruins at the base of mount hylia almost match perfectly with the ones sorroundings temple of time in the sky islands. Just complement each others.
Thanx so much for your hard work. You have my like and my suscribe.
Greetings from El Salvador.
Great observation and greetings!! I agree, I think all that architecture line up. There's a massive bridge in the snowy region of the Great Sky Island (focus of the shot at 12:28) and I'm super curious what that used to be a part of
The 17 memory genuinely made me cry when I first saw it but was met is satisfaction after beating the game. I was still confused though after the game in previous memories had stated that dragonification is permanent.
P.s amazing video, love the in-depth breakdown
The first Hyrule Castle was up on the ancient Plateau, we see it in a few memories in fact.
In “A Show of Fealty", when Ganondorf speaks, we can see the roof of the Temple of Time out a window, and it looks rather nearby.
In “Sonia is Caught by Treachery”, we can see the front face of the castle. A long balcony overlooking the stairs up, with the main entrance behind and a row of decorative pillars and columns in two rows.
In “The Birth of the Demon King", we see landmarks nearby which are all visible from a middle elevation vantage point on the Great Plateau.
In “Tears of the Dragon”, we see several shots of the Temple of Time with its surroundings, and catch sight of a large structure up the hill and not too far from the temple; in one shot, just after she consumes her secret stone, we see this structure again - as well as what appears to be the front entrance seen earlier, but from its right side~!
But sonias grave is in the forgotten temple
@@RobloxOverloadGames yes, because that seems to be where Zelda, Rauru, and Sonia's body transported to upon fleeing the Demon King.
@@theloruleanhistorianthe castle was probably at the shrine of resurrection though, the sheikah just destroyed it for the shrine of resurrection
@@RobloxOverloadGames it was on the hillside above and behind it. I don't believe the Sheikah were involved with dismantling it at all; rather, since the capital was relocated to the site above the Imprisoning Chamber… I see two possibilities. 1) It was left abandoned, and its stones were reused to build the more modern structures (Temple of Time, Great Plateau walls, etc.). 2) The process of uplifting the surrounding lands into the sky may have destroyed the castle, since it appears that the Great Sky Island came up in separate chunks, rather than as a single solid piece.
This is great content. Nice job dude!
I believe your theory of the location of the castle in the past is correct because while I was wondering through the Hyrule Castle that we see in Botw and Totk, if you go down a spiral staircase to a very low level of the castle, there is a stone tablet that says that Hyrule Castle was constructed to keep Ganondorf concealed (something like that), meaning before Ganondorf was sealed, there was no castle there.
Well done, you can tell a lot of time and research were put into this
Amazing video! This information will definitely help in some theories I have, as it confirmed many of my ideas.
This video is amazing ! Awesome work
Great video, piecing all this together!!! I've been dying to play this game, but know as soon as I buy it I won't get anything else done in life for a while. haha
Still, I've been watching some playthroughs and things as I work, videos like this have still been really enjoyable! One day I'll hop into this world again....
This is good. Bro good idea for a video. Original, thumbs up! Also great editing.
I think it’s also interesting that the cave that housed the shrine of resurrection is visible at 2:16 behind them…
Thank you for this video, I wish there were more videos like this
Comments like this are what keep me going
Amazing video!!
4:58 Interesting how in Memory 8, Duelling Peaks had not yet been split. This also matches up with the map of Hyrule in the Forgotten Temple.
interestingly enough on that map the river of the dead is not present on the plateua and there is a massive lake that covers all of hyrule field
This was a super good analysis for a channel with only 570 subscribers! You're really underrated lol
Made my day lol
This has a shocking amount of detail from the developers, damn.
Why do you think the grass turned yellow when the Great Sky Island (and other islands) rose?
Hmm.....I think my theory is the lack of rain. I mean, have you noticed how most sky islands don't get rain?
Lack of rain, higher elevation and more exposure to direct sunlight
Could also just be basic natural selection. The grass slowly evolved to be more yellow as time went on or yellow species of grass overtook the sky islands as they presumably had a better time thriving in the new environment.
Assuming the dev team thought this through... Yellow foliage would absorb less solar energy, and so would help protect the plant from excess sunlight exposure and allow for more efficient photosynthesis by only absorbing blue-UV light. It also reflects heat better, allowing the plant to retain moisture more effectively, essential in situations where there's little or no rainfall. The same reasons why grasses in dry grassland areas are always yellowish.
I think the replies here have covered my initial thoughts, the one thing I’d add is we do see vegetation respond differently in the sky. Zeltik made the point in his last video that Sundelions are negative copies of Silent Princesses - so maybe Sundelions are just Silent Princesses that grow in the sky?
Genuinely a good video.
One thing that I noticed during the video is, that I think the developers had a little oversight. You mention the Stone at 9:03 which explains that the Demon King is sealed under the Castle. Yet Zelda and Link, walking down there, should have known who he is once they reached but they were surprised to find a Chamber down there. I'm sure the developers just put the stone there later to explain it to the player better, but Zelda living in the Castle should have had access to that stone for sure.
Anyway, great video, well explained, good editing. You earned my Like.
The passageway in which the stone sits is hidden under a statue which has since fallen over due to the Upheaval
great video
Are the memory cutscenes prerendered videos or are they a live render? Otherwise it would be interesting if you go out of bounce with the camera.
Prerendered, you can see the macroblocks if you look hard enough
I agree! I’m waiting for someone to do that, I’m not sure how you do it 😅
If you're "out of bounce," drink more Gummiberry Juice!
@@hchatnationYou can’t. The whole Ancient map is on video files only. There’s no assets of it in the game, so exploring it is impossible.
Wow good job
If all the cutscenes are rendered in real time, would it be possible to mod the game in such a way to make the memory locations explorable?
Not all cutscenes in BOTW /TOTK are real-time namely memory cutscenes.
The only cutscene that is rendered in real time is the one where Zelda receives the Master Sword, or the one where Link sends it back (not the dragon tear, just the one at the beginning of the game). For that they just plastered an image of the Great Plateau behind Zelda to give the illusion of them being there. All the other dragon tear memories are pre-rendered.
What doesn't seem to work is when Ganondorf is looking at The Great Plateau, you see the Zonai shrines. Are we saying that the shrines were there, disappeared and got replaced with Sheikah shrines, and then got re-replaced with the original Zonai shrines?
Yes, actually lol. Chasms exist where those shrines were, so for that reason they moved. I’d guess
I think Impa’s theory of the Geoglyphs makes sense. They were drawn by future civilizations that interpreted them from the visions.
Ooh do I have a theory for you! lol, I have another video about the Sheikah and the Zonai. You don't have to watch it - the short is I think the Ancient Sheikah were the ones who actually drew the Geoglyphs because they were laying the foundation for Link when the future Zelda spoke of, came around. That's why all the Zonai stuff reacted during the upheaval - it was all plotted by the Sheikah. That last bit is an observation from Monster Maze.
if i had to guess it was the Chamberlain who lead a small tribe of hylians to become sheihak, who went on to become inspired by Rauru, Zelda, Sonia, and mineru's sacrifice to stop ganondorf. In the end the chamberlain learned a great deal of zonai lore and science and set out to project their legacy.
One thing that bugged me is why there was so much existing Zonai architecture already present where the Sages have their battle with Ganondorf. At Gloom's origin, you can see that the spikes that surround where Ganondorf was sealed are definitely Zonai in nature. You can also see that the area below that was pre-existing as well. Then I noticed that chunks of the "stalactites" that are composed of a jasmine-like substance found below the sky islands were there in this lower area. This same substance is what the Hover Stones are made of, leading me to believe that it's this substance that allows the islands to float. These chunks being down here lead me to believe that its the original site where the Zonai had descended upon Hyrule.
I wonder, since these memories are obviously 3d models separate from the hyrule we play in, would there be a full map of the ancient past in the game files?
I'm guessing that there is no Giant Goddess Statue in the Zonai kingdom, because it wasn't carved yet. I'm guessing it was carved after (or shortly before) the last of the Hylians were raised up to Skyloft. Hidemaro Fujibayashi alluded "there may have been a history of destruction before the story of Hyrule's foundation". I think that destruction was the prologue intro of the game Skyward Sword. With Raru and Mineru out of the picture, the Demon King's spirit began leaking out, and led a violent seige against the remaining citizens of kingdom of Raru's Hyrule, and Hylia herself had to take the last of the surviving Hylians to Skyloft (using similar technology as Mineru used to lift OG Hyrule). That's why there are ruins of the previous civilization on the surface under Skyloft (like mining facilities), and possibly the early stages of dragonificated Zonai, Lanayru, Eldin, Faron, who possibly are smaller and able to speak because their Zonai DNA and the relatively short amount of time between the Zonai Hyrule and the founding of the Skyloftian Hyrule (maybe). I'm guessing the Ganondorf 'Demon King' and the Demise 'Demon King' are potentially related because Demise's scar is where Ganondorf's Tear was fastened. Once Link defeats Demise, Zelda (through the blood of the Godess) and Link (through the spirit of the Hero) are cursed to fight reincarnations of Ganondorf going forward, and that's why we see things eerily similar in Ocarina of Time. The Sheikah find a way to bottle Ganondorf up for 10,000 years (potentially why in the OG TotK trailer, the structure above Raru's hand looks similar to the Sheikah technology found in the Shrine of Resurrection in BotW and not Zonai which looks cleaner and sleeker) and then again he leaks out in the form of Calamity Ganon.
I think this theory would explain the lack of Hylia references in the Zonai time period, and also the lack of Triforce in the Zonai time period. Hylia wouldn't have given up her status and the Triforce would still be secret possibly even to TotK Raru.
Wait, so you're saying that the Temple of Time from BOTW/OOT, which looks like a typical church, and the new Temple of Time from TOTK, which looks like a stack of layers which get larger toward the top, are the same? Despite the fact that they both exist in TOTK, in separate places?
Not that they are the same. The ToT from the Great Sky Island was originally where the ToT from BotW/OOT is now. They built the latter ToT where the Zonai ToT was before it was sent skyward
I think the implication of the glyph map room behind the secret stone room is that someone with knowledge of the situation and the power of the royal family was attempting to preserve the locations of the tears/memories for the future. Since the style is a mix of both hylian and zonai, we may be able to speculate that it was installed during the time of the Ancient Hero (or Rat Link, as I affectionately call him). I've also read speculation that the third botw-style game will somehow be in the era of rat link or playing through those events like the splitting of the dueling peaks.
I think it was the Ancient Sheikah 👀
@@hchatnation I can definitely see that as well. I also am really liking the idea that mineru and rauru may have had separate children and lineages. That would be so crazy but fun to explore.
i'm calling him rat link now
@@bowser_the_flamingshell we welcome all in the Rat Link Lore Support Group😌
The castle wasn’t even built yet. In the royal ancient passage, a plaque says it was built after ganondorf was imprisoned.
I think that 2 story aztec-looking building on mount hylia might actually be Hyrule High Court, where ganondorf meets rauru
There are two Hyrule Castles, both in separate locations and in different eras. The kingdom was confirmed to have been founded on the Great Plateau, considering the evidence pointed out in this video, and on that same plaque you mentioned it was stated that the new Hyrule Castle was built on top of the Imprisoning Chamber in order to keep Ganondorf sealed below. So yes, you are correct that the *predominant* Hyrule Castle we know of wasn't built yet, but there was still a *smaller* Hyrule Castle before it on the Plateau, the original, that was only used during Rauru and Sonia's reign.
If you throw out any of the timeline stuff (hard to do, I know), the ruins in front of the Temple of Time on the Great Plateau match Castle Town from OOT. If you assume that is what remains from that era, then the Hyrule Castle from OOT would also be nearby... maybe a third Hyrule Castle?
Anyone notice the the entrance to the shrine of Resurrection? Behind zelda in the memory
Honestly i think that the typhlo ruins was the castle as raurus grave is inside of them
Isn't it (Officially) called the Distant Past?
My biggest question is... how to fuse the story of ocarina of time with the story of tears of the kingdom??? Some places fit more or less... but the story of before the "time split" does not fit at all... if it is the same Rauru, the same castle and it is few years before Kokiri Link... would it be 2 Ganondorf, 2 princess Zelda, 2 masterswords but 1 Link in that time??? One Ganondorf who kill the king and get trapped under the castle and turn into a mummy while the second Ganondorf pursue the princess and Impa and get (or not) the triforce, then there is a princess who become Sheka and a princess from the future who become a dragon??? Is there a perfectly fine Mastersword and a decayed one at that time? ...I think that ocarina of time happened way before the Zonai time and then get completely destroyed before the Zonai time... that way, Ganondorf could either be the imprisoned one who did not yet got the triforce, who broke free and finaly got it or Ganon who got sealed by the mastersword... but then... if the Zonai time happend first, how Ganondorf manages to reach the Zonai time if he was born at the time of ocarina of time??? That king Rauru of that time did not know anything about Ganondorf evilness until (second) Kokiri Link came out of the temple of time (without Navi) after the end credit of the oot game ... i mean... in oot time, at the begining of the game, Ganondorf pledge allegence to king Rauru, then for 10 years, Ganondorf secretely create monsters to terrorise the peoples, then Ganondorf slay his own creations in order to be praised as a trustfull hero... in order to gain the trust of the king who just lost his wife while she gave birth to a princess Zelda... at that time, after 10 years of slaying his own creations, when Ganondorf finaly gor the trust of the king, young Zelda and (first) young Link spied on the meeting between Ganondorf and king Rauru... and then, couple of days later, Ganondorf slay the king and Zelda flee... but that is nothing to do with the story of the Zonai Rauru king... And does King Rauru or Queene Sonia who is descendant of Skyward Zelda??? (For oot characters i refer them as "first" and "seconds" to differenciate the youngs at the begining of the story or at the end of the story)
Unfortunately, I think trying to directly connect OoT's story with TotK can only produce a chaotic mess for the reason you've described.
A theory I like is that TotK's Rauru was the first king of a NEW Hyrule kingdom that he founded after the old one kingdom from the previous games collapsed. Even the game's director Hidemaro Fujibayashi suggested this as a possibility in a recent interview (which I heard about through this video by Monster Maze czcams.com/video/6JYXevz5i9w/video.html).
Thus, this Rauru and Ganondorf are not directly connected to those in OoT but are a case of history echoing itself. The timeline doesn't get more complicated and we can all avoid hurting our brains from thinking too hard. Of course, there are still questions to be answered and the Zelda theorist community might figure out a better explanation but I think this one will work as a good starting point until then.
oot hyrule is now the depths, in wind waker the koroks had a tradition every year to plant deku see trees all throughout the great sea in hopes to make more land, and so the result is current day totk hyrule, thats why the depths has an underwater looking theme, with all the original link outfits and oot soldier ghosts, and so everything about the original hyrule was lost to time after wind waker
@@buss1205 Absolutely beautiful theory
If both Sonia and Rauru died then how is the royal family alive?
Who continued the bloodline and where did the hylians come from?
liked
I'm sorry, sun-del-ee-uns? What are those? Or did you mean Sun-de-lions? As in, dandelions?
Don't u mean dun-dee-lee-uns?
@@Archetype_Angel darn-dill-ee-uns
or dumb-deed-leach-bums
@@geminisfl now we’re getting somewhere.
I thank you so so much for skipping the draconification 😂😭
It’s not FE it’s FI the I is said how it’s word is
I love that you were able to find the exact locations each memory took place in, I'd honestly assumed at this point that it was just standard cutscene BS where none of it was "filmed on location" in the actual game. But the more I think about this game the more it drives me insane how deliberately neglectful the development team was with the whole story process. It feels like this game was made by 10 different teams that were not allowed to compare notes or check any previous games including Breath of the Wild.
In comments on other channels I've ranted about how the ancient Hyrulean tablets are either all lies or else indicative of how the devs feel about the lore of their own game (namely that if Zelda and Mineru were the ones that raised the Temple of Time into the sky, they either brought it back down or they raised it as a dragon and a tablet, because it was still on the ground in that final flashback, and the tablet writer claims to have outlived Mineru and Zelda, so who put the tablets in the sky?), but rewatching these memories I now have a new gripe.
Relatively minor by comparison, but the several times we see the Zonai Shrines of Light in the flashbacks, none of them correlate to their locations in the present. There are at least two clearly visible from Ganondorf's vantage point during the molduga raid, but from what I've seen the only shrine visible from the surface is tucked away in a little valley that opens up to the other direction away from that hilltop. And the one visible from the pedestal behind the Temple of Time is just clearly not there when the comparable cliffside is shown. I almost feel like a couple of those line up with the locations of the Shiekah shrines, but I can't be 100% sure about that.
Also, until now I've been very focused on the inconsistency of the locations of the Shiekah tech from BotW and why we weren't able to see Sky Islands in that game given how clear they are in this game, I never actually stopped to wonder what the justification was for us not seeing geoglyphs and dragon tears in BotW either. These aren't minor locations that are easily missable, they're literally massive works of art that are visible clear across the map, and little puddles left on the ground untold ages ago by a dragon.
The only explanation is the worst handwave explanation that prevents any real explanation: "Because magic." I guess the Zonai had some magical contingency in place that if they all died every trace of their shrines would disappear with them until it's convenient for a future hero (or else Ghost Rauru and Ghost Sonia were pulling more strings than just undoing the otherwise presumed permanent draconification), and the ancient Hylians drew the geoglyphs in magical disappearing ink that only reacts to Ganondorf's Gloom, NOT MALICE, ONLY GLOOM.
I've also spent so much time wondering about Rauru and Sonia's seemingly lost heir that would have to be Zelda's ancestor who was never shown to exist in the flashbacks that I only recently stopped to question the nature of Zelda's inherited powers. Presumably, based on Skyward Sword, her light powers came from being the reincarnation of the Goddess Hylia (which is already interesting since the Goddess Statues all seem to be communicating with some being that I now suppose is only masquerading as Hylia?), and try as I might I can't find any solid evidence that Hylia was a goddess of time, and yet TotK seems to imply that Sonia's powers were explicitly time based while Rauru's were light based, so is Rauru the descendant of Hylia in this scenario instead of Sonia?
I'm done. I love this game, but I hate this game.
Some questions can probably only be answered by "gameplay reasons" or "this was an oversight" but allow me to offer suggestions to some of the ones I think have solid lore reasons behind it.
Why don't the Zonai Shrines of Light in the flashbacks correlate with where they are in the present?
There seems to be a connection between the ancient Zonai Shrines and the ancient Sheikah shrines. The two seen in that flashback are located right where the Cryonis and Stasis shrines were located, and even in memory 10 you can briefly see a Zonai shrine in Gerudo Valley where the Jee Noh shrine was in BotW. So the placement of the flashback shrines was definitely deliberate by the developers, probably showing more of how the ancient Sheikah were linked to the Zonai. But I'm not aware of a reason for why Zonai shrines appeared in new locations in the present.
Why couldn't we see the Sky Islands in BotW?
NPC dialogue in TotK shows that the sky islands weren't visible to anyone until after the Upheaval. As to how they were hidden, past games in the series have done this too: Skyward Sword, Twilight Princess, and Minish Cap all had islands/buildings that were hidden in the sky and even in BotW, the dragons vanish into a portal after flying up into the sky. As to why they only now became visible, their invisibility probably got deactivated by whatever triggered parts of them to lose their levitation ability during the Upheaval.
Why couldn't we see the geoglyphs?
The pictures seem to be drawn with a substance similar to the dragon's tears themselves. It is shown multiple times in-game that even as a dragon Zelda is subconsciously aware of Link's movements (her passing on Recall, shedding the final tear, and of course the final boss sequence). It seems reasonable that her tears and the pictures made with them reacted as Zelda became more active upon Link's awakening.
Why is Rauru light and Sonia time?
Rauru having the light element is at least partly an echo of Ocarina of Time's Rauru being the Sage of Light. We weren't given a reason for OoT Rauru being light (there have long been theories about him being part of the royal family, maybe even the first king of that kingdom) but in TotK Rauru's case it seems to be from his close connection to the gods. And although Hylia has never been explicitly linked to time they've long been thought to have a connection: her apparent influence on the future/destiny in SS, her blade the Master Sword having time manipulation ability in OoT/TP; the Temples of Time in BotW/TotK seemingly dedicated to Hylia, etc. Sonia being the Sage of Time is just another step in that direction. Sonia also probably does still have light (or "sacred") power but like Zelda her stone just amplifies her time ability. We see that Sonia's power is far weaker than Zelda's, so my own guess is that whatever sacred power is left in Sonia's bloodline by this point in the timeline is far weaker than what Rauru is now introducing to it.
This game is massive and complex, so although I'm personally optimistic about many other problems having good explanations for them, it'll take time for the community to find and share them all.
jumping into theory territory, it could be possible that this all took place before skyward sword, and it was merely malice we fought as demise, so maybe it was the other way around, demise being the pure hatred of ganondorf, and during the imprisoning war, the other races either fled from hyrule or left to the skies, which could put skyward sword some couple hundred years into the future (i don't trust nintendo to keep the same landscape over the course of the games so i don't think it's important to worry about landmarks unless it's same game cutscenes, like this video)
tldr; it takes place before skyward sword and is the reason skyward sword happened, with demise actually just being the pure hatred of this Ganondorf.
What caused everything to acsend into the sky though?
The combined power of the sages, they did it as a way to hide the Islands and to provide Link a place to recover so Ganondorf couldn't reach them.
I think Zelda lands in Hyrule Field in the first memory. It seems too far away to be the Great Plateau, and since Hyrule Field back then was actually just a forest, the amount of trees add up.
You can just barely see a corner of the Temple of Time in the background pf that memory. That's why he mentions the forest on the Great Plateau.