the legend of zelda timeline theorys and debate thread. post ideas here!

thundrwaveprime · 07-31-2008, 07:07 PM

this is my order. ones that are close together are direct follow each other, ones that are far apart take place hundreds of years apart.

minish cap

ocarina of time
SPLIT
majora's mask

twilght princess

four swords adventures

a link to the past wind waker
oracle of ages/seasons phantom hourglass
links awakening

the legend of zelda (original)
zelda 2 the adventure of link

i can write a novel explaning all the explanations and twists and stuff about this, now post your own ideas.

GigatronSama · 07-31-2008, 09:24 PM

It doesn't exist.

My take is that there are several series much like transformers.

The 4 swords series starts at Minish cap, followed by Four Swords, and ends at Four Swords Adventures. It gives different origins for Ganondorf, does not contain the Triforce, does not mention the 3 Gods, nor does the master sword appear. Totally different story.

New series Starts at Ocarina of time and encompasses Majora's Mask, Twilight Princess, Windwaker, and Phantom Hourglass. There may be some time travel based splitting between OOT MM and TP.

The 16 bit era series features A link to the Past, followed by Oracle, and Link's Awakening. In spite of early claims that A link to the Past is a prequel to the 8 bit era games, that may have been a mistake. Though there's so little story in the first Zelda that this is still possible, but not absolute.

CripNite · 08-01-2008, 03:03 AM

...head splitting over this notion...

Don't try to make sense of it. Just enjoy the games.

If they had wanted a timeline, there would have been one.

How come no one ever tries this with the Mario games?

Ra88 · 08-01-2008, 07:47 AM

Yeah, there is no timeline. Each game has it's own plot and events, with just the very basic and vague background of Link/Zelda/Ganon in the past. Exceptions are Zelda 2, Link's Awakening, Majora's Mask, Phantom Hourglass and MAYBE Wind Waker (it's iffy if that's a true sequel to OoT because some things, like the Sages, don't add up from what I remember). Twilight Princess isn't a sequel to OoT because of various reasons, the most important one being Ganon's imprisonement into the Twilight realm.

CripNite · 08-01-2008, 08:58 AM

The only timelines are small ones, in that Zelda games come in twos (IE Zelda 1 and 2; Link to the Past and Link's Awakening; Ocarina of time and Majora's Mask, Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass) with the exception of 1 (Minish Cap/Four Swords/Four Swords Adventures) and one that's not done yet (Twilight Princess presently has no pair, but it's either Link's Crossbow Training -doubtful for lack of a plot- or it's pair is in the making). Other than that, there's so many holes and contradictions in the timeline that it's practically impossible to make them work together.

GigatronSama · 08-02-2008, 02:26 AM

Crossbow training seems to just be alternate presentations of key battles in Twilight Princess, no real story to it. Fun game though.

Hybrid Prime · 08-02-2008, 03:02 AM

This one is pretty confusing to me.I love Zelda I just gave up on trying to put an order on them.Although I have not played one since the Game Cube WW.

Scrapper6 · 08-02-2008, 03:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CripNite

How come no one ever tries this with the Mario games?

Because the Mario games for the most part have a concrete timeline of events that can be pretty well followed if you go by year of release date and system. The only exception to that rule would be the contradictory origins for the characters created by the Yoshi's Island series.

If I'm wrong sue me.

As far as the Legend of Zelda goes. Ask Shigeru Myamoto to share his timeline of events for the series. The creator obviously made something of a timeline since he's the master mind behind it all. And if he won't share it then that's just because it's probably so complicated and full of plot points not yet adressed by any games due to the fact that Zelda games don't come out as often as Mario games that he refuses to spoil the future of Zelda for the fans.

EvaUnit13 · 08-02-2008, 04:10 PM

I think Miyamoto said there isn't a definite timeline and they haven't put as much thought into that than lots of Zelda geeks. I personally prefer no timeline so that I won't have to play every single game to get the complete story. Mario pulls this off since the timeline is very simple, but other games like Kingdom Hearts have pretty complex timelines

ZeroMayhem · 08-03-2008, 12:41 AM

Yeah, no official timeline from Nintendo still I think the theories in this video do a very good job of tying things together: