Official Zelda Timeline released

[Lanthirrhos]

It's pretty old news at this point, and I'm probably one of the few nerds around here who spent hours upon hours researching/playing the games, arguing on forums, and generally trying to piece together the Zelda timeline. (Hey, I'm nerd, and it was fun.  ) Nintendo has finally released the official timeline, which features not just a dual timeline like many (including me) theorized, but the timeline actually splits into three after OoT.

 

[Sunrise Lord]

So the surface world of Skyward Sword is actually the sacred realm, or am I confused?

[Lanthirrhos]

No, the Silent Realm from SS becomes the Sacred Realm once you unite the Triforce.

 

Nintendo released the Hyrule Historia in english finally that goes a bit more indepth into that chart.

[Mashiara Sedai]

Oh, that's really cool!  I love playing the Zelda games, but I never gave much thought to the logistics behind them.  I just figured the Hero was reborn, over and over.  But I love that they released a timeline!  I also think it's so cool that they prepared for the Hero's defeat, and that's what lead to the first Zelda games! 

 

Do you think they'll keep future games somewhere in this timeline, or will they make another branch?

[Lanthirrhos]

I think they'll stay in the sand box for now. The Adult timeline is completely open for new styles of Zelda game, their new game (for the 3DS) is being referred to as A Link to the Past 2 (and that timeline has a lot of potential for new games as well, especially if the ditch the Ganon route). The child timeline seems like it will be a very traditional style of Zelda games. And there are still some timeline gaps that they can fill in. For example, the Four Swords + Hyrule Adventure game comes after Ganondorf has died in that timeline, but features Ganon (in his Demon form) as a main boss (albeit without any knowledge of his previous incarntion's ambitions. The creators of the game claim that this Ganon is entirely new, and not related to Ganondorf in any way. That's a rather large plot hole that needs plugging in the Child Timeline.

 

Hyrule Historia makes it clear that the ALttP Link is that same one as in the Oracle games, as well as Link's awakening. I'm assuming that ALttP2 will continue on with the same Link finally returning to Hyrule. If they keep up the trend of making sequals to previous games they may have a ton of ideas lined up right there.

 

I (personally) would LOVE to see a complete remake of ALttP with modern tech. They should be working on that instead of Wind Waker.

[Red2111]

i'd heard they'd released an offical time line; but after all these years of Nintendo trolling us with "no offical timeline" i figured it was just rumor.  nice to see it though.

 

i wonder if they'll decide to make a child line for when Link is defeated in OoT.

 

 

@ Lanth - they remastered LttP for GBA, it came on a duel cartridge with 4 Swords.   i'd love another release of that game, its hands down the best in the series.  OoT didn't get me to buy a 3DS, but LttP will *nods*

 

i'm currently giving Spirit Tracks another go on my DS

[Lanthirrhos]

Yeah, I want a LttP thats in the OoT/MM/TP style, rather than a remastered one. That would require a completely new start from the ground up, so it prolly will never happen.

 

It also doesn't help that I haven't owned a nintendo handheld since the gameboy color.  So I miss out on those consoles/games.

[Silver]

Hmm think I've played all of those games except the Oracle games, Legend of Zelda  and maybe the 4 Swords game. Might've played that one as well... That's not to say I finished them all but I played them

[Red2111]

Lanth yer not missing much with ST or PHG.  its a very watered down verson of the game imo.   the entire game play of both remind me of the first hour of WW.   its nice for a quick easy "Zelda on the Go" fix; especially because the music is still up to par with the series, but their not much to write home about, nor do they rank in my top 5 of Zelda games.

 

 

i'm actually itching to re-play TP ...  i just dont have the paitences to help escort the Zelda prince again

[Lanthirrhos]

[Silver]

Oh god, I hated that damn owl!

[Agitel]

I spent a lot of time discussing the timeline on GameFAQs back in the day. I'm a bit annoyed that they chose a third timeline option for "the Hero is defeated." It's completely unnecessary and doesn't really make sense. The end of OoT at least creates the type of paradox to cause a timeline to split. We got nothing like that to suggest there was a third possibility.

[Silver]

Don't think they meant it as a plot line Hero death, more like a rage quit at a boss you keep dying at kind of death. 

[Lanthirrhos]

I spent a lot of time discussing the timeline on GameFAQs back in the day. I'm a bit annoyed that they chose a third timeline option for "the Hero is defeated." It's completely unnecessary and doesn't really make sense. The end of OoT at least creates the type of paradox to cause a timeline to split. We got nothing like that to suggest there was a third possibility.

 

I have to agree. The third timeline is shoe-horned in there. Fans bent over backwards to fit all those games into 2 timelines (and some people even mashed them all into one timeline)--and some people even made it make sense! The least nintendo could have done would have been to rip off all of our hard work.

[Red2111]

Oh god, I hated that damn owl!

 

 

really?

 

 

i prefered the Owl over Navi's constant "Hey!" "Hey!" "Hey!"

[Agitel]

LISTEN

[Sunrise Lord]

I liked Navi...

[SinisterDeath]

Source: ExtraPunctuation

Just What Exactly Does the Triforce in Zelda Do?

I always find it to be a bit of a futile exercise to critique Nintendo's major tentpole franchises, because I'm not sure who I think I'm talking to. The people who like them like them in the same way they like seeing familiar old Uncle Peter showing up to sing them their favorite old songs and tell them their favorite old jokes, and they don't want me complaining about how you've heard them all before and Uncle Peter should grow up and find better things to do with his life.

I just think Zelda games should be compared to something other than all the previous Zelda games, like they exist in a world where other, perhaps better, action adventure games exist. Play one and try to consider how you'd feel about it if it was an all-new IP and it didn't have some royal legacy supporting it, like you didn't already know the characters and where they fit amid the spokes of this wheel we're turning for another in a long line of turns. But that doesn't work with Hyrule Warriors, because if you took away the legacy behind it, it would cease to exist. The legacy is the only reason it's there.

While Nintendo has acknowledged that all Zelda games exist in the same continuity, it hardly matters since most of them take place huge expanses of time apart (with the obvious exception of direct sequels like Phantom Hourglass or Majora's Mask). And besides a few token mentions here and there, I always thought the series considered it something of a faux pasto make big acknowledgements of continuity. Because it kind of paints the whole universe as revolving around a never-ending struggle of futility, kind of like the relationship between Batman and the Joker. Except that those two eventually gained some self-awareness about it, while the Zelda series exists in obliviousness to its status as an endless recurring reboot.

All of which means it would probably have been smarter to not reference continuity between the games at all, but Hyrule Warriors is uncouth enough to lay it all bare, ripping big holes between the only-fractionally-different universes of the different Zeldas with its big clumsy paws, and the absurdity of the ongoing routine is thrown into sharp relief.

And there was one question about Zelda's plot that the game left me with, and which nags me still. You know the Triforce, the ultimate artifact of power around which the entire series is based? What, exactly, does it do?

I'm not asking what the 'legends' say it does. I'm not asking what various characters throughout the years have claimed it does. I want to know what it has actually done, before our eyes, with incontrovertible evidence that the Triforce alone was doing it. It seems to function mainly as a Maguffin artifact, existing only as something that everybody wants, with the central drama being preventing it from falling into the hands of the bad guy who we all hate, Ganondorf, because that would be bad. But what usually happens at the end of Zelda games, when Ganondorf more often than not successfully assembles the Triforce despite our best efforts, is that Ganondorf transforms from a taller-than-average bloke who can't be killed into a pig monster that can.

In a world where magic is commonplace, that seems like it could be achieved without what is ostensibly the most powerful artefact in the world One imagines that being empowered by such an object would then preclude the possibility of being defeated by a lone androgynous twat with a sword.

No, the usual spin we're given is that the Triforce, when completed, has the power to grant the wish of anyone holding it. Not the person possessing it, just anyone who physically touches it. Memorably, at the end of Wind Waker, Ganondorf is moments from touching the Triforce before a deus ex machina character teleports in and cheekily touches it first, making one wonder why any of the preceding adventure was necessary if he could always have done that. But it obviously can't grant wishes onmipotently or without stipulation, because otherwise the moment Ganondorf assembled it the world would instantly change into one to his liking where Link and Zelda didn't exist and no-one even remembered things being different.

Actually, secondary question -- what's the Triforce made from? It looks like a metal of some kind, so is it magical in the same way that isotopes are radioactive? And if so, does magic have a half-life?

This leads me to what I wouldn't call a fan theory, because I'm not a fan, but more an outsider interpretation from what I've seen of Zelda games: I don't think the Triforce does bollocks. Maybe it did at one point, but the thing's been broken up and scattered so many times that it is, at least by the time of Wind Waker, mainly just an attractive art installation. Some games (Link to the Past, for e.g.) have claimed that Ganondorf used it to spread darkness across the land and raise an army of monsters to terrorize it, but going by other games, he seems to be perfectly capable of achieving that without the sodding Triforce, and it was probably just helping him believe in himself like Dumbo with his magic feather.

But what about all that wish business at the end of Wind Waker? Glad you asked. The wish that The Amazing Deus Ex Machina Man apparently has granted by the Triforce is to flood Hyrule, and since Hyrule is in a magic giant air bubble at the bottom of the ocean, water immediately cascades down upon it. So no magic was being used here, it was simply the magic powering the air bubble being taken away. Furthermore, Mr. D. S. X. Machina Esq is evidently a powerful magic user with an investment in Hyrule, so it's not too much of a stretch to assume he's simply dispelling an incantation that he himself set up.

So why pretend it was the Triforce granting his wish? That's obvious: because it's in everyone's best interest for Ganondorf not to realize that the Triforce is scrap metal, something he was moments from discovering. If he couldn't be eternally distracted by the wild goose chase, then he may finally start devoting his energies to finding the true artifact of ultimate power in the Zelda universe. Which is, I dunno, let's say, Tingle's jockstrap.

[Lanthirrhos]

Well that's... certainly not a cohesive article. Seems more like click-bait than anything. I mean, there are a million Zelda wikis, if he hasn't played any of the games where they explain where the Triforce came from, or what it is. Or even how it works. I'm sure that he is actually aware of all those things, they're just looking for site traffic. Same old, same old for our gaming media.

[SinisterDeath]

Well that's... certainly not a cohesive article. Seems more like click-bait than anything. I mean, there are a million Zelda wikis, if he hasn't played any of the games where they explain where the Triforce came from, or what it is. Or even how it works. I'm sure that he is actually aware of all those things, they're just looking for site traffic. Same old, same old for our gaming media.

His articles aren't 'click-bait' in the way you mean.You've never heard his reviews?

[Lanthirrhos]

Nope, I recognize the name and a vague reputation attached to it as a notable person. I could easily be missing out on his style/"thing" that typifies his work. But from the uninitiated's perspective, the article has little substance, and presents very little to consider.

[SinisterDeath]

Nope, I recognize the name and a vague reputation attached to it as a notable person. I could easily be missing out on his style/"thing" that typifies his work. But from the uninitiated's perspective, the article has little substance, and presents very little to consider.

He was giving an outsiders, non-fanboi description of what he thought of the tri-force... Sure he could have 'googled it' but that would take out the context of being an outsider, looking in.

 

For me, who hasn't touched a Nintendo since the SNES, these modern Zelda games, timelines, stories, initially released as A hundred unrelated games that were initially released as 'one off' stories. (Like Final Fantasy) Only at some point they decided everything was in the same universe/world, and all the convoluted unrelated stories were somehow magically connected. Then you toss in the Tri-force, from a gameplay perspective.. doesn't really do anything.

 

Imagine if you will, in 20 years, the directors at Square-Enix decide every Final Fantasy game are in the same 'universe', and the same 'world'. Just at different time lines/dimensions/ect. It would be... messy as all hell.

[Lanthirrhos]

Okay, well out of 12 paragraphs, 4 of which have nothing to do with the Triforce, and another poses the supposed main question of the article. A sixth paragraph starts  talking about the half life of gold. We're half way though the article numerically, and we haven't had any discussion about the main topic. Of the remaining paragraphs, we don't get discussion on why the Triforce is a bad storytelling/gameplay piece (which I wouldn't disagree with at this point, Nintendo needs to own up and CREATE stories/motivations, not recycle old content in the same way) but we instead get commentary (on a subject that he admittedly knows little about) on why he thinks the Triforce--in game--is just a lump of metal. I get the cheekiness behind the text (or at least, I'm reading it into being) but jeez I wouldn't give the time of day to someone who wrote as much tosh just to bury the the only point that he had.

 

As for the first half of the article (the part that avoids the supposed driving force behind the text), I can only say that there are quite a few hints at timeline relations beyond direct sequels from 1991 and on. And considering the number of direct sequels before that, there has always been a strong presence for some sort of chronology. It's certainly true that he isn't a fan of the series, because it takes some hardcore/in-depth puzzling to make sense of any of it. There's no way a player casually visiting the series would have any of the knowledge necessary to delve into that rabbit hole. That said, there were established chronologies, mostly focusing around OoT.

 

OoT--ALttP (ALttP referencing events in OoT)

 

OoT--MM--TP (MM being a direct sequel, and TP being announced as a successor title)

 

OoT--WW--TPH--ST (WW being announced as taking pace a certain number of years after OoT, TPH being a direct sequel to WW, with ST taking place 100 years after that)

 

These were official chronologies before we had an official timeline announced. Again, not that I'd expect someone who wasn't a fan of the series to know that... but it really makes this half of the article even more useless. Why it is there? Should I care (4-paragraphs-out-of-12-sort-of-care) about his his views on Nintendo/LoZ legacy/continuity in an article titled "Laying Bare the Mystery of Zelda's Triforce Artifact: Just What Exactly Does the Triforce in Zelda Do?"? His first 2 paragraphs are spot on for a great--but entirely different--article. Instead we have a mishmash of quite random topics that don't actually get addressed, let alone address what the title claims the piece to be about. And once we get onto the the topic, we get, badly written to purpose, "Non-Fan" Fiction about magical half-life, placebo affected Ganon, and a multi-dimensional/multi-age conspiracy to keep Ganon(dorf) chasing the Triforce--because it is entirely useless.  That's the section that is all about click-bait, and trying to drive butthurt fan-peoples to their site to drive up ad-revenue.

 

Maybe I'm just a party-pooper, but if that's the level of outsider analysis that I can expect from him, I'd never read him again. And it started off so promising--if the article had been titled "Why Zelda games are outdated, stale, and unimaginative". I'm looking for meat to tear into from my media outlets, not the mindless dribble that falls out of their ears about series that they don't know. There are a million criticisms he could have leveled at the series and Nintendo, but we received this instead.

 

I may find Zelda games lacking these days (It's almost as bad as Final Fantasy in that regard), but I'll still play almost every one.... sorta like people and Dynasty Warriors... it may be the same drivel every time, but I love it anyways... For now. Ugh, and while I'm on that subject... did he really bring up Hyrule Warriors in an analysis of the Zelda series...? Because even more randomness was necessary, apparently. 

 

All in all, I don't see the appeal. I'll stick with click-bait. Not enough substantial analysis to make a case for anything. Just a lot of tongue-in-cheek inanity.

[SinisterDeath]

 

 

All in all, I don't see the appeal. I'll stick with click-bait. Not enough substantial analysis to make a case for anything. Just a lot of tongue-in-cheek inanity.

Well tongue in cheek is his forte.

If anything he did it not as 'clickbait' but to 'troll' zelda fans.

 

He did start out on Youtube as a videogame reviewer. I watch his reviews for there entertainment value, rather than for any purchasing decision... but I also try not to let any reviewer sway my opinion on a game... I have found many games he hates, I like. And games he likes, I really like.. so there is that.

Here's one of his zelda reviews.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/5148-The-Legend-of-Zelda-Skyward-Sword

[Lanthirrhos]

Well, I call trolling click-bait. Troll wants, attention, so troll trolls. 

 

Troll wants the ad-revenues, so Troll writes article for attention... aka clicks.

 

So Click-bait. My convoluted logic will prevail!

 

You can expect much from me at this time of night... morning. Whenever, where ever, and whatever it is, I haven't slept none the ways.