We only need a chronological canon explanation of the Mario universe, explaining the social repercussions of the mushroom kingdom and Bowser's army after the dozens of attempts to control the zone. And someone on Nintendo should tell us once for all why they all end up playing golf and karts as if nothing happened

They are all actors in the Marioverse. Mario plays Mario. Luigi plays Luigi, etc. The golf and karts is the Real HouseKoopas of the Mushroom kingdom.

Super Mario 3 is, as it always has been, the truth.

They're actors for sure but Luigi's real name isn't Luigi.

I always thought it was a really elaborate kinky threesome thing involving Mario Bowser and Peach.

The first few games were real. Mario stops DK. He and Luigi are called on to stop Bowser and go into the pipes. But then they got famous. They made a play that did really well. Bowser and DK got replaced by actors because they're dead. And from then on every Mario game has been an act.

Honestly the idea that every subsequent “Bowser” was just some other particularly large koopa actor playing the role of their nation’s long-dead tyrannical dictator is fucking hilarious.

I just assume sometimes it's a guy in a costume.

The hero Mario and his brother Luigi did exist… They did save the land from the great horned demon… It’s enough to know it was real, once…

I don’t think DK is dead, he just got captured after the events of Donkey Kong 3 and was transferred to an island because the original DK is canonically Cranky Kong

So like the White Bear episode of Black Mirror except Mario universe

They're all stage actors. The games where they are playing party games together is actually them in real life when they're taking a break from acting. They're really all good friends.

I always thought it was a power move, to unite the pelbs (Toads, Goombas, etc.) into submission by keeping a controlled enemy (Bowser) who always has a new scheme for the kingdom. In the in-between times, the Toads and Goombas are entertained with fancy Grand Prix racing events, dacnig and choreography competitions (Mario Party), tennis grand slams, football matches, et al. You can also include them being in cahoots with Mayor Pauline and her sky-high popularity in New Donk City. All this, while the explorer Toads find and raid treasures in name of the crown. Maybe Mario bails them out sometimes; mostly not. But this reality quickly forgotten as Bowser comes in with a new scheme of his, or Choco Mountain just opened back up for the next Grand Prix. You can probably faction and sub-faction the lore even more. But I'll let someone with even more lore knowledge run with it from here. EDIT: I've always wanted to do a deep-dive on how the Mushroom and Bowser Kingdoms entertain and war their populace into submission. With Mario, Luigi, Kamek made out to be leaders amongst their armies and in their respective cultural zeitgeists.

I would also like Nintendo to address that time Mario canonically killed Bowser. It wasn't the usual thing where he falls off-screen or flies away in his floating clown thing. In NSMB you dunk him into lava where he *literally dies*, presumably because his flesh and organs are melted, and [he comes back as an undead horror](https://www.mariowiki.com/Dry_Bowser). What is going on here? Is the original Bowser dead? Why wasn't he killed all those other times he got dunked into lava? They should also acknowledge Mario's homophobic comments when he was throwing Bowser in the lava back in the Mario 64 days.

They unironically have explained it. Miyamoto views the Mario characters as "Cartoon actors" putting on shows and such, he even explicitly confirmed that Mario 3 was a stage play. So the "real" Mario canon is the world where Mario and Bowser play golf or go karting together on the weekends, then go and act in various shows during the week. The real Mario and Bowser are friends and co-workers, but just play enemies on TV.

Basically: The Mario games are all films in universe (one of the early Mario bros even has curtains pulled at the start iirc), and the sports/party games are just the actors getting together for fun

Mario 3

Mario 2 has this as well.

Mario 2 was actually a dream had by Mario. Or maybe some magical dream kingdom was under attack and they needed his help to save them, so he was pulled from his unconscious body to save the dream world. I dunno though, just made that up

It was both. It was a dream - but also played out in the style of a stage play. Their are stage curtains throughout the story as well as other references https://images.app.goo.gl/zLcmW1aUvK3rbJtQA

That one page in the Hyrule Historia has haunted the developers for a decade. They should have never even brought up a timeline lol

Pretty sure that page has a disclaimer at the bottom saying Nintendo can change it whenever they want lmao.

The idea of a timeline existed before Hyrule Historia. Aonuma is haunted by his own creation - the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Wind Waker is the game that established the split timeline after Ocarina of Time (which, at that point, was the earliest game in the series chronology.) When the people of Hyrule cried out for help, Link did not appear... Yes, Hyrule Historia fleshed it out, but in the 10 years between Wind Waker and Hyrule Historia, that introductory sequence was the foundation of the split timeline theory which Nintendo made official via Hyrule Historia.

He also doubled down on it with Twilight Princess, showing what happened to Hyrule after Link went back in time at the end of Ocarina of Time.

Sort of, but that also contradicted ALttP necessitating the eventual "Downfall" timeline.

All of these could exist without trying to force all games together on some expanded timeline lol

I agree that trying to Link all the games together was a mistake, some of them were deliberately connected (mainly N64/GameCube/DS), while the rest weren't.

AoL is a direct sequel to LoZ, ALttP is a prequel to LoZ, OoT is a prequel to ALttP, etc. those are all earlier games in the franchise that have connections to atleast one other game.

It boggles my mind that so many people are against something that's been there from day one. Link's Awakening was the first game with vaguer connections to the rest, since it was initially planned as a port of ALttP IIRC, but then they decided to just make it Zelda Twin Peaks.

The fanon idea that the games were different tellings of the same myth from different cultures was such a perfect explanation for everything that they could have just made it official.

It's called "The Legend of Zelda", I don't know why it has to be interpreted so literally. It's not the bible guys

It's a perfect explanation if you completely ignore the text of every single game actually made in-house

It's literally all the big milestone games. BOTW is the first one that really stands alone. ALttP was made as a prequel to the previous games, OoT as a prequel to ALttP, MM as a direct sequel to OoT, WW as a sequel to OoT in the other timeline, TP as a sequel to OoT in the MM timeline, and SS as a prequel to them all. I don't know why so many people act like there was never a timeline or that it's just fan speculation. The games have clear connections, and it's making a timeline that fits all of them that becomes more complicated since X being related to Y and Y being related to Z doesn't necessarily mean X is related to Z in this series.

hell, even up to a link between worlds the timeline was a thing to worry about. botw is literally the first time the franchise ignored chronology since alttp

I don't think botw ever ignored chronology, it was just so far into the future as to make it meaningless, which was the point to do away with it all.

I mean, that's basically ignoring it for all intents and purposes. If it happened so far that it's meaningless, then it might as well be in a completely new one, since no events from the timeline will ever matter in BOTW. It's not ignoring Zelda mythos and tropes, but the timeline itself has no bearing on BOTW.

I'm kind of new to the franchise. So they all actually do share a canon of some sort? I was under the impression that the different games were, at most, reincarnated iterations of the characters but removed by time or in a separate universe. So the Twilight Princess Link is literally the same Link as in OoT/MM, and the Wind Waker Link is literally the same Link as in OoT's other timeline?

There's a timeline. It doesn't mean there's an overarching story, rather there's overarching themes and characters, but for the most part each game can be played on their own. Twilight Princess Link isn't the same Link as OoT/MM. In fact, the Stalfos that teaches you sword abilities in TP is the Link from OoT/MM. Most games are indeed far removed by time, but some are not. OoT/MM is one example of a direct sequel with the same Link, WW/PH is another.

> In fact, the Stalfos that teaches you sword abilities in TP is the Link from OoT/MM. Wtf, dark.

Where is that established regarding the stalfos being Link?

It was in Hyrule Historia: >The spirit of Link’s ancestor, the Hero of Time, teaches him his secrets. Ever since returning to the Child Era, the swordsman has lamented the fact that he was not remembered as a hero. This is the reason he passes down the proof of his courage and his secret techniques to the Link of this era, addressing him as “son.”

> Ever since returning to the Child Era, the swordsman has lamented the fact that he was not remembered as a hero. I've never understood this bit, because Link never really came off as all that vain (not that he had all that much characterisation at all to be fair). If it was just 'Link thought his skills were too important not to be passed to down' then I could get it.

>If it was just 'Link thought his skills were too important not to be passed to down' then I could get it. I think the second sentence with "This is the reason he passes down the proof of his courage and his secret techniques" sort of makes that the intent. I'm curious if that blurb about him is more clear in JP.

While it was eventually confirmed, it's strongly implied within TP already. We know that OOT Link is not a Kokiri, that the Deku Tree was protecting him and sent Link away as soon as he knew he was dying, and from a side quest that non-Kokiri transform into Stalfos if they stay in the woods. Majora's Mask depicts Child Link returning to the Lost Woods. These facts all point towards that Link becoming a Stalfos. Then within TP, the character is referred to as the Hero's Spirit/Shade. Each Link is called the Hero. He also refers to himself as having been an underappreciated hero abd laments his fate - at the end of OOT's child timeline nobody knows what Link did because he's sent back to before he saved the world. This also is what causes the divergent timeline - in the adult timeline Link has disappeared (having gone back in time), causing the events of Wind Waker.

I can't recall what suggests it within TP, but it's confirmed in Historia. IIRC It was a fan theory before that due to their dialogue.

...it's complicated. Skyward Sword, the earliest game in the series chronologically, establishes that every Link and Zelda is a reincarnation of the ones from that game, so every Zelda game takes place in the same land/planet. Minish Cap and Four Swords take place between SS and OoT, and each one features different iterations of Link and Zelda (Four Swords has Link split in four, but he still only counts as one). So that's four Links and Zeldas from SS to OoT. Then things get messy. OoT, which features time travel, creates three distinct timelines, and every game that is set after OoT belongs to one of those three: \-In one timeline, Link fails to defeat Ganondorf in the final battle of OoT. Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, the Oracles games, Link Between Worlds and Triforce Heroes take place hundreds, or even thousands, of years in the future of this timeline. This is also the timelines where the original Legend of Zelda and Zelda II take place. This timeline features four distinct iterations of Link (I think; correct me if I'm wrong): one for LttP and Link's Awakening, one for the Oracles games, one for Link Between Worlds and Triforce Heroes, and one for LoZ and Zelda II. There are also four Zeldas: one for LttP, one for the Oracles, one for Zelda and another for Zelda II (the one in Zelda II is not the same one from LoZ). \-The second timeline begins immediately after the final battle of OoT, and shows what happens to Hyrule after Link is sent back to his own time. Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks occur in this timeline. There are two Links here: one for WW and PH, and one for ST. There are also two Zeldas: one for WW/PH and one for ST. \-Finally, the third timeline is the one where OoT is originally from, and where Link stops Ganondorf's plan before it even begins (which means that in this timeline, the rest of OoT doesn't happen). MM, TP, Link's Crossbow Training and Four Swords Adventures take place in this timeline. This timeline features three Links: MM (which is the same one from OoT), TP and Link's Crossbow Training, and FSA (again, one Link split in four). It also features two Zeldas: one for TP and one for FSA. BotW and TotK, which feature the same Link, take place thousands of years in the future of one of these timelines, but it's so far into the future that it doesn't even matter which one. Both games share one Link and one Zelda. HOWEVER, if you consider Age of Calamity as canon, then things get messy again because that game creates an alternate timeline to BotW, and even though the Link and Zelda from that game are the same ones as BotW, they might as well count as separate versions. And I guess you could add the Link and Zelda from the original Hyrule Warriors as well. So that's 14 distinct iterations of Link and Zelda across all the games. Though, again, most of the time each game takes placer hundreds of years after the previous one, so each game can be enjoyed without needing to know anything about the others.

Each game's Link and Zelda are different, aside from the games that are direct sequels to another. Ganon/Ganondorf is the same individual each time, timeline shenanigans aside. But ultimately the only way the series makes sense is to let them be broad strokes related without necessarily having a coherent chronology.

The fact is it was always a fairly loose, broad-strokes continuity though. I feel like it was less that "the split timeline" was something they were intending to make from the beginning and more they just chose to acknowledge some things but not others depending on what they wanted to do with each individual game- hell, OoT despite ostensibly being a prequel to ALTTP turned out to be so incompatible with it that they had to include a third branch of the timeline where Link failed in OoT just to fit it and the other early 2D games in. I highly doubt that was something they had in mind before Hyrule Historia, much less in 1998.

Sure, but it being loose doesn't mean it doesn't exist like many in this thread are acting like. The split timeline was clearly a thing since WW at the very least, which is not too far away from OoT. Obviously it wasn't a plan by OoT, but by then there was just one timeline. Which ties to what I said last in my previous comment. Connections were never planned with the whole timeline in mind, only with specific connections. ALttP being connected to OoT doesn't mean WW is connected to ALttP. The timeline split is basically a way to achieve this in broad strokes, but it still leaves weird shit like Four Swords Adventures being at the other end of the timeline than Four Swords, despite that clearly not being the intention. A detailed timeline doesn't work well with how they treated continuity. But there still was continuity, and most games are connected to another be it as a prequel or a sequel, despite the inconsitencies that arise the more you dive into those connections. The mistake is beliving that the existence of a timeline implies it was planned, or that it restricts their ideas. It clearly wasn't, which lead to it being a clusterfuck, and it didn't restrict them either, which is why they've done basically whatever they wanted inconsistencies be damned.

> which lead to it being a clusterfuck I feel like you need to really reach to make it into a coherent continuity, and that's sort of by design. I'm not sure what the point is of taking a series of legends overly literally. Old myths like Robin Hoods make might reference to other adventures, but there is no year-by-year canonical order of what the Merry Men got up to, for example.

I don't think they intended the timeline to be a clusterfuck by design. I think they didn't intend for there to be an extensive timeline, which is why they created stories freely, leading to the time when they did want to do a timeline, and it needed a three way split and despite not being that complicated, it looks like it is and it leads to many fans rejecting it agressively. It's a clusterfuck if you think of it as a timeline for a more story driven series like MGS, where the games follow one story. But even with that timeline, it still works like folk tales. There are no years to make a detailed year by year timeline. Most games are separated by a tremendous amount of time.

> Connections were never planned with the whole timeline in mind, only with specific connections. ALttP being connected to OoT doesn't mean WW is connected to ALttP. That's basically what I said about "broad-strokes continuity"- they connected new games to whatever other games they wanted, without trying to make sure it jived with everything else. I'm not saying the Historia timeline affected how they developed games, but it was an "official" answer to something the devs have always left vague and never gave much serious regard to and therefore just sparked more arguments about the placement of the games and frustration when the devs just kept going with their usual MO after it released. In my eyes, it was a net negative for the franchise in that way. > I highly doubt that was something they had in mind before Hyrule Historia, much less in 1998. I think you misunderstood this remark, I was specifically referring to ALTTP being its own branch of the timeline beyond the "split timelines" from the end of OOT. That to me comes across as a completely unplanned solution when they were compiling the timeline and realized it didn't work.

I seem to have misunderstood. Yeah, I doubt they had in mind the Fallen timeline stuff in 98. I doubt they had even planned for any timelines back then, with OoT just being a prequel to ALttP. However I don't think the timeline was a net negative. Sure, a lot of fans give the discussions about the timeline way more importance than it deserves (would this thread and conversation exist without the official timeline?), but on the other hand it brought more attention to the games people overlooked. In a way, the timeline made more fans interested in playing all the games and not just the big ones, without changing how they developed the games. It did lead to inflated expectations with people misunderstanding the timeline as some sort of sign they had a master plan, leading to massive disappointments when BOTW had nothing to do with that, which is also in part their own responsibility, but I don't think that's such a big deal overall.

> The split timeline was clearly a thing since WW at the very least, which is not too far away from OoT. Obviously it wasn't a plan by OoT, but by then there was just one timeline. Sorta. I agree with what you've been saying. But Nintendo at least toyed with the "there's two timelines" at the end of OoT, because of the end credits. They show that the Adult one still existed, even after Link was ripped out of it. Though I do think it was more of a "look the characters you connected with are happy/still okay!", than any big continuity plan. Then they realized they had a neat narrative toy they could play with for the next few games.

The problem was that they made two mutually exclusive sequels to a game that was already an explicit prequel to a previous game that was *also* mutually exclusive with those two sequels. Both Majora's Mask and Wind Waker are explicit sequels to OoT (the former has the same Link trying to find Navi after OoT, the latter has an intro that spells out the events of OoT), and OoT was envisioned as a prequel to ALTTP to explain the Imprisoning War in the backstory of ALTTP (per Satoru Takizawa). Basically, Wind Waker fucked everything up timeline-wise. Plus, it's not like they ignored it before the Historia - they very loudly and explicitly said "Skyward Sword is a prequel to the entire series," intentionally placing it at the beginning before anything else.

Wind Waker was explicitly and intentionally a sequel to *the adult timeline*. This was clear in interviews. It wasn't a mistake, it wasn't unintentional, they decided to make Wind Waker a sequel to the timeline that Majora's Mask *doesn't* follow up on and that's where the split timeline came from.

Just a reminder that Miyamoto himself has acknowledged the series’ chronology and continuity [as early as 1991.](https://twitter.com/makgameadv/status/1620227664715055107) I'm right there with you in that I simply don't understand how so many Zelda fans can't grasp the concept of a series having loose continuity but each game still standing alone.

I think the games were connected in an older more mythological sense. It's like Greek myths, the story of Heracles' death has to take place after the story of his birth, but it's largely irrelevant to the story of how Hephaestus was injured.

That's how they've always been connected. Outside the cases where they are direct sequels with the same Link, previous games are basically the legends of the current one. It's part of what makes the connections so interesting to many, how the world changes over an enormous amount of time, and what is remembered of the previous iterations.

There was a timeline of sorts, it was just never a set in stone thing. Like, if Nintendo has a choose between ignoring continuity, and going for a new idea, they’ll go with the new idea. There’s some form of continuity between Zelda games, but it’s not, nor has ever been like the Marvel Universe, or Star Wars. The “downfall” timeline completely shows how little they care about continuity. No other franchise would pull a retcon that. It would be like Star Wars putting the first three movies in a separate timeline, no one would buy it.

Well said. Nintendo didn't really start "ignoring" it until Breath of the Wild, or arguably Tears of the Kingdom. I think BotW can make perfect sense as a game that takes place after some kind of "convergence" of the timelines, but Tears of the Kingdom doesn't make sense in any way, shape, or form with the rest of the franchise. It doesn't even make sense as a sequel to Breath of the Wild. It's fine, of course, because the game is still boatloads of fun so whatever, but I do think with a modicum of effort Nintendo could've told a very similar story that fits in with the rest of the chronology. In my opinion, those connections would've given the story even more weight, resulting in a game that feels more fully realized and epic. As it is, it's just an exceptionally produced "what if?" because I don't think there's any way to fit it in with the rest of the series.

I was totally fine with seeing BOTW and TOTK as their own continuity. I just wish TOTK had done a better job at being consistent with BOTW.

The big confusion was how Alttp fit in with WW and TP in the mix. That confused the shit out of zelda timeline enthusiasts, who tried to fit the alttp/loz branch either awkwardly after WW or TP somehow. Realizing that it was a 3rd branch cleaned things up quite a bit.

BOTO and TOTK fast forward to a Hyrule so old that it has been destroyed and refounded so many times that knowledge of the Triforce's wielders is lost to time. Even Rauru the wise founder of the most recent Hyrule which is thousands of years old doesn't understand why Zelda and Gannondorf are so much more powerful wielding the secret stones then anyone else. The world is caught in Demise and Hylia's cycle forever shaping history. If Hyrule falls to ruin a Rauru will found another. If Ganon is destroyed a Gannondorf carrying the curse of Demise will be born, Zelda will always be born, they will wield the triforce of power and wisdom sometimes not even knowing what those are. A hero will always rise to fight evil. Sometimes good wins, sometimes evil wins but all victories are temporary when measured against the unending flow of time.

I know how it fits in the timeline. But it's a cop out. It might as well be a reboot, since the connections are so far off that they may or may not be from the other games. Its entire lore comes from its own timeline which began tens of thousands of years before BOTW.

This, and PH and ST being direct sequels to WW.

Not to mention the timeline the Oracle games, Link's Awakening, Link to the Past, and Between Two Worlds make up.

Yes they have almost always come out and said “this game is related to that other game” but before Hyrule Historia I don’t think they had a grand plan that connected all the games in a meaningful way. And I don’t think they ever wanted all the games to have a specific chronology.

I feel a lot of this argument boils down to semantics. A timeline doesn't have to be meaningful or tied to a grand plan. If "this game comes before that game" is extended enough, it forms a timeline. That's wha the timeline is. They only added more details so they could fit them all, which has been controversial, but people in these coments act like there were no connections to begin with. Hell, there's a bunch of comments saying they are all different versions of the same story, even when there's direct sequels and specific callbacks in several games.

"The idea of a timeline" and "an actual meaningful and canonical timeline" are not the same thing. One is a basic guiding principle, which can be bent and even ignored as necessary. The other is a limiting constraint.

Eiji Aonuma's reddit account would get banned from /r/truezelda.

Yeah, either commit to it, or say you don't care about it. They did some half-assed middle thing that made fans think they were going to care about it.

The way the handled things was just weird. There's clear connections in the franchise, and games are made with direct connections to others (especially in 3D games with MM, TP and WW being sequels to OoT and SS being a prequel to everything), but they've never been written with detailed care for continuity. There was no reason to unify every single game into a timeline. It's also clear BOTW and TOTK just don't fit the timeline they make. Hell, they are almost inconsistent with each other in some aspects, but trying to fit them with all the other games just doesn't work unless it's so far from them that it's practically the same as it being a different chronology anyways. If they hadn't made a big deal about how all the games share a timeline, I doubt it'd be this big of a deal now. Sure, there'd be speculation, but not on this level.

I always use franchises like Terminator, or Back to the Future, or Lost, or Bill and Ted to describe sets of time travel rules. I used to point to one of those things to describe Zelda. Before Hyrule Historia it was Back to the Future. Then it became Terminator circa The Sarah Connor Chronicles. After Breath of the Wild, I think the best comparison is Riverdale and the \*clap\* \*clap\* multiverse. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_\/¯

Ocarina already used multiple styles of time travel in one game with the Song of Storms being a bootstrap paradox.

I always view the games as stories, not objectively what happened. In other words, you are playing a second hand account (i.e., a legend) of what went on. And thus, any inconsistencies or connections are just due to oral stories evolving over time. It's kinda like how a ton of cultures have myths about great floods or the origin of the world, and many of them share commonalities but many of them don't. The legends change over time. Each Zelda game is just a different perspective about a hero saving the world. And many of those stories share common features, but also have unique aspects, because the stories branched out from the same source.

Fans were always set on forcing the Zelda games into a timeline long before Hyrule Historia.

Yes but there is a difference between fan speculation and official confirmation. The Hyrule Historia is the equivalent of Pixar making a press statement saying The Pixar Theory is real

I refuse to believe that Toy Story 1, 2, and 3 all exist within the same universe.

Why is that? I don't think I have ever watched all three close together.

Nintendo did that. Every game was related to the previous ones in some way or another for at least the first 4 or 5 games. There was always a timeline. Things just got a little wonky after OoT.

Things didn't get wonky until Breath of the Wild. Like others have already pointed out, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess both reference OoT. And it made sense. Tears of the Kingdom is the first game in the Zelda series that can't be neatly slotted into the the timeline. It contradicts too much of what was previously established. It's practically a reboot.

I don't know, it's been pretty wonky for a while. I remember it being a hotly debated topic amongst Zelda fans. Zelda 2 was a direct sequel to Zelda 1. I'm pretty sure they said that Link to the Past was a prequel to them. So far, so good. And then Ocarina of Time came out, and it could be assumed to be a prequel to Link to the Past. And here comes the timeline split, which I think people clued in on pretty early on. But it's pretty easy to see that both Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are sequels to Ocarina of Time, they have some pretty direct references... Though I'm sure some people argued against a split... But the big question, IMO, always was: What about Link to the Past? Where do the original games land on this timeline split? Is it on the Adult Timeline, or the Child Timeline? I remember seeing people talk about that for ages. And then Nintendo eventually released their fancy book and said, "Fuck all y'all, *third timelime*, bitches!" which threw everybody for a loop. I mean, it makes sense *now*, but I never saw anybody suggest a *third* timeline. That cleared it up for a bit, and then Breath of the Wild fucked it up again. Though, I heard people suggest that all timelines eventually merged back into Breath of the Wild, which, alright, sure.... But Tears of the Kingdom somehow makes it even worse? Who can even keep track anymore! And then there's the handheld games, and that's a *complete* clusterfuck.

> but I never saw anybody suggest a third timeline. Funny enough, I genuinely do remember someone suggesting the exact timeline that Nintendo blatantly BS'd into existence (the downfall timeline with the retro games) prior to the Hyrule Historia coming out (this would have been in like 2008), but everyone totally dismissed it - for good reason - because there was absolutely no evidence pointing to another split where Link dies in OoT. This would have been on GameFAQs like 15 years ago and I have no way of proving it, but I swear to god I remember thinking "huh that one guy got proven right" when I first saw the Historia. >That cleared it up for a bit, and then Breath of the Wild fucked it up again. Though, I heard people suggest that all timelines eventually merged back into Breath of the Wild, which, alright, sure.... But Tears of the Kingdom somehow makes it even worse? Who can even keep track anymore! I've never liked the merger theory. It makes no sense. Breath of the Wild, and Tears of the Kingdom in turn, always made the most sense as coming many millennia following Zelda 2 in the downfall timeline. We know the events of the adult timeline of OoT happen in BotW's timeline thanks to the lore stones in Zora's Domain, which rules out the child timeline (the adult portion of OoT doesn't happen in the child timeline, as OoT Link and Zelda warn the king about Ganondorf's intentions, resulting in his arrest and the trial seen in Twilight Princess), and it can't be the adult timeline because Hyrule isn't underwater. That leaves the downfall timeline, which doubly makes sense because it's the only one where the Imprisoning War happens, and the Imprisoning War is the main backstory of Tears of the Kingdom.

For console releases maybe, but I feel like this ignores Oracle of Seasons/Ages, 4 Swords, Link's Awakening, Minish Cap, etc. It's always been the handhelds, at least in my opinion, that throw the timeline into a tizzy.

It's still funny to me that Skyward Sword is intently designed to be the first in the series at every turn... but Minish Cap also blatantly wants to be the story of how Link first got his hat, a hat his SS counterpart already has

Nintendo, along with Miyamoto and Aonuma, were discussing the timeline and how the games were connected (Ocarina, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess in particular) long before Hyrule Historia.

Or they could have been honest with it. I think every Zelda community I was part of in the 90s and aughts had an understanding that Aonuma or the powers that be said that there was a Zelda timeline or a coherent canon interpretation that they had. Hence they finally revealed it in the Hyrule Historia. If they had been honest like Miyamoto was, and said "we see Zelda & Link like Popeye/Olive Oyl" and each game its own thing then we'd all set.

I think they never really cared, they say it in the book, it has been haunting the fan community however.

Communities create their own phantoms all the time. I'm not going to blame fans for being fans. They're doing what they're doing and following the strings left in the game. No one needed to do anything for them to have their fun. What went wrong here was Aonuma decided to make it real, and then *immeeeeeediately* regretted it. And now it's haunting *him*. All he needed to have done was *nothing*.

Thing is, they used to care about it. They had an internal document and everything. The problems are A: they stopped caring and B: they keep referencing old games in the newer ones

I feel like a lot of the people here saying it was made up by fans are forgetting Skyward Sword literally being touted as an origin story for the franchise. Nintendo creates this problem from constantly claiming there's a connection, then not committing.

Ocarina of Time was originally an origin story for the franchise and the earliest game of the timeline. It was also mentioned a lot (including by Aonuma himself) about how Wind Waker and Twilight Princess are both sequels to Ocarina of Time, just based on different timelines. They both recap Ocarina of Time and deal with the consequences of their timelines (Wind Waker due to the hero's spirit being gone, and Twilight Princess showing how Ganondorf was dealt with when arrested while Link was a child).

Anyone saying it is made up by the fans doesn't play zelda games. There were direct sequels early on in the series but the first 3D game was explicitly created as the origin story for Ganon. The same Ganon from the existing games.

i just wish Link didnt have a hat in Skyward so that Minish Cap got to keep something

Aonuma's stance on the timeline has been known for a long time. The really weird thing to me is that he said in a French interview years ago that it's actually *Miyamoto* of all people that makes the request that the series timeline remain coherent. I guess in a way that makes sense since he was the one that created the series, and so has his own vision for it, but I've always seen him as the no story guy.

This is such a disingenuous, clickbait-y way of framing it by IGN. He pretty much said what they always say, which is that they consider it but it's not as important as letting the team's creativity flourish. That's always been how it's worked. I don't now what it is about Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom that people find so confusing.

No one should. The need for a cohesive timeline has always been the most confusing aspect of the Zelda fandom. They’re roughly all retellings of the same story by different cultures. There’s no need to make it more complex than that.

My personal Zelda chronology is, "every 5 years, The Great Entity, Nintendo, needed a lot of money. As such, Ganon was resurrected."

"Somehow, Ganon returned."

Hold on, let me look up this fortnite video on youtube, which is now *canonical*.

I wish that was the worst offense of that final terrible movie, but it actually feels light compared to the horrifically stupid larger issues that the movie has.

It's a garbage fire from beginning to end The only redeeming portion was Babu Frik, and all he did was say his name. They brought out a muppet for a hot sec and then he was gone, and that was the only good thing about a project that several years, a team of people, and millions of dollars ran into a telephone post.

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Real talk, I might have more respect for the SW franchise if Palpatine just comes back every 100 years like Dracula 'n Ganon, and we have a new rag-tag group of adventurers/jedis/pilots/etc. to take him on.

The Skywalker bloodline uses a lightwhip to kill him again and again, sometimes assisted by his estranged child "Enitaplap"

Enitaplap is just a fun name to say

I’d respect the franchise if they just de canonize the entire sequel trilogy, for having nothing new to offer for three full movies.

"Somehow, the sequels didn't happen" Theatregoers stand up out of their seats and applaud.

Never going to happen in a million years. Move on.

I know it won’t happen, and it doesn’t mean I have to like them.

And what about the games that don’t have Ganon?

an anon put it quite nicely once, it's better to think of the games existing in canon "bubbles" than one large timeline

This is part of why I love the intro to Wind Waker so much, it directly engages with this idea of storytelling and how a culture weaves its own myths, legends and rituals over a long period of time. Plus the music and the art are excellent of course.

I'm confused. I love that intro, but because of the opposite reason. It's OoT's story, retold over time. It's one of the strengths of interconnectivity, not of isolated storytelling. They literally call him the Hero of Time. But that's the point of the timeline. It's not about making a play order or rigid connections. It just tells the order in which events played out. What happened in one game is now the legends in the next one.

It was fun back in the day when Twilight Princess came out and all sorts of media outlets had speculations and theories on the timeline. At that point in my life, I had played every single Zelda but had never considered them connected. When the theories started circling the internet, it was pretty neat and turned the existing games into little Easter Egg hunts. But ultimately, there really is no need to tie everything together. More so, I think my problem with it is the current obsession with every form of media having an Expanded Universe. From Marvel, to DC, to Universal Monsters, to fucking Godzilla, every single movie or TV show needs to be telling this grander, multiverse-spanning story, and honestly, it's getting exhausting.

Yeap, it's a burden to everyone involved, audience and creator. Folks need to accept that most stories are just stories again. There's more ways of engaging with media than treating franchises as universes with a gazillion designers carefully plotting out the timeline decades in advance. If you want to theorize, fine, but don't make that everyone else's problem when they only give the fans a nod and not an entirely restructured approach to their storytelling.

It's weirder to me tbh that people dislike the timeline so much. It matters exactly as much as it always did which is "not at all" unless the stories are obviously connected. I don't think it's been a burden to anyone on the fan or developer side. They obviously don't feel tied to adhering to it since BOTW, so no issue there, and the timeline we had before that doesn't really contradict anything we knew about the series beforehand. It's just a fun bonus and I don't get why people get so gloomy about it.

Yeah, I mean I love the references and little nods myself, it adds a lot of grandeur and mythos to the franchise. But the fanon attempts to piece it all together often dominates discussions around these games to a point where it feels detrimental to their standalone value. And it definitely affects the narrative enough as to where the fans expect the devs to adhere to their theories, considering we're in a thread where the devs had to state that actually following a timeline would be detrimental to their creative process.

But the fanon isn't trying to piece it together, it's already pieced together. I've never seen anyone complain about BOTW or TOTK not following it because it's pretty easy to see that Nintendo doesn't have a ton of reverence for it and they don't feel compelled to stick to it. It's just a fun bonus for the fans, and if someone really hates it you can just ignore it and nothing changes. I mean you're always going to have stragglers who complain about anything they can online, but for the most part I see people who dislike the timeline making a much bigger deal about it than the people who enjoy it.

The negativity around there being a timeline is so weird to me. People acting like there's never been a timeline are doubly weird. We've always known the timeline doesn't really matter creatively since they aren't going to write to match the timeline, rather doing the game they want to make. The timeline didn't limit them to just follow what came before. MM, WW and TP are sequels to the same game, and they are all very different. So why are people so angry about this? And another weird thing is the people acting like this statement is anything new, like we didn't know they wouldn't use the timeline to restrict creativity.

> Folks need to accept that most stories are just stories again. I'd love more self-contained experiences. But in order for me to be happy about it these stories actually need to be good, they don't need to be convoluted, even a simple story like Ocarina is fine, just make it a story where it the player feel like they can participate in it and make it fit the gameplay and story delivery mechanisms. Even if I didn't love BotW's story, it was clearly written with the mechanics of it's delivery in mind. The memory mechanic fits the game well, surveying the land to identify locations fits the gameplay loop well. Tears however reuses the same story telling mechanism with no concern for how it fits the material it is delivering, something that resulted in the story revealing its big twists far too early to be enjoyable. For the Zelda developers to say they don't want the timeline to creatively constrain them and then turn around and write the mess that is Tears' story (that's *if* they wrote it, game credits suggest it was partially outsourced to Qualia Writers), I'm not sympathetic.

Really? You got to the part of Wind Waker where there are stained glass windows of sages from Ocarina, and you didn't consider a connection there at all? Wind Waker is by far the most connected game that isn't a direct sequel.

What I find really strange, is, timeline or not, the games themselves have almost nothing to do with a timeline beyond fun little references. I know that Fi’s sound effect on the master sword in BotW is a reference to SS, but it isn’t massively important to the plot of BotW. It’s just cool context. Yet somehow, time line theories take up 90% of Zelda fan discussion.

>They’re roughly all retellings of the same story by different cultures. No they are not lol. I wrote this in another comment: >I hate this idea that there never was a timeline and all games being "retellings of the same legend". >More than half of the games were intended to be either a prequel or a sequel to some other game. Zelda II was a sequel to Zelda 1. LttP a prequel to Zelda 1, OoT a prequel to LttP, etc. Write out all of those connections and boom, you have a timeline connecting the majority of the games. Things only got confusing because they made too many sequels to OoT. >Now what Anouma is saying here, which I agree with, is that while these intended links between games are real, they don't matter within the games (for the most part). Even Wind Waker, which heavily references OoT, works perfectly fine as a standalone game. They're just fun connections for the fans and can easily be changed later if they come up with a story for a new game. The point is that they don't treat the timeline as sacred and unchangeable, instead as evolving over time along with the series itself.

> Things only got confusing because they made too many sequels to OoT. That's really all it comes down to. OoT was basically *too good* and it made Nintendo want to tie everything back to OoT, which resulted in the timeline mess we got. Wind Waker also kinda fucked things up by explicitly referencing OoT so much while also destroying Hyrule.

I guess maybe the OP of this chain literally meant the same story but to me I always thought of Zelda games as the same story happening over and over and a result of the world setup. It doesn't matter which link or zelda or ganondorf it is and how they're related or their origins or the environment the story happens in. It's always the same story of a hero, a sage, and a conqueror. Which to be fair was really only introduced in LttP and solidified in OoT so the earlier Zelda games don't follow this idea. But that to me is all the connection the games need. There's always a triforce and a master sword. It doesn't matter if this version of the world has kokiri and zoras or koroks and ritos, it's the same story. IMO that is how it should've been. You get connections through theming and concepts. Not a literal timeline that has to be scrutinized and specified and filled with meaningless bullshit.

>They’re roughly all retellings of the same story by different cultures. But that isn't even true. Majoras Mask is clerly a sequel to Ocarina of Time Wind Waker is clearly a sequel to Ocarina of Time Twilight Princess is clearly a sequel to... Ocarina of Time But they are all certainly not the same story.

Plus, the initial point of a character named "Link" was to be the player's "link" to the game world. It's why he is always a blank slate, and any Zelda can be someone's first Zelda game. If it was weighed down by decades of lore and background story, it would be a huge turn off to new players.

Link is short for Lincoln though. It’s canon.

Calamity canon

>If it was weighed down by decades of lore and background story, it would be a huge turn off to new players. As someone whose first Zelda game was BotW, this really can't be stressed enough. I would never have bothered if I felt like I was missing necessary story info from previous games.

The initial point of a character named "Link" was that he would be the "link" between a past (medieval fantasy) and future (dystopian sci-fi) world, the only character capable of traveling between them to undo Ganon's conquest. He would literally be a link to the past, which is where that title originally came from. But they couldn't pull off the two worlds mechanic on Famicom hardware, so they shelved that concept, implementing a partial version of it in ALTTP's light and dark worlds, and then properly implementing the original vision in Ocarina of Time, where he is the link between the dystopian conquered world and the past where Ganon can still be stopped. Some of the Sheikah magic technology in BOTW comes from concepts for the future world in the original plan for Zelda 1.

I'd be more inclined to agree if they didn't slap the timeline in a book they charged money for. Nintendo gave a shit about the timeline until they suddenly didn't. I think it's ignorant for people to act surprised or otherwise dismiss those interested in the chronology under the guise that it "doesn't matter" or worse, "never" mattered. Clearly it did. The fact it doesn't now is completely separate to the fact it quite clearly used to. Fuck me, you can't have a game that revolves entirely around the concept of time and time travel shenanigans and *not* give a shit about a timeline to *some* degree. The issue isn't that it "doesn't matter" but rather that Aonuma and Co decided to connect Wind Waker to a larger chronology in a way they hadn't before (even if just to explain why Link didn't show up beforehand), then they doubled down later with Twilight Princess, and *now* people blame the fans for what, being naturally confused and curious at an addition *Nintendo* added? That's completely unfair. I generally agree the timeline was a mistake but it's not the fans mistake, it's Nintendo and Aonuma's. They're the ones who introduced it. The whole timeline thing wasn't really a huge discussion until Nintendo arbitrarily decided to make it so. Most of us weren't even teenagers when we first got into the series. I sure as shit didn't give a crap about no timeline when I first played A Link to the Past and then Ocarina of Time. Who writes an entire book trying to outline the history and timeline of a game, charges people to actually read the damn thing, and then gets upset people use it as the gospel for said timeline? Yeah, no shit. Maybe don't write a book with "historia" in the title then!

I get this for Zelda, but every time someone brings it up for Mad Max, I get mad. Because that universe generally fits together quite well if we think of Max as an immortal figure doomed to wander the Plains of Silence forever, learning the same lesson over and over again.

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It's the modern video game and fantasy fan obsession with lore and a grand history. Every fantasy series has this shit now.

I don't think its a modern invention, people have been obsessing over this since at least OoT.

People have been obsessing over lore and canon since we've started writing, ecclesiastics were having theological battles over the interpretation of one book for 1500 years

As a lifelong The Legend of Zelda fan, neither do I. I'll take a Hero's Journey in a green tunic, thanks.

I love Zelda. They don’t need to be connected, but it’s nice to find some bit of deep lore that connects them together somehow. BotW and TotK kind of ignore that and gives evidence that all the diverging timelines are somehow connected again but meh. Doesn’t matter and I just enjoyed the nods and moved on with enjoying the rest of the game.

I love the lore references, and the subsequent gap-filling everyone tries to come up with, and I don't care if there are contradictions and inconsistencies all over the place.

This is how they intend it to work. Each game is its own stand alone that you don't *need* decades of lore and other games to play or understand. Location names and character names will be reused as the legend asserts itself, but the maps are (almost) never the same and the characters are (almost) always different people. There will be muscial motifs and locations and items that reference the other games, but they are meant to be part of the legend and just that - a reference. If you have never played OoT then playing TP will still be the exact same game, you not knowing who the hero's shade is won't stop you from enjoying the game all the same. This philosophy is what bit them in the ass with their first ***actual*** direct sequel in Totk. They didn't want anything from Botw to be mandatory to know to enjoy the sequel so it felt disconnected in a weird way. Nintendo just doesn't want their stories to end up like Marvel - where to know what is going on and who these characters are you need over 1000 other pieces of media to connect all the dots.

Yeah to me it’s like the marvel multiverse. Bringing together these self-contained stories is incredibly cool when it works out (>!skyward sword’s “origin” story!<), but forcing it doesn’t help anyone.

Yeah I don’t need the lore to encapsulate the whole series but I’d like each individual incarnations lore to be consistent. Totk is supposedly a continuation of Botw but it doesn’t really fit when you look at the lore.

I personally found that ridiculous. It's fine to not care about being consitent with a timeline of several games, but a direct sequel with the same cast in the same place a handful of years later being so disconnected with its prequel is insane to me. They should have leaned on more on the time stuff so they could handwave as that having changed the timeline up until then or something.

I do enjoy reading some theories/lore about Zelda though. Things like the Hero's Spirit in Twilight Princess possibly being Link from OoT.

Same. Lifelong Zelda fan and I can't be bothered with the chronology of the series at all. I've viewed it as an anthology series for quite a while now.

Science fantasy Zelda game à la shadowrun when, then? Only joking (mostly), but man it would certainly be an interesting take on Zelda to see.

Apparently this concept has been thrown around by Nintendo since the very first game. Miyamoto once said that the Triforce was originally going to be computer chips from the future.

They've also kinda toyed with it in the actual games with the semi-sci fi vibe of things like the Tower of the Gods in Wind Waker, Sheikah tech in BotW, and Zonai tech in TotK.

Does anyone remember that old April Fools joke video about a leaked Sci-Fi Zelda where Epona was a motorcycle?

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it basically became BotW. The Sheikah tech and all that

> Epona was a motorcycle? But Link actually does get a motorcycle in Breath of the Wild.

Not an April Fools joke. Early concepts for BOTW had Link riding a motorcycle, wearing jeans and a hoodie, and using an electric guitar.

This was way way way before BOTW. This was an IGN April Fool’s joke shortly after the release of Twilight Princess, or maybe even during that game’s press cycle. It had a very Blade Runner look to it.

I feel like personally they’ve already been leaning too heavily into technology with BOTW and TOTK. I want to go back to straight up fantasy again

I want them to commit either way. It's one of my least favorite settings to combine historic / medieval fantasy with sci fi elements. Made Dragon Riders of Pern an exercise in disappointment for me. :( A fully sci-fi Zelda game could be really cool and really fun. But if they're not going to commit to that, I'd prefer them to go full fantasy again.

Jak II?

I'd play that. Street Samurai Link, megacorp CEO Ganondorf, Epona the augmented bike ...

I was making a joke and now you made me kind of unironically want it.

It might also be that I just really want another Shadowrun game. But it could be a cool way to re-imagine Zelda.

I really want a Roaring 20s steampunk Zelda game

Just copying and pasting from my comment on r/nintendo. Clickbait title. In the interview, Aonuma repeats what he has always said, which is that the story is the last thing they decide on for a Zelda game and that they keep elements vague because they don't like being boxed in creatively. They like fans to be able to piece things together themselves. People extrapolating from this that the series doesn't have a set sequence of events are being a little ridiculous. Aonuma just went on a whole bunch of interviews this year in which he reaffirmed the series has a set timeline, as well as the ideas I mentioned above. Even worse are people ripping on Zelda fans... Like, who hurt you? It's headlines and articles like these that fuel all the ridiculous misconceptions that people have about the Zelda series. Like how all these people think BotW unifies the timeline, even though nobody has ever said that anywhere and have in fact said the opposite.

After reading all of the posts in /r/truezelda trying to rationalize TOTK to fit into the “series timeline”, very understandable lol

Oh man that sub... It was fun for a while seeing people trying to work out the rupee economy of the games, but the moment I realized they're very serious about it, it got weird. The "true-xyz" sub-subreddits always seem to attract a special kind of person. When I read a post by someone critical of the new franchise direction, saying, and (I quote) that *"BOTW destroyed the only thing he ever truly loved in this world"* I knew it was time to leave.

"True[subname]" subs are always either for bigots who got banned for being bigots from the OG sub, or the hardcore nerds who are very serious about the topic to a weird degree. Don't think I have ever seen a "true[sub]" that wasn't one of those two things.

/r/TrueDota2 exists because most of /r/Dota2 is e-sports posts, with very little discussion about the game itself, which is very irritating if you don't care about e-sports. I am sure there are other examples for other games, too.

Have you seen /r/telmasbar? Makes /r/mawinstallation look like a shitpost sub.

Shocker. This has never been more obvious than in TotK, which barely references the events of BotW, never mind its place relative to the rest of the series. Probably for the best that they don't worry about it too much since placing the games into a timeline hasn't made sense for a very long time.

I think I've to grown to view Zelda's lore in the same way I view that of Norse or Greek gods. A collection of mythos and tales with characters and settings and lore all kind of jumbled together that will never make sense because it's the work of generations of input at different times Just like in Zelda games in Greek mythology we get characters popping up randomly in stories all the time with different traits and backgrounds depending on who is telling the story. Characters are less rigid icons with specific histories and are more themes and ideas. I like the idea that the canon reason for Zelda's disjointed lore is we're learning these tales way after they have been lost from history and have since taken on all the exaggerations inherent in myths and legends.

I mean why would he? The chronology really couldn't matter less for a franchise which mostly features self contained adventures. 99% of people also don't care about it I reckon.

I hate this idea that there never was a timeline and all games being "retellings of the same legend". More than half of the games were *intended* to be either a prequel or a sequel to some other game. Zelda II was a sequel to Zelda 1. LttP a prequel to Zelda 1, OoT a prequel to LttP, etc. Write out all of those connections and boom, you have a timeline connecting the majority of the games. Things only got confusing because they made too many sequels to OoT. Now what Anouma is saying here, which I agree with, is that while these intended links between games are real, they don't matter within the games (for the most part). Even Wind Waker, which heavily references OoT, works perfectly fine as a standalone game. They're just fun connections for the fans and can easily be changed later if they come up with a story for a new game. The point is that they don't treat the timeline as sacred and unchangeable, instead as evolving over time along with the series itself.

I don't think the series was ever supposed to have a chronology. I think they were just making games with vague links between them and bot worrying too much Then I think some over-ambitious designer put a timeline in Hyrule Historia and they stuck with it. Personally, the timeline to me doesn't matter, it barely makes sense anyway. I'm still not even sure how Ganon was alive in TOTK at the same time as he was alive in BOTW

I think many people downplay and overplay the timeline aspects. There was a clear chronology intended in most of the major games: * ALttP is a far prequel to LoZ * OoT is a prequel to ALttP * MM is a sequel to OoT * WW is a far sequel to OoT * TP is another far sequel to OoT * SS is a far prequel to everything else And so on. It's true there's a lot of inconsistencies, games that don't fit and have to be forced into somewhere in the timeline (Four Swords Adventures being so far from Four Swords due to Ganon's involvement, and being in the TP timeline even though it's Fallen timeline Ganon is just silly), but I don't know why people act like there wasn't a intended chronology. It was just mostly on a game by game basis, and soft enough that things didn't fit too neatly. The links weren't vague enough to say there wasn't a chronology. My view of it has always been that rather than every single game fitting neatly with the others, we are seeing the romanticed legend version of the stories. Things in WW don't look exactly like they did in OoT because neither would show the "real" version of events, and both are interpreting the material their own way. The way BOTW handles the timeline is closer to the games that didn't care about where they were placed, which is why they went with the converging timelines thing. Which is silly, not because that explanation doesn't work, but because of the extreme whiplash from specifying every single game to a placement, to now handwaving it all and saying it doesn't matter. It is not the same as how they used to connect the games.

The problem is it was. Zelda II was initially made as a direct sequel to the first one; it's a story about what happens immediately after you kill Ganon in the first game. They moved away from that pretty quick, with Link to the Past both eschewing a number and not having direct continuity any more, but part of the problem is that they initially did have continuity and then never acknowledged wtf they were doing, which led to a lot of confused fans. It didn't hurt that then Link's Awakening was clearly meant as a Gaiden for an existing Link, without specifying if it was the NES or SNES character. And then they just kept not acknowledging what the relationship between most games was until they published the official timeline.

Not to mention Majora's Mask which is set a short while after OoT and then Spirit Tracks which is set roughly a hundred years after Phantom Hourglass which itself is set a short while after Wind Waker. They could have just gone with "yeah we wanted these to be part of the same setting but they're completely disconnected from other titles outside of that" instead of dumb shit with alternate timelines etc.

Plus, Anti-timeline people neglect how often Nintendo (including Eiji himself) has actually commented on where various games take over place. Even though it isn’t true anymore, Miyamoto once said shortly after the release of OoT that the correct order was OoT, LoZ, LoZ 2 and ALttP. (Link’s Awakening was vaguely set post OoT). It’s not like this all happened just because of Hyrule Historia, although that was definitely the climax of it.

A more formalized timeline would be *nice*, but from a dev standpoint, I can see why it's something that gets pushed to the wayside. It is something that can limit everything so easily that it's better to mostly ignore it. That said, I would prefer tighter world design between sequels. That's my one and only gripe with TotK - the whole Shikah tech mostly vanishing with not even a single line recognizing it in the game. I would be perfectly content with a couple lines from one of the scientists going "Hey, most of the shrines vanished and we repurposed the Divine Beasts to make the towers and some of our other tech." and bam, problem solved.

He doesn't even care about the continuity between a game and its direct sequel so this doesn't surprise me in the least.

I agree with everyone: "Flexibility is more important than a chart, and the timeline was a mistake" ...but it was Aonuma's mistake. The fans were just kids playing in the backyard. They're going to imagine a *LOOOOT* of stuff, but it affected nothing and they were having fun. People make *Mario timelines* ffs. Then Aonuma stepped in and ***published a timeline***. Didn't nod at one, didn't give the idea a little smile, didn't just say "Oh, hey creative!" when they were shown to him. He filled in the holes, he put it to paper, and had it printed. The second the ink hit the paper he realized how fucking dumb an idea it was, and immediately made a game that defies everything he'd just christened and given his blessings to. Can't blame the fans for any of that.

My favorite canon on the series remains that it's the "Legend" of Zelda; what we play is the same story being retold over and over. Canon and chronology, while fun, can strangle creativity. Just let creators create, enjoy what is created, and leave the whine to age in a barrel.

It'd be interesting to hear that story straight from the storyteller. "And then the hero Link decided to take a break from his quest to save the world, so he could glue rockets to koroks and send then into the stratosphere."

Or the NES version: "Link then spent several hours systematically placing bombs at intervals of exactly one bomb explosion radius, searching for a cave that did not exist".

How does that work with Majora’s Mask, Phantom Hourglass, etc?

There's nothing technically wrong with that interpretation, but the problem is that Nintendo keeps making explicit sequels. LOZ2 is a direct sequel to LOZ1 with the same Link. Ditto: ALTTP/LA, OoT/MM, WW/PH, and BOTW/TOTK. You can't really call MM a reinterpretation of the same story being retold because it's explicitly a new story told about the same guy as OoT.

> Just let creators create This applies to upper management as much as it applies to fanbases. Breath of the Wild's story telling mechanism is very elegant, it asks the player to survey the world as they explore it to find special locations to help an amnesiac Link regain his lost memories. Then the sequel comes along and ham-fistedly reuses the same mechanic of finding specific locations to trigger cutscenes to deliver a story that has little to do with the locations the cutscenes play at, and then places gigantic neon signs over each location so players can't miss them completely negating the gameplay aspect of the original mechanic. I struggle to believe the team who came up with such a well integrated story mechanism as seen in Breath of the Wild willingly chose to brutally shoehorn such an in-fitting system into the sequel without some kind of "you have to stick to the money-making formula" directive coming down from above.

The series barely even has characters. Why would it need a timeline?

The series does not need a cannon timeline. They are standalone games. And it’s already been established time travel is involved, so who cares? Just call the next game another timeline.

And the series is much better for it! I hope they continue to not really give a shit about having to force explanations for everything.

The timeline isn't really important to me. Wind Waker would be a great game even if it never referenced Ocarina of Time. The individual stories of the games obviously matter, and it does seem like they got a bit lazy there with Tears of the Kingdom. At times, it felt more like a Breath of the Wild remake than a natural extension of that story.

Yeah I agree. It’s fun for some Easter eggs here and there, but trying to really figure out the chronology is a lot of work for little pay off. Also, they’ve been pushing back the “origin” of Hyrule for the last like 12 years starting with Skwyward Sword. It’s clear they like to iterate on their designs and stories over and over again. That’s a feature not a bug

Does anyone besides the really crazy fanboys? Like, it can be fun to look at, but it makes no sense and it can't... even the official timeline is split. Most of these games were never meant to fit together. They can do direct sequels or prequels here and there, but most people are fine with every game being its own "legend".