The major geological changes throughout Zelda series can be fun to analyze. It’s very surreal to play Breath of the Wild, arguably the most current game in the series’ timeline, only to immediately thereafter play Skyward Sword and get thrown rapidly back in time. Peering back into Hyrule’s very beginning, armed with intimate knowledge of the kingdom’s current state, the player sees how warped the world has become over the millennia. The Lanayru Desert is one of the most debated locations from Skyward Sword – mostly in reference to what, exactly, we’re looking at. My favorite location to speculate over in this desert is the Lanayru Gorge.
So what’s the deal with this desert? Is it just what the Lanayru region used to look like, having kept its name this entire time? Is it the Gerudo Desert instead?
Some of this confusion arises from the existence of the Gerudo Dragonfly, a collectible in Skyward Sword that is specifically found in this region. It is a reference to the Gerudo, a race that appears in previously published games, namely Ocarina of Time. Is the race named after the insect, or is it the other way around?
There’s also the debate over how climate change affected the region post-Skyward Sword. As the player experiments more and more with the Timeshift Stones littered throughout the region, it is revealed that the desert was once a lush ecosystem next to a large body of water. The Ancient Robots that reside there refer to a “great sea”. With the passage of time, this has become the Great Sand Sea, the coastline of which is at the edge of the desert. It’s possible that eventually, post-game, the region replenishes itself and becomes what it once was, as opposed to remaining a barren wasteland.
Regardless of the desert’s future, we know its beginnings. The desert has an underbelly of ancient mines that have been lost to time. The Ancient Robots were created to work and maintain these mining sites, transporting Timeshift Stones to the processing facilities further inland. According to Fi, the Lanayru Gorge was the first area in the desert to be mined. It is the origin of the entire operation that eventually drained the region of its natural resources. It’s also likely that the gorge was where Timeshift Stones were first discovered. The area has now been overrun by monsters, and Link must use the Timeshift Stones to get past obstacles that have decayed over the centuries.
The Lanayru Gorge is inaccessible when Link first makes landfall in the desert. Golo, a Goron researcher, guides Link to a crumbled passageway within the Lanayru Caves that eventually leads to the gorge. Once there, the player must make their way across the tall pillars of rock, then through another subsection of the ancient mines within the cliffs of the gorge.
While the rest of the desert has the challenge of navigating through deep, wide pits of quicksand, the Lanayru Gorge holds the danger of Link potentially falling to his death. There are portions where Link uses his Clawshot to swing between hovering Peahats to avoid falling into the gaping chasm below. He must also work with more abandoned mine carts, and walk across narrow bridges that only form within bubbles of time created by moving Timeshift Stones. Fi describes the area as “intricately subdivided” by old remains of mining equipment, such as the cart tracks.
Some aspects of the Lanayru Gorge seem familiar, particularly to those who have played Breath of the Wild. The structure of the cliffs is reminiscent of the layout of Zora’s Domain. There’s also the abundance of Timeshift Stones in the gorge, which, when activated, are alike in color to the Luminous Stones that are found all over the map of Breath of the Wild, but especially along the Zora River that flows from Zora’s Domain.
Additionally, the design of the ancient mining facilities in Skyward Sword are inspired by Mesoamerican art and architecture. This motif appears several times throughout the Zelda series, including the Tower of the Gods in The Wind Waker, but more notably in the Zonai Ruins from Breath of the Wild’s Faron Woods. Are these designs a callback to the civilization that first mined the Timeshift Stones?
Though the details of the civilization that built the robots are unknown, the robots serve the Thunder Dragon Lanayru, referring to him as their ‘Master’. The dragon resides in the Lanayru Gorge, though when Link discovers him in the present day, all that is left of him are bones. He died of an illness long ago, one that the robots tried to cure by planting the seedling of a Tree of Life. When met under the bubble of a Timeshift Stone, the dragon is alive but very weak.
The robots urge Link to help them plant the seedling, as they haven’t had luck getting it to grow in the Lanayru province. The tree takes hundreds of years to reach maturity, but the region’s climate change prevented the tree from developing past a sprout. In order to cure the Thunder Dragon, Link must travel to the past and plant the seedling in the Sealed Temple, the biome of which is much more suitable for its growth. Retrieving the Life Tree Fruit in the present, Link can then deliver it to the dragon of the desert’s past. Once cured, Lanayru teaches Link his portion of the “Song of the Hero,” which is needed to move further in the story.
There exists an underlying theme throughout the Lanayru Desert of reclaiming the sources of life and glory that have been lost to time. Link must befriend, save, and investigate the elements of the past, and through his eyes, the player has a clear view of what the world of the surface was like prior to the war against Demise. We see the long-abandoned Temple of Time, in one of its many iterations throughout the Zelda series –old and crumbling, but stark against the desert’s heated horizon. We revive the boisterous Thunder Dragon, learning the third and final part of the song Link has been trying to master. The Tree of Life quest sends us back to the Sealed Temple, which is thought by some to be the Forgotten Temple from Breath of the Wild. According to Creating a Champion, the Forgotten Temple was used as a ceremonial hall to honor the Heros of the past. The first of which being Skyward Sword’s Link, who planted the Tree of Life all that time ago. It can still be found in Breath of the Wild, bursting forth from the walls of the Forgotten Temple.
