thoughts on the "official" Zelda timeline

[Jack7]

What are your thoughts on the recently released and partially translated Hyrule Historia? I don't know how i feel about the third split in the timeline. however I am glad my hunch about OOT link being in TP was corect

[Shulamana]

I honestly think it's hilarious that people actually work up a sweat worrying about it.

[fahlim003]

Due to the fact time travel has been involved in the series I think it messed up the clarity as far as time-line is concerned. Compare it to Metroid where it's the same character in every game and generally speaking is over a short period of time. Not only, but the arena or setting if you will is not always "Hyrule". EDIT: Although they seem to take that Z3 set a great bar and that in making Z4(LA) the setting is finally changed, although not for long (5 years until OoT).

My theory is that they wanted to make the ideal Zelda game over time, perhaps going from Z1/Z2 to Z3(ALTTP) and in doing so they kept the locale the same which ultimately causes some confusion when there was already game(s) in Hyrule but it's obviously not the same layout, which if otherwise would not be very interesting. Of course there is an official time-line out and the idea that there has always been a Zelda "Master Plan" floating around too, so who knows.

[Cryomancer]

My thought before this was "revealed" is the same as my thought after.

Oral history.

[TonyTheTiger]

Back when Ocarina of Time came out and the explanation for its disjointed relationship with the previous four was that there were multiple Links and Zeldas, I knew right then and there it was a pointless change that would only serve to confuse the shit out of people. I can't believe how much of an understatement that turned out to be.

[NayusDante]

I'm most surprised that The Legend of Zelda is actually on it. I always assumed that one really was the "legend" of Zelda, and the other games were reinterpretations of that legend with a loose timeline decided internally after several games had been published. I would not believe that any of the games prior to Ocarina were developed with the knowledge of where they fit into this timeline.

[TonyTheTiger]

I would not believe that any of the games prior to Ocarina were developed with the knowledge of where they fit into this timeline.

Which is why it's so arbitrary. It seems like Nintendo just got fed up and went "fine, here." There's nothing within any of the Zelda games that even especially requires them to all be different people from different generations. With the exception of Link and Zelda having 10 different "first" meetings (easy enough to avoid writing into the stories since they rarely have any repercussions), the games always seem to play off the same "on to the next adventure" motif as the Mario games do. I guess a flooded planet in Wind Waker poses a slight problem but it's not like draining the water by next week's adventure is such an insurmountable problem for a magical kingdom.

[NayusDante]

If there is indeed some long-term timeline to the Zelda series, you would think that there would be some kind of technological or political progression over the years. It's not a very believable timeline if the state of things at the end isn't that much different from where it started. Why does the history of Hyrule matter if nothing ever changes?

The timeline picture that I originally saw actually had a split down the middle. It implied that success or failure in one of the games had different results, and proceeded to show that some games only appeared after one outcome. So, there's infinite possibilities, but at least we know the chronological order of those possibilities...?

Next, Miyamoto could say that eventually the Hylians evolve into animal-people that fly around in space, effectively making Star Fox fit into the timeline as Zelda XXII. But wait, would that be on the "good" or "bad" fork of the timeline?

[old man]

I call bs on this zelda timeline bs.