After 21 mainline games (and counting), it can be hard to keep track of every aspect of lore in The Legend of Zelda. Anyone who’s played more than one game can attest, because things get really confusing, and that includes things explicitly stated in the games themselves. Off-screen lore is one thing, but even what Nintendo has established in the games is inconsistent at best. Despite a few uninspired attempts to set parameters, it’s totally out of hand.
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Things are introduced in games and retconned later. Preexisting lore is also retconned. Nintendo has had a really hard time setting the Zelda timeline and the lore, partly because they never really cared about it. The timeline was only established to appease fans who really needed to know the chronology of Hyrule, and it got messy pretty fast. Nintendo also can’t seem to get out of its own way on it. Fortunately, I have the solution for all of these problems right here.
Nintendo Has a Golden Opportunity to Fix Zelda Lore
It is unclear currently what Nintendo is doing with The Legend of Zelda. Something, aside from the predictable remake/remaster of an old game, is going to come out eventually, and series producer Eiji Aonuma and company are probably hard at work on the next mainline game as well. If they’re not, they need to start making the game that will fix all of Nintendo’s problems.
The timeline splits after Ocarina of Time, and initially, it was understood that Breath of the Wild was the reunion of those timelines. Why Nintendo decided later on that those two titles were off in their own little world is beyond me, because their being the reunification of the separate branches was lore and timeline gold. Nintendo’s no stranger to retcons, obviously, so it would be totally fine for developers to go back later and admit that they were wrong, setting the Breath of the Wild era at the end of the timelines, bringing everything back together.
The reason this made so much sense is that Breath of the Wild had so much from the different Zelda timelines. Elements of each distinct branch, which had different lore and even different species, were brought together. This seemed to indicate that this was some alternate timeline/universe, or it was after a merger, the latter of which makes more sense, but the former was Nintendo’s choice.
The ancient sea in Breath of the Wild might be the Great Sea from Wind Waker or Skyward Sword, so that means it came from the Adult Timeline branch. A Zora tablet names Princess Ruto a sage, which seems to be a reference to the Downfall Timeline. The other seven sages are also mentioned, which also refers to the Downfall Timeline. A speech from Princess Zelda references embers of twilight, which are only present in Twilight Princess. That is part of the Child Timeline. The Rito are the evolved Zora from Ocarina of Time, but since Zora are also in Breath of the Wild, this implies a merger.
There are tons of other examples like this, but two things are clear: Nintendo cared very little for the lore when making Breath of the Wild, and it makes so much sense that there was some sort of convergence. If there were a split, then there could naturally be a convergence.
So let’s just ignore the fact that Nintendo foolishly established the Wild era as a separate timeline and recognize the fact that this solves all of their problems. The final step to fixing the longstanding and particularly bothersome issue with this franchise is to just make a game wherein the merger of all of these Zelda universes takes place. This would work by making the next The Legend of Zelda title set prior to Breath of the Wild and after Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, which seems to be the latest chronological game in this series other than Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom.
In this game, Link can face some sort of cosmic threat (perhaps Null from Echoes of Wisdom) instead of just a threat to Hyrule. It’s here that he, Princess Zelda, and the others can all learn about the different timelines and universes, essentially showcasing the existence of the multiverse. The villain’s goal would be to wipe out all of the timelines entirely. This was very close to what Null wanted to do in Echoes of Wisdom.
This attempt would naturally be thwarted by Link, Zelda, and some other heroes from whichever timeline branch Nintendo chose to set this in. However, the attempt wouldn’t fail entirely, as the timelines would converge despite Link’s best efforts, thus sending each individual branch crashing into one another, and therefore creating a merger that leads to Breath of the Wild.
This would create some issues with the future of the franchise, though. Link and Zelda returning to fight Ganondorf every 100 years or so would make a little less sense than it does now, even with the curse of Demise. However, as long as Nintendo set the games well enough into the future, they could reasonably just be descendants. Plenty of the established games have descendants already, and Ganondorf dies and gets revived all the time, so it wouldn’t be much of a change anyway.
Plus, this would allow Nintendo to pull from any game for the future without having to worry about which timeline branch it goes on. Also, the aforementioned problem is much easier to deal with than the thousands of retcons and confusing chronology we currently have.
This would itself be a major retcon, but it would basically be the final retcon for the Zelda franchise. After this, everything would sail pretty smoothly as long as the developers actually committed to adhering to the parameters, which would be pretty wide and very easy to follow. Nothing would be off-limits to them.
Is Nintendo going to do this? Probably not. It took them 25 years to actually establish a starting point and a timeline, which was admittedly a haphazard choice. The company didn’t care to clarify much for two and a half decades, so why would it bother with anything as long as the games keep selling? And there’s no indication that gamers are going to stop playing any time soon, so Nintendo has little incentive to bother with this.
Either way, it’s fun to think about a world where the Zelda timeline is not utterly confusing and terribly convoluted, or a world where the lore is not collapsing in on itself because of all the different entries. Maybe Nintendo didn’t expect the dungeon adventure it created in 1986 to grow to this unwieldy size, but it did, and the team should absolutely consider making something to help ease some of the burden.
It’s Time to Clear Up Zelda’s Timeline Confusion
Nintendo, to their credit, did attempt to clear up the timeline in 2011 with Skyward Sword, and it was a successful endeavor until more new games came around. Breath of the Wild really threw things off, and it’s a little surprising that no one has tried to fix it since. Sure, it’s only been eight years, but it was a massive game that people took notice of those plot holes in. However, the only people who care about the lore and timeline are gamers, not the company or the developers, for the most part.
Still, it’s a bit of a black mark on an otherwise sterling video game franchise, and there’s obviously a pretty simple solution. After years of complaints from gamers, it’s beyond time to fix the timeline, which would eventually look like this:
- Skyward Sword
- The Minish Cap
- Four Swords
- Ocarina of Time
This is where it would split into three branches. The first is the Downfall Timeline:
- A Link to the Past
- Oracle of Seasons/Ages
- Link’s Awakening
- A Link Between Worlds
- Tri Force Heroes
- Echoes of Wisdom
- The Legend of Zelda
- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
The second branch is the Child Timeline:
- Majora’s Mask
- Twilight Princess
- Four Swords Adventures
The third and final branch is the Adult Timeline:
- The Wind Waker
- Phantom Hourglass
- Spirit Tracks
The timelines would then converge with the untitled The Legend of Zelda game that leads into Breath of the Wild, and everything new that comes after that would be after Tears of the Kingdom in the timeline. This is extremely convoluted, but after the next 21 games, this would only be viewed as a small, temporary blip in the timeline that has since been streamlined.
This would also fix the Zelda lore, as everything would be canon and could be drawn from. There are elements from some older games that have not yet shown up in Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom, but they could in the future without any confusion. Chalk the latency up to an effect of the crashing timelines. It would be a win for Nintendo, because it would make life easier in the future and give the developers a game to make that would be a huge hit. It would also be a win for gamers who finally wouldn’t have to complain or be confused about this part of the series.
What do you think? Would this suffice to fix the biggest problem the series has, or is it a non-issue that doesn’t need this level of attention? Let us know in the comments!
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