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"That's a nice river, Hyrule. Why don't you back it up with a source?"
"My source is that I made it the fuck up"

austin: "i am not a nerd"
also austin: "now let's exhaustively map this fictional river system"

I hope a dev in the future quotes this channel as the reason they properly laid out river starts and ends, as well as other seemingly "obvious" map design bits.

My favorite thing about your videos like this (mapping rivers, laying out power grids, where do all these pipes go, etc) is that they are about the joy of discovery, knowledge for the sake of knowledge. You don't approach them with "Well, Actually, if these rivers were supposed to be REAL they'd flow like this. How embarrassing for the game devs!" but instead they are "Let's go on this hypothetical journey just for funsies." And it sure is funsies. :)

fun fact about the floodplain theory, if you go to the backroom of the forgotten temple there is a map of hyrule on the floor which shows that during rauru's era most of hyrule field was actually one massive lake

I thought the water was sourced from the kingdom's tears

Something was missed and is incredibly important is that under the East Reservoir is an enormous complex of pipe systems that spread out over the massive cave systems in the directions of the enormous waterfalls that feed Zoras domain, meaning its not wizard magic but an incredibly massive engineering feat of the Zora

8:06 Some people have pointed to the Sun being in a different part of the sky as evidence BOTW and TOTK take place in different seasons

Somehow I had never managed to notice that all water in the game is perfectly flat. The illusion of topographical relief worked so well that I never even considered that I never saw a river actually flow downhill.

I’d like to point out that the changes made to Gerudo Canyon are one of the few changes that the game explicitly mentions. Several NPCs point out that the river, caves and waterfalls formed directly because of the Upheaval.

"Places you can stand to feel strange feelings for no reason"
Wow finally someone who understands these games!

2:31 “cause i’m not a nerd” proceeds to talk about the mapping of the legend of zelda for 30 minutes

29:35 My favorite part in the whole video is when Austin says “f*ck ton” but the bleep happens 1 second after he says it, so the bleep is completely pointless. Lagging bleeps are funny.

I don't remember who, but one NPC in BotW actually mentions that the Lanayru Great Spring (i.e. the Zora's Domain area) is the source of all fresh water in Hyrule

Fun fact: A lake with an underground/ hidden outlet is called a Cryptorheic basin, and a lake with no outlet that lets off water via natural processes like evaporation is a Endorheic basin. It seems like Hyrule has a fair few of both of these types even though they are rather rare in the real world.

That was actually impressive. The final animation showing all the river flowing directions was super cool to understand the whole Hyrulean system. Loved it.

i could see a Discworld book about a character mapping all this out, especially with quotes like "the river gets really strong around here, presumably due to evil goblin magic."

As a real PhD hydrologist, you give really good explanations for these concepts! You are the best digital hydrographer on YouTube.

At 15:00 , you point our the rocky versus mossy sides of the river. While this scene is a little more extreme than reality, it is grounded in real life! At turns in river channels, the flowing water has a hard time turning, so it's energy is directed at the outside channel wall, and this extra energy will erode the side, which may cause fresh rock to be more exposed. This is known as a cut bank. Conversely, the inside of a channel turn will have the lower energy flowing water, allowing the water to slow down, allowing for sediment to settle in this region (known as a point bar). This sediment can build up and it isn't too surprising that wetland plants to start growing here. (Although moss may be a bit of a stretch as peat moss tends to not be that close to faster flowing water).


Your Skyrim video was recommended to me a few months ago, thought it was great, and I'm glad the algorithm sent me back this way!

So excited for the next Zelda game, "Wisdom of the Hydrologists"