Show HN: The Zelda timeline to catch up before the Ocarina of Time remake

Posted by jsomau 4 days ago

I made this ahead of the Ocarina of Time remake which comes out in 17 days. I remember the feeling of playing it as a kid but I hadn’t kept up with the story so I built a timeline to catch up before the Door of Time reopens.

Nintendo’s own timeline is the authority here (Hyrule Historia and their chronicle page). The fun part was rethinking how to visualize it. It branches at the end of Ocarina into three eras depending on whether Link wins or loses, so each era is its own thread on the cloth. The threads meet again much later with Breath of the Wild.

I had a lot of help from Claude. I’d often thought about building things like this but never found the time between the day job and the rest of life.

Comments

Comment by somat 3 days ago

I don't consider it to be one unified story at all, I mean some of the series obviously are connected, but the rest are, as the name suggests, legends about Zelda. Unconnected unreliable narrations about some sort of heroic past events. Everybody agrees about the characters involved but as to what exactly happened, that is lost to time. So each culture is now telling the story a different way, emphasizing whatever is important to them.

I consider as a sort of modern equivalent to the coyote stories. or Paul Bunyan, Finn McCool, Gilgamesh, Or really, any legendary heroic epic passed along by oral storytelling.

So it is fun to try to fit it into some sort of unified timeline. But I don't think it is, that is not how they were actually written and we would loose most of the interesting storytelling flexibility if that is how they write them in the future.

Comment by cyphar 3 days ago

While I agree in spirit and think that was true for most of the games when written, there has been an official timeline published by Nintendo[1,2] since 2011 (and the idea was apparently around internally since 2002).

I would be surprised if it did not have some impact on the writing of the games, though of course there is (as of yet) no explicit reference to the timeline in the games.

[1]: https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda_timeline [2]: https://zelda.nintendo.com/about/

Comment by johnnyanmac 3 days ago

Yeah, I think it was a huge mistake and restraint to reveal an official timeline. But it's something they did and something to accept happens.

And then something to question once again when Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom cannot make its mind up about such a timeline. somehow being so far in the future that all timelines converge and all history is lost. Basically disregarding the idea of a timeline altogether. ToTK can't even commit to really being a chronological sequel to BOTW if you break down details in the game.

Comment by cdaringe 3 days ago

Maybe.

History can be rewritten.

The history written today adds intrigue and lore.

Comment by an0malous 3 days ago

Sure but the Nintendo timeline is just another retelling of the legends of Zelda, an unreliable meta story of a past (or future) that is lost to time

Comment by kulahan 3 days ago

At this point you could just make up any reality you want and it would be equally as valid if we’re going to take the creators’ input as simple apocrypha.

Comment by order-matters 3 days ago

Was the timeline an artistic idea of the creator or a reaction by a brand to fulfill a customer service request?

Comment by lynndotpy 2 days ago

An artistic idea of the creator. They have a simple relation to at least another. For example, it is not a retcon that "Zelda 2" is a sequel to "Zelda".

Comment by andruc 3 days ago

Art is subjective, after all.

Comment by kulahan 2 days ago

Truly the worst part of it.

Comment by popalchemist 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by tourmalinetaco 3 days ago

If it had any impact on the writing, then it certainly wasn’t present for BotW/TotK. Taking the various branches and smashing them together just for sake of references (despite the incompatibilities) showed to me that they really weren’t worried about the timeline internally and didn’t consider where or how the games fit together.

The official timeline was already a botched version of the fandom’s timeline, and the fandom continues to come up with far more interesting variations of the timeline that answers far more than the official does.

I mean, the official doesn’t even interface with the split timeline created by Skyward Sword, or how both Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons can happen in either order. Also it’s just poorly designed; the “Hero Defeated” section is not a timeline but an alternative universe. There is no canonical ending to Ocarina of Time featuring Ganondorf’s victory in the game itself (unlike LoZ II’s ending card), meaning those games cannot be attributed to that scenario without changing it from a timeline to a separate universe entirely.

Comment by aezart 2 days ago

This has zero canon justification, but I saw a theory on Reddit suggesting that the "Hero Defeated" ending of OoT was the natural result, but Link's wish on the Triforce at the end of LttP changed history to allow Link to defeat Ganon in OoT, creating the two victorious timelines in that game. It was a neat idea.

Comment by black6 3 days ago

That's similar the way I think about James Bond. He's not one singular person, but a code name given to an agent in deep cover. The agent, the person changes through the decades, but the name lives on.

Comment by Dylan16807 3 days ago

There's clearly more than one Link. It's more like, did every James Bond story happen in the same world at specific years.

Comment by notnullorvoid 3 days ago

Many of the games include histories within the current telling, histories which include past versions of Gannon, Link, and/or Zelda.

It's pretty clear that the cyclic nature is a part of the story.

Comment by ChrisRR 3 days ago

I've always considered that the "official" timeline was probably just made up by an overeager designer and Nintendo official hadn't really twigged how seriously people would take it until Hyrule Historia was on the market.

As far as I consider, it's just a series of games with a loosely connected series of stories, with a few exceptions of direct sequels

Comment by stasomatic 3 days ago

For me it was sharing lore in parallel timelines. Both BOTW and TOTK are amazing games and twice better on the Switch 2. The more timelines, the better, bring it.

Comment by lynndotpy 3 days ago

I prefer this interpretation, but there is just so much textual content in the games which support a unified branching timeline for most of the games. You can start with the explicit chronologies you have and mostly put them together like a puzzle. Zelda games which don't explicitly position themselves in chronological relationship to another Zelda game are the exception (like OoS/OoA or the Four Swords timelines).

This is not a deep-Zelda-nerd take, this is mostly working with simple connections like "Zelda 2 is a sequel to Zelda 1".

I think most Nintendo IPs are about playing around with the same motifs, ideas, narratives, and gameplay elements. Metroid is another series where this is very evident, with half of the games being spiritually a remake of a game which game before. A timeline doesn't preclude the Zelda series as a story about the cyclical nature of conflict, about archetypes reappearing throughout history, or as a legend passed over generations.

Comment by DuperPower 3 days ago

what was cool was realizing "oh yea this is a link to the past prequel" and thats it

Comment by ranger207 3 days ago

I don't think most Japanese media is as concerned with fitting things into a canon as much as American media is. Like, in Gundam, you have 0079, Thunderbolt, and Origin all allegedly in the UC canon, but there's pretty significant deviations in Thunderbolt and Origin from 0079 so they're not really the same timelines. American comics will also have multiple timelines or universes, but they'll make it clear which one each individual series goes with, and have crossover events explicitly acknowledging the existence of the different canons. Japanese media doesn't tend to do that, and I think trying to fit it into a coherent timeline is a fool's errand

Comment by throaway1985asd 3 days ago

Japan doesn't seem to take the hero fantasy thing as seriously. It seems to be more about escapism in general and what the show and characters are "about," even if that's not really very deep to begin with.

Comment by micromacrofoot 3 days ago

buddhists believe in reincarnation

Comment by breezybottom 3 days ago

What are you talking about? The timeline is official and published by Nintendo, a Japanese company. It's not some fan theory.

Comment by Laremere 3 days ago

It's questionable that it's not literally just a fan theory. For years fans were trying to put the Zelda games on a single timeline, and Nintendo just didn't care. The split timeline was one of the top theories of how everything can be put together, based off of a single developer comment that implied a 2 way split instead of a 3 way split: https://zelda-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Split_Timeline

Then Hyrule Hostoria came out as a collectable. I would put good money on a conversation during its writing that went like this "What else can we put in here?" "Maybe a timeline of the games?" "Yeah, sure. What's the official one?" "There isn't one. The fans have a fun split timeline one." "Oh neat. Yeah work out the details. Now has anyone found that Wind Waker concept art yet?"

A common flaw I see in media literacy is operating like the author has pulled a completely coherent story from a different universe and simply written it down, as opposed to a creative process. Nintendo has never cared about the timeline, nor developing a single coherent story across all of the Zelda games. Some games are sequals, prequels, or have direct references. The timeline itself is purely from non-game sources, and is obviously not a factor when they design a new game.

Comment by cyphar 3 days ago

The timeline was obviously not a planned aspect of the story originally and I personally don't find it particularly great storytelling but there is evidence in interviews of a timeline document existing internally since at least 2002[1] (where Shigeru Miyamoto explicitly said they do take it into consideration when writing the game's story but primarily focus on the games individually).

Maybe they did release the timeline because of fan pressure but some sort of timeline did exist for at least a decade before they released it which doesn't fit your theory they just came up with something and released it in secondary media because of fan pressure.

[1]: https://www.nintendoforums.com/articles/40/super-play-magazi...

Comment by philistine 3 days ago

Well the best proof they that didn't want to make games within a timeline is they published it and their next game was like yeah this is so far into the future that the timeline has all become stuff of legends.

Which was exactly the situation before they published the timeline!

Comment by lynndotpy 3 days ago

Right? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills in this thread. Almost every Zelda game has a clear sequential relationship to another Zelda game. They aren't complicated stories and one doesn't need to be a deeply-read Zelda nerd to see it.

The only questions which the official timeline answers is how exactly to connect some otherwise-disparate sequences of games into a unified directed graph.

2002 was the first point in time where having a timeline document was useful, because it was the first game to make it clear there was at least a "child timeline" and an "adult timeline". Before then, there was a simple sequential chronology in the series.

Comment by throaway1985asd 3 days ago

With video games in particular, a lot of them weren't really planned in advance to be successes. They were just ideas that ended up getting made.

Comment by rezonant 3 days ago

Yes, but published very much due to fan pressure, and clearly figured out to match the games rather than being designed up front. Nintendo perhaps more than other Japanese companies intentionally avoids letting existing lore constrain their creativity on new games. That apparently is changing however, as now that Nintendo has successfully launched a cinematic arm they have said they want the movies to be a source of canon that the games will reinforce, a markedly different strategy than they've used previously.

Comment by breezybottom 3 days ago

What fan pressure? No one forced them to do anything. If they were as averse to it as you say, because of their Japanese genetics, they would resist any pressure.

Comment by rezonant 3 days ago

Pressure doesn't mean forcing someone to do something. And I also never said anything about genetics.

Comment by bubbluppugus 3 days ago

That has little to do with "Japan" and more to do with "that's how it went back then."

There's stories all over about Hollywood dumping physical copies of films, sets and props only to later regret it.

No one knew if a sequel or trilogy or decades of fan service would happen. They didn't care like our rose colored glasses of time make us see.

American comics and Star Wars has had their continuity reset.

This is just "grass is greener" type thinking. It's only ever been the US fan culture that cared; most creators just see it as a paycheck

Comment by rezonant 3 days ago

Yeah my point was to downplay how specific this is to Japan, and focus much more on it being a pretty Nintendo specific phenomenon, though you're also right that video games (and other media) as a whole tended toward this sort of thing at the time, whereas now the painful lessons of losing this stuff is more apparent to creators.

Comment by collinmcnulty 3 days ago

I do not want to rain on your parade, but I find attempts to impose a coherent timeline on Zelda miss the opportunity to engage with it as a legend, a story told over and over with certain essential parts but many changing interpretations. How our very familiarity with the story creates the opportunity for surprise. There are so many fictional worlds with sprawling lore, and so few that engage with the retelling of stories and myths like Zelda does.

Comment by Rapzid 3 days ago

The games we are playing aren't retellings of the same story though. There are numerous sequels for one. Second the concept of a timeline isn't just in Hyrule Historia, it's referenced in the games themselves; for example the hero of time in Twilight Princess and Breath of the Wild.

It's loose, but it's there. These are separate stories, retold many times or not, and the cyclic nature of the battle for the triforce is established game lore.

I believe it's also misleading to say Nintendo doesn't care about the timeline stuff. They care but also make a conscious decision to keep it light and not overly bound or caught up in it.

Comment by collinmcnulty 3 days ago

This is what I mean. The cyclic nature of the battle in game lore is itself the series engaging with the concept of legend. The characters and the player both have a vague concept of the legend but not its exact contours this time around.

Comment by atomicnumber3 3 days ago

I agree, but Nintendo greatly damaged opposition efforts to timelining by... endorsing one. In an artbook, of all places.

Comment by lynndotpy 3 days ago

Eh, even before 2011 with the official timeline and the Skyward Sword prequel-to-all-games, there was plenty of textual content to support a timeline.

AoL was a sequel to LoZ. ALttP was a prequel to LoZ. LA was a sequel to ALttP.

OoT is explicitly a prequel to ALttP.

OoT splits into at least two timelines. MM explicitly follows the child Link who preempted Ganon's ascension. WW explicitly has you fight the Ganon defeated by adult Link. TP explicitly places itself as a sequel to the "child timeline" and so also a sequel to MM.

The only games which lacked an explicit placement to the rest were the Four Swords series and the Oracle games. Not small exceptions, but exceptions none the less, and that's only if you ignore interviews. (And interviews would give you Minish Cap preceding Four Swords preceding Ocarina of Time.)

Comment by hyperhello 4 days ago

What’s the word for trying to do cluster analysis on what is actually randomly distributed data? The games do have obvious similarities and sometimes refer to each other, but they’re independent events.

Comment by xnx 4 days ago

Nintendo now maintains/updates an official timeline: https://zelda.nintendo.com/about/

Comment by bspammer 4 days ago

Sure but that's a retcon. They didn't have this in mind when they made the games.

Comment by tarsierscripter 3 days ago

I have been playing Zelda games since the late 80s. I have never felt the need to try to weave a cohesive timeline out of the entire series.

Instead, I view the games as a combination of re-imaginings and direct sequels. However, the games really are not story-driven enough to care which one is which. Any of the games can be played standalone or in any order, and it doesn't matter.

In my view, the story of these games is mostly a pretext and the real reason is the gameplay. Some of the games lean a bit harder into the story angles, and they really suffer for it (too many cutscenes make those games frustrating to play).

Comment by conductr 3 days ago

I feel this way too. A huge trend in general I have noticed with younger generations, as gaming has modernized and matured, is the overall importance of story and cohesion. Plumber fell in a pipe and discovered weirdness was all we needed. I don’t play a lot these days but when I do I still just tend to skip over the story part or get annoyed when it won’t let me.

Comment by rolosa 3 days ago

So? They have it now.

Comment by bspammer 3 days ago

I don't consider it canon when a different group of people decades later make a timeline, just because they happen to work for the same company. It might as well be fanfic.

Comment by cyphar 3 days ago

There is a 2003 interview with Shigeru Miyamoto that suggests an "enormous" timeline document existed since at least 2002 and they took it into account when writing Wind Waker if not earlier games[1]:

> Shigeru Miyamoto: For every Zelda game we tell a new story, but we actually have an enormous document that explains how the game relates to the others, and bind them together. But to be honest, they are not that important to us. We care more about developing the game system… give the player new challenges for every chapter that is born.

So I don't think this is as clear cut as "a different group of people decades later make a timeline". The least charitable view might be that they never intended the unified timeline thing to became public and didn't consider it "lore", but I'm not sure I buy that either (since they talked about some details in other interviews, including the Victorious/Fallen Hero split most people object to).

[1]: https://www.nintendoforums.com/articles/40/super-play-magazi...

Comment by johnnyanmac 3 days ago

You'd have an understandable point for a western company who likely had a revolving door of key developers and leadershhip. But Japanese companies have pretty high retention rates, and Nintendo has some of the highest of all Japanese companies, period. Not just in games.

So in this case, I imagine almost all the writing staff present for Zelda in 1986 were present to establish such a timeline some 15 years later. And much of them were probably still around 20 years after that working on the upcoming remake. I'm truly envious.

Comment by rezonant 3 days ago

It's a fair point, but Nintendo is the only entity that can decide canonicity, and retconning continuity is far from uncommon especially when a franchise transitions from being a single entry to multiple installments.

Nintendo just never did that until the speculation about the topic became noticeable enough that they felt they had to address it (at which point everything was so inconsistent that only the timeline split could reconcile it). And even then, the unified timeline was published years before BoTW, and it adds the wrinkle that... (waves hands) all of the timelines sort of became the same thing.

That sort of hand waving is unavoidable as BoTW has elements from all three of the timelines, it literally cannot be on one of the three legs-- and if it's not, the only other logical place it would fit is before Skyward Sword (meaning an entirely separate ancient founding of Hyrule) or just after the Imprisoning War which would butt up against A Link To The Past. But those can't fit because the Zora evolved into the Rito and BoTW has both.

Never mind the strange notion that a fish people evolved into bird people under the pressure of a worldwide flood... you'd think that wouldn't be necessary or helpful, but hey, Zelda's weird.

Comment by pests 3 days ago

> But those can't fit because the Zora evolved into the Rito and BoTW has both.

Mostly in jest, but isn't that a creationist argument we all usually dismiss? "Why are there still primates around if we evolved from them?"

Comment by rezonant 3 days ago

Haha yes-- in this case for BoTW to be at the beginning of the timeline, the Rito wouldn't exist yet, as they are only present in Wind Waker and beyond, not that it's impossible for both to exist.

Comment by tourmalinetaco 3 days ago

The Rito are fundamentally different though, right? WW Rito are humans with bird beaks, but BotW/TotK Rito are actual birds in humanoid stature. Personally I always assumed they were Loftwings that became sentient.

Comment by CM30 2 days ago

I mean it's not like it's a different group of people now. Out of the development team for the original game, only one person definitely doesn't work at Nintendo anymore (Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo CEO that retired in 2002 and died in 2013), and possibly I. Marui (who doesn't have much info online in general). And Eiji Aonuma has been producer since Ocarina of Time in 1998.

So, while it's questionable how much involvement some of the team may have had with this timeline, it's entirely feasible they could have gotten input from the same people that wrote the games from the very beginning.

Comment by antics 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by yieldcrv 3 days ago

this is more so a corporate acquihire of fan fiction writers

Zelda canon was never that deep when each game was written

writers had no secret timeline or their own deep interest in the prior writers rendition

they have a loose setting and other people that chose the writer to have near complete license to do whatever they want with it

and even that’s a negotiation, writers often have their own backlogged story already that they adapt to existing IP retroactively

whatever it doesn’t matter, I’m just surprised people are actually spending energy on this for this franchise. If this is what “fun” looks like now, it’s fine

Comment by 4 days ago

Comment by InsideOutSanta 4 days ago

I'm pretty sure Nintendo itself said at one point that they don't have a clear chronological order and may not tie into each other properly, even though they later retconned an order.

Still, it's fun to try to figure out how the puzzle pieces might fit together even though they came out of different boxes.

Comment by SubiculumCode 3 days ago

I've only played a handful of these games .. but do they work together as a theme or story progression or are they, as I suspect, pretty much independent rehashes with no real relationship other than making money and appeasing fans?

Comment by esperent 3 days ago

> no real relationship other than making money and appeasing fans

That's a very cynical and dare I say Hackernews take. You could also, less cynically, see them as unique pieces of art that have managed to carve a space in a field where, by necessity, a lot of money is needed to create it (AAA games).

Tears of the Kingdom is art. It's a beautiful, simple fairytale told through the medium of a huge open world game and there's something unique in being able to embody that story for so many hours. I haven't played any other Zelda games from the past ~20 years but if they're similarly artful (and by all accounts they are) we don't need to be cynical towards their simplicity or the fact that they're variations on a theme. Pretty much all human art (and business) is, after all.

Comment by SubiculumCode 3 days ago

I'm not cynical about the games, I'm cynical that the games have any relation to each other in their plots.

Comment by coded_monkey 3 days ago

They say it’s because they create a game around good gameplay and write the story around it later.

Comment by somat 3 days ago

Which is the correct way to design a game, I am not going to go full Carmack and say the story does not matter at all, but at their heart a computer game is a simulation, a complex machine full of intricate moving parts. Getting thees parts to mesh well is the most critical part. and the story however well or poorly written sort of sits unconnected on top of it, for the most part ornithological to the machine underneath. The bit you actually interact with.

It is why I consider excessive use of cutscenes a tell of poor game design, They stop the machine and pull the player out of the environment. They have their place, but generally should be avoided.

book: tell a story

movie: show, don't tell (big sin opening lore dump)

game: do, don't show (big sin cutscene)

Comment by tormeh 3 days ago

I like "do, don't show" but I don't think that precludes a thin layer of gameplay over a story. Walking simulators are a prime example. The entire point of a walking simulator is the story, but the game doesn't progress without input from the player, unlike in a cutscene/movie. What Remains of Edith Finch is one of my favorite games, but the gameplay is pretty barebones.

Comment by pjerem 3 days ago

I played most Zelda games of the last 30 years.

To the exception of TOTK, I _never_ noticed any link (hehe) between different titles. I know there are some references, but I never catch them.

Even Majora's Mask, which is an official follow up occurring months after Ocarina of Time have a totally different story to tell that don't even try to continue the OoT story and is more just another completely independent story barely in the same universe.

I love the Zelda games, I consider myself a fan. But they are just that : good games. Each of those games do have interesting stories to tell, interesting universes to visit, but the overall "franchise" lore is totally uninteresting.

And honestly I don't think it's something bad, it means each game is free to go where it wants, and every game is free to have an universe as rich as it wants.

I see Zelda totally like I see mario : it's just universe codes, not a real lore. Nobody cares if Mario Galaxy happens before or after Mario 64 or Super Mario World. Zelda is the same for me. And that's cool.

Comment by gambiting 3 days ago

Even TOTK which is meant to be a direct sequel to BotW is...only loosely connected. Like obviously the map is the same and characters kind of reference some of the events from BotW, but (frustratingly) it's like almost everyone underwent extensive lobotoby between the games and forgot 99% of what happened. The entire lore of the world gets rewritten too.

From what I understand - it's because Nintendo famously designs the game and gameplay systems first and then writes a story to match what they built. If the story doesn't work with the setting then...<shrug> - it's still a good game at the end of the day.

Comment by InsideOutSanta 3 days ago

They do have common themes. Sometimes, they (seem to) explicitly refer to each other, and sometimes, they make vague allusions to things you might interpret as having happened in other Zelda games. But overall, I think it's fair to call most Zelda games independent of each other.

Comment by gchamonlive 4 days ago

If they have obvious similarities, they aren't randomly distributed data

Comment by hyperhello 3 days ago

Correlation does not imply causation.

Comment by breezybottom 3 days ago

What point are you trying to make?

Comment by andai 4 days ago

https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

https://xkcd.com/111/

Comment by howunfortunate 3 days ago

The second graph on the spurious correlations page bugs me, that has a plausible explanation! (cultural prestige / zeitgeist centralizing on the hard sciences)

Comment by hmokiguess 3 days ago

I just wanted to say thank you, you made my day brighter because you reminded me the remake comes out in 17 days and you got me to reconnect with one of my favourite games.

Seems like a lot of folks here are eager to discuss about interpretation and opinion, I take that as Nintendo did a great job providing enough to keep everyone engaged into the dream and fantasy behind it.

Cheers To more Zelda!

Comment by jsomau 3 days ago

Thank you! This is my favourite comment from the thread. You caught the heart of it.

Comment by everdrive 3 days ago

There's not really a Zelda timeline. Interestingly, it's a bit like religion.

Originally, there was barely a story, and it existed just to give some motivation and context for the various video games. This encompasses Zelda 1 - 5. ie, NES, SNES, Gameboy Zeldas, and Ocarina of Time. When Majora's Mask came out, it was a direct sequel, which hadn't really happened before, and moreover, you carry on as Child Link rather than Adult Link. (recall that you end OoT as Child Link in the credits)

By the time Wind Waker came out, Nintendo had officially started talking and thinking about Zelda timelines, although I think you can argue that they had already started down this path in Majora's mask. Wind Waker is the first game to formalize the idea that there are many Links, and it's more of a status or title than a person. The person who saves Hyrule. At some point (I really stopped following Zelda closely after Twilight Princess) Nintendo seems to have bowed to the pressure on the internet, and released the "official" Zelda timelines. ie, Nintendo followed the trend of trying to formalize the timeline, but did not really invent it)

The "official timeline" is convoluted because (much like religious stories) much of it was never planned in advance, and the current understanding is something of a retcon that would have been unrecognizable back in the old NES / SNES Zelda days.

Comment by chrisgd 3 days ago

Well, despite all the negativity about trying to fit something, I find the outline inter sting and appreciate you creating it. I like trying to see all the potential fits plus I was not aware of the number of games available that I never played.

Comment by prophesi 3 days ago

Love the site, though I'll always prefer this attempt at explaining the Zelda timeline by Brian David Gilbert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-25c8Rsobw

Comment by jsomau 3 days ago

Thanks! I’ll check it out

Comment by sharkbot 4 days ago

Don't forget to include:

- Link: The Faces of Evil

- Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon

- Link's Crossbow Training

- the various Hyrule Warriors games

Good luck! :)

Comment by yunruse 4 days ago

Per a scholar in the field [0], clearly The Legend of Zelda Monopoly is the pin which holds the entire Zelda timeline together!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-25c8Rsobw

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by BewareTheYiga 4 days ago

I thought the Hyrule Warriors games were not canon. Did I get that wrong?

Comment by xnx 4 days ago

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is canon.

Comment by whateveracct 4 days ago

i think the second one is canon but it has time travel and stuff so it's also basically not

(the second one wasn't very good..but the first is a great game and runs even better on Switch 2.)

Comment by xnx 4 days ago

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity gets a "Definitive Edition" Feb 25, 2027. Will be interesting to see if gameplay improves.

Comment by throwaway613746 4 days ago

[dead]

Comment by cubefox 3 days ago

Apocrypha!

Comment by jrflowers 3 days ago

Super Smash Bros is canon

Comment by gradus_ad 3 days ago

I prefer to think of LoZ without a coherent timeline. Just 3 archetypal souls finding each other again and again and again...

Comment by opan 1 day ago

Orders for media get debated endlessly, but release order is always the safest bet. If you were there on day 1 and played each thing when it was new, that was release order, and that's what a lot of people did. Even intentional prequels may tease later stuff for fans who know the other entries. In other words I think things are made with release order in mind more than chronological order.

Comment by bovermyer 4 days ago

I played Legend of Zelda, Adventure of Link, A Link to the Past, and Ocarina of Time to conclusion. I haven't really played any Zelda games since then, except maybe for a few minutes for a few of them.

I'm a little surprised to hear that Ocarina of Time is getting a remake. I take it it's going to be a Switch 2 exclusive?

Comment by mathgeek 3 days ago

It’s the second remake for OoT (it had a DS version as well). It holds similar status to FF7 in that it was the first 3D version of its franchise and brought a lot of new blood into the fanbase.

Comment by chocochunks 3 days ago

It had a 3DS version, and that was more of a remaster than a remake. Spruced up graphics and some QoL things but basically the same bones.

Comment by pjerem 3 days ago

If you are still interested in the franchise and in video games, what I can tell you is that the Zelda franchise ages like good wine.

In other words : if you have good memories of your experiences with those games, do yourself the favor of playing the other titles, they are equally good.

Comment by xnx 4 days ago

Yes

Comment by wise_blood 3 days ago

If I may: let's ignore the timeline entirely.

If you want to sample the Zelda series, I'd propose:

- Link's Awakening for the 2d experience

- Ocarina of Time for the 3d experience

- Breath of the Wild for the open world experience

as a starting point. The remakes are all new, so you get some QoL.

Comment by opan 1 day ago

I'd recommend Link to the Past or Minish Cap for 2D, Wind Waker (HD) for 3D, agreed on BotW.

Comment by luxuryballs 3 days ago

Links Awakening is its own world Link didn't do any of that other stuff he was just an adventurous dude who found himself on an island and that was the most remarkable thing about his life and he was still just a normal dude after.

Comment by mherkender 3 days ago

The "Zelda timeline" is a solution looking for a problem -- Nintendo generally builds gameplay and adds a story as an afterthought. Outside of the occasional direct sequel (and even then, only just) everything that happened in every other Zelda game is completely irrelevant.

Yes I know Hyrule Historia has a timeline. It's an afterthought too, it's not like they had books of deep Zelda lore to compile, they just put something together to sell a book.

Comment by astura 3 days ago

I don't think you need to "catch up," every Zelda game is self-contained. Also, it's a remake of a game you already played, so you already know the story. If anything, coming in fresh would be a benefit.

Idk why we can't enjoy Zelda games for what they are - each game has recurring core cast, similar mythological archetypes & thematic motifs, and similar gameplay, but are all independent of each other. Even the games that are direct sequels to each other are still very independent.

Comment by mathgeek 3 days ago

We can enjoy them for what they are. A bunch of fans arguing online doesn’t detract from the majority who will just play the game and enjoy it.

Comment by irishcoffee 3 days ago

Sorry everyone here is dumping on you, I think kids these days say some like “go touch grass” when this kind of thing happens.

I think this is neat and honestly the perfect use of an LLM, just some for-fun project to visualize something completely inconsequential and nostalgic.

Somehow is devolved into dunking on the west and other unfortunate “better than thou” comments.

Comment by jsomau 3 days ago

Thank you for the kind words. I'm not fazed by the discussion. I just hope both teams have fun.

Comment by cr125rider 4 days ago

This is really fun! Great design!

Comment by jsomau 3 days ago

Thank you! It was a hoot to let my ideas run and have fun.

Comment by tehnoslow 3 days ago

I’m not a fan of the chronological approach, but I like this project. It’s beautifully done, I found it interesting to explore

Comment by jsomau 3 days ago

Thank you for the kind words.

Comment by Am4TIfIsER0ppos 3 days ago

Timeline? Surely it is Zelda 1, 2, Link to the Past, the Gameboy one, then Ocarina. Did I forget one? Skyward Sword? That was years later.

When you watch Star Wars do you start with The Phantom Menace? Do you start Star Trek with Enterprise or maybe even First Contact?

Comment by monk_grilla 3 days ago

> When you watch Star Wars do you start with The Phantom Menace?

I might be a heretic but yes, as a surface level Star Wars fan I watch them in the order they are numbered: episode I through episode IX.

However I don't think it applies to LoZ at all and there is literally no reason to care about a timeline between the games for your enjoyment of them.

Comment by Luzu 2 days ago

I really like the website design. I think the scrolls go perfectly with the theme, and it makes me want to play Zelda again

Comment by groundzeros2015 3 days ago

Zelda is not a continuous story. It’s a retelling of the same stories over and over with new elements.

Western audiences just love literalism.

Comment by uejfiweun 3 days ago

Why does the timeline split into 3 after OOT?

Comment by lynndotpy 3 days ago

In Ocarina of Time, Link has the ability to travel back and forth to the future, taking on an adult form. As an adult, he defeats Ganon and seals him away, with Ganon swearing to return one day.

But then Link returns to his childhood time. As a child, Link warns Zelda about Ganon, and preempts the future (where Ganon takes power and adult Link defeats him) from happening. So, there are at least two timelines.

Majora's Mask follows this child Link in one of the few explicit sequels in the series.

But then Wind Waker faces off against the Ganon defeated by adult Link. This is explicitly referenced in the text but it's not so clear-cut a sequel.

Meanwhile, Ocarina of Time was explicitly a prequel to A Link to the Past (depicting the events described in ALttP's backstory). But (1) some events don't quite line up and (2) the continuity of games established in the other timelines can't really neatly fit the ALttP-LA-OoS/OoA-LoZ-LA chronology. So a third timeline is just the neatest way to do it.

None of this really matters for playing or understanding the games, though. With the exception of Majora's Mask (and Phantom Hourglass / Spirit Tracks to a lesser extent), each Zelda game can be enjoyed as someones first Zelda.

Comment by oceansky 3 days ago

Weird design choice by Nintendo. Imo, the whole timeline thing is a very clear afterthought for legend of zelda, most games have little to no relation to each other.

Comment by uejfiweun 3 days ago

Well, I feel like Nintendo just makes games and they've never cared much about lore. I feel the weird choice is by gamers, for continuing to care about this "timeline" which is so clearly a post-hoc rationalization.

Comment by sick_of_slop 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by port11 3 days ago

Man, what a beautiful website.

Comment by Tepix 3 days ago

Is there a list of WASM ports of these games so we can play them in the browser?

Comment by thr0waway001 3 days ago

This is like watching trailers about a movie before going to the movie. Letting it wreck your wonderment. If you've never played OOT I suggest you just take it in on its own merit. Then go back and look at this. Let it surprise you. We don't do this enough.

Also, it's almost an open secret that the the Nintendo development teams weren't really thinking in terms of a coherent timeline until later when they published some book mainly because they saw an opportunity to make money and sell merch to a bunch of nerds rather than to truly give a history to a bunch of somewhat related but fairly disjointed games all from the same franchise. They only pretend there's a timeline cause it sells games and books. Not cause there really is. What's worse is that the Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom games really throw a wrench in the works.

TLDR: enjoy these games on their own merit and know that only few titles are meant to be really connected in some way. Like Ocarina of Time <-> Majora's Mask and/or Breath of the Wild <-> Tears of the Kingdom . As for the rest there's slight references to each other but not really much linking them.

Comment by delecti 3 days ago

This is a lovely website, but the premise is entirely incorrect (that there's anything you need to know going in), and also spoils details from the game which this is supposedly background for.

Nobody should be discussing the timeline before playing the games. And not from some kind of purity perspective, but just because it's nerd shit that you won't get anything out of until you do. I really enjoy thinking and talking about the timeline, but I'm under no illusion that it's anything more than after-the-fact fanfiction.

Comment by petarb 4 days ago

Having trouble loading the link

Comment by Fricken 3 days ago

No matter how much you load Link he is just as nimble and spry. Encumbrance isn't an issue in the Zelda games

Comment by phforms 3 days ago

I enjoyed it, but for things like this, I would actually like to know what your genuine contribution was and what Claude did for you. It just makes me appreciate it more when I know that a human made the effort of investing their own creativity and thought into the writing or design.

Comment by conductr 3 days ago

So you’re saying your appreciation of a thing can only be attributed in retrospect after learning about how it was created and what human labors went into it and will be subjectively assigned based on your own personal beliefs around that contribution.

Seems a bit weird. To me, it’s enough that someone has a thought of something they wish existed and now it does exist. How they bring it into existence isn’t of much importance to me. The AI didn’t dream this into existence, but it may very well have performed 99.9% of the creative work, but the human provided the spark in the form of that instruction to do so. With nearly all creative works, I can appreciate the craft but also I don’t have to; I can just appreciate the output.

Comment by funkychicken 3 days ago

Why? What does it matter for a random video game visualization?

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by rootsudo 3 days ago

Yeah I was surprised there was a timeline and all

Comment by monster_truck 3 days ago

This feels like homework. I hate homework

Comment by ang_cire 3 days ago

Isn't it just "Zelda runs off to be with Ganondorf, pretends she is happy when Link saves her", same schtick as Mario?

Comment by hyperadvanced 3 days ago

No, in many of the games it’s not like she’s a damsel in distress, and usually helps like to defeat ganon

Comment by ang_cire 3 days ago

I think people are missing the joke...

Comment by 3 days ago

Comment by oliyoung 3 days ago

... and then comes the movie, and it's canon weight is going to blow it all up

Comment by d3Xt3r 3 days ago

Looks cool, but tbh I just want to get the TL;DR of it: what I need to know before I pick up OoT.

Comment by monk_grilla 3 days ago

Nothing. Most of us played OoT without any knowledge about the story. Everything is explained. As many others have said in this thread, the story is a background to excellent gameplay, and you won't get anything extra out of it by "preparing".

I hope you enjoy it!

Obligatory link to Ship of Harkinian for anyone else interested in playing or replaying OoT: https://www.shipofharkinian.com/

Comment by sick_of_slop 3 days ago

[dead]

Comment by candlemas 4 days ago

There's a story?

Comment by gliiics 3 days ago

<rant>

I'm gonna be the annoying guy and ask... Why? There's an official timeline page and if you want more details there's a page on a community maintained wiki (even independent from the hell that is wikia/fandom/whatever their current name is). I understand there's sense of accomplishment in personal projects... But a lot of this seems to be done by AI anyway, and that's my main gripe. Why are we wasting computing like this? To me this feels on par to using AI for things that can otherwise be easily looked up on a search engine (as long as your SE lets you filter through the slop)

I'm sorry if this feels like a personal attack - it really isn't my intention, but why are we pretending that things like this have no impact? And yes I know massive AI usage in corporate environments, slop image/video generation, etc have much more impact and that even that is still small compared to the amount of compute used from training (EDIT: and yes, what i'm mad about is specifically the environmental impact from this wasted compute). But that argument feels a lot like "my single vote doesn't count". Could we try to not make it worse? Sorry for being a party pooper i guess.

</rant>

Comment by schnebbau 3 days ago

What a rollercoaster.