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[MoonFrog]

Just going to put out there another reason I don't like three timelines: game over time could branch from any game. It has nothing to do with the time traveling in OoT. The only things which do are the child and adult timelines. It would, say, make just as much sense to have a timeline which branched into adult and child at OoT and then, say, branched into paths leading to WW and Zelda 1 after aLttP. The three timelines muddies the waters as to just why OoT is a branch point.

Again this is an aesthetic quibble, buts it's things like this that drive me to reject the official timeline until I absolutely cannot.

 

[RagnarokX]

Just going to put out there another reason I don't like three timelines: game over time could branch from any game. It has nothing to do with the time traveling in OoT. The only things which do are the child and adult timelines. It would, say, make just as much sense to have a timeline which branched into adult and child at OoT and then, say, branched into paths leading to WW and Zelda 1 after aLttP. The three timelines muddies the waters as to just why OoT is a branch point.

Again this is an aesthetic quibble, buts it's things like this that drive me to reject the official timeline until I absolutely cannot.

OoT is the one that muddied the water. Neither of its two endings lead to ALttP. OoT created the idea that the triforce goes inside people that represent the values of each triforce, so even if they held off when the 3rd branch started it would inevitably have to involve a Link and Zelda getting their asses kicked so that Ganon can get the triforce and make his wish so that ALttP can happen. Nintendo decided to have it be OoT so that it could still have part of its original role as a prequel to ALttP and keep things relatively simple.

If they made the child branch lead to ALttP like you are proposing the problem still exists. The Hero of Time has the triforce of courage when Zelda sends him to the new timeline and Ganon would have to beat him up to get it. No matter how it happens the hero has to fail in order to set up ALttP.

 

[SkyOdin]

OoT is the one that muddied the water. Neither of its two endings lead to ALttP. OoT created the idea that the triforce goes inside people that represent the values of each triforce, so even if they held off when the 3rd branch started it would inevitably have to involve a Link and Zelda getting their asses kicked so that Ganon can get the triforce and make his wish so that ALttP can happen. Nintendo decided to have it be OoT so that it could still have part of its original role as a prequel to ALttP and keep things relatively simple.

If they made the child branch lead to ALttP like you are proposing the problem still exists. The Hero of Time has the triforce of courage when Zelda sends him to the new timeline and Ganon would have to beat him up to get it. No matter how it happens the hero has to fail in order to set up ALttP.

OoT was made to serve as a prequel to ALttP though. There are dozens of various details both big and small that are specifically in the game to reference ALttP. The establishment of Kakariko Village as the biggest town in Hyrule, the sealing of Phantom Ganon "between dimensions" so that it can become Agnahim, and even almost every detail of the sealing of Ganon match up. You just need to substitute "Link" for "the Knights of Hyrule" and OoT works almost perfectly as the Imprisoning War.

The only inconsistancy between OoT and ALttP is the Triforce, and guess what? That exact same inconsistancy exists when you go from ALttP to ALBW! It makes absolutely no sense for Ganon to have the Triforce of Power in ALBW, considering that the whole assembled Triforce was safely kept in Hyrule after ALttP and through the Oracle games. There is an equally big continuity gap there that isn't explained, but the games and timeline happily skim over it.

And the strange thing is that Twilight Princess and Wind Waker are much less natural fits to following Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess in particular had a huge plothole in that nothing surrounding Ganondorf makes any sense whatsoever. It doesn't make sense for the Sages to executing him, and it doesn't make sense for him to have the Triforce of Power. All the explainations for how those things came about are way too convoluted.

The thing is, it feels like people make a huge deal about making sure that the Imprisoning War matches up perfectly down to the last detail, but then are more willing to accept or overlook inconsistancies in other canon game connections. I find it strange.

 

[MoonFrog]

OoT is the one that muddied the water. Neither of its two endings lead to ALttP. OoT created the idea that the triforce goes inside people that represent the values of each triforce, so even if they held off when the 3rd branch started it would inevitably have to involve a Link and Zelda getting their asses kicked so that Ganon can get the triforce and make his wish so that ALttP can happen. Nintendo decided to have it be OoT so that it could still have part of its original role as a prequel to ALttP and keep things relatively simple.

If they made the child branch lead to ALttP like you are proposing the problem still exists. The Hero of Time has the triforce of courage when Zelda sends him to the new timeline and Ganon would have to beat him up to get it. No matter how it happens the hero has to fail in order to set up ALttP.

I wasn't proposing child branch to aLttP. I was proposing adult branch. Before the timeline came out, I thought it was MM and TP on child side (like official timeline states) and MC-OoT-aLttP-LA-(WW)-Zelda I-Zelda II or MC-OoT-aLttP-LA-Zelda I-Zelda II-(WW).

The thing I'm not holding sacred is the exact nature of the Triforce, which is exactly what Nintendo didn't hold sacred going from Zelda 1 to aLttP to OoT. As I've said, I don't care about tying down just what it means to have part of the triforce or all of the triforce. That just seems like something which would alter slightly and be embellished when telling a legend. So it doesn't seem like a high cost to me.

The three timeline setup is high cost to me because (all stated above in various posts): does not flow from the explicit branching of time in OoT; adds a branch which is not even derived from said time branching; makes OoT->aLttP be a mixed retelling of OoT->TP and OoT->WW where there is a failed Link and a conflict ending with the Sages imprisoning Ganon themselves; changes the original chronology of the first five games; makes that chronology (the original canon) depend on an ending to OoT that is not depicted. The new timeline is a very ugly canon imo, which forces things together in weird ways in order to make everything make optimal 'historical' sense when that is not a value I recognize regarding the story of Zelda.

Furthermore, the way the games are made, i.e. with a story tacked onto gameplay and then placed on the timeline, I don't think there is that much need to respect the official account (one that says itself it may not be accurate). Until Zelda becomes effectively 'The History of Zelda,' this will continue to be the case. I'm perfectly okay with inconsistencies in Zelda. It just depends on how ugly or beautiful they are . There are inconsistencies in religious myths, in Homer, in Tolkien, etc. I don't think they need to be hammered out or explained away and rationalized. That is just not the sort of story-telling they are.

---

On another note, someone above mentioned SS starting alternate timelines. I imagine the stuff we know flows from Zelda and Link starting Hyrule on the ground in the present at the end of that game. With an ending in the past, would those robots in Lanayru be still alive? Could that be another way to start an 'advanced Hyrule' early on?

 

[Teknoman]

Yeah. Most of the major 3D games are linked. At least, they all branch from OOT in some way.

But like, Minish Cap doesn't need to be part of a big timeline, it's just a fun Zelda story.

All the ones that don't really feature Ganon as a boss make sense though. Minor stuff going on while he regains power.

 

[Beren the Empty-Handed]

FSA would have never worked as the Imprisoning War, either. It has Ganon and 4 Links and no war. And Vaati is there! I know they originally planned for it to be a prequel to ALttP that explained how Ganon got the Trident of Power, but it would have just made things even more complicated.

Sure it would have worked, because it was intended to. Vaati is irrelevant, and actually works given his position in the Oracle games. Link wields the Four Sword and not the Master Sword (because nobody could be found to wield it), chaos engulfs all of Hyrule, you have an "army" of Links acting as knights, and Ganon transforms with his trident and ends up sealed. The map even lines up nearly perfectly with ALttP's. Him being sealed in the Four Sword is inconsistent, but no more so than SkyOdin's examples as he's listed above. The Hyrule Historia even goes "oops, lol, some of this doesn't really work, but just ignore it, k?" So you have to look at it a bit looser, and then FSA fitting before ALttP just makes more sense to me than where it is.

If they didn't want it to lead into ALttP, and wanted it to be more vague, they should have done a better job removing all of the tie-ins that they left in the game. It still makes more sense than being after TP, imo, and then we don't have to deal with the only occurrence of a second Ganondorf.

 

[RagnarokX]

OoT was made to serve as a prequel to ALttP though. There are dozens of various details both big and small that are specifically in the game to reference ALttP. The establishment of Kakariko Village as the biggest town in Hyrule, the sealing of Phantom Ganon "between dimensions" so that it can become Agnahim, and even almost every detail of the sealing of Ganon match up. You just need to substitute "Link" for "the Knights of Hyrule" and OoT works almost perfectly as the Imprisoning War.

The only inconsistancy between OoT and ALttP is the Triforce, and guess what? That exact same inconsistancy exists when you go from ALttP to ALBW! It makes absolutely no sense for Ganon to have the Triforce of Power in ALBW, considering that the whole assembled Triforce was safely kept in Hyrule after ALttP and through the Oracle games. There is an equally big continuity gap there that isn't explained, but the games and timeline happily skim over it.

And the strange thing is that Twilight Princess and Wind Waker are much less natural fits to following Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess in particular had a huge plothole in that nothing surrounding Ganondorf makes any sense whatsoever. It doesn't make sense for the Sages to executing him, and it doesn't make sense for him to have the Triforce of Power. All the explainations for how those things came about are way too convoluted.

The thing is, it feels like people make a huge deal about making sure that the Imprisoning War matches up perfectly down to the last detail, but then are more willing to accept or overlook inconsistancies in other canon game connections. I find it strange.

That was the original idea with OoT, yeah, but it never really worked that well.

The Imprisoning War according to ALttP: A thief from the desert named Ganondorf entered the sacred realm and got the Triforce. Word spread of the Triforce and people began disappearing in their search for it. Then dark forces started pouring from the portals to the Sacred Realm and a great war broke out. The sages ended the war by sealing the portals.

OoT as the Imprisoning War. A thief from the desert named Ganondorf got 1/3rd of the triforce and blew up Hyrule Castle. 1 guy stabbed him in the face and the sages sealed him and his 1/3rd of the Triforce in the Sacred Realm.

The Imrisoning War according to the official timeline: A thief from the desert named Ganondorf went to the sacred realm to get the triforce and had to beat up 2 people to get the whole thing. The sages sealed him in the Sacred Realm. Word spread of the Triforce and people began disappearing in their search for it. Then dark forces started pouring from the portals to the Sacred Realm and a great war broke out. The sages ended the war by sealing the portals.

OoT is missing the explanation for how Ganon got the whole triforce, the part where people went to the Sacred Realm looking for treasure (some of whom you meet in ALttP), and the war in which Ganon did not play a direct role. Pretty much the only thing in common is the involvement of sages.

ALBW has the opposite issue. At the end of ALttP the Triforce is whole and Link makes a wish. According to ALBW the royal family kept the Triforce in the castle but somehow ended up losing it. The Triforce of Wisdom ended up inside Zelda and the Triforce of Power ended up inside of Ganon, who was sealed in darkness. The Triforce of Courage seems to have been inside of Link; he goes on a quest to rescue the sages and they help him obtain the triforce in some kind of spiritual realm. I think it's safe to say that someone probably touched the Triforce some time between ALttP and ALBW, causing it to split and the pieces went to their respective bearers.

TP doesn't explain Ganon well, but you can figure it out without what Aonuma said. I did. At the end of OoT, when Zelda sends Link back to his childhood, he has the Triforce of Courage in his hand. This means that the Triforce was split into its 3 pieces in this new timeline when Link arrived in it. So OoT explains why Ganon had the Triforce of Power. None of the characters in TP would know this, so they can't explain it. As far as the sages and Ganon know in TP the gods granted it to Ganon. Also part of the point of sending Link back to his childhood in OoT was to create a timeline where the bad future never happens. Link goes to Zelda and warns her about Ganon and it can easily be implied that this time they successfully convince the King of Hyrule to stop Ganon. Ganon gets executed by the sages and sealed in the Twilight Realm. All of that is pretty well shown by the games themselves and not really convoluted. Not much inference required at all.

 

[MoonFrog]

The Imprisoning War according to ALttP: A thief from the desert named Ganondorf entered the sacred realm and got the Triforce. Word spread of the Triforce and people began disappearing in their search for it. Then dark forces started pouring from the portals to the Sacred Realm and a great war broke out. The sages ended the war by sealing the portals.

OoT as the Imprisoning War. A thief from the desert named Ganondorf got 1/3rd of the triforce and blew up Hyrule Castle. 1 guy stabbed him in the face and the sages sealed him and his 1/3rd of the Triforce in the Sacred Realm.

The Imrisoning War according to the official timeline: A thief from the desert named Ganondorf went to the sacred realm to get the triforce and had to beat up 2 people to get the whole thing. The sages sealed him in the Sacred Realm. Word spread of the Triforce and people began disappearing in their search for it. Then dark forces started pouring from the portals to the Sacred Realm and a great war broke out. The sages ended the war by sealing the portals.

OoT is missing the explanation for how Ganon got the whole triforce, the part where people went to the Sacred Realm looking for treasure (some of whom you meet in ALttP), and the war in which Ganon did not play a direct role. Pretty much the only thing in common is the involvement of sages.

I think there are a couple things to keep in mind:

-the time gap in OoT. What exactly Ganondorf does and how quickly he does it all after entering the sacred realm is vague.

-Consider OoT as the part where Ganondorf gets the triforce and finds himself stuck in the sacred realm after a brief stint as master of Hyrule. The imprisoning war described in aLttP, then, could happen after OoT. It is basically a prelude to the conflict of aLttP where Ganon is seeking to get himself out of the now Dark World. So to spell this thought out:

OoT: Ganondorf is imprisoned by Hero of Time->Seal starts to fray and various adventurers enter dark world. This leads to imprisoning war and seal is refortified->aLttP: Ganon tries to get out again through Agahnim. Link stops him.

I think that is workable.

Again I'm going to ignore the vicissitudes of what was a single triangle becoming three becoming something that split into three, etc. Its right up there with Hylia and the three goddesses and the three dragons among things that don't comfortably fit with each other.

 

[RagnarokX]

I wasn't proposing child branch to aLttP. I was proposing adult branch. Before the timeline came out, I thought it was MM and TP on child side (like official timeline states) and MC-OoT-aLttP-LA-(WW)-Zelda I-Zelda II or MC-OoT-aLttP-LA-Zelda I-Zelda II-(WW).

The thing I'm not holding sacred is the exact nature of the Triforce, which is exactly what Nintendo didn't hold sacred going from Zelda 1 to aLttP to OoT. As I've said, I don't care about tying down just what it means to have part of the triforce or all of the triforce. That just seems like something which would alter slightly and be embellished when telling a legend. So it doesn't seem like a high cost to me.

The three timeline setup is high cost to me because (all stated above in various posts): does not flow from the explicit branching of time in OoT; adds a branch which is not even derived from said time branching; makes OoT->aLttP be a mixed retelling of OoT->TP and OoT->WW where there is a failed Link and a conflict ending with the Sages imprisoning Ganon themselves; changes the original chronology of the first five games; makes that chronology (the original canon) depend on an ending to OoT that is not depicted. The new timeline is a very ugly canon imo, which forces things together in weird ways in order to make everything make optimal 'historical' sense when that is not a value I recognize regarding the story of Zelda.

Furthermore, the way the games are made, i.e. with a story tacked onto gameplay and then placed on the timeline, I don't think there is that much need to respect the official account (one that says itself it may not be accurate). Until Zelda becomes effectively 'The History of Zelda,' this will continue to be the case. I'm perfectly okay with inconsistencies in Zelda. It just depends on how ugly or beautiful they are . There are inconsistencies in religious myths, in Homer, in Tolkien, etc. I don't think they need to be hammered out or explained away and rationalized. That is just not the sort of story-telling they are.

---

On another note, someone above mentioned SS starting alternate timelines. I imagine the stuff we know flows from Zelda and Link starting Hyrule on the ground in the present at the end of that game. With an ending in the past, would those robots in Lanayru be still alive? Could that be another way to start an 'advanced Hyrule' early on?

MC-OoT-aLttP-LA-(WW)-Zelda I-Zelda II or MC-OoT-aLttP-LA-Zelda I-Zelda II-(WW) doesn't work. Wind Waker is the most explicit of all of the Zelda games about where it sits in the timeline. It directly follows OoT with nothing in between and leaves absolutely no wiggle room. This is a game where you literally can't go "Lol it's a legend!" because several characters in WW were alive in both times.

Actually the Triforce has been fairly consistent in its depiction; at least newer depictions have not conflicted with past depictions.

In Zelda 1 Ganon and Zelda had their respective pieces of the Triforce. Zelda took hers and broke it into pieces and hid the pieces in dungeons across Hyrule.

In Zelda 2 Link is informed of the Triforce of Courage, which was sealed away long ago.

In ALttP both Link and Ganon make a wish on the complete Triforce. The timeline explains how Ganon was able to do this in a way that is consistent with everything else and the game explains how Link was able to do this.

In OoT it's explained that when an impure person touches the Triforce it splits. This doesn't really conflict with the past games because it was already split in the first 2 games and ALttP provides no reason for it to split.

In Wind Waker it is shown that Ganon still has his piece of the Triforce. Zelda's family extracted the Triforce of Wisdom like Zelda did in Zelda 1 and split it into 2 pieces for safekeeping. The Triforce of Courage was forced from the Hero of Time's body due to OoT's time travel shenanigans and was split up and hidden throughout the land.

In TP everyone who should have a Triforce inside them due to OoT's time travel shenanigans has one inside them.

In SS Link attains courage, wisdom, and power and makes a wish on the complete triforce.

In ALBW the complete Triforce was kept by the royal family following ALttP, but something happened that caused it to split. Zelda had her piece, Ganon got his piece even though he was sealed, and Link got his piece.

There's nothing there that really retcons anything.

Moving on, you say that issues with ALttP following OoT could be explained away as being due to faulty retelling of the legend, but then your main complaint about the fallen hero timeline is that it isn't created by time travel. You're picking a choosing where you care about details.

"The three timeline setup is high cost to me because (all stated above in various posts): does not flow from the explicit branching of time in OoT; adds a branch which is not even derived from said time branching; makes OoT->aLttP be a mixed retelling of OoT->TP and OoT->WW where there is a failed Link and a conflict ending with the Sages imprisoning Ganon themselves; changes the original chronology of the first five games; makes that chronology (the original canon) depend on an ending to OoT that is not depicted."

The sages imprisoning Ganon themselves is the original chronology. OoT changed that and the official timeline changes it back. The ending that leads to ALttP is technically depicted. All you have to do is get a game over. There isn't a screen that pops up with a silhouette of Ganon saying what happens due to your failure but do you really need it spelled out for you like that?

 

[Mak]

You know, that's a good question. When did it become 3?

Before release and for a while after release Nintendo said that OoT told the same story as ALttP's prologue. We can ascertain that Nintendo changed their minds on this some time before 2004 since the initial plan for Four Sword Adventure was pretty much for it to replace OoT as ALttP's Imprisoning War. So likely even during Wind Waker development.

Ataru Cagiva's Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods manga published between 1995-1996, 2 years before the release of Ocarina of Time in 1998, has the Link from ALttP meeting his ancestor who wielded the Master Sword during the Imprisoning War and lost against Ganon.

http://historyofhyrule.com/publications/manga_lttp3/015.html

The adult ending of Ocarina of Time seemed to lend itself to leading into ALttP with Ganondorf being sealed away by the 7 Sages, whose names were then passed down to become the names of towns in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and Link conveniently disappears from that timeline and wouldn't be around to be recorded as a hero. Ganondorf ends with threatening to exterminate the descendants of the Sages, Link, and Zelda, the the OoT team gave him a pig form at the end as special recognition to A Link to the Past and admitted they were dealing with the Imprisoing War of the 7 Sages.

The only exception is that Ganondorf was sealed away with the Triforce of Power, but that could have left things open or have been cleaned up. The child timeline could have been a new start leading into the Zelda Space World 2000 demo, while the adult originally connected to the older games they purposely referenced.

2011
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/zelda-ocarina-of-time/4/2

Iwata: When you make a Zelda game, how do you think about the story?

Miyamoto: The stories in The Legend of Zelda may not match up as the series progresses. We actually expend a lot of time trying to make them match up, though. It would make things a lot easier if the players said, “Oh, that doesn’t really matter.” (laughs)

Iwata: But when a series builds up for as long as it has, that isn’t easy.

Miyamoto: Right. Especially when it comes to a story of the Zelda games, we can’t do anything disappointing, so with the Ocarina of Time, we worked on the story with reference to the past games in the series.

1998
http://www.angelfire.com/games5/makzelda/interviews/kiootcomments.html
http://www.glitterberri.com/ocarina-of-time/1101-interviews/parts-they-want-you-to-see/

(Character Designer Satoru Takizawa) This time, the story really wasn’t an original. We were dealing with the “The Imprisoning War of the Seven Sages” from the SNES edition Zelda. To give that game a little “secret” recognition, I thought that keeping the “pigness” in Ganon would be the correct course. So we made him a beast “with the feeling of a pig.”

Could you please find how this game connects with the previous ones?

(Script Director Toru Osawa) Though in this game Zelda is now included in the Seven Sages, the other six have the names of the town names from the Disk System edition “The Adventure of Link.”

In the SNES edition game, the story “Long ago, there was a war called the Imprisoning War” was passed along. A name in the Imprisoning War era is the name of a Town later. They were like “pseudo-secrets.” We wanted to throw these out through the entirety of the game. That thing from then is now this.

Tarin and Marin, a father and girl who appeared in “Link’s Awakening” (GB) were used as the base for a different parent and child who comes out in this game. These are the things that when they are seen by a person who has played Zelda before they will understand. If people begin to think “Do you think that this could be that thing from then?” then I will be happy.

I think what happened is you had Yoshiaki Koizumi writing the manual and backstories for A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, and then working as a director as one of the 3 original staff to begin the Zelda 64 project along with Script Director Toru Osawa (the creator of Kid Icarus). Koizumi created the backstory of the 3 goddesses in ALttP and continued working on the series with a lot of continuity.
http://www.wired.com/2007/12/interview-super/

Koizumi was pulled off a project to co-direct Majora's Mask with Eiji Aonuma, which was a side story sequel to OoT's child timeline ending. After Majora's Mask, Eiji Aonuma became producer of the Zelda series while Yoshiaki Koizumi became producer of the Mario series (previously the assistant director of Super Mario 64), and worked on Super Mario Sunshine.

The Space World 2000 demo of the realistic Link and Ganondorf facing off with sword fighting was what they were working on at one time for Zelda, a more detailed version of Ocarina of Time. But it was not the kind of game Aonuma wanted to make so they went in an entirely different direction with The Wind Waker, with Aonuma drawing from his childhood cartoons. Shigeru Miyamoto wasn't staisfied with a more realistic direction with Link having ear piercings for Zelda, and wasn't sure of the cartoonish direction either but approved the change.
http://shmuplations.com/miyamotoxnaka/

https://youtu.be/eEF9Utdu-L0

Yoshiaki Koizumi who had consistently worked on the Zelda series and its story with A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask, only lended a hand to the scenarios for Windfall Island in The Wind Waker before going off to be the producer of the Mario series at EAD Tokyo,. Eiji Aonuma as producer of the Zelda series took it into a new direction, and they branched off from Ocarina of Time in a new direction.

The timeline split from Ocarina of Time is similar to Dragon Ball Z and the time travel of future Trunks' story

- Trunks comes from a ruined future to warn Goku and the Z fighters about the Androids

- Trunks returns to the future, defeats the Androids, but is defeated by Cell. Cell uses his Time Machine to travel to the past and obtain the Androids of the past.

- While in the past Trunks encounters his Time Machine that cell used, altering his events. Trunks becomes stronger, returns to the future, defeats the Androids of his time, and is ready for Cell, and defeats him.


3 timelines

- Trunks returns to his future and dies against Cell
- Trunks returns to his future and defeats Cell
- Goku and the Z fighters defeat Cell live and a new timeline and future is created

 

[MoonFrog]

MC-OoT-aLttP-LA-(WW)-Zelda I-Zelda II or MC-OoT-aLttP-LA-Zelda I-Zelda II-(WW) doesn't work. Wind Waker is the most explicit of all of the Zelda games about where it sits in the timeline. It directly follows OoT with nothing in between and leaves absolutely no wiggle room. This is a game where you literally can't go "Lol it's a legend!" because several characters in WW were alive in both times.

I said as much, hence why I said WW is where things become more difficult to piece together. I said that a couple of posts ago. That said, I really don't see why characters cannot fade in and out of legends tbh. Really why not? Along these lines: So what if Deku tree and the forest spirits are absent from aLttP?

Also nothing in between? Um, what about the "Hero came many times, but one time he didn't?" That sounds like it could be a gloss on, say, aLttP-Zelda 2 or aLttP.

You're picking a choosing where you care about details.

Yes, yes I am as I said: "I'm perfectly okay with inconsistencies in Zelda. It just depends on how ugly or beautiful they are " That is exactly what I am doing and I have explained why I don't think there is anything wrong with doing so given the garbled, unfocused development of the story over time, the vague, repeating narrative, previous canons, etc. The moment there is something wrong is the moment something is wrong with Zelda.

As to "Lol it's a legend:" That is most certainly not my point. I don't laugh at legends. What is wrong with enjoying inexact, slippery narrative?! Forcing Zelda to make "perfect sense" ruins part of what it is imo.

EDIT: Tbc, I am not trying to argue against anyone accepting the new canon. What I am arguing is that there is more than enough room for headcanon with Zelda. I don't feel the need to bow down to Hyrule Historia.

 

[Mak]

double

 

[ramparter]

I don't believe in timeline splits,

 

[DecoReturns]

I personally don't care about timelines. Or maybe I do if it influences the game but Zelda are mostly make the game first then stick it somewhere in the line.

 

[ash_ag]

You know, that's a good question. When did it become 3?

I was recently toying around the idea of the "Timeline of the Zelda Timeline", and this is what I ended up with:

It's easy to see where the points of interest are. Unless I missed something, The Wind Waker is indeed the part where things got a bit confusing, because the Adult ending of OoT was assumed to lead to A Link to the Past. Other than that, the timeline as speculated by the more prevalent theories wasn't particularly different from what Hyrule Historia presented. In regards to the games' order, I'd say that HH made three things clear (by arguably introducing a couple retcons):

• What makes the ALttP and TWW timelines different
• Where Four Swords Adventures really is placed
• That the Oracle games are indeed set between ALttP and LA

Other than those three things, the order was accepted more or less as HH presented it. Most people simply made a distinction between the "classic" Zelda games (ALttP branch), and the "modern" ones (TP and TWW branches), without assuming there's a canonical reason for that distinction.

This is something I posted earlier, but I personally see the Zelda series as having six loosely-connected narrative threads. They may all belong in a common (albeit split) timeline, but they work very well on their own. You don't have to consider the Oracle games or ALBW when thinking of the series as it was pre-OoT, and when talking about ALBW, the ALttP pseudo-sequels, or even Skyward Sword hardly matter. Likewise, the Four Swords trilogy may be inelegantly scattered throughout the timeline, but their order works just well.

 

[MoonFrog]

This is something I posted earlier, but I personally see the Zelda series as having six loosely-connected narrative threads. They may all belong in a common (albeit split) timeline, but they work very well on their own. You don't have to consider the Oracle games or ALBW when thinking of the series as it was pre-OoT, and when talking about ALBW, the ALttP pseudo-sequels, or even Skyward Sword hardly matter. Likewise, the Four Swords trilogy may be inelegantly scattered throughout the timeline, but their order works just well.

I like this idea.

 

[RagnarokX]

Ataru Cagiva's Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods manga published between 1995-1996, 2 years before the release of Ocarina of Time in 1998, has the Link from ALttP meeting his ancestor who wielded the Master Sword during the Imprisoning War and lost against Ganon.

http://historyofhyrule.com/publications/manga_lttp3/015.html

The adult ending of Ocarina of Time seemed to lend itself to leading into ALttP with Ganondorf being sealed away by the 7 Sages, whose names were then passed down to become the names of towns in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, and Link conveniently disappears from that timeline and wouldn't be around to be recorded as a hero. Ganondorf ends with threatening to exterminate the descendants of the Sages, Link, and Zelda, the the OoT team gave him a pig form at the end as special recognition to A Link to the Past and admitted they were dealing with the Imprisoing War of the 7 Sages.

The only exception is that Ganondorf was sealed away with the Triforce of Power, but that could have left things open or have been cleaned up. The child timeline could have been a new start leading into the Zelda Space World 2000 demo, while the adult originally connected to the older games they purposely referenced.

2011
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/zelda-ocarina-of-time/4/2


1998
http://www.angelfire.com/games5/makzelda/interviews/kiootcomments.html
http://www.glitterberri.com/ocarina-of-time/1101-interviews/parts-they-want-you-to-see/



I think what happened is you had Yoshiaki Koizumi writing the manual and backstories for A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, and then working as a director as one of the 3 original staff to begin the Zelda 64 project along with Script Director Toru Osawa (the creator of Kid Icarus). Koizumi created the backstory of the 3 goddesses in ALttP and continued working on the series with a lot of continuity.
http://www.wired.com/2007/12/interview-super/

Koizumi was pulled off a project to co-direct Majora's Mask with Eiji Aonuma, which was a side story sequel to OoT's child timeline ending. After Majora's Mask, Eiji Aonuma became producer of the Zelda series while Yoshiaki Koizumi became producer of the Mario series (previously the assistant director of Super Mario 64), and worked on Super Mario Sunshine.

The Space World 2000 demo of the realistic Link and Ganondorf facing off with sword fighting was what they were working on at one time for Zelda, a more detailed version of Ocarina of Time. But it was not the kind of game Aonuma wanted to make so they went in an entirely different direction with The Wind Waker, with Aonuma drawing from his childhood cartoons. Shigeru Miyamoto wasn't staisfied with a more realistic direction with Link having ear piercings for Zelda, and wasn't sure of the cartoonish direction either but approved the change.
http://shmuplations.com/miyamotoxnaka/

https://youtu.be/eEF9Utdu-L0

Yoshiaki Koizumi who had consistently worked on the Zelda series and its story with A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask, only lended a hand to the scenarios for Windfall Island in The Wind Waker before going off to be the producer of the Mario series at EAD Tokyo,. Eiji Aonuma as producer of the Zelda series took it into a new direction, and they branched off from Ocarina of Time in a new direction.

The timeline split from Ocarina of Time is similar to Dragon Ball Z and the time travel of future Trunks' story

- Trunks comes from a ruined future to warn Goku and the Z fighters about the Androids

- Trunks returns to the future, defeats the Androids, but is defeated by Cell. Cell uses his Time Machine to travel to the past and obtain the Androids of the past.

- While in the past Trunks encounters his Time Machine that cell used, altering his events. Trunks becomes stronger, returns to the future, defeats the Androids of his time, and is ready for Cell, and defeats him.


3 timelines

- Trunks returns to his future and dies against Cell
- Trunks returns to his future and defeats Cell
- Goku and the Z fighters defeat Cell live and a new timeline and future is created

I think it's pretty clear from the evidence that Nintendo changed their minds on OoT's relationship to ALttP during the development of Wind Waker, but when do you think they came up with the fallen hero timeline idea? For a good while it seemed like they were just going to pretend that the pre-OoT games didn't happen.

I said as much, hence why I said WW is where things become more difficult to piece together. I said that a couple of posts ago. That said, I really don't see why characters cannot fade in and out of legends tbh. Really why not? Along these lines: So what if Deku tree and the forest spirits are absent from aLttP?

Also nothing in between? Um, what about the "Hero came many times, but one time he didn't?" That sounds like it could be a gloss on, say, aLttP-Zelda 2 or aLttP.



Yes, yes I am as I said: "I'm perfectly okay with inconsistencies in Zelda. It just depends on how ugly or beautiful they are " That is exactly what I am doing and I have explained why I don't think there is anything wrong with doing so given the garbled, unfocused development of the story over time, the vague, repeating narrative, previous canons, etc. The moment there is something wrong is the moment something is wrong with Zelda.

As to "Lol it's a legend:" That is most certainly not my point. I don't laugh at legends. What is wrong with enjoying inexact, slippery narrative?! Forcing Zelda to make "perfect sense" ruins part of what it is imo.

EDIT: Tbc, I am not trying to argue against anyone accepting the new canon. What I am arguing is that there is more than enough room for headcanon with Zelda. I don't feel the need to bow down to Hyrule Historia.

Nothing happens in-between OoT and Wind Waker like ALttP. The plot makes it very clear that the last big thing to happen in the world was OoT and the flood that followed it. Everyone who has been alive since the time of OoT has a hard-on for the Hero of Time and there have been no heroes since his disappearance.

Well, the main reason I'm fine with the official timeline is that it does a good job of fixing inconsistencies created by OoT and cleans things up. Trying to make ALttP fit in the other two branches requires a ton of fan fiction which makes things very ugly while the official timeline just keeps everything the way they've always been according to the plots of the games themselves. It seems like the tidiest solution to a problem that they took a decade to fix. I don't see it as slighting the old games at all. They're basically just restoring the old games to their proper place while respecting the universe rules created by OoT so that things are consistent.

Link failing doesn't necessarily mean he dies, either. I mean look at Wind Waker. In Wind Waker Ganondorf gets the complete Triforce by defeating Link, but before he can make his wish King Deus Ex Machina beats him to the punch. Afterwards Link and Zelda fight and kill him.

What if the Fallen Hero scenario was similar? Link gets beaten and Ganondorf gets the complete Triforce. Link, Zelda, and the sages then battle him and seal him away. After all, despite there being no mention of a hero or Ganon in the Imprisoning War, ALttP Link is supposed to be a descendant of the Knights of Hyrule; as only they were capable of removing the Master Sword from ALttP's pedestal. The Hero of Time couldn't have descendants if he died. I mean, if you're going to make up headcanon I don't see why you couldn't go with something like this.

 

[SkyOdin]

I was recently toying around the idea of the "Timeline of the Zelda Timeline", and this is what I ended up with:

...

This is something I posted earlier, but I personally see the Zelda series as having six loosely-connected narrative threads. They may all belong in a common (albeit split) timeline, but they work very well on their own. You don't have to consider the Oracle games or ALBW when thinking of the series as it was pre-OoT, and when talking about ALBW, the ALttP pseudo-sequels, or even Skyward Sword hardly matter. Likewise, the Four Swords trilogy may be inelegantly scattered throughout the timeline, but their order works just well.

This is certainly the most useful approach to take. I think it best highlights how the timeline came to be, and shows off both how it works and why it doesn't at the same time.

Ultimately, I get the strong impression that different people in Nintendo have differing views on what the timeline is, and even whether or not there should be one. There certainly seems to be a divide between Miyamoto and Aonuma about the role of story in the Zelda series.

Overall, I think constructing a timeline gives a lot less useful information about the series than looking at the games in their order of release. The timelines are just messy, and don't really paint a useful picture of what fills in the gaps or what direction the series is headed. However, if you study how the series has evolved over the years and expanded upon its concepts, you can begin to see that sort of thing. Look at how they developed the idea of an ancient flying civilization in the sky over Hyrule. It started as the Palace of Winds in Four Swords, but that was further developed by Minish Cap to include a tribe of red-haired people who lived with birds and could walk on clouds. Then Twilight Princess had the City in the Sky filled with those freaky Oocca, which were positioned as an ancient tribe of Hyrule. Finally, Skyward Sword fully fleshed out the idea of Skyloft and the ancient origins of the Hylians. I find these threads of ideas to be much more fascinating than timeline discussions.