The Legend Of Zelda - General Thread

No, see, that’s exactly what I mean by utter nonsense.

You can’t say the series is different takes on the same legend, then turn around and go “but half of them are follow-up legends.” Pick a lane.

Trying to make sense of multiple timelines will turn you cross eyed,or give you a very bad headache

And dont get me started on alternate worlds like Termina..

You don't have to pick a lane. You can say that we're seeing a bunch of versions of the same legend, and that those "versions of a legend" are sometimes bigger than a single game.

I remember the form letter they used to send out pre-HH where they would say that the opening lines of TWW ("This is but one of the legends of which the people speak") meant there was no timeline, so stop theorizing ya nerds!. Wonder if they're going with that approach again.

It does seem like the timeline causes more issues than it solves.

I always thought the "multiple takes on a different legend" thing was crap (Like it doesn't make any sense when we've got Zeldas that are unambiguously direct sequels of other ones as has been already mentioned) so I'm not too sad HH took a spiked boot to its throat.

Edited by rmctagg09 on Jul 20th 2018 at 3:33:01 PM

Yeah, 'each game is a different take on the same legend' has never been what the series has been about. That's just never been a thing.

Like, ALTTP refers to the battle against Ganon as something that happened a long time ago, and that was only the third game in the series. And after that, we have LA being clearly intended to be the same Link as ALTTP, OOT giving an origin story for Ganon, MM and WW clearly grounding themselves as post-OOT in ways that make them definitely not the same story as previous games...

I mean, you might be able to sell PH and ALBW as re-tellings of LA and ALTTP respectively, but those are relatively recent games and the only ones where that premise holds any water whatsoever. Maybe one could force TP and the original LOZ into the same mold as ALBW and ALTTP, but it would take one hell of a crowbar.

I mean, the timeline in Hyrule Hystoria is nonsense, but I still resent that Breath of the Wild decided to just freaking throw the whole thing out, like it threw out so many of the classic tropes that made me like Zelda in the first place.

And yeah, "Different variations on the same legend" was literally never a thing.

They'll be vague about it until Nintendo has another book to sell.

Does it really matter what timeline it takes place in when it's supposed to be like, 100,000 years after the next-closest thing?

Like, I really don't understand the obsession with which timeline Breath of the Wild is in.

I think it's important to keep in mind that Nintendo didnt throw the games on a timeline randomly on a whim. They started building the timeline as early as Wind Waker, as mentioned in an interview at some point.

So every game since Wind Waker at least has had consideration on when it's placed on the timeline, and which timeline it's in. And that also means every game released before Wind Waker likely had no place on a timeline besides Zelda 1 > Zelda 2. Which explains why so many old games, and the entire downfall timeline, seem out of place in regards to every other game.

That said, they recently retconned a part of the timeline for literally no reason (the Oracle Games) and BOTW seems to throw the timelines out the window, indicating that they don't care about it anymore.

It's not that they never cared, it's that they stopped caring.

Er, rather they didn't care at first. Then they did. And then didn't again.

Edited by EpicBleye on Jul 20th 2018 at 1:37:39 PM

Monday Night I completed my second playthrough of “Twilight Princess”.

I was especially glad I beat the game this month because I’m using Abrams’ 2018 Zelda calendar and for July, Abrams used a painting of Link fighting two Dark Nuts. This painting can be seen on the back of the Twilight Princess Instruction Booklet.

This second file was one I started back in the summer of 2011: I named my character “Skyward” and named my horse “Sword”. Back in 2011 I was curious to see how far I could go in Twilight Princess without looking up information on the internet. I never got out of the first dungeon.

When ever I got stuck in my second playthrough of Twilight Princess (and it happened quite often) I used videos of a Youtube user named “Zelda Master”. When you need help in Zelda games, I can’t stress it enough: watch “Zelda Master” videos.

The first time I played through “Twilight Princess” I didn’t even know Agitha existed. When I first played “Hyrule Warriors”, I thought Agitha was a character developed specifically for HW. Agitha writes this adorable letter to Link about her desire to fly like a butterfly. It brings to mind Marin from “Links Awakening” and Marin’s desire to fly away like a seagull. What a pair Agitha & Marin would make.

I found a way to make “Twilight Princess” unwinnable. I saved & quit immediatly after getting the spinner in Arbiter Grounds. Then I put the spinner in the ground to open the path to the boss but this permanently seals the path to the mini-boss. If you seal the path to the mini-boss area without getting the big key, you have to start the whole game over again. Luckily I never saved so I just turned the game off. When I turned the game back on, the path to the mini-boss was unsealed again and I got the big key. Fortunately, most people wouldn’t quit immediatly after getting the spinner so most people wouldn’t get as close as I did to making the game unwinnable.

My biggest issue with “Twilight Princess” has always been too much focus on the kids from Link’s hometown. These are characters that I simply don’t find interesting and frankly just don’t give a dang about. The consequence of this extended focus is that it takes time that could have been spent developing the relationship between Link & Zelda. Thus I feel that Link & Zelda’s team-up at the end of “Twliight Princess” severely lacks the impact it had in “Wind Waker”. At the end of the game, Zelda & Link seem to really only know each other as mutual friends of Midna.

Thankfully Midna is more than awesome enough to cancel out the blandness of the other new characters in “Twlight Princess”. Midna is probably my second favorite companion character in the franchise after Phantom Zelda in “Spirit Tracks”

I have not played the HD remake but this game’s Wii graphics still look impressive after nearly 12 years.

I don't know if the focus on the kids really has anything to do with Zelda lacking a connection with Link. Even without the kids, Zelda is separated from the main action with no way to participate in it, and is completely removed from the plot about halfway through. You'd need to invent something out of the whole cloth to work Zelda into the plot, and I don't think removing the focus on the kids (who don't really appear all that much) would do much to change that.

I’ve never heard that one, I’ll admit, but Twilight Princess has a couple infamous ways to break the game.

Saving on the wrong side of the Bridge of Eldin is broken can get you stuck there with no way back. And I don’f Remember the specifics, but it’s possible to REALLY fuck up your meeting with Shad below Kakariko Village and get stuck down there with him.

Well, at one point, the timeline went Ocarina of Time > Majora's Mask > A Link to the Past > Link's Awakening > The Legend of Zelda > The Adventure of Link. Then The Wind Waker came along and introduced the split timeline.

Well, people were still kinda trying to reconcile Wind Waker with the rest of the series.

It wasn't until Twilight Princess that things really went off the rails in terms of timelines.

It was around that time that the Split Timeline Theory started gaining ground.

Wind Waker confirms the split timeline theory in its opening cutscene, though. And I always thought it was pretty clear that Twilight Princess took place after Majora's Mask in the child/"original" timeline, but I know some people disagreed.

It's been a while, but I vaguely remember first hearing about the split timeline idea not long after Wind Waker came out. And it made sense, considering the time travel in OoT's ending, and that none of the previous games could really take place after WW or between OoT and WW.

I remember that it really gained prominence after TP but WW was when it started taking shape.

Actually, you guys are right. It did start with Wind Waker.

I think the timeline would be pretty easy to puzzle out if it weren't for the Four Swords games. They're the ones that threw everything into chaos.

Yeah, I remember the timeline really started with WW, because there was a really easy timeline before it.

You had OOT at the beginning, followed by MM, then ALTTP, then the Oracles, then Link's Awakening, then the original game, and finally Adventure.

WW came in and blew all that up by implying it was not long after OOT and that Hyrule had completely drowned, which invalidated all the other games after OOT and possibly even MM, and then people looked at OOT's time travel and went "A-HA! Split timeline!" Gained more prominence after it came out that TP took place supposedly 100 years after OOT, which was the same time WW was supposed to take place. Then came PH and ST which showed that there was a new Hyrule but it definitely was separate from the Hyrule blessed by the goddesses, Skyward Sword took place way at the beginning but spawned a much less-compelling split-timeline argument, and then came ALBW, which showed a continuation of ALTTP's Hyrule.

Then, finally, HH settled the matter, but now BOTW has gone and messed it up. No one knows where to definitively put it, though there are compelling arguments for both the Child Link and Imprisoning War sides.

I think it was fairly obvious that Wind Waker takes place in the future, after Link returns to the past. The game spells it out. I didn't need Twilight Princess to come along and confirm the split timeline theory, though that did make me think "Oh, so this continues the 'original' timeline."

Weren't there some interviews that came out around the time WW did talking about the way timeline split? It was very much intentionally how WW was written, anyway.

The nice thing about split timelines and stuff is that it gives rise to some great "What if?"s. What if Link lost against Ganon? the Imprisoning War timeline. What if there was an alternate Hyrule? A Link Between Worlds. What if there was this really great game about Tingle, but we didn't give it to Western audiences because of how much they hate him? Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland.

Edited by Rytex on Aug 1st 2018 at 9:30:04 AM