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I like that there is some relationship between the games, like oot/mm to tp, and minish cap to fs/fsa, but I think having an entire timeline connecting every single game doesn't work very well.
The only part of the timeline that makes sense to me is Skyward Sword being the first one. It is the origin story of the Master Sword, after all.
Other than that, I've never really understood the timeline.
Not a hater, though. I know there are people who really enjoy discussion about it.
The timeline confused me for a while as well but it finally just clicked for me after a while. IMO it's best understood by the characters it follows.
So basically to recap: at the end of Ocarina of Time, Zelda sends Link back to their first meeting so that he can live out the seven years of his childhood that he missed. This creates two of the timelines.
The "Adult Timeline" follows on in the 'seven years later' world, where, due to Zelda sending him back in time at the end, Link no longer exists in this timeline, period. Ganon breaks free at some point, the Hero of Time doesn't reappear to save the world since he doesn't exist anymore, and the gods flood Hyrule as a last resort to drown Ganondorf under a torrential flood, leading to The Wind Waker.
The "Child Timeline" follows Link, who has returned to his childhood, and uses his knowledge of the future to warn Zelda and the royal family of Ganondorf's treachery. Ganondorf's coup thus fails, and he survives an execution attempt before being sent to the Twilight Realm, setting up Twilight Princess. Meanwhile, Link goes in search of Navi, which leads directly into Majora's Mask.
And then the "Downfall Timeline" is a misnomer since it's not necessarily a timeline like the other two — it's actually an alternate universe where Link dies in the final boss fight against Ganon in OOT. Ganon therefore claims Link's Triforce of Courage and then takes the Triforce of Wisdom from Zelda before the Sages seal him in the Sacred Realm along with the full Triforce, leading to the Sacred Realm becoming the Dark World and setting up A Link to the Past.
... Yeah, it's still really complex, but thinking about it in terms of "which version of the OOT world is this timeline about" is what made it click for me.
Tl;dr Adult Timeline is the Adult Link world, the one that endured seven years of Ganondorf's reign. Child Timeline is the Child Link world, one where a post-OOT Link averts Ganondorf's seven-year reign from ever happening. Downfall is the AU where OOT Link dies.
I'm glad to see someone acknowledge the impact of the Downfall timeline. For years I've read so many comments about how the three timelines should converge in a game, but it never really seemed like a possibility given that the three wouldn't necessarily co-exist. It's more of a conditional wherein if the Downfall timeline exists, the Adult and Child timelines cease to be. If the Child and Adult timelines exist, there is no Downfall timeline with which to converge.
Once they introduced the timeline with this conditional branch, I checked out of caring how they all clicked. If they're going to add a condition in one game that spawns a different timeline, they could do it again and again using any story point as the catalyst for a timeline branch to make a series of games fit. It feels like they made the timeline more for the fans, when in actuality, it never felt like they were trying to make the games co-exist as they continued to roll them out. And I was always okay with that.
To me instead of seeing it link loosing during the final fight, I see it as link never existing in the first place as a result of time travel. Like he gets the master sword and just disappears never to return, and that is the downfall timeline. Makes it seem less alternate history like you do scribe
Whatever the reason, if he doesn't beat Ganon, Zelda never plays the Ocarina after the fight to send him back 7 years, and the Child and Adult timelines are never created. Whether he loses or doesn't exist at all, the part in the story where those timelines are created in the story is never reached. It still remains conditional.
The timeline itself doesn’t say that he dies. It says that he’s defeated. Defeated never means that one dies. After all, after the defeat, the sages end up sealing Ganon anyway. This means Link himself is very much alive.
Yes, but the Child and Adult eras are still never created. It's an alternate universe because the Child Timeline is the one Link returns to, and the Adult Timeline is the one that continues on after Link defeats Ganon. If Link is defeated, then it *can't* be the same timeline, regardless of whether he survives or not, because the timeline is not the same as the Adult one where Link wins and Ganon is sealed with *only* the Triforce of Power, whereas in Downfall he has the *whole* Triforce.
OP is missing the fact that the time travel paradox creates the Adult and Child timelines. We effectively see both timelines in the game. Downfall timeline just pretty much a "what if" scenario.
For me, I'm happy to consider every game a "what if" scenario unless there are clear references to other games in it. A Zelda game's story is about the vibes for me. It doesn't need intricate interconnectivity and "lore" to be interesting.
>For years I've read so many comments about how the three timelines should converge in a game, but it never really seemed like a possibility given that the three wouldn't necessarily co-exist. It's more of a conditional wherein if the Downfall timeline exists, the Adult and Child timelines cease to be. If the Child and Adult timelines exist, there is no Downfall timeline with which to converge.
The way I imagined it is that the flood timeline served as the foundation (because BotW has Koroks), and some cataclysmic event caused the other two timelines to merge into it.
It's all just for fun, though. It makes less sense the longer you think about it.
>Ganondorf's coup thus fails, and he survives an execution attempt
But *how*? How did he get the triforce of power when link never opened the door yet in this timeline? I know I know. "Divine prank".
>Ganon therefore claims Link's Triforce of Courage and then takes the Triforce of Wisdom from Zelda before the Sages seal him
They could just do that the whole time?!
> But how? How did he get the triforce of power when link never opened the door yet in this timeline? I know I know. "Divine prank".
We see it happen in Twilight Princess, but we never got an official explanation, just speculation.
A theory I find adequate is that returning from the future with the capacity to stop Ganondorf even before he even gets the chance to attack is considered to be unfair, and letting him have the Triforce is an act of balance.
>But *how*? How did he get the triforce of power when link never opened the door yet in this timeline? I know I know. "Divine prank".
At the end of OoT, Link carries his piece of the triforce back to the past with him. When you see him and Zelda meeting in the courtyard in the very last scene of the credits, we can see the triforce glowing on his hand.
The idea is that Link bringing a piece with him is what fractures the triforce. If he's already holding a piece, then the other two have to go somewhere, naturally to Zelda and Ganon. Ganon wouldn't know that he's suddenly holding a piece of the triforce he's been after, but he's somehow able to trigger it right before he's executed in Twilight Princess.
That's why it's seen as a divine prank. No one in universe understands why Ganondorf seemingly obtained the triforce of power out of nowhere. To them, the only logical explanation is that the gods gave it to him for some reason.
This is my conclusion as well. Link being sent back to the past to a time *before* Ganondorf claims the Triforce in a way that does not involve putting the Master Sword in the pedestal causes Link to still have the Triforce in that final scene where he meets Child Zelda for the first time again.
Thus, the Triforce shatters, and Wisdom finds Zelda and Power finds Ganondorf. The piece lays dormant until it's needed — namely, saving Ganondorf from being killed by the huge longsword currently being plunged through his chest. It awakens in that moment and the Sages freak out and banish him to the Twilight Realm in a panic.
>does not involve putting the Master Sword in the pedestal causes Link to still have the Triforce
Triforce was playing the find the chosen ones any% speedrun
It still amazes me how badly Nintendo mangled their own lore when they wrote OOT. They advertised it as a prequel to ALTTP and managed to create not one but *two* timelines that didn’t match what they wrote just a few years earlier, so they had to retroactively establish a third one just to fix it.
Yeah, iirc OOT was originally just meant to depict the Imprisoning War mentioned in ALTTP's lore. It, uh, did not match the ALTTP description very much.
I don't think Nintendo really knew what they were doing at the time. Keep in mind that hyrule historia was released years after ocarina of time. Like almost 20 years I think? Until then the "split timeline theory" was just a theory and the debates people would have over it on Nintendo forums were wild. Sooo many people absolutely hated the split timeline theory.
This is not true.
Twilight Princess and Wind Waker were developed with the child and adult split in mind, it was not something the community randomly came up with.
Right. You can find developer quotes and interviews that link almost every single game together pre-historia. It's insane how many people still think the timeline was suddenly made up in 2011 to appease fans
ESPECIALLY for the dual Timeline split. The only aspect I agree with is Downfall being tacked on because they wrote themselves in a corner with Alltp being set after OoT.
Yep, there has been clear timelines from Nintendo for YEARS and people choose to ignore it. Did they change plans they had at one time or another? Sure. But the idea of the games having a connection has clearly been a thing in the back of their minds the whole time.
As someone who was actually there, the entire Zelda community was in constant debate about the split timeline theory until the release of hyrule historia.
Right, but the developer interviews were available back then too. Aonuma and Miyamoto have said Ocarina had two endings. They've said that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess were thought to be parallel points in time from different timelines.
The linearist arguments never made sense for that reason
the aldult/child timeline split was developed to explain the split between lttP/WW, long before TP had ever even come out. No one had ever considered LttP in some other "thrid timeline" until the HH had come out.
Yes, that is my point. HH came out of left field with downfall, but the timeline split wasnt something the community came up with, it was largely accepted and basically confirmed by lots of interviews with the dev team back around WW-TP times
First off I'm a huge fan of the lore, though I can recognize when things fit, and when they don't. With that said, it you look closely at the relationships between events, it appears that, rather than making OoT a true prequel to ALttP, the events Child and Adult timelines of the 3D games (up until WW) were actually based off of the established pre-3D timeline from 1993. So it makes sense the events in ALttP and OoT wouldn't line up. The 3D games were originally a retelling of the events of the 2D games at the time:
|Pre-3D Timeline (Template)|Post-3D Timeline (Adult)|Post-3D Timeline (Child)|
|:-|:-|:-|
|ALttP Manual: Seal War (No Hero)|OoT Ending: Ganon Sealed (Hero)|n/a|
|ALttP: Ganon Returns (Hero)|WW Prologue: Ganon Returns (No Hero)|n/a|
|LA: Hero Side Quest after Defeating Ganon|n/a (Refer to Child Timeline)|MM: Hero Side Quest After Defeating Ganon|
|Hyrule in Decline|Great Deluge|n/a|
|LoZ: Ganon Returns (Triforce of Wisdom Broken into Pieces )|WW: Ganon Returns (Triforce of Courage Broken into Pieces)|n/a|
|LoZ: Ganon Finally Defeated|WW: Ganon Finally Defeated|n/a|
\*Note the Oracle games are not included. This is because they were made by a third party (Capcom) and not in house.
The origin of a LOT.
SS is the origin of the Master Sword, the origin of Zelda being a reincarnation of the goddess Hylia, the origin of the "Hero" (Link), the origin of "Ganons" spirit (Ganondorf is his own person, but him transforming into a pig/beast is him borrowing Demise' power that has been passed to him).
Not to mention the return of Hylians to the surface which would later be known as Hyrule >!as shown in Totk Rauru and Sonia create the kingdom of Hyrule (Rauru being a Zonai which at the time likely already existed on the surface and other Sky Islands Hylia had created, and Sonia being a later descendant of Zelda some time after Skyward Sword)!<
I'm pretty sure BotW doesn't fit and isn't meant to. It's more like a world in which all other games exist as legends.
They may not be entirely accurate as legends tend not to be, but they came about to fill in the gaps surrounding tidbits of truth, from sea salt on mountain tops and legendary swords, to floating Islands or a guy named Tingle.
It's so far into the future from the previous games, (10,000 years minimum and probably a lot more) that it can exist at the end of all timelines. Imo, Hyrule Warriors should be cannon because that DOES merge the timelines in part but whatever.
Anyways, Breath is so far ahead that they can pretty much write anything they want and it doesn't interfere with the old timeline. That's the important part of it if you care about the game order
So when the game talks about the ancient fight against Gannon, that the excavated guardians and divine beasts were made for, does that still take place way after every game or is that during the old tomeline
you can't merge a timeline. you can only open new paths. any theory that strongly pushes for a merge is nonsense and don't know what they are talking about.
Feasibly you could have timelines converge on relatively similar events happening for different reasons… it’s highly unlikely but if we consider infinite timelines it must happen at some point, so maybe the canon timelines are just those three timelines which all include roughly analogous events in the BOTW era
That's kinda how I figured BotW worked. It wasn't literally the three timelines recombining and the worlds merging together. Rather, each of the three separate timelines would eventually experience the same events and would become indistinguishable from one another, even though the series of events leading to that point differed between timelines (for example, the Rito evolved in a different way in the child timeline to the adult timeline).
The issue with that is that the three timelines we’ve been presented with are too radically different to ever converge like that. The Adult Timeline’s Hyrule was literally flooded, re-founded somewhere else as New Hyrule, and last we saw had freaking trains AFAIK. There is no possible way for that version of the kingdom to eventually end up with the same circumstances and geography as the Child and Downfall timelines.
Yeah, I've come to accept that it doesn't really work (unless old Hyrule got unflooded and people moved back, but that would be an odd narrative).
Tbh I think we are supposed to treat BotW/TotK as a new continuity where events from the older games may have happened, but not necessarily in the same way. Similar to how the Batman Arkham games reference famous comic book storylines, but still take place within their own continuity.
100% agreed. They just aren’t compatible with the rest of the Zelda canon as we know it. The only game that I personally think remains 100% canon is Skyward Sword, since that game’s story actually has legitimate relevance to the plot of TOTK.
What are you talking about, if Nintendo ever decides that the timelines did merge then that's canonically what happened. It's a fictional story with magic and gods and a literal reality-altering MacGuffin called the Triforce. Nintendo can do whatever the fuck they want with the story, merging timelines included.
Just putting it out there, we see a game where the timeline is merged.
Hyrule Warriors.
I know, I know, non canon, but it works. It explains all of BotW's inconsistencies perfectly.
I think it’s fun to theorize in the same way it’s fun to theorize about the Pixar theory but I’ve seen people genuinely mad that Nintendo did not care too much about the timeline.
And I’m like, does it really matter?
So I like having the timeline in a sense, but it's not critical, BotW + TotK confuse it up a bit, but end of the day it doesn't matter at all.
What seems weird is that people have taken the notion that stories like these have been planned meticulously and thoroughly decades ahead as if continuity always existed in every medium and it didn't.
Timeline came in to help make sense of things but even then not this be all end all guideline to arduously follow, continuity isn't a must to enjoy these games nor is there a requirement that it has to push it farther than an individual title to make it greater. The beauty resides in each game individually and lucky when some add up.
Yeah, canon and consistency matter, but only up to a point. A lot of SFF media attracts a hardcore cadre of super-sweaty nerds who care more about exhaustively overexplained bookkeeping than they do about emotional resonance. xP
The same crowd that needs every single mf thing, object, word, and scene to have so much meaning, and references that it's like gd the drapes are just red for dramatic effect not because it's foreshadowing to a future storyline.
Same but im still confuse why are those people still mad or what they mad at. Is it still possible that skyward sword is still the first game (with fi in the sword) and it just happen to be a very long time since ss and people just forget about their ancestor. Or it could be alternate universe where maybe botw have it's own ss version.
In the end https://youtu.be/xzpndHtdl9A
Yeah I've never really understood the whole "Minish Cap and Four Sword come first" (after SS) thing. It just seems like Nintendo saw that the internet just theorized that for some dumbass reason like Link getting a hat and went with it as canon.
You could honestly argue that that trilogy doesn't even have to be canon.
Honestly it doesn't bother me if they aren't connected but I'm a lore guy. So them connecting in some way just kinda hits that spot. Then again I'm not gonna sit here and drink copium hoping to forcibly shove BOTW and totk into the timeline. Like it's kinda obvious that they have stopped with it
I would be the same way honestly if not for the clear presence of Fi in both botw and totk. That goes way beyond borrowing elements and loose ideas from other games. That's a whole ass character and it compels me to connect it all together in some way.
Personally I get soft reboot vibes from TOTK (and BOTW, in hindsight). Skyward Sword is canon, Fi’s presence and several other details make that clear, but every other game now exists in this nebulous cloud as in-universe legends with questionable accuracy based on conflicts with Calamity Ganon.
In a cutscene/memory in BOTW, after link gets owned by all those guardians and lynels, zelda is told by the master sword to place link into the chamber of resurrection. The master sword both glows and beeps exactly as it would in Skyward Sword if Fi was trying to tell link something, confirming that she indeed still resides as a spirit inside the sword.
She also finally speaks to Link again after he completed the Trial of the Sword. Just to be clear, I mean she beeps at Link too, but it's still the first hero to hear her since SS. It actually makes me tear up to see
I remember someone doing this in TotK, too, and being slightly confused since I don't have a single clue about Zelda lore and never played Skyward Sword far enough to know about Fi.
She’s the humming voice from the Master Sword that Zelda is seen conversing with and asks Link if he can hear.
So no physical appearance.
Like all the references to other games in botw/totk, it’s very easy to sidestep/miss/ignore.
Not to mention the Forgotten Temple being explicitly the same temple as the one in the Sealed Grounds (right down to the Loftwing gargoyles), where in TotK you even get the Goddess Sword (which I feel is a point for merged timelines)
Just because Fi is in BotW/TotK, doesn’t mean SS actually happened. She probably exists in this timeline/universe too, same as Link and Zelda and Beedle and Impa. It doesn’t mean it’s the same Fi, just probably a different version of her, like the other characters.
I feel like if the first HW was canon it would fix a lot of (not all) of BOTWs timeline issues because it has elements from all three and the first HW merges all three.
Don't they link the two timelines together? Like this is only 100 years after or something like that?
The school in Hateno talks about it a bit for anyone interested
In tears of the kingdom, the school talks about the calamity which happened in breath of the wild. The problem is fitting both of these games together in the rest of the timeline.
Indeed. Part of the play for me is seeing where things connect, and the conversations had with other players about the game. To add to this, some might seem to take it too far to the point of stressing about it but that might just be one of the pitfalls of text communication.
I think you describe people that like digging into the lore pretty unfairly. They aren’t worrying or stressing about how the games relate to one another, it’s not like the big picture lore gets in the way of their enjoyment of the games. They just like looking for clues and speculating about how said clues can shape our understanding of the series. It’s a means of secondary enjoyment of the games that enriches playing them. If you don’t want or need that, that’s fine too. But there’s no point trying to shut down a conversation you don’t want to be a part of in the first place.
My take, it’s THE LEGEND of Zelda, not just Zelda. Legends are unreliable as source material, told differently depending on who’s telling the story. Not everything is literal and of course contradictions arise.
The Zelda timeline, and the way it's written, exists to please both types of fans. Those like you, who don't care about the lore and history, can still enjoy each game in a vacuum. While people like me, who love deep diving into series lore, have a mountain of official transmedia to crack into. That's by design.
Consider BotW and TotK's story telling method as a microcosm of this writing style: The story *IS* there, but it's entirely optional. That doesn't mean it isn't important. Some people don't care about the story, some people do. So make it optional. *This is the core philosophy of the Zelda Timeline as a whole.*
Arguments only break out because of posts like this. When one side of this divide tells the other side that their way of enjoying the series is somehow improper.
As someone who likes timelines and lore, I have yet to see a signle person act as if the games "need" to be connected for the games to be enjoyable. I guess some people like that probably exist, but I havent seem one lmao
While there is a ton of stuff canonically established, and especially with TOTK being a traditional direct sequel, I can't help but think of Zelda games as self contained stories.
There is no timeline. Only the idea of a timeline. Each game takes and leaves and changes what it wants from this idea of a timeline. There’s no need to fret over every retcon, as every game has them.
I like how place names in BOTW and TOTK refer to characters and places and events from all of the other games. It hints at a richer world with a history and myths and legends - the idea of a timeline as you put it. But don’t really need to engage with it beyond that.
people who like the timeline enjoy the games just as much as you do.
just because you think the lore is stupid doesn’t mean people who like the lore don’t like the games. we all like zelda here!
Yeah I mean, that's kind of how I see it. There are references and common elements in each existence but they aren't directly connected via linear time
More than that, I actually like how the games themselves merely reference events in other games but never spell out the lore. Also, I kinda feel like Nintendo doesn’t really dwell on it and only released an official timeline to try to get fans to stop asking about it.
Same. I also think that was why they released that timeline, I never really put too much stock into it other than it was like "here you go, now shut up"
I love lore and theorizing on possible connections throughout the series. Especially if the evidence for those theories are strong. But at the end of the day to me lore is like a Spice. It can help make an amazing meal but first the actual meat (which is the game in this analogy) has to actually be good.
I enjoy the thought that everything is connected in some way, its fun to think about and theorise where things fit in but at the end of the day all of the games are enjoyable stand alone adventures and I don't ever have to think too deeply about it
The only arguments I’ve seen are when people tell others to stop theorizing about timelines and they’re dumb for doing so (which has happened to me).
If you don’t care about a larger timeline that’s fine. I have fun thinking about it and picking apart the connections between the games. Obviously the creators didn’t have an overarching timeline in mind when making them.
You’re conflating others having alternate views on a niche aspect of the lore and having fun speculating with actual heated argument. It only gets heated when people shit on others opinions or joys.
Just let others enjoy what they want. If you don’t like posts theorizing about a timeline, ignore it.
Lore is a really fun thing for. And hypothesizing lore theories is also really fun. Going down the rabbit hole of what connections and tiny details fanbases have put together makes me love the worldbuilding so much more.
Zeldas no different. I don't care if there is no definitive timeline, but I love seeing the theories and connections. The fact that BOTW/TOTK is so far in the future and derives from all of the divergent timelines makes it even more interesting to me.
I do think forcing things to fit is unnecessary and it's okay for there to be no official solution. Like the downfall timeline itself is kind of iffy imo, because that should mean there could be a divergent downfall timeline for every game following the outcome where Link loses.
So many of the people in this thread haven’t spent much time on that sub and it shows.
There are literally people like “FUCK this series, I give up, why should I care about this SHIT when Nintendo doesn’t, Zelda is fucking TRASH now” on nearly every thread about the timeline and lore.
They take it way, way, *way* too seriously
this is where i’m coming from lol. i think obsessing over the timeline is weird, but if you enjoy it, go ahead. what bothers me is seeing how many people obsess with it to the point that it ruins their enjoyment of the series and all they do is cry online about the timeline being inconsistent.
I honestly feel like there isn’t anything blatantly timeline breaking in TotK anyway; seeing as BotW was designed deliberately so far in the future that all previous stories exist solely as myth.
Who knows how much time passed between the Skyloft people resettling the surface, and Hyrule as a kingdom being actually founded. The Founding in TotK could just be a definitive point for that, and it doesn’t necessarily conflict with Skyward Sword.
As for there being a Ganondorf then; I’ve always been a proponent that there absolutely could be multiple Ganondorfs throughout time. That’s what the whole macguffin of “a Male Gerudo is born once a century” ought to be used for. So there being a ‘prime’ Ganondorf being sealed underground while other incarnations of him have been running around is not entirely unreasonable.
The timeline is vague and disjointed to begin with, so argue over semantics and minor “retcons” is silly anyway.
I thought that the Gerudo in BOTW were forced to go out and breed with Hylians due to the fact that Ganon being sealed somehow told the universe "hey, there's still a male Gerudo alive, you cant give birth to another one", because otherwise they wouldn't have needed to breed with Hylians, but who knows.
The Gerudo have always had to mate with Hylians. They are still human, but only produce females. So reproductive partners are obviously slim pickings inside their own culture. They have to form partnerships with Hylian men or reproduction simply wouldn’t happen.
If a game seems to have an established connection to a previous one (Majora's Mask being a direct sequel to OoT after Link was sent back to his childhood by Zelda, Twilight Princess being pretty clearly set after OoT in general) then I'll take it as gospel.
Beyond that, I just think of them as variations on the same tale being told through the ages.
I like to treat it the same way I treat FromSoft's catalog.
Its fun to speculate about connections between every game. But its easier to take each entry/duo as their own continuity.
Kinda sad they made an "official" timeline in Hyrule Historia still.
I mean if the game isn’t a direct sequel then I don’t see how much the timeline insists upon itself that it takes away from the gameplay experience. I’ve noticed since OOT that story has been a key point of progression in the game and provides depth to characters. Growing up I loved the sense that the games were connected. One of the great things about Zelda is it has so many things for players to gravitate towards and people can find their own style of Zelda that they like. I think the developers can adhere to a timeline and create an amazing gameplay experience. It’s not like there is a quiz game show like banjo kazooie where if you don’t know about the timeline you can’t progress to the final boss fight.
I love seeing consistency and timeline connections tho, it makes the world feel more real and fosters theory-crafting. The world becomes more alive as you think about the world outside of the game
Recently this aspect of fandoms is perceived very negatively, but it’s really fun to connect games and theorize about how things connect. It’s not appreciated anymore tho imo
Continuity is nice. Breaks in continuity carry a risk of breaking immersion. Like having the Rito be introduced as the descendents of the Zoras, evolved from fish-people into bird-people, in order to survive a cataclysmic event, only for a later entry to say "oh no they've existed as a separate, parallel species for over ten thousand years"... it just makes veterans stop and go "huh?" since now the legends conflict with themselves. Especially since the legends are what we the players _play_ and experience.
Back when I was a kid played Ocarina of Time without acknowledging the existence of any previous Zelda. And had a blast. Adulthood ruined many things for me by instilling a need to make sense of everything, with little room for pure wonder and make believe. Tracing timelines, forcing a logical thread between them... that is a way to ruin the fun, denying escapism when you eventually find and can't ignore the many "flaws", rooting yourself into the dull realm of the "real world" while trying to experience something meant for you to let yourself get lost into.
It's really jarring and breaks immersion when something in the story breaks continuity. A good example that is often brought up is the unexplained disappearance of shieka tech from botw to totk. There's no mention of what could have happened, not even a throw-away line. Those kinds of things can really take players out of the game for a bit.
Now take that example from above and apply it to the entire lore of the games. It's okay that everything doesn't align with past games or that each game is its own continuity, but the stories are constantly referring to past games, introducing their continuity, only to break it within that same story it was reference by. For example, assuming anyone reading has played the first few hours of the game, totk refers to the Imprisoning wars from the past lore, and not even an hour later into the game, the first king of Hyrule is announced breaking the continuity of that past lore.
Timeline theorists are a result of people trying to make sense of things that took them out of the immersion.
I'm saying none of that was jarring to me and while I like following the story of each game I don't really care about how the Imprisoning War changed or whatever new timeline happened, I'm just like
Enjoying the game?
Like you do you but I don't get how you can play any Nintendo mainline series that's gone on for decades and care that much about strict continuity
It just seems like you're making problems for yourself
I'm not strict about continuity. Nowhere did I say I was. I'm just a person who has been playing Zelda for a very long time with a passive understanding of the "lore." Regardless of how you play the games, immersion is an important element for a lot of Zelda players. Even when coming into the game expecting its own continuity, retcons will always take people out of the story for those who are aware of it. That was the case for me, and I'm not even a timeline junky.
If I could make a personal recommendation. If you like gameplay in particular, could I recommend uno or monopoly? I feel like you would get more enjoyment out of those boring ass games rather than creating a post looking for a circle jerk.
Yeah. I do. Its lazy writing to disregard everything for a half baked origin story of Hyrule, especially when we already had a game for the origins of Hyrule. A game with a good story I might add.
It didnt. But the story feels much more fun if I feel like the writers actually care about established lore.
Tbh, Totk story feels like the "writers"(according to the credits nobody was hired to write) just didnt care in so many levels, its annoying. They didnt care about how it could fit in the broad timeline, didnt care to make an interesting Ganondorf, did not care to make the characters not feel stupid, did not care to make a story that could make a good use of finding the memories non linearly, did not care ro make the story non repetitive once completing a dungeon, ignored Botw story as much as possible, etc.. etc...
The lack of timeline connection feels like a symptom of a larger problem.
Story and gameplay shouldn't be viewed so independently from each other. Fiction is the oldest form of entertainment and has evolved from verbal stories to novels, films, and now video games. Games were given birth as a form of fictional storytelling where people are actively participating.
Miyamoto's philosophy is misguided, as a story is what gives motivation for gameplay, or in other words, story IS gameplay. I had a blast playing botw and totk, but looking back, I don't recall a damn thing that I did in my playthroughs. A more compelling story wouldn't hurt modern zelda and would actually elevate it even further.
Games were given birth as games. Look at where video games came from, things like pong. Arcade games. Shmups. Pinball. Mario.
I'm not at all arguing that they aren't a storytelling medium now, you'd have to be ignorant to say that they can't or aren't used that way.
But they really don't have to be. Sometimes they can just be fun.
People play video games for different reasons. Personally, like, I thought in recent memory the Octopath Traveler games were better in terms of story but their gameplay is pretty old school. Great games nonetheless.
A more compelling story would not hurt modern Zelda, but it's not really the main reason that a lot of people play it and honestly it's enjoyable without it. For me, I don't play Zelda games because the story is compelling. Honestly I've never found the stories of Zelda games all that interesting other than Majora's Mask. Which is fine. Still love the series.
Pong was an introduction to the technology. Arcade games, shmups, and Mario all had some naritive to it. Even pinball machines had a theme to them. Narrative has always been a part of video games, even back then when the technology was limited in telling that narrative. Save the princess, shoot the alien ships, etc. As technology improves to allow for better gameplay, ways to tell a better narrative are capable as well. But regardless of what I say, why are you asking for opinions in your post only to argue with them.
It's not recommended when those opinions are a result of you asking for opinions to begin with. It makes it seem like you are looking for an argument or a circle jerk.
I'll be sure to listen to your recommendations on all of my future internet activity, sir. I care very much about what you have to say and your judgements on my character. Pleasing you is my only goal.
Honestly, I like to sort them into a timeline for my own entertainment. I never viewed Nintendo's 'official' timeline with much credibility, and there's reasons aplenty to draw your own conclusions. Nobody is right, nobody is wrong. It's a fake world that's there for fun and that's it.
I've had people question why I like the series solely because of the timeline. Like, yes, I absolutely love lore and I understand half of LoZ lore doesn't make sense, but I still have a lot of fun playing the games. Anything that does seem to connect are like fun little easter eggs for other games in the series to me, whether it's actually logical or not. It's fun and that's good enough for me 🤷🏻♀️ Plus, the lore isn't the only factor that makes a game good.
I mean I enjoy the games for what they are and still want to make sense of the timeline. They're not mutually exclusive concepts.
And yea ofc there wasn't any timeline for you to worry about during your childhood it didn't exist
I'm very much in this boat. The speculation is fun, but these are games created by different development teams over decades of time. I just want them to focus on making the best possible game and story one at a time, while staying true to the overall spirit of what has come before.
There is literally no point in arguing over theories of what the timeline could be, the actual timeline is plain to see for everyone on the official Zelda website: https://zelda.com/about/#timeline
Honestly, not until [Nintendo did](https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Zelda_Timeline?File=E_timeline.png).
But then… they did.
and now… I kind of can’t not?
I sort of liked when it was just a Legend.
but now there’s a canon… I can’t not a canon.
Tears of the Kingdom did something really cool and the internet is being really annoying about it. It establishes the LEGEND of Zelda. Now half of the internet are being really annoying whining about the timeline and the other half is being really annoying and talking down to anyone talking about the timeline.
I agree. I don't believe the creators ever intended for there to be a timeline and only created one because theorizing is good for free social media advertisement.
Some games have clear connections, others don't. Some games just have fun little Easter eggs that are Easter eggs and not meant to place the game in a specific timeline slot.
It is fun to theorize, but I think some people take it a little too serious and get upset that Zelda isn't super deep about keeping lore straight. Oh well.
I like the connections between the games (if there is any ) and the lore as a whole but in the end I know the story are selfcontained so I don't care as long as there is some sort of coherence even if the maps are not the same or some things change place etc.
I enjoy the games, but having a well made and lit together timeline would be better for me. Doesn’t need to be too tightly weaved together, but at least confirm for me what games led to what other games. In the case of botw, I would love an explanation as to how the timelines converged. Maybe a game placed before botw that converges the timelines oot caused. Kinda like dark souls where each game leads to the other, but are set apart by a vast timeskip.
I am literally following the game with an intense ADHD… like:
I must go there.. oh wait is this cave? Let me dwell inside for 30 min. Where I was going? Oh a npc, I wonder what he wants.. and goes on 😂
So the timeline hardly matters to me at this point
Ye i used to care about the timelineuntil I actually learned about it. It's essentially there to make SOME sense of the games. I just enjoy the games for what they're and don't really bother with the timeline bs
It’s all just a multiverse to me. There are a few direct sequels where it’s the “same Link,” but otherwise I don’t care. All retellings of a similar “Legend.”
I love the timeline, lore, geography, etc. myself, and love to debate and talk about it from my own personal subjective standpoint, even if it goes against Historia and Nintendo, but ultimately I don't care all that much and just like to have fun.
But at this point, arguing over the lore might as well be just as important as dungeons lol.
I think it’s kinda fun. It’s fun thinking they are all connected but not in a way that you have to worry about too much. I like the whole split timeline thing with Ocarina, and I like thinking about how there’s probably another split because of the time travel in Tears. Idk I’m not super worried about it but it is kinda fun.
I dont care about the timeline because I dont believe it. They just need simething to market skyward sword back then and obviously, they abandon it after a link between worlds
There is no timeline.
Or there is one, but Nintnedo thought 10 times less about whether it adds up as the fans do.
That, and I strictly see BotW era as its own reboot. The callbacks to the other games as history is almost nonexist and where it does it, it bathes in plausible deniability. Yes, there is a 10.000 year old backstory and then even older events. But I think it's not the literal story of the older Zelda games that belong in that history, but an unknown BotW version of a Wind Waker for example.
Imagine the old games didn't exist and then imagine that ages ago in BotW there too was a vast ocean where the desert now is. That's how it fits. Nothing else.
But just the shift from Ganondorf being "king of evil" or "king of thieves" alone and into "Demon King" in all the recent gamed I see as a directorial shift. Naoki Mori and Fujibayashi's vision of Zelda now. Between TP and SS there has been a change of the old guard at the Zelda team with Aonuma and others stepping more into the background of its creative development. That is what we're seeing and that is what causes the confusion. Fujibayashi has a different tonal vision for this franchise than Aonuma had. Aonuma embraced the darkly weird adventure elements of Zelda. Fujibayashi embraces the cartoonishly simple and comical aspects of the brand, hence the amount of bumbling music in combat starting with Skyward Sword, Link obviously flailing his arms in order to sprint, and bokoblins looking cute.
Ditto for aspects of the narrative. Fujibayashi's style can be traced back to the Oracle games. His games are cuter and more straightforward. They don't really have the same sense of connection I felt between games like Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker, or the spiritual connection between Ocarina and Twilight Princess. They stopped chasing that sense of "mysterious Zelda universe" in favor of a more face-value universe, and that's why the timeline has basically been reset into BotW. This now matters. The older games don't. That's BotW's timeline.
I mean, its fun. That’s all. It’s not important to anyone’s enjoyment of the base game. I don’t really get why you yourself have concerned yourself with “why do people enjoy X thing” if all you care about is the games at face value anyhow yunno?
I actually love the timeline, because it’s a puzzle in its own way! We have each puzzle in game, but linking all the history and backstory of lore keeps me excited and always wondering. It’s fun to me, and hearing other theories is fun too!
I also have the tism so it’s like an itch to figure out, and it’s my special interest so I really really enjoy it!
100%. the timelines are the most toxic thing about the fanbase and nintendo in my opinion made a massive mistake giving in. i dont' see mario with a timeline
nothing wrong with direct sequels or direct prequels. the 15 game divergent timeline stuff is wack
For me I enjoy getting involved in the lore of the games because it lets me appreciate any references more then. Also I like that the Zelda games tell their own stories but also one overarching story spanning timelines
To me, a timeline is what holds it all together. "Time" in itself is a huge theme spanning across multiple games. I'm okay with the timeline being vague or loose, and I like the idea of the timeline splitting based on the events of OoT (although I prefer to call the "fallen timeline" the "abandoned timeline" as that makes more sense in my head).
SS was one of my favourites in the series particularly because it told the beginning of it all and having a timeline where the games are at least loosely related to each other makes the world feel that much more expansive and adds to the overall theme of "good vs evil."
The timeline exists to tell the story of how in this world, evil will always rise but there are also always hero(es) that will rise to face it as well. The central symbol of absolute power, the Triforce, is the perfect symbol for this as it's something that is part of nature having no distinction between good and evil and granting immense power to whoever wields it, good or bad.
Which is why I feel a sense of dissonance between >!SS and TOTK because they made SS specifically for this reason and then a few years later TOTK kinda makes that irrelevant. And saying that they're just retellings kinda feels like a cop-out.!<
I feel like players (and even sometime the developers) completely miss the mark of the overall themes and importance of stories like these when they constantly retcon established themes, lore and more because "it's just a game." If it didn't have the expansive story-telling or lore it has, I probably wouldn't be that into Zelda and it would just be another franchise milking popularity. Don't get me wrong though, the games are always fun with their unique mechanics.
As a game developer myself, I understand that the world can't always be or look the same, and as times change or move forward, I'm okay with things changing (such as the distinction between Zora and Rito, and Korok and Kokiri evolving), or the world being laid out different. The important thing is for consistency in landmarks, lore, characters/races, etc.
TL/DR: This series needs a timeline and connection to other games to make the world feel alive and progressive and to underline every major theme the franchise stands lays out.
Agree with you 100%. It seems very silly to me and always has. The amount of time that supposedly passes between each game makes it so it doesn't even matter if they're linked or not. If someone enjoys piecing things together that don't really fit together cool but not me lol
I’m kinda glad they’re doing a soft reboot of the lore. Like. BotW establishes that every other game is essentially irrelevant, and the stories of those games are just myths and legends to the world of BotW (aka there’s gonna be inconsistencies to the real world and what really happened). It’d be cool if they built the next few games in the world and lore of BotW/TotK, but I’m not sold. The loose connections the other games had was enough for me, if they keep a similar vibe I’d be fine.
Agreed.
My first Zelda game was OOT, and i've played every single Zelda game since.
The timeline is bullshit, the lore is non-existant, and the story only exists from game to game with some recurring elements, and sometimes games connected (i.e. OOT and MM, or WW, PH and ST).
Just enjoy each one as they are. The timeline does not matter.
Inside every Zelda player, there are two wolves
One of them wants to enjoy the game it is currently playing
One of them wants to enjoy all the games at the same time
Which one will win? Well, that depends on which one is actually a pink rabbit, for you personally
I've watched some and it's like, cool, if you're interested in connecting them and theorizing go ahead, but it seems like an uphill battle if you're really invested
Aside from games that are designed as direct sequels (OoT having MM, WW, and TP as direct sequels, the original having Link's Adventure, etc) I don't think the series really works well with a timeline anyways.
They always try to reset and tell a story where it can be independent of anything else.
It's not like Metroid where you can track each game in a specific order because it's a continious narrative. Zelda isn't like that
Yes.
I view them a set of tales from a mythology and not a carefully constructed narrative, the elements and the history are connected but creative liberty is taken.
The way I see it, Hyrule is timeless. The sages are always there and Link appears when he is needed. When I die I hope I can be Link in an endless loop of saving Hyrule.
I think it's a fun distraction a sizable portion of the community gets carried away with and can be overly kind to flawed games if there's enough lore drops. At least at first. Eventually bad game design does make people stop acting like knowing the origin story of a piece of equipment or iconography makes a game good.
*Cough* Skyward Sword *Cough*
It can also have a negative impact on the games themselves. Personally, I think Demise is one of the worst ideas in the canon, as his dying curse robs the trio of their agency in a lot of ways. Wind Waker's take on Ganondorf is the most interesting version I've seen so far, and it bums me out that even if he doesn't realize it, he was fated to do all these things, not because he wanted a better life for himself and his people, but because of a millenia old curse.
Not every fantasy world needs mountains of “lore”. I love the amount of history and detail Tolkien put into his Legendarium, but that type of approach wouldn’t really benefit Zelda in any meaningful way IMO
To me, connecting all the Zelda games into one grand tale is almost as silly as doing the same for the Mushroom Kingdom
Just me but I look at Skyward Sword as the origin story & all the other games happened after the ones released before. There has always been a descendent of the Goddess & a silent hero. Trying to make sense of a timeline turns into Always Sunny conspiracy board
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I like that there is some relationship between the games, like oot/mm to tp, and minish cap to fs/fsa, but I think having an entire timeline connecting every single game doesn't work very well.
The only part of the timeline that makes sense to me is Skyward Sword being the first one. It is the origin story of the Master Sword, after all. Other than that, I've never really understood the timeline. Not a hater, though. I know there are people who really enjoy discussion about it.
The timeline confused me for a while as well but it finally just clicked for me after a while. IMO it's best understood by the characters it follows. So basically to recap: at the end of Ocarina of Time, Zelda sends Link back to their first meeting so that he can live out the seven years of his childhood that he missed. This creates two of the timelines. The "Adult Timeline" follows on in the 'seven years later' world, where, due to Zelda sending him back in time at the end, Link no longer exists in this timeline, period. Ganon breaks free at some point, the Hero of Time doesn't reappear to save the world since he doesn't exist anymore, and the gods flood Hyrule as a last resort to drown Ganondorf under a torrential flood, leading to The Wind Waker. The "Child Timeline" follows Link, who has returned to his childhood, and uses his knowledge of the future to warn Zelda and the royal family of Ganondorf's treachery. Ganondorf's coup thus fails, and he survives an execution attempt before being sent to the Twilight Realm, setting up Twilight Princess. Meanwhile, Link goes in search of Navi, which leads directly into Majora's Mask. And then the "Downfall Timeline" is a misnomer since it's not necessarily a timeline like the other two — it's actually an alternate universe where Link dies in the final boss fight against Ganon in OOT. Ganon therefore claims Link's Triforce of Courage and then takes the Triforce of Wisdom from Zelda before the Sages seal him in the Sacred Realm along with the full Triforce, leading to the Sacred Realm becoming the Dark World and setting up A Link to the Past. ... Yeah, it's still really complex, but thinking about it in terms of "which version of the OOT world is this timeline about" is what made it click for me. Tl;dr Adult Timeline is the Adult Link world, the one that endured seven years of Ganondorf's reign. Child Timeline is the Child Link world, one where a post-OOT Link averts Ganondorf's seven-year reign from ever happening. Downfall is the AU where OOT Link dies.
I'm glad to see someone acknowledge the impact of the Downfall timeline. For years I've read so many comments about how the three timelines should converge in a game, but it never really seemed like a possibility given that the three wouldn't necessarily co-exist. It's more of a conditional wherein if the Downfall timeline exists, the Adult and Child timelines cease to be. If the Child and Adult timelines exist, there is no Downfall timeline with which to converge. Once they introduced the timeline with this conditional branch, I checked out of caring how they all clicked. If they're going to add a condition in one game that spawns a different timeline, they could do it again and again using any story point as the catalyst for a timeline branch to make a series of games fit. It feels like they made the timeline more for the fans, when in actuality, it never felt like they were trying to make the games co-exist as they continued to roll them out. And I was always okay with that.
To me instead of seeing it link loosing during the final fight, I see it as link never existing in the first place as a result of time travel. Like he gets the master sword and just disappears never to return, and that is the downfall timeline. Makes it seem less alternate history like you do scribe
Whatever the reason, if he doesn't beat Ganon, Zelda never plays the Ocarina after the fight to send him back 7 years, and the Child and Adult timelines are never created. Whether he loses or doesn't exist at all, the part in the story where those timelines are created in the story is never reached. It still remains conditional.
The timeline itself doesn’t say that he dies. It says that he’s defeated. Defeated never means that one dies. After all, after the defeat, the sages end up sealing Ganon anyway. This means Link himself is very much alive.
Yes, but the Child and Adult eras are still never created. It's an alternate universe because the Child Timeline is the one Link returns to, and the Adult Timeline is the one that continues on after Link defeats Ganon. If Link is defeated, then it *can't* be the same timeline, regardless of whether he survives or not, because the timeline is not the same as the Adult one where Link wins and Ganon is sealed with *only* the Triforce of Power, whereas in Downfall he has the *whole* Triforce.
OP is missing the fact that the time travel paradox creates the Adult and Child timelines. We effectively see both timelines in the game. Downfall timeline just pretty much a "what if" scenario. For me, I'm happy to consider every game a "what if" scenario unless there are clear references to other games in it. A Zelda game's story is about the vibes for me. It doesn't need intricate interconnectivity and "lore" to be interesting.
>For years I've read so many comments about how the three timelines should converge in a game, but it never really seemed like a possibility given that the three wouldn't necessarily co-exist. It's more of a conditional wherein if the Downfall timeline exists, the Adult and Child timelines cease to be. If the Child and Adult timelines exist, there is no Downfall timeline with which to converge. The way I imagined it is that the flood timeline served as the foundation (because BotW has Koroks), and some cataclysmic event caused the other two timelines to merge into it. It's all just for fun, though. It makes less sense the longer you think about it.
>Ganondorf's coup thus fails, and he survives an execution attempt But *how*? How did he get the triforce of power when link never opened the door yet in this timeline? I know I know. "Divine prank". >Ganon therefore claims Link's Triforce of Courage and then takes the Triforce of Wisdom from Zelda before the Sages seal him They could just do that the whole time?!
> But how? How did he get the triforce of power when link never opened the door yet in this timeline? I know I know. "Divine prank". We see it happen in Twilight Princess, but we never got an official explanation, just speculation. A theory I find adequate is that returning from the future with the capacity to stop Ganondorf even before he even gets the chance to attack is considered to be unfair, and letting him have the Triforce is an act of balance.
Link returned with the Triforce, thus shattering the whole. Wisdom found Zelda, and Power eventually found Ganondorf
>But *how*? How did he get the triforce of power when link never opened the door yet in this timeline? I know I know. "Divine prank". At the end of OoT, Link carries his piece of the triforce back to the past with him. When you see him and Zelda meeting in the courtyard in the very last scene of the credits, we can see the triforce glowing on his hand. The idea is that Link bringing a piece with him is what fractures the triforce. If he's already holding a piece, then the other two have to go somewhere, naturally to Zelda and Ganon. Ganon wouldn't know that he's suddenly holding a piece of the triforce he's been after, but he's somehow able to trigger it right before he's executed in Twilight Princess. That's why it's seen as a divine prank. No one in universe understands why Ganondorf seemingly obtained the triforce of power out of nowhere. To them, the only logical explanation is that the gods gave it to him for some reason.
This is my conclusion as well. Link being sent back to the past to a time *before* Ganondorf claims the Triforce in a way that does not involve putting the Master Sword in the pedestal causes Link to still have the Triforce in that final scene where he meets Child Zelda for the first time again. Thus, the Triforce shatters, and Wisdom finds Zelda and Power finds Ganondorf. The piece lays dormant until it's needed — namely, saving Ganondorf from being killed by the huge longsword currently being plunged through his chest. It awakens in that moment and the Sages freak out and banish him to the Twilight Realm in a panic.
>does not involve putting the Master Sword in the pedestal causes Link to still have the Triforce Triforce was playing the find the chosen ones any% speedrun
It still amazes me how badly Nintendo mangled their own lore when they wrote OOT. They advertised it as a prequel to ALTTP and managed to create not one but *two* timelines that didn’t match what they wrote just a few years earlier, so they had to retroactively establish a third one just to fix it.
Yeah, iirc OOT was originally just meant to depict the Imprisoning War mentioned in ALTTP's lore. It, uh, did not match the ALTTP description very much.
I don't think Nintendo really knew what they were doing at the time. Keep in mind that hyrule historia was released years after ocarina of time. Like almost 20 years I think? Until then the "split timeline theory" was just a theory and the debates people would have over it on Nintendo forums were wild. Sooo many people absolutely hated the split timeline theory.
This is not true. Twilight Princess and Wind Waker were developed with the child and adult split in mind, it was not something the community randomly came up with.
Right. You can find developer quotes and interviews that link almost every single game together pre-historia. It's insane how many people still think the timeline was suddenly made up in 2011 to appease fans
ESPECIALLY for the dual Timeline split. The only aspect I agree with is Downfall being tacked on because they wrote themselves in a corner with Alltp being set after OoT.
People don’t pay attention to the media they consume, especially in this fandom.
Yep, there has been clear timelines from Nintendo for YEARS and people choose to ignore it. Did they change plans they had at one time or another? Sure. But the idea of the games having a connection has clearly been a thing in the back of their minds the whole time.
As someone who was actually there, the entire Zelda community was in constant debate about the split timeline theory until the release of hyrule historia.
Right, but the developer interviews were available back then too. Aonuma and Miyamoto have said Ocarina had two endings. They've said that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess were thought to be parallel points in time from different timelines. The linearist arguments never made sense for that reason
the aldult/child timeline split was developed to explain the split between lttP/WW, long before TP had ever even come out. No one had ever considered LttP in some other "thrid timeline" until the HH had come out.
Yes, that is my point. HH came out of left field with downfall, but the timeline split wasnt something the community came up with, it was largely accepted and basically confirmed by lots of interviews with the dev team back around WW-TP times
First off I'm a huge fan of the lore, though I can recognize when things fit, and when they don't. With that said, it you look closely at the relationships between events, it appears that, rather than making OoT a true prequel to ALttP, the events Child and Adult timelines of the 3D games (up until WW) were actually based off of the established pre-3D timeline from 1993. So it makes sense the events in ALttP and OoT wouldn't line up. The 3D games were originally a retelling of the events of the 2D games at the time: |Pre-3D Timeline (Template)|Post-3D Timeline (Adult)|Post-3D Timeline (Child)| |:-|:-|:-| |ALttP Manual: Seal War (No Hero)|OoT Ending: Ganon Sealed (Hero)|n/a| |ALttP: Ganon Returns (Hero)|WW Prologue: Ganon Returns (No Hero)|n/a| |LA: Hero Side Quest after Defeating Ganon|n/a (Refer to Child Timeline)|MM: Hero Side Quest After Defeating Ganon| |Hyrule in Decline|Great Deluge|n/a| |LoZ: Ganon Returns (Triforce of Wisdom Broken into Pieces )|WW: Ganon Returns (Triforce of Courage Broken into Pieces)|n/a| |LoZ: Ganon Finally Defeated|WW: Ganon Finally Defeated|n/a| \*Note the Oracle games are not included. This is because they were made by a third party (Capcom) and not in house.
I don’t think they actually have a shit about the lore at the time and still don’t
I feel the same I’m fine with skyward sword being the first and I’m happy to just listen to theories and speculation
The origin of a LOT. SS is the origin of the Master Sword, the origin of Zelda being a reincarnation of the goddess Hylia, the origin of the "Hero" (Link), the origin of "Ganons" spirit (Ganondorf is his own person, but him transforming into a pig/beast is him borrowing Demise' power that has been passed to him). Not to mention the return of Hylians to the surface which would later be known as Hyrule >!as shown in Totk Rauru and Sonia create the kingdom of Hyrule (Rauru being a Zonai which at the time likely already existed on the surface and other Sky Islands Hylia had created, and Sonia being a later descendant of Zelda some time after Skyward Sword)!<
I'm pretty sure BotW doesn't fit and isn't meant to. It's more like a world in which all other games exist as legends. They may not be entirely accurate as legends tend not to be, but they came about to fill in the gaps surrounding tidbits of truth, from sea salt on mountain tops and legendary swords, to floating Islands or a guy named Tingle.
Oot/mm connect to TP and WW. So I love the relationships between the games. I thought BOTW was supposed to re merge the timeline.
It is supposedly set so far into the future that all previous games have faded into legend.
Damn! Interesting tidbit. I didn't know that before. Thanks!
BotW is essentially a soft reset of the franchise; it's set extremely far into the future compared to the rest of the series
It's so far into the future from the previous games, (10,000 years minimum and probably a lot more) that it can exist at the end of all timelines. Imo, Hyrule Warriors should be cannon because that DOES merge the timelines in part but whatever. Anyways, Breath is so far ahead that they can pretty much write anything they want and it doesn't interfere with the old timeline. That's the important part of it if you care about the game order
Everyone says that about HW and conveniently forgets the part where the timelines get unmerged after you beat Ganon.
So when the game talks about the ancient fight against Gannon, that the excavated guardians and divine beasts were made for, does that still take place way after every game or is that during the old tomeline
I'm pretty sure it's still after everything else. Basically all the story told within the game is post- split timeline if I understand it right.
you can't merge a timeline. you can only open new paths. any theory that strongly pushes for a merge is nonsense and don't know what they are talking about.
Feasibly you could have timelines converge on relatively similar events happening for different reasons… it’s highly unlikely but if we consider infinite timelines it must happen at some point, so maybe the canon timelines are just those three timelines which all include roughly analogous events in the BOTW era
That's kinda how I figured BotW worked. It wasn't literally the three timelines recombining and the worlds merging together. Rather, each of the three separate timelines would eventually experience the same events and would become indistinguishable from one another, even though the series of events leading to that point differed between timelines (for example, the Rito evolved in a different way in the child timeline to the adult timeline).
The issue with that is that the three timelines we’ve been presented with are too radically different to ever converge like that. The Adult Timeline’s Hyrule was literally flooded, re-founded somewhere else as New Hyrule, and last we saw had freaking trains AFAIK. There is no possible way for that version of the kingdom to eventually end up with the same circumstances and geography as the Child and Downfall timelines.
Yeah, I've come to accept that it doesn't really work (unless old Hyrule got unflooded and people moved back, but that would be an odd narrative). Tbh I think we are supposed to treat BotW/TotK as a new continuity where events from the older games may have happened, but not necessarily in the same way. Similar to how the Batman Arkham games reference famous comic book storylines, but still take place within their own continuity.
100% agreed. They just aren’t compatible with the rest of the Zelda canon as we know it. The only game that I personally think remains 100% canon is Skyward Sword, since that game’s story actually has legitimate relevance to the plot of TOTK.
What are you talking about, if Nintendo ever decides that the timelines did merge then that's canonically what happened. It's a fictional story with magic and gods and a literal reality-altering MacGuffin called the Triforce. Nintendo can do whatever the fuck they want with the story, merging timelines included.
Just putting it out there, we see a game where the timeline is merged. Hyrule Warriors. I know, I know, non canon, but it works. It explains all of BotW's inconsistencies perfectly.
I think it’s fun to theorize in the same way it’s fun to theorize about the Pixar theory but I’ve seen people genuinely mad that Nintendo did not care too much about the timeline. And I’m like, does it really matter?
So I like having the timeline in a sense, but it's not critical, BotW + TotK confuse it up a bit, but end of the day it doesn't matter at all. What seems weird is that people have taken the notion that stories like these have been planned meticulously and thoroughly decades ahead as if continuity always existed in every medium and it didn't. Timeline came in to help make sense of things but even then not this be all end all guideline to arduously follow, continuity isn't a must to enjoy these games nor is there a requirement that it has to push it farther than an individual title to make it greater. The beauty resides in each game individually and lucky when some add up.
Yeah, canon and consistency matter, but only up to a point. A lot of SFF media attracts a hardcore cadre of super-sweaty nerds who care more about exhaustively overexplained bookkeeping than they do about emotional resonance. xP
The same crowd that needs every single mf thing, object, word, and scene to have so much meaning, and references that it's like gd the drapes are just red for dramatic effect not because it's foreshadowing to a future storyline.
Exactly. I pine for a world where I didn’t know where Han Solo got his name. xD
Look at the dice!!!!
Same but im still confuse why are those people still mad or what they mad at. Is it still possible that skyward sword is still the first game (with fi in the sword) and it just happen to be a very long time since ss and people just forget about their ancestor. Or it could be alternate universe where maybe botw have it's own ss version. In the end https://youtu.be/xzpndHtdl9A
Yeah I've never really understood the whole "Minish Cap and Four Sword come first" (after SS) thing. It just seems like Nintendo saw that the internet just theorized that for some dumbass reason like Link getting a hat and went with it as canon. You could honestly argue that that trilogy doesn't even have to be canon.
Yeah, Minish Cap being first is a weird one. I guess you could call the Wind Tribe remnants of Skyloft? Maybe?
Honestly it doesn't bother me if they aren't connected but I'm a lore guy. So them connecting in some way just kinda hits that spot. Then again I'm not gonna sit here and drink copium hoping to forcibly shove BOTW and totk into the timeline. Like it's kinda obvious that they have stopped with it
I would be the same way honestly if not for the clear presence of Fi in both botw and totk. That goes way beyond borrowing elements and loose ideas from other games. That's a whole ass character and it compels me to connect it all together in some way.
That's honestly a good point. I completely forgot about Fi and she definitely talks to Zelda on multiple occasions Oh.................fuck
Personally I get soft reboot vibes from TOTK (and BOTW, in hindsight). Skyward Sword is canon, Fi’s presence and several other details make that clear, but every other game now exists in this nebulous cloud as in-universe legends with questionable accuracy based on conflicts with Calamity Ganon.
Where is Fi in TOTK/BOTW?
In a cutscene/memory in BOTW, after link gets owned by all those guardians and lynels, zelda is told by the master sword to place link into the chamber of resurrection. The master sword both glows and beeps exactly as it would in Skyward Sword if Fi was trying to tell link something, confirming that she indeed still resides as a spirit inside the sword.
She also finally speaks to Link again after he completed the Trial of the Sword. Just to be clear, I mean she beeps at Link too, but it's still the first hero to hear her since SS. It actually makes me tear up to see
Also I think either Zelda or the Deku Tree refers to the Master Sword with female pronouns
I remember someone doing this in TotK, too, and being slightly confused since I don't have a single clue about Zelda lore and never played Skyward Sword far enough to know about Fi.
She’s the humming voice from the Master Sword that Zelda is seen conversing with and asks Link if he can hear. So no physical appearance. Like all the references to other games in botw/totk, it’s very easy to sidestep/miss/ignore.
Not to mention the Forgotten Temple being explicitly the same temple as the one in the Sealed Grounds (right down to the Loftwing gargoyles), where in TotK you even get the Goddess Sword (which I feel is a point for merged timelines)
Just because Fi is in BotW/TotK, doesn’t mean SS actually happened. She probably exists in this timeline/universe too, same as Link and Zelda and Beedle and Impa. It doesn’t mean it’s the same Fi, just probably a different version of her, like the other characters.
This is where I’m at, I’ll enjoy the games regardless, but having an understandable timeline just makes it that much better.
I feel like if the first HW was canon it would fix a lot of (not all) of BOTWs timeline issues because it has elements from all three and the first HW merges all three.
There's Rauru, though. He's a goat in TotK, but he's still there. Different timeline and land design, but same world.
The only way to make it work is to do timey wimey shenanigans anyway since the timeline didn’t branch like it was supposed to for totk.
Don't they link the two timelines together? Like this is only 100 years after or something like that? The school in Hateno talks about it a bit for anyone interested
In tears of the kingdom, the school talks about the calamity which happened in breath of the wild. The problem is fitting both of these games together in the rest of the timeline.
I assume that's what we're all doing (Enjoying the game). The timeline is part of that enjoyment for those who care to make sense of it.
I can enjoy the games and also be neurotic about the timeline. It's not some binary thing. It's kinda fun to speculate.
Yeah, I wouldn't think about the timeline if I didn't enjoy the games.
Meanwhile me, who has not played any Zelda game, checking here and wikis at least once a week for timeline speculation... xD
Indeed. Part of the play for me is seeing where things connect, and the conversations had with other players about the game. To add to this, some might seem to take it too far to the point of stressing about it but that might just be one of the pitfalls of text communication.
I think you describe people that like digging into the lore pretty unfairly. They aren’t worrying or stressing about how the games relate to one another, it’s not like the big picture lore gets in the way of their enjoyment of the games. They just like looking for clues and speculating about how said clues can shape our understanding of the series. It’s a means of secondary enjoyment of the games that enriches playing them. If you don’t want or need that, that’s fine too. But there’s no point trying to shut down a conversation you don’t want to be a part of in the first place. My take, it’s THE LEGEND of Zelda, not just Zelda. Legends are unreliable as source material, told differently depending on who’s telling the story. Not everything is literal and of course contradictions arise.
The Zelda timeline, and the way it's written, exists to please both types of fans. Those like you, who don't care about the lore and history, can still enjoy each game in a vacuum. While people like me, who love deep diving into series lore, have a mountain of official transmedia to crack into. That's by design. Consider BotW and TotK's story telling method as a microcosm of this writing style: The story *IS* there, but it's entirely optional. That doesn't mean it isn't important. Some people don't care about the story, some people do. So make it optional. *This is the core philosophy of the Zelda Timeline as a whole.* Arguments only break out because of posts like this. When one side of this divide tells the other side that their way of enjoying the series is somehow improper.
Best post in the thread
This is the way
This is the way
As someone who likes timelines and lore, I have yet to see a signle person act as if the games "need" to be connected for the games to be enjoyable. I guess some people like that probably exist, but I havent seem one lmao
Oh man you should go on r/truezelda
Yeah except that's not really the attitude over there
While there is a ton of stuff canonically established, and especially with TOTK being a traditional direct sequel, I can't help but think of Zelda games as self contained stories.
that's pretty much how I look at each of them
It’s kind of a retelling of the same legend over and over again, that changes through the ages. Like an anthology
There is no timeline. Only the idea of a timeline. Each game takes and leaves and changes what it wants from this idea of a timeline. There’s no need to fret over every retcon, as every game has them.
I like how place names in BOTW and TOTK refer to characters and places and events from all of the other games. It hints at a richer world with a history and myths and legends - the idea of a timeline as you put it. But don’t really need to engage with it beyond that.
people who like the timeline enjoy the games just as much as you do. just because you think the lore is stupid doesn’t mean people who like the lore don’t like the games. we all like zelda here!
There has already been like 500 threads fighting over this. If you don’t care don’t pay attention that’s literally it.
you get it.
I've of a mind to think they're part of some multiverse. But that's just me.
Yeah I mean, that's kind of how I see it. There are references and common elements in each existence but they aren't directly connected via linear time
It'd be neat if they had all the Links from different timelines come together and fight a common enemy.
INTO THE LINKOVERSE they all just get together to bomb some dodongos
Great! I can't wait to bomb some dodongos!
READ LINKED UNIVERSE
And the botw/totk Link is the only one who has weapons break on him
More than that, I actually like how the games themselves merely reference events in other games but never spell out the lore. Also, I kinda feel like Nintendo doesn’t really dwell on it and only released an official timeline to try to get fans to stop asking about it.
Same. I also think that was why they released that timeline, I never really put too much stock into it other than it was like "here you go, now shut up"
Me.
I enjoy it for what it is, but I would enjoy it a lot more if the story was faithful to BoTW and cannon at large.
I love lore and theorizing on possible connections throughout the series. Especially if the evidence for those theories are strong. But at the end of the day to me lore is like a Spice. It can help make an amazing meal but first the actual meat (which is the game in this analogy) has to actually be good.
I enjoy the thought that everything is connected in some way, its fun to think about and theorise where things fit in but at the end of the day all of the games are enjoyable stand alone adventures and I don't ever have to think too deeply about it
The only arguments I’ve seen are when people tell others to stop theorizing about timelines and they’re dumb for doing so (which has happened to me). If you don’t care about a larger timeline that’s fine. I have fun thinking about it and picking apart the connections between the games. Obviously the creators didn’t have an overarching timeline in mind when making them. You’re conflating others having alternate views on a niche aspect of the lore and having fun speculating with actual heated argument. It only gets heated when people shit on others opinions or joys. Just let others enjoy what they want. If you don’t like posts theorizing about a timeline, ignore it.
Lore is a really fun thing for. And hypothesizing lore theories is also really fun. Going down the rabbit hole of what connections and tiny details fanbases have put together makes me love the worldbuilding so much more. Zeldas no different. I don't care if there is no definitive timeline, but I love seeing the theories and connections. The fact that BOTW/TOTK is so far in the future and derives from all of the divergent timelines makes it even more interesting to me. I do think forcing things to fit is unnecessary and it's okay for there to be no official solution. Like the downfall timeline itself is kind of iffy imo, because that should mean there could be a divergent downfall timeline for every game following the outcome where Link loses.
Sure, but at the same time, those trying to make sense of the timeline ENJOY that as well. Everyone enjoys things differently.
based on r/truezelda, it seems to cause them some significant distress lol
So many of the people in this thread haven’t spent much time on that sub and it shows. There are literally people like “FUCK this series, I give up, why should I care about this SHIT when Nintendo doesn’t, Zelda is fucking TRASH now” on nearly every thread about the timeline and lore. They take it way, way, *way* too seriously
So a small, loud minority of people somehow stand in for everyone?
this is where i’m coming from lol. i think obsessing over the timeline is weird, but if you enjoy it, go ahead. what bothers me is seeing how many people obsess with it to the point that it ruins their enjoyment of the series and all they do is cry online about the timeline being inconsistent.
I honestly feel like there isn’t anything blatantly timeline breaking in TotK anyway; seeing as BotW was designed deliberately so far in the future that all previous stories exist solely as myth. Who knows how much time passed between the Skyloft people resettling the surface, and Hyrule as a kingdom being actually founded. The Founding in TotK could just be a definitive point for that, and it doesn’t necessarily conflict with Skyward Sword. As for there being a Ganondorf then; I’ve always been a proponent that there absolutely could be multiple Ganondorfs throughout time. That’s what the whole macguffin of “a Male Gerudo is born once a century” ought to be used for. So there being a ‘prime’ Ganondorf being sealed underground while other incarnations of him have been running around is not entirely unreasonable. The timeline is vague and disjointed to begin with, so argue over semantics and minor “retcons” is silly anyway.
I thought that the Gerudo in BOTW were forced to go out and breed with Hylians due to the fact that Ganon being sealed somehow told the universe "hey, there's still a male Gerudo alive, you cant give birth to another one", because otherwise they wouldn't have needed to breed with Hylians, but who knows.
The Gerudo have always had to mate with Hylians. They are still human, but only produce females. So reproductive partners are obviously slim pickings inside their own culture. They have to form partnerships with Hylian men or reproduction simply wouldn’t happen.
If a game seems to have an established connection to a previous one (Majora's Mask being a direct sequel to OoT after Link was sent back to his childhood by Zelda, Twilight Princess being pretty clearly set after OoT in general) then I'll take it as gospel. Beyond that, I just think of them as variations on the same tale being told through the ages.
Almost like it's some kind of legend... of Zelda.
I like to treat it the same way I treat FromSoft's catalog. Its fun to speculate about connections between every game. But its easier to take each entry/duo as their own continuity. Kinda sad they made an "official" timeline in Hyrule Historia still.
I mean if the game isn’t a direct sequel then I don’t see how much the timeline insists upon itself that it takes away from the gameplay experience. I’ve noticed since OOT that story has been a key point of progression in the game and provides depth to characters. Growing up I loved the sense that the games were connected. One of the great things about Zelda is it has so many things for players to gravitate towards and people can find their own style of Zelda that they like. I think the developers can adhere to a timeline and create an amazing gameplay experience. It’s not like there is a quiz game show like banjo kazooie where if you don’t know about the timeline you can’t progress to the final boss fight.
I love seeing consistency and timeline connections tho, it makes the world feel more real and fosters theory-crafting. The world becomes more alive as you think about the world outside of the game Recently this aspect of fandoms is perceived very negatively, but it’s really fun to connect games and theorize about how things connect. It’s not appreciated anymore tho imo
Continuity is nice. Breaks in continuity carry a risk of breaking immersion. Like having the Rito be introduced as the descendents of the Zoras, evolved from fish-people into bird-people, in order to survive a cataclysmic event, only for a later entry to say "oh no they've existed as a separate, parallel species for over ten thousand years"... it just makes veterans stop and go "huh?" since now the legends conflict with themselves. Especially since the legends are what we the players _play_ and experience.
I like watching the YouTube videos and theories but when they change the whole order of stuff in the official books it doesn't bother me
Back when I was a kid played Ocarina of Time without acknowledging the existence of any previous Zelda. And had a blast. Adulthood ruined many things for me by instilling a need to make sense of everything, with little room for pure wonder and make believe. Tracing timelines, forcing a logical thread between them... that is a way to ruin the fun, denying escapism when you eventually find and can't ignore the many "flaws", rooting yourself into the dull realm of the "real world" while trying to experience something meant for you to let yourself get lost into.
It's really jarring and breaks immersion when something in the story breaks continuity. A good example that is often brought up is the unexplained disappearance of shieka tech from botw to totk. There's no mention of what could have happened, not even a throw-away line. Those kinds of things can really take players out of the game for a bit. Now take that example from above and apply it to the entire lore of the games. It's okay that everything doesn't align with past games or that each game is its own continuity, but the stories are constantly referring to past games, introducing their continuity, only to break it within that same story it was reference by. For example, assuming anyone reading has played the first few hours of the game, totk refers to the Imprisoning wars from the past lore, and not even an hour later into the game, the first king of Hyrule is announced breaking the continuity of that past lore. Timeline theorists are a result of people trying to make sense of things that took them out of the immersion.
I'm saying none of that was jarring to me and while I like following the story of each game I don't really care about how the Imprisoning War changed or whatever new timeline happened, I'm just like Enjoying the game? Like you do you but I don't get how you can play any Nintendo mainline series that's gone on for decades and care that much about strict continuity It just seems like you're making problems for yourself
I'm not strict about continuity. Nowhere did I say I was. I'm just a person who has been playing Zelda for a very long time with a passive understanding of the "lore." Regardless of how you play the games, immersion is an important element for a lot of Zelda players. Even when coming into the game expecting its own continuity, retcons will always take people out of the story for those who are aware of it. That was the case for me, and I'm not even a timeline junky. If I could make a personal recommendation. If you like gameplay in particular, could I recommend uno or monopoly? I feel like you would get more enjoyment out of those boring ass games rather than creating a post looking for a circle jerk.
Yeah. I do. Its lazy writing to disregard everything for a half baked origin story of Hyrule, especially when we already had a game for the origins of Hyrule. A game with a good story I might add.
I mean, did the new game...make the old game not exist? You can still play that game right?
It didnt. But the story feels much more fun if I feel like the writers actually care about established lore. Tbh, Totk story feels like the "writers"(according to the credits nobody was hired to write) just didnt care in so many levels, its annoying. They didnt care about how it could fit in the broad timeline, didnt care to make an interesting Ganondorf, did not care to make the characters not feel stupid, did not care to make a story that could make a good use of finding the memories non linearly, did not care ro make the story non repetitive once completing a dungeon, ignored Botw story as much as possible, etc.. etc... The lack of timeline connection feels like a symptom of a larger problem.
Nintendo games are not about the story. If there’s some story that’s fun. But the story only exists to serve as a secondary to the gameplay.
Xenoblade says hi
That's the Miyamoto philosophy and I'm here for it.
Story and gameplay shouldn't be viewed so independently from each other. Fiction is the oldest form of entertainment and has evolved from verbal stories to novels, films, and now video games. Games were given birth as a form of fictional storytelling where people are actively participating. Miyamoto's philosophy is misguided, as a story is what gives motivation for gameplay, or in other words, story IS gameplay. I had a blast playing botw and totk, but looking back, I don't recall a damn thing that I did in my playthroughs. A more compelling story wouldn't hurt modern zelda and would actually elevate it even further.
Games were given birth as games. Look at where video games came from, things like pong. Arcade games. Shmups. Pinball. Mario. I'm not at all arguing that they aren't a storytelling medium now, you'd have to be ignorant to say that they can't or aren't used that way. But they really don't have to be. Sometimes they can just be fun. People play video games for different reasons. Personally, like, I thought in recent memory the Octopath Traveler games were better in terms of story but their gameplay is pretty old school. Great games nonetheless. A more compelling story would not hurt modern Zelda, but it's not really the main reason that a lot of people play it and honestly it's enjoyable without it. For me, I don't play Zelda games because the story is compelling. Honestly I've never found the stories of Zelda games all that interesting other than Majora's Mask. Which is fine. Still love the series.
Pong was an introduction to the technology. Arcade games, shmups, and Mario all had some naritive to it. Even pinball machines had a theme to them. Narrative has always been a part of video games, even back then when the technology was limited in telling that narrative. Save the princess, shoot the alien ships, etc. As technology improves to allow for better gameplay, ways to tell a better narrative are capable as well. But regardless of what I say, why are you asking for opinions in your post only to argue with them.
I'm not allowed to argue with opinions now?
It's not recommended when those opinions are a result of you asking for opinions to begin with. It makes it seem like you are looking for an argument or a circle jerk.
I'll be sure to listen to your recommendations on all of my future internet activity, sir. I care very much about what you have to say and your judgements on my character. Pleasing you is my only goal.
It's not my personal recommendation, and you don't have to listen to it.
you're the only person to tell me so, so it seems like it's just you buddy
Fire Emblem? Xenoblades?
Honestly, I like to sort them into a timeline for my own entertainment. I never viewed Nintendo's 'official' timeline with much credibility, and there's reasons aplenty to draw your own conclusions. Nobody is right, nobody is wrong. It's a fake world that's there for fun and that's it.
I've had people question why I like the series solely because of the timeline. Like, yes, I absolutely love lore and I understand half of LoZ lore doesn't make sense, but I still have a lot of fun playing the games. Anything that does seem to connect are like fun little easter eggs for other games in the series to me, whether it's actually logical or not. It's fun and that's good enough for me 🤷🏻♀️ Plus, the lore isn't the only factor that makes a game good.
I mean I enjoy the games for what they are and still want to make sense of the timeline. They're not mutually exclusive concepts. And yea ofc there wasn't any timeline for you to worry about during your childhood it didn't exist
I'm very much in this boat. The speculation is fun, but these are games created by different development teams over decades of time. I just want them to focus on making the best possible game and story one at a time, while staying true to the overall spirit of what has come before.
yes, agree
There is literally no point in arguing over theories of what the timeline could be, the actual timeline is plain to see for everyone on the official Zelda website: https://zelda.com/about/#timeline
Except that doesnt include botw and totk, which everyone is arguing about.
Honestly, not until [Nintendo did](https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Zelda_Timeline?File=E_timeline.png). But then… they did. and now… I kind of can’t not? I sort of liked when it was just a Legend. but now there’s a canon… I can’t not a canon.
Tears of the Kingdom did something really cool and the internet is being really annoying about it. It establishes the LEGEND of Zelda. Now half of the internet are being really annoying whining about the timeline and the other half is being really annoying and talking down to anyone talking about the timeline.
I agree. I don't believe the creators ever intended for there to be a timeline and only created one because theorizing is good for free social media advertisement. Some games have clear connections, others don't. Some games just have fun little Easter eggs that are Easter eggs and not meant to place the game in a specific timeline slot. It is fun to theorize, but I think some people take it a little too serious and get upset that Zelda isn't super deep about keeping lore straight. Oh well.
>don't believe the creators ever intended for there to be a timeline How can you people say this shit after watching the wind waker prologue?
Or devs talking about TP and WW happening concurrently back after when TP released :)
You get it
I like the connections between the games (if there is any ) and the lore as a whole but in the end I know the story are selfcontained so I don't care as long as there is some sort of coherence even if the maps are not the same or some things change place etc.
I enjoy the games, but having a well made and lit together timeline would be better for me. Doesn’t need to be too tightly weaved together, but at least confirm for me what games led to what other games. In the case of botw, I would love an explanation as to how the timelines converged. Maybe a game placed before botw that converges the timelines oot caused. Kinda like dark souls where each game leads to the other, but are set apart by a vast timeskip.
I am literally following the game with an intense ADHD… like: I must go there.. oh wait is this cave? Let me dwell inside for 30 min. Where I was going? Oh a npc, I wonder what he wants.. and goes on 😂 So the timeline hardly matters to me at this point
I feel you lol And happy cake day!
Ye i used to care about the timelineuntil I actually learned about it. It's essentially there to make SOME sense of the games. I just enjoy the games for what they're and don't really bother with the timeline bs
It’s all just a multiverse to me. There are a few direct sequels where it’s the “same Link,” but otherwise I don’t care. All retellings of a similar “Legend.”
I love the timeline, lore, geography, etc. myself, and love to debate and talk about it from my own personal subjective standpoint, even if it goes against Historia and Nintendo, but ultimately I don't care all that much and just like to have fun. But at this point, arguing over the lore might as well be just as important as dungeons lol.
I think it’s kinda fun. It’s fun thinking they are all connected but not in a way that you have to worry about too much. I like the whole split timeline thing with Ocarina, and I like thinking about how there’s probably another split because of the time travel in Tears. Idk I’m not super worried about it but it is kinda fun.
I don’t care about the timeline that much I just love all the games
I dont care about the timeline because I dont believe it. They just need simething to market skyward sword back then and obviously, they abandon it after a link between worlds
There is no timeline. Or there is one, but Nintnedo thought 10 times less about whether it adds up as the fans do. That, and I strictly see BotW era as its own reboot. The callbacks to the other games as history is almost nonexist and where it does it, it bathes in plausible deniability. Yes, there is a 10.000 year old backstory and then even older events. But I think it's not the literal story of the older Zelda games that belong in that history, but an unknown BotW version of a Wind Waker for example. Imagine the old games didn't exist and then imagine that ages ago in BotW there too was a vast ocean where the desert now is. That's how it fits. Nothing else. But just the shift from Ganondorf being "king of evil" or "king of thieves" alone and into "Demon King" in all the recent gamed I see as a directorial shift. Naoki Mori and Fujibayashi's vision of Zelda now. Between TP and SS there has been a change of the old guard at the Zelda team with Aonuma and others stepping more into the background of its creative development. That is what we're seeing and that is what causes the confusion. Fujibayashi has a different tonal vision for this franchise than Aonuma had. Aonuma embraced the darkly weird adventure elements of Zelda. Fujibayashi embraces the cartoonishly simple and comical aspects of the brand, hence the amount of bumbling music in combat starting with Skyward Sword, Link obviously flailing his arms in order to sprint, and bokoblins looking cute. Ditto for aspects of the narrative. Fujibayashi's style can be traced back to the Oracle games. His games are cuter and more straightforward. They don't really have the same sense of connection I felt between games like Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker, or the spiritual connection between Ocarina and Twilight Princess. They stopped chasing that sense of "mysterious Zelda universe" in favor of a more face-value universe, and that's why the timeline has basically been reset into BotW. This now matters. The older games don't. That's BotW's timeline.
I mean, its fun. That’s all. It’s not important to anyone’s enjoyment of the base game. I don’t really get why you yourself have concerned yourself with “why do people enjoy X thing” if all you care about is the games at face value anyhow yunno?
I actually love the timeline, because it’s a puzzle in its own way! We have each puzzle in game, but linking all the history and backstory of lore keeps me excited and always wondering. It’s fun to me, and hearing other theories is fun too! I also have the tism so it’s like an itch to figure out, and it’s my special interest so I really really enjoy it!
I like lore
100%. the timelines are the most toxic thing about the fanbase and nintendo in my opinion made a massive mistake giving in. i dont' see mario with a timeline nothing wrong with direct sequels or direct prequels. the 15 game divergent timeline stuff is wack
For me I enjoy getting involved in the lore of the games because it lets me appreciate any references more then. Also I like that the Zelda games tell their own stories but also one overarching story spanning timelines
To me, a timeline is what holds it all together. "Time" in itself is a huge theme spanning across multiple games. I'm okay with the timeline being vague or loose, and I like the idea of the timeline splitting based on the events of OoT (although I prefer to call the "fallen timeline" the "abandoned timeline" as that makes more sense in my head). SS was one of my favourites in the series particularly because it told the beginning of it all and having a timeline where the games are at least loosely related to each other makes the world feel that much more expansive and adds to the overall theme of "good vs evil." The timeline exists to tell the story of how in this world, evil will always rise but there are also always hero(es) that will rise to face it as well. The central symbol of absolute power, the Triforce, is the perfect symbol for this as it's something that is part of nature having no distinction between good and evil and granting immense power to whoever wields it, good or bad. Which is why I feel a sense of dissonance between >!SS and TOTK because they made SS specifically for this reason and then a few years later TOTK kinda makes that irrelevant. And saying that they're just retellings kinda feels like a cop-out.!< I feel like players (and even sometime the developers) completely miss the mark of the overall themes and importance of stories like these when they constantly retcon established themes, lore and more because "it's just a game." If it didn't have the expansive story-telling or lore it has, I probably wouldn't be that into Zelda and it would just be another franchise milking popularity. Don't get me wrong though, the games are always fun with their unique mechanics. As a game developer myself, I understand that the world can't always be or look the same, and as times change or move forward, I'm okay with things changing (such as the distinction between Zora and Rito, and Korok and Kokiri evolving), or the world being laid out different. The important thing is for consistency in landmarks, lore, characters/races, etc. TL/DR: This series needs a timeline and connection to other games to make the world feel alive and progressive and to underline every major theme the franchise stands lays out.
This is such an L post
Agree with you 100%. It seems very silly to me and always has. The amount of time that supposedly passes between each game makes it so it doesn't even matter if they're linked or not. If someone enjoys piecing things together that don't really fit together cool but not me lol
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Lol I really feel that
I’m kinda glad they’re doing a soft reboot of the lore. Like. BotW establishes that every other game is essentially irrelevant, and the stories of those games are just myths and legends to the world of BotW (aka there’s gonna be inconsistencies to the real world and what really happened). It’d be cool if they built the next few games in the world and lore of BotW/TotK, but I’m not sold. The loose connections the other games had was enough for me, if they keep a similar vibe I’d be fine.
Agreed. My first Zelda game was OOT, and i've played every single Zelda game since. The timeline is bullshit, the lore is non-existant, and the story only exists from game to game with some recurring elements, and sometimes games connected (i.e. OOT and MM, or WW, PH and ST). Just enjoy each one as they are. The timeline does not matter.
Inside every Zelda player, there are two wolves One of them wants to enjoy the game it is currently playing One of them wants to enjoy all the games at the same time Which one will win? Well, that depends on which one is actually a pink rabbit, for you personally
I just like, enjoy the games that I do. Some of them I don't as much. That's mostly Spirit Tracks.
Yea. Most Zelda fans. Just not the loud ones
Half of the time I care, the other half I don’t care, mainly because it will end up killing me just thinking about it
i think its cool to think about but when playing the games i really dont care "how it fits into the timeline"
My buddy at work told me to watch an hour long video about how all the games are connected
I've watched some and it's like, cool, if you're interested in connecting them and theorizing go ahead, but it seems like an uphill battle if you're really invested
Aside from games that are designed as direct sequels (OoT having MM, WW, and TP as direct sequels, the original having Link's Adventure, etc) I don't think the series really works well with a timeline anyways. They always try to reset and tell a story where it can be independent of anything else. It's not like Metroid where you can track each game in a specific order because it's a continious narrative. Zelda isn't like that
They coming up with this stuff as they go and seem to rewrite the lore every game. Other writers job to tie it together and make an official timeline.
Yes. I view them a set of tales from a mythology and not a carefully constructed narrative, the elements and the history are connected but creative liberty is taken.
The way I see it, Hyrule is timeless. The sages are always there and Link appears when he is needed. When I die I hope I can be Link in an endless loop of saving Hyrule.
I think it's a fun distraction a sizable portion of the community gets carried away with and can be overly kind to flawed games if there's enough lore drops. At least at first. Eventually bad game design does make people stop acting like knowing the origin story of a piece of equipment or iconography makes a game good. *Cough* Skyward Sword *Cough* It can also have a negative impact on the games themselves. Personally, I think Demise is one of the worst ideas in the canon, as his dying curse robs the trio of their agency in a lot of ways. Wind Waker's take on Ganondorf is the most interesting version I've seen so far, and it bums me out that even if he doesn't realize it, he was fated to do all these things, not because he wanted a better life for himself and his people, but because of a millenia old curse.
Not every fantasy world needs mountains of “lore”. I love the amount of history and detail Tolkien put into his Legendarium, but that type of approach wouldn’t really benefit Zelda in any meaningful way IMO To me, connecting all the Zelda games into one grand tale is almost as silly as doing the same for the Mushroom Kingdom
Just me but I look at Skyward Sword as the origin story & all the other games happened after the ones released before. There has always been a descendent of the Goddess & a silent hero. Trying to make sense of a timeline turns into Always Sunny conspiracy board
Honestly it feels like they took Zelda and merged stranger things.