#because OoT is a game about time travel and the entire concept of the split timelines in this series | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

the-game-spirit · 11 months

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I have been going so insane over the zelda timeline regarding totk like I am LOSING my mind

like. either 1. botw/totk is a completely new continuity. worst option. boring.

2. it is SO FAR in the future of the (probably downfall) timeline and there has been SO MUCH canon-typical time bullshit in between that the other two either bleed over OR the ever-funny hyrule warrior's convergence theory happens that it may as well be just a soft reboot and history is just. repeating endlessly. also kind of boring imho

OR 3. totk memories happen sometime after skyward sword. interesting. also a completely fucking insane idea.

it's a misconception that SS zelda and link founded hyrule! they almost certainly didn't!

did the zonai make the timeshift stuff in SS? the tower of the gods in WW? the ooccoo? a fascinating concept!

what about the triforce? who knows! i don't think minish cap has anything to do with it either and it does get sealed away at some point sooooo

but more importantly

is there a fucking dehydrated ganondorf sealed away underground for every single zelda game

most people would be like, 'no, of course not, thats so stupid how does oot ganondorf exist if totk ganondorf is in hand jail already' and 'ganondorf has a history of reincarnation/revival but that can't happen if he's still alive ya dingus' and normally I would agree! I did agree! I've been scratching my head trying to make this work since I started playing totk

except!!! except!!!!!! we have literally already seen this happen before!!!!

so. skyward sword.

skyward sword is a closed loop time travel story. I cannot stand when people try to shoehorn another timeline split in SS because no split happens. that's the point. that was hylia's plan. the first hero? before skyward sword link? hylia's chosen knight that defeated demise? that was always skyward sword link in the past. demise even confirms this in dialog. something something he's 'never seen a hylian stand up to him before.' idk the exact quote but it Very Much Implies demise has never encountered any incarnation of link before.

so. how do we kill the imprisoned (demise) in the future and then go back and kill demise again in the past in a closed loop?

because we seal demise's consciousness in the sword, and his body in the ground

the imprisoned is clearly mindless. even more mindless than downfall timeline ganon post-resurrection. it has one single goal, which is to reach the temple and.... the master sword. with the consciousness of demise sealed within.

we have confirmation that two versions of the demon king can, technically, exist entirely separate from eachother.

it isn't a stretch to think that if his body is sealed away, effectively dead and unable to spread his malice, that the spirit of demise's hatred (if its not sealed with the sword, like in totk) would reincarnate until the time comes that the seal weakens enough (the first calamity) that it doesn't need to.

obviously there are still problems here like. where are the rito? (personally I think they just fuck off to hebra, which only barely exists in any other game, and I wholeheartedly believe the WW rito are a completely different species)

if totk ganondorf is sealed under the castle before oot, but the great plateau is implied oot castle town, why didn't we find dehydrated dorf there? uuuuuuuhhhhhhh next question

(listen the great plateau doesn't really match up with oot castle town anyway, no other details really match, definitely not the typical 'death mountain to the north(east), lake hylia down south' geography we usually see)

is rauru totk and rauru oot the same or different? zelda actually calls the sages 'ancient creators of hyrule' in oot, and since rauru is the only actually ancient one there.... uh. its entirely possible! why does he look hylian in oot? uhhhhhh? magic? because seeing some giant talking goat person that has never been seen before might not inspire trust in the traumatized monster-fighting 9 year-old-turned-16-year-old. also isnt oot rauru ALSO the owl? its been a LONG time since I played oot so I genuinely don't know if I just made that up but if so the guy has a history of changing form I guess

honestly I think we do have to allow for a certain level of handwavy 'new game' leeway, just like we do with EVERY game, in order to make this work. the map is always different. some things are introduced that have never once been heard of before in any other game. some things DONT exist that have in other games. some things are so different they're nearly unrecognizable. there are little easter eggs and no, they don't always have to mean something.

#AAAAAAAAAAAAA #obv theres problems. theres always problems with the zelda timeline. this one just has more problems than most #if you want it to have ANY bearing on any other game at all. it could be option 1 or 2. its entirely possible #just. boring lmao #loz #legend of zelda #totk #tears of the kingdom #totk spoilers #loz timeline #if i got any details wrong lemme know i wrote this at 2am and looked up nothing lmao #spirit chats #loz meta #i do firmly believe that if it is in the timeline no matter where it is botw is absolutely downfall timeline #it CANNOT be adult because the master sword is. yknow. There.#it also cant be child because the oot sages were absolutely a thing! ruto is referenced and she didnt become a sage in child timeline #it cant be referring to the totk sages. its just. such a blatant nod to oot ruto #i get totk is just oot 2.0 but like. not that lmao #anyway sorry ill shut up about the timeline that infamously makes no sense

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anarchopuppy · 2 years

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It's time for another one of my long-ass Zelda posts that no one actually reads but that's okay because I'm just posting it for myself. The topic today:

The Zelda Timeline Actually Makes Perfect Sense If You Just Think About It For A Minute

Casual fans and non-fans will take any opportunity to mock the Zelda timeline, with their criticism often starting and ending with "Look, there are three whole branches! Three!" followed by not inspecting it any further. Even big Zelda fans who know the lore extensively will still claim (without giving evidence) that the developers never intended for there to be a timeline or shared story at all while they were writing the games, and just made it up post-hoc to put in Hyrule Historia. But is that true?

Even as early as 2003 (around Wind Waker's release), Miyamoto and Aonuma confirmed that they had an official document with the entire timeline laid out in it, and that claim was reiterated in several other interviews following that. So, there's that idea put to rest right away. Straight from the horse's mouth, there has always been an official timeline

Fun fact: Did you know that back when Ocarina of Time was still called Zelda 64, around the same time that the very first ingame footage was being shown to the public, before the time travel concept was even decided on - we're talking very early development - Nintendo reportedly told IGN that its story took place after Adventure of Link? Now, you may say that that proves that they don't care much about the timeline if they're changing it up partway through production, but to me it says the opposite. Even in the experimentation phase, before they had even come up with the central concept of the game, they were already considering where it would fit into the timeline

But the claim I made at the top wasn't that the timeline was considered beforehand, but that it makes "perfect sense"

The Official Timeline Is The Only One That Works

Let's consider the games in the Zelda series in release order and see how they fit with each other

First was Zelda 1. After that came Zelda 2, an obvious direct sequel with the same Link. Then LttP, which the devs clearly stated was a prequel to Z1 - and it couldn't really have been anything else, since Z1 ends with Ganon being killed and AoL ends with his resurrection being prevented. Link's Awakening is just a dream and could go anywhere on the timeline. Ocarina of Time is a clear prequel to LttP, exploring the origins of Ganon and the beginning of his life as a man, as established in LttP's manual (I'll talk more about OoT and the Downfall Timeline further down). Majora's Mask is a direct sequel to OoT

After that comes Wind Waker, the first seemingly ambiguous placement. The game begins with a legend of the Hero of Time, the player character from OoT, sealing Ganon and then disappearing forever. It's clear that this is referring to the timeline that Link left in OoT. And since in LttP Hyrule hasn't been flooded and abandoned along with the Triforce and Master Sword and Ganon's corpse (which is how WW leaves it), we can be pretty certain that this doesn't come before any of the previously released games. Nor does it come after, since it makes clear reference to the events of OoT and explicitly states that no hero like the Hero of Time has appeared since. So it must be a new timeline split from all that time travel stuff. Cool

Then is Twilight Princess, which also doesn't fit with any of the other games we've seen. In its backstory, Ganondorf was stopped before taking over Hyrule or even touching the Triforce, which doesn't match with either of the two histories that have been established. It does match perfectly with the timeline the Hero of Time returned to at the end of OoT, though, and there's other evidence (such as the Hero's Shade, which is heavily hinted in-game to be the Hero of Time) that supports that. Again, can't come before anything else we've seen since Ganon dies, and can't come after since Ganon never got the Triforce. So the only option that makes sense is for this to be another timeline branch following from OoT

After Twilight Princess comes Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, both of which are explicitly sequels to WW. Then Skyward Sword, which is heavily established as the first game in the series chronologically and came with an official timeline to prove it. Then Link Between Worlds, a sequel to LttP (in Japanese it's even a numbered sequel), and finally Breath of the Wild which has its own nonsense going on and effectively soft reboots the timeline

Ok, so where's that famous ambiguity and arbitrariness? Everything locks in pretty solidly, there's just no other option that makes sense. This is supported by the fact that the Zelda fanbase came to the exact same conclusions before there was ever an official timeline. There were some people who were so attached to a unified timeline that they came up with wild and varied theories to fit it all together, but among the people who recognized that there was a timeline split, they effectively all put the games in the exact same order that would later be revealed as official. But with one major difference - everyone agreed on the order of the 2D games, but no one could figure out whether they belonged at the end of the Adult Timeline or the end of the Child Timeline, with some even arguing that the split timeline "merged" somehow before the 2D games. No one had even considered the Downfall Timeline as an option

What's Up With The Downfall Timeline Anyway

The DT is the most controversial part of the official timeline. There are two timelines that are clearly explained by the events of OoT, and then a third that splits off at the same point that just exists for seemingly no reason. Before the official timeline was released, the fanbase couldn't make sense of the 2D games and how they fit into everything. So what gives?

As I said above, OoT was conceived of and established as a prequel to LttP. But even before the timeline split nonsense, that didn't really make sense. In the backstory of LttP, Ganondorf acquires the entire Triforce before being sealed by the sages - and in-game we do see Ganon in possession of the completed Triforce, even able to wish on it - but in the events of OoT Link and Zelda retain their pieces at all times. OoT is clearly intended to be the events of LttP's backstory, but the ending is changed, like a "what if" scenario where Ganon loses instead of winning

And I argue that's exactly what it is. The Zelda team wanted to flesh out the stuff from LttP's manual, but a game where you lose at the end no matter what you do isn't fun, so they had to make it so you can win. The DT doesn't make a lot of sense when you think of it in timeline order, in terms of how it came to be in-universe, but it becomes a lot more clear when you think of it in development order, in terms of why the developers made the decisions they did. Ocarina was a reboot, a "what if we won instead" story in the same vein as Age of Calamity

In other words, the Downfall Timeline split isn't something that mechanically exists in-universe like the Child/Adult split, and it becomes very confusing if you try to think of it in those terms. Instead, it's another story being told by Nintendo where a different version of events happened, like an alternate history. And when you realize that, the entire timeline starts to make perfect sense

Hold On You Left Out Like Half A Dozen Games

Yeah, you caught me

The other most controversial part of the Zelda timeline is the placement of third-party games. This is the source of the only retcon in the official timeline, which was moving Link's Awakening from after the Oracle games to before them. It also results in the "Vaati trilogy", which was clearly meant to be one continuous story, being split up by thousands of years across multiple timelines. Surely, you say, I can agree that that's confusing and arbitrary?

And I would respond, yeah. Trying to fit games and stories from third-party devs into a timeline with the mainline games post-hoc was a bad idea, and the Vaati trilogy, the Oracle games, and Tri Force Heroes fit into the history about as well as the CD-i games and the Nelsonic Game Watch do. They're great games, by and large, but they're spinoffs and should've been treated as such - trying to include them is the only thing that screws with the timeline. Throw them out, and everything makes sense

#zelda #loz #legend of zelda #the legend of zelda #tloz #i finally did it like i promised i would all those months ago #pops talks zelda

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