Awkward Zombie

The final battle in that is still one of the best in my opinion. Truth to be told, I don't actually remember if it played well but, damn the setting is cool. A sword fight in the sunken Hyrule as the water slowly fills the room, it is very epic. And Zelda gets to help directly too, making the whole thing even better.

It's because there's a weight to it. Until the three timelines were established, there was a belief that the title was the farthest forward in the timeline of the series. The timeline, as understood back in the day, went:

• Ocarina of Time
• Majora's Mask
• A Link to the Past
• Link's Awakening
• Oracle of Ages/Seasons
• The Legend of Zelda
• Adventure of Link
• The Wind Waker

Having found the kingdom of Hyrule beneath the Great Ocean, there's something powerful and somber about seeing the endpoint of what Ganon's great ambitions throughtout the franchise ultimately wrought. In the end, Hyrule just couldn't be saved and here, at the gravestone of a nation, was one last duel with the man whose greed and ego ruined it all - concluding with the people who were once Link and Zelda closing the book on Hyrule forever and moving on with their new lives on the ocean.

For its time, "The Wind Waker" was a phenomenal ending to The Legend of Zelda, is what I'm getting at. That sense of finality really ramped up the battle with Ganon in a way that hasn't been seen before or since - with the possible exception of "Breath of the Wild", which is essentially next-gen "The Wind Waker".

But then "Twilight Princess" happened which officially took place simultaneously with "The Wind Waker" but in a different timeline and also seemed to act as an interquel between "Ocarina of Time" and "A Link to the Past", which confused matters greatly. And then later they released the official timeline. And now "The Wind Waker" isn't a conclusion to anything anymore.

Yeah, the third is the "Downfall Timeline", which is the timeline created from Link failing to defeat Ganon. That's the one that the original games take place in, and it basically exists so they can keep doing stuff in the Adult and Child timelines without having to reconcile any of the old stuff.

It's a fancy way of declaring games 1-4 Early-Installment Weirdness and exiling them from canon - except in the rare instance where they actually decide they want to put a game there, such as "A Link Between Worlds".

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 31st 2018 at 9:59:55 AM

Wind Wake is still a conclusion to all the Hyrule stuff in the Adult Timeline, right? Though, yeah, not as final as before once we start splinting timelines left and right. Still, I remember the timelines theory being quite popular even before Twilight Princess.

The Downfall Timeline surprised me though. I knew they had canonized the timelines theory, but I didn't know they added a third one. From what I can remember, the most common interpretations put everything either in Adult or Child timelines, with the early games going in the Child Timeline, after Twilight Princess.

I'm just so thirsty for a Switch remake of Windwaker...

Kind of? Like, it loses a lot of its finality in that regard when it is literally the next game in its timeline after Ocarina. And also when it has sequels.

The official Adult Timeline, including games released after "The Wind Waker", goes:

• Skyward Sword
• The Minish Cap
• Four Swords
• Ocarina of Time -> SPLIT
• The Wind Waker
• Phantom Hourglass
• Spirit Tracks

So. Yeah. A lot of that sense of this being the dramatic final battle at the end of all things isn't really in effect anymore. The timeline split kinda ruined "The Wind Waker". Now it's just a fun cartoony adventure where Link and Zelda once fought Ganon again.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Dec 31st 2018 at 4:28:12 AM

My point is that, to my memory, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks is very divorced to the Ganon and old Hyrule stuff, having new villains and very different world. As such, WW still keeps some of its finality and, thus, its ending is still satisfatory. Furthermore, to my memory WW was always the game immediately after Oo T, at least in some interpretations of the timelines, so that aspect of it wasn't present in all interpretations and, as such, it wasn't really "ruined" by future developments, as it was always there.

To be clear, though, I do understand what you are saying and agree with your points, when seeing things from your perspective. It is just this was never the perspective I was most familiar with when I was into the Zelda fandom and, as such, WW never quite had this place for me.

I played it for the first time this year so I can confirm that it is still good as hell.

Strictly speaking, to my knowledge there are two Ganons. The main Ganon, who there are three iterations of due to the timeline splitting...

...and Four Swords Adventures Ganon. Who exists entirely because the team working on FSA, due to some internal development chaos, didn't bother really adhering to the lore. Rather than decanonizing it Nintendo just said "oh well, let's make this work somehow" when it came time to release the official timeline.

Imagine a game set in a Hyrule where time is beginning to collapse and Ganondorf finally meets Ganon.

I've followed the Kingdom Hearts series for a decade and a half and this shit is still beyond me

At least Kingdom Hearts suffers more from cloning shenanigans where everybody is some sort of memory copy or whatever of someone else, which is pretty straightforward. Zelda's got the time travel shenanigans going on, which always complicates everything.

My impression that the difficulty with zelda timelining is because the games themselves don't care to announce it all that much? And have massive timeskips between most of them for reincarnating purposes.

In KH, the stuff is craazy, but it actually matters and so there is an effort put in to actually have the info somewhere. Like in Homestuck, sure, it is massive WTF in any given moment, but you know that somehow it is a timeloop and you will get to see how the loop closes (or how it is unclosed at some point and the loose ends get stabbed by Spades).

While Zeldas were just doing whatever they wanted and tried to staple it up post-factum.

Hilarious, when this Zelda lore podcast I listen to covered Four Swords Adventure, they came to the conclusion that it was secretly one of the most important games in the timeline, despite being seemingly irrelevant.

Yeah, that's my impression. The Zelda games were not written with any sort of specific continuity in mind, they just kept reusing certain patterns and themes for convenience and decided to call it reincarnation.

I mean, there is some deliberate chronology between games. Some games are created to be explicit sequels, such as The Adventure of Link, Link's Awakening and Majora's Mask. Others make clear reference to other games, such Wind Waker to Ocarina of Time and OoT to A Link to the Past. From there you can sorta piece together some chronology. Not to mention the backstory of Zelda Two being practically tailor made to justify multiple Princess Zelda's across multiple games.

But, yeah, a master chronology between all games was clearly not the main concern when developing new games.

If you only look at the games actually developed by Nintendo (rather than Capcom; i.e., no Four Swords, Minish Cap or the Oracle games) it's was actually all pretty clear and coherent until Wind Waker came along and split the timeline. And even that was still fairly straightforward until Twilight Princess came along to muddy the water further.

And then Hyrule Historia retconned in the third timeline to troll the fanbase explain away Early-Installment Weirdness. And then Breath of the Wild broke things entirely by being chock-full of mutual-exclusive bits of Continuity Porn.

Edited by Gilphon on Jan 3rd 2019 at 7:23:39 AM

The tendency to favor poetic prose doesn't always help the franchise's conciseness either. Fans are still divided over whether or not Link reincarnates, based entirely on how you interpret a handful of lines about various Links having the "spirit of the hero".

• Literal: The ACTUAL PHYSICAL SPIRIT, the SOUL, of the SPECIFIC ORIGINAL HERO PERSON, occupies your body and every other Link's body.
• Metaphorical: You carry within you the same courage and personal character as all the other people who've been Links.

Worth noting that nearly every Zelda game allows you to name Link whatever you want. "Link" is just a default name; the idea is supposed to be that the character serves as your "link" to the gameworld, and you name each one whatever you will.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 3rd 2019 at 6:13:40 AM

He tends to look pretty similar too though.

Also, there are some points where the lore straight-up contradicts itself. Like, "Skyward Sword" established that all the Zeldas are reincarnations of the Goddess Hylia, but "The Adventure of Link" features the Link from "The Legend of Zelda", having rescued Zelda, dashing off to rescue an entirely separate Zelda who exists simultaneously with the first Zelda.

Explain that shit, Hyrule Historia.

Also, "Link's Awakening" features illusory characters Marin and Tarin created by Link's subconscious in a dream world. These characters would go on to appear as actual people Malon and Talon in "Ocarina of Time", but officially the Link from "Link's Awakening" is the one from "A Link to the Past", centuries after "Ocarina of Time", who never met Malon and Talon and would have no reason to know they ever existed.

Clear, rational, consistent continuity has never been the franchise's strong suit.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Jan 3rd 2019 at 6:23:19 AM

Magic, fate, time travel, and gods can explain a lot of oddities. Who's to say that there can't be multiple Zeldas at once? Maybe one is technically "from the future," a later reincarnation, but it doesn't actually matter because of the way predestination works. Or she's just another princess with the same name, because it's already been established that all daughters of the royal line are supposed to be named Zelda.

(I actually started writing a fic where Queen Zelda has to deal with her daughter being her own reincarnation, but I'm not sure if I'm gonna finish it.)

Who is to say that I am not Zelda right now

Me.

And also logic.

Link didn't create the world of Link's Awakening. That was the Wind Fish's dream. Being a god, it's possible he knew about Talon and Malon.

The Hylia situation is weird, but it's not impossible that one of the Zeldas was just a normal person rather than a divine reincarnation. Or maybe both of them are instances of the goddess. and also Skyward Sword's story is dumb and cheapens the overall lore of the series in multiple places

Zelda has always been a series where the team tries to maintain continuity, but they don't really get too hung up on it. This occasionally leads to contradictions and plot holes. And because of a combination of that and the secrecy about the timeline prior to Hyrule Historia, for a while it was a frequently circulated meme that the Zelda games are just a "legend" with different spins put on the same story over and over. It still shows up from time to time, but it's lost some traction since an official timeline was released (and also since hardcore Zelda fans have started pointing out that the series was *always* supposed to have a timeline as early as Zelda II).

Down, boy