/vr/ - Retro Games

>>8960582
It's fine, although I personally wouldn't put FS or FSA on any timeline at all.

>>8960582
Nintendo doesn't actually care about the timeline, they made it to sell picrel and then promptly abandoned it so it wouldn't restrict future games. So the timeline can be whatever you can make a logical argument for!

Zelda 1 - > Zelda 2

All other games are non canon.

The official timeline is more stupid than any fan timeline, so I ignore it.

>>8960602
People consider FS, FSA and TFH part of the main series and it's really damn annoying

>linked ending of oracles
>even though they don't tell you this outright, you understand that these games are prequels to LA
So fucking good

>>8960602
Or Minish Cap, since that's the prequel to FS and FSA.

>>8960694
Minish Cap is fine. Four Swords games are more like spinoffs

>>8960676
It makes sense if Oracle/LA Link is a new Link and not the same one as ALttP Link.

>>8960714
Minish Cap literally tells you where the Four Sword and Vaati came from, elements that only specifically exist in FS and FSA.

>>8960715
It's the same Link in all 4 games as far as I remember

>>8960726
Which doesn't add up when Oracle Link is treated as totally new to being a hero, has never met Zelda before, and doesn't know what the Triforce is.

>>8960732
Well the intro of Oracles makes it look like he is transported to some alternate dimension
>inb4 fuck off with your headcannon, autist
Not so fast, they literally did this shit in Phantom Hourglass, it felt like fanfic-tier autism but it happened. And Phantom Hourglass was written by Fujibayashi who also directed Oracles

>>8960720
>>8960714
>>8960694
Minish Cap is a sensible game with a normal plot and setting. FS and FSA are amalgam games that fill themselves with stuff they borrow from the other games with no regard to function or context. Even Hyrule Warriors would make more sense on a timeline than FSA.

>>8960676
>You're Link, right? My name is Zelda.
Yeah, they fucked up.

>>8960947
FS and FSA are multiplayer-focused games, that's why they shouldn't really be considered mainline entries, not even because of the lore. Like who the fuck played the original Four Swords? Nintendo sure does like to re-release Zelda games and there is a reason they've never been properly re-released

>>8960947
Back when FSA released, there were two main theories surrounding its placement, both centered around Ganondorf, as he is presented as a wholly new version of the character. TWW had come out just the year prior, and since it killed off its version of Ganondorf (which, let us remember, was the same as OoT's), some theorized FSA went after TWW or MM.

So in the post-TWW placement (popular with single-timeline theorists and those few split-timeline theorists that liked to put most of the games after TWW), FSA Ganon was a wholly new incarnation of the character. In the post-MM placement, he was actually the same as OoT Ganondorf, who, frustrated in his plans to get the Triforce, went in search of another source of power, and found it in the form of the Trident. Obviously, both placements had huge holes in them.

TP released and that complicated things yet again, since that game ALSO kills OoT Ganondorf. However, some (myself included) began to think this actually made a post-TP placement work nicely, as unlike post-TWW, Hyrule still exists, and this being a new Ganondorf who gets sealed away at the end set it up nicely as a bridge leading into ALttP.

Of course, in the end Nintendo decided they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too, so they opted for a third "what if" """""timeline""""" and relegated FS/FSA into its own little post-TP ghetto leading into nothing. I stopped theorizing at that point.

MM splits the timeline.
In one timeline Link saves Termina and returns to Hyrule to later help TP Link as the Hero's Shade. In another timeline, Link abandons a doomed Termina by time travelling and TP Link fails his quest, resulting in the flood of WW.

>>8961018
WW was a problem the moment it came out. OoT had been designed from inception to be the direct prequel to LttP, without leaving room in-between for anything else to breathe. Then out of nowhere Nintendo just ignores that LttP existed and makes WW. It's not even that they forgot about LttP, because they borrow so much of the seal beaking mechanics of LttP in WW that you could almost consider WW to just be a wet LttP. Both WW and LttP kill Ganon without resealing him, so neither game left room for the other to exist.

>>8960582
>Zelda timeline
lol

>>8961038
No Anon.

WW and LttP require that Ganon be sealed by the sages. That only exists in the adult ending of OoT.

TP requires that Link tattles on Ganon in the past before he can attack to begin with. That much is actually spelled out within the TP cutscenes. That only exists in the child ending of OoT.

>>8961051
To be fair, even OoT was not a fully perfect fit for ALttP's prequel by itself, due to Ganondorf only having the ToP and not the whole thing. This isn't a minor detail - there's no way ALttP happens if Ganon just has the one piece.

>>8961081
It was never hard to just chalk that up to Ganon managing to gather the missing pieces during the time between games. They aren't the same Zelda and Link in the two games.

>>8961092
I'm not fond of using headcanon to smooth things up between games unless there's absolutely no choice but to do so, but at the time, I guess there wasn't much else to do.

Assuming the developer intention of OoT being ALttP's direct prequel held through to release, we're basically forced to admit OoT was a giant retcon of ALttP's stated backstory no matter what. Recall that ALttP's manual states the Sages went out in search of both the Master Sword AND a Hero to wield it, but they ran out of time and had to rely on the Knights of Hyrule to defend them while they cast the sealing spell, and IIRC it implies Ganon himself didn't actually step out of the Dark World himself, but only his malignant influence and his minions. So it's not so much they sealed HIM away so much as they simply sealed the gateway between the Light and Dark worlds shut so Ganon's power would stop emanating from it. Needless to say, this is very different from how OoT's events went down.

I play games for gameplay not story. I’ve played em all and don’t remember a lick of story.

Does it make sense for the hero to be defeated? If he was defeated, why would Ganon need reviving?

>>8960582
Outside of newer games being added, the placement of LA & Oracles was apparently swapped.

>>8961123
Presumably because the castle guards saw Link's Triforce mark and let him in regardless. That or it wasn't really the castle and just some random temple.

ALttP Link doesn't own Epona, either.

>>8961123
Ah, so Nintendo actually saw a modicum of sense after all.

>>8961120
We know that the sages can often predict dark futures that they want to be prevented. If you look at that through a sci-fi lens, then in order to see the events, they had to have happened in some alternate timeline. Passing information backward through time is effectively the same as sending a person or object.

>>8961117
If any manual has a difficult time being rationalized at this point, it's the manual for AoL with the story of why all princesses are named Zelda.

>>8961132
I would understand that if that timeline came before OoT. But after it, Ganondorf became Ganon and defeated the hero. He would still be alive in ALttP.

>>8961063
The imprisoning war of aLttP lines up well with the adult ending of OoT no, argument there.
The WW version of the story is much less detailed. One of the few details which is shared is that the Hero of Time was a young boy. The game also makes clear that WW Link is the same age as OoT Link according to their history.
We know from TP's backstory that Link's tattling plan failed and they resorted to imprisoning him anyway.

>>8961150
Ganon in WW and LttP isn't being revived. He's being released from his prison. He isn't killed in OoT. He is alive and well at the beginning of WW and LttP.

For Link's defeated ending, he still needed to have gathered all the sages... or at least some Link substitute needed to. He just needed to lose at the castle. What went down differently is up to speculation.

>>8961162
WW story is a bit muddied because it seems Nintendo didn't really believe in a timeline split yet. They really didn't commit to it until they actually released TP. At the time of WW, all they had commented on is that OoT had two endings, which isn't quite the same as a timeline split. You can even find the story of MM in WW as told from Tingle's perspective.

>>8961176
Nintendo never believed in any timeline until it became time to sell merchandise. They just made something up with vague enough details to presumably connect to something else in the franchise.
Which is why it's fun to speculate on the timeline, unlike something like Metroid with a clear timeline and Mario with an irrelevant timeline.

>>8961169
You're right. According to https://www.zeldadungeon.net/wiki/Defeat_Ending: The Defeat Ending is one of three endings of Ocarina of Time, which follows into the Decline Timeline.

In this branch, when Link challenged Ganondorf, he lost. Obtaining the complete Triforce as a result; Ganondorf becomes the Demon King, Ganon, and enters the Sacred Realm, transforming it into the Dark World. However, Zelda and the Sages weave a final spell and successfully trap him in the Dark World. The spell of what would become known as the Seven Wise Men is too strong for him to break and take control of the Light World as well. This initiates the events of A Link to the Past.

>>8961169
>or at least some Link substitute needed to
A weird theory that I think is fun.
In AoL, the map is full of locations that Nintendo recycles to be character names in OoT. The lore implication is that the places were named after the heroes of the Imprisoning War. With phonetic spelling differences because Japanese games. This little bastard manages to have probably more places named after him than any of the other sages. If you want an elf boy in green, he kinda matches the description. Maybe Mido steps up the plate in the downfall line. Maybe just at the end for the sake of Saria, or maybe he is simply the Link of that timeline while our Hylean orphan slept in.

>>8960987
FSA is legitimately a great game, I would love to see a re-release. It’s very unfortunate that the most recent co-op multiplayer Zelda was that failed abortion of a game Triforce Heroes.

What if Mido never existed, and just represents Link's sense of self-doubt? What if Link has been Mido all along?

>>8961205
Just a development holdover it seems, he was intended to become the Sage of Shadow.

>>8961018
FSA Ganon resembles the Oracles one a lot. He is fucked in the head as opposed to him being intelligent in ALttP and possible the first Zelda too because he was smart enough to control an army

>>8961579
The Oracles Ganon was basically a mindless hulk since the ritual for his revival wasn't properly completed. FSA Ganon isn't mindless, just generically mwahaha evil.

>>8960987
I did
The roguelike dungeon generation was pretty fucking good.

You should get the Anniversary Edition

>>8960774
Basically they were taking Majora's Mask schtick and used it for other Zeldas

>>8961119
You should learn to read anon, make a difference, we can all stop being illiterate one day, it's never too late to learn.

At this point there's enough Toon games you could just separate them all into their own Toon Timeline or something. Maybe even have it star the same one Link, since he's identical across all the games anyway.

>>8961186
Half-correct. The Hero of Time losing to Ganondorf results in him completing the Triforce and becoming ALttP Ganon, but he gets sealed by the Sages anyway somehow (Link needed to weaken OoT Ganon to do that and he only had the Triforce of Power, but TWW & TP being other direct timeline sequels means Nintendo had to write a third ending retroactively). HOWEVER, this only retcons the bit in the ALttP manual about how Ganon entered the Golden Land / Sacred Realm and obtained the Triforce, which was explained as found the land's entrance with his bad of thieves and slaughtered them all to claim to Triforce for himself. The events of the Imprisoning War itself still more or less play out as described in ALttP. The Sages in OoT aren't the same ones in ALttP anymore; at least a considerable generation passes between Ganon's sealing by the OoT Sages and the resealing of the Sacred Realm by the ALttP Sages. This also makes a bit more sense as the Sages' descendants in ALttP are all human/Hylian (although ALBW messes this up by reintroducing a Zora and a Goron-esque Hylian).

>>8963013
You know, one thing that always bothered me about OoT was how it waffled between sealing and killing Ganondorf. When you meet Zelda in the Temple of Time, the plan she lays out is to "lure him into the Sacred Realm" and then seal the entrance, and Link's job is to defend Zelda while she casts the seal. That's fine, maybe she believes he can't actually be killed while holding the ToP. Why else would her first instinct be to seal him rather than kill him?

Then she gets captured, you go fight Ganondorf, and... seemingly kill him. Zelda doesn't bat an eye at this. In fact, she initially remarks how he was a pitiful man, apparently thinking he's done for. Then when he starts bringing the tower down, Zelda calls it him "using the last of his strength", and then remarks that "it's over" once that bit's done. Then he comes back, turns into Ganon, and we're back to Plan A, I guess.

I know the plan probably always was for him to end up sealed to conform to ALttP, but it would've been much better if sealing him was Plan B, something they were forced to do because ultimately he's too powerful to kill. But they telegraph his sealing from the get-go, then seemingly renege, almost as if Zelda went "oh, you actually killed him instead. Cool, that saves us some trouble." But nope, at the end we're back to sealing him after all. It's sort of narrative whiplash, I feel.

>>8963108
To conclude, I do wonder if the bit in the Temple of Time where Zelda tells you the plan to seal him was added later. It makes much more sense for her to just tell Link they're going to work together to defeat him, her gift being the Light Arrows as a potent tool to do so, before being captured. Then when you're fighting Ganon and go pick up the Master Sword again, that's when Zelda tells you he's too powerful to destroy and the plan now is to seal him away, but she and the Sages need more time to cast the necessary spell, and Ganon needs to be weakened further by the Master Sword as well.

>>8963128
With matters of lore, the natural first place to check would be to see if there was a difference in the Japanese script. It's going to be the definitive lore to begin with.

>>8963138
Yeah, I was gonna say I don't know if the Japanese differs at all on this, but unless the translation completely made up everything Zelda tells you at the ToT, I don't see it different a whole lot. Anyway, AFAIK OoT actually was localized fairly faithfully IIRC, which is more than I can say for TWW and TP.

>>8961038
>>8961051
>>8961063
In the original release of WW, the Tingle Tuner has hidden dialogue retelling the events of MM which creates the legend of Tingle similar to the legend of the hero at the start of the game. Not saying MM leads to WW, just a funny thing to point out

>>8963184
kek I remember single-timeline theorists falling back on that Tingle legend as the ultimate cope once it was becoming more and more obvious we had a split timeline situation.

>>8963184
It's in every release of WW. Even without the tuner, you just need to bomb the correct locations.

>>8960582
The timeline gets a "B" all things considered. The biggest issue it has is an oft-overlooked one, and that's the placement of Four Swords and, to a lesser extent, The Minish Cap. In the Four Swords Adventures intro/manual, they refer to the Link from the Four Swords manual backstory (clearly an abridged legend of what'd be The Minish Cap) as a "young boy" and then refer to the Link and Zelda during the events of Four Swords as Link and Zelda. This is obviously intending for Four Swords Adventures to be a direct sequel to Four Swords with the same Link and Zelda; no other game refers to a previous Link and Zelda by name, it's always the "hero" and "princess" at best. Hyrule Historia instead weirdly has Four Swords closer in the timeline to The Minish Cap, with its own Link and Zelda, and has the Four Swords manual backstory as its own separate incident. Minimally, Four Swords should've been right before Four Swords Adventures. You can also make the argument that The Minish Cap should've been bumped in the post-Twilight Princess period, since a) the idea to make it the earliest game with Link's hat is completely moot, and b) since The Minish Cap is pre-Ocarina of Time, Vaati's seal is totally unaccounted for in two out of three timelines, which kinda sucks. Though at least by having Four Swords before Four Swords Adventures, you can imply that Ganondorf had something to do with the weakening seal on Vaati.

>>8963225
Yeah, that placement makes no sense. Absolutely everything points to FSA being a direct sequel to FS. Hell, if anything, it makes things worse, as TMC ends with you destroying Vaati, not sealing him. At least putting distance between the games softens the discrepancy some, but putting them right next to each other makes it that much more blatant.

>>8963225
I'm honestly surprised there was no prequel to Minish Cap about the Hero of Men

>>8960663
This is how I feel for the most part.

If you want to stretch it, ALttP, LA, OoA/S are their own canon.

>>8960732
>has never met Zelda before
Zelda II establishes multiple Zeldas, just a royal naming thing. He is in a different region, Labrynna or whatever and the other place.

I remember watching a guide for Zelda 2 because I'm a scrub who can't beat an old action-adventure game on his own, I think it was done by Zelda Dungeon and the guy who did that playthrough said something like
>The story is in the manual. And yeah, it basically tells you what the actual Legend of Zelda™ is.
And it has been engraved in my memory ever since. Because come to think of it, it really is true. It's kind of retconned now because of all that Hylia and regular girl Zelda stuff from Skyward Sword though

>>8963230
Ganon comes back without anybody questioning it all the time. Pretty easy to assume that Vaati returned at least once between Minish Cap and Four Swords and got sealed into the Master... I mean, Four Sword.

The real issue I have with the Four Swords games is that there's zero ties to the Triforce and Master Sword, as they're wholly replaced with the Light Force and Four Sword in the lore. All three might as well be its own fully-separated timeline

>>8964396
Picori will be in BoTW2, mark my words

>>8960774
I assumed it was just sending him to different countries. Doesn't matter anyway since he most likely dies at sea at the end of LA

>>8964402
BotW is such a total mishmash of Zelda elements that it's a valid possibility.

>>8964424
I think it's safe to say BotW is a total franchise reboot, yes? It being somehow after all the timelines smacks of "let's just pretend they all took place so we're no longer constrained by what went on before".

>>8960617
They introduced a timeline because fans had been asking them relentlessly for one, years before that point.

>>8964424
>Linebeck island
>even Spirit Tracks is acknowledged, Phantom Zelda armor in DLC
And no Ezlo or Picori? Fucking seriously?

>>8964441
To be fair, the Oracle games don't get much if anything, either. Nintendo seems to have something against the Capcom-made Zeldas.

>>8964441
Forgot to add
>Eventide Island is a reference to Crescent Island from Oracles
>Ravio's mask
Well, it appears to me that there is a callback to every handheld Zelda game except for the fan favorites. Bravo, Nintendo

>>8964451
Eventide is more a reference to Link's Awakening since the goal is to collect the orbs to unlock the shrine at the top of the highest mountain, echoing unlocking the Wind Fish's egg.

>>8964402
It's small, but it doesn't look like a Picori.

>>8964459
Well, 50/50. The very first time I played BoTW and arrived there. It reminded me of this
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK6U3tX3CeQ&ab_channel=ZeldaCentral
6 50

>>8964437
They publicly released an official timeline due to fans, yes, but Aonuma had stated on several occasions they had an internal document that outlined how the games fit together, and even if that was bullshit, most of the major games were all explicitly connected to one another well before that, and creating a timeline was not at all hard as long as you used what the games, promotional materials and the developers themselves stated about them. Admittedly it got real murky once TWW and TP came out, and who really knew where the Four Sword games fit, but you could at the very, very least say there was internal continuity within the pre-OoT games and likely Oracles, within OoT together with its sequels and their sequels, and within the Four Sword games. So at the very least, you had three relatively solid continuity blocs, one of which had a veritable and confirmed timeline split (the OoT bloc). How these three blocs interacted was where the conundrum lay.

>>8964428
No, not at all.

>>8964474
Remember when Nintendo of America thought all Links except the one in Wind Waker were the exact same person all the way through?

>>8964474
>Aonuma had stated on several occasions they had an internal document that outlined how the games fit together
As you say, that was likely bullshit. Devs like Aonuma casually lie all the time, it's a part of the culture over there.

>>8964485
This just in: NoA doesn't know anything and makes shit up. More at 11.

>>8964418
>spoiler
Severe bullshit, for one thing we didn't spend a whole game waking Link up all for nothing, second, seagulls don't fly that far from shore, and Marin!Gull most likely guided him to shore.

>>8960582
I do not trust the official timeline at all, it's shit.
Here's MY timeline
>Pre-Split
Skyward Sword
The Minish Cap
Ocarina of Time
>World where Link defeats Ganondorf
Wind Waker
Phantom Hourglass
Spirit Tracks
>Link is sent back in time and Ganon is stopped without being sealed
Majora's Mask
Twilight Princess
Four Swords
Four Swords Adventures
Link to the Past
Link's Awakening
Legend of Zelda
Adventure of Link
Oracles of Ages and Seasons
>???
Breath of the Wild

>>8964753
This was my timeline to a T as well, back when I still gave a fuck and debated this shit endlessly here and on GameFAQs.

>>8960582
I have literally never played anything outside of Timeline 1 except for Ocarina of Time. Guess that's just the timeline for me.

>>8960617
Is that why they updated it, retard?

Im convinced that they only cared a little bit about the timeline until they realized they could make money by that book and by helping them market certain games (ie skyward sword). The split timeline looks ridiculous and I refuse to believe that this was in mind the whole time as opposed to being cobbled together afterwards.

>>8965089
Obviously they never had it all laid out from the beginning, but if you attempt to construct it game-by-game as each title was released, you can see it coming together nicely, until TWW came and threw everything into question, that is.

>>8965115
Lol I think its all bullshit. Who cares?

>>8965065
No, they updated it to sell the Zelda encyclopedia. And even that didn't contain BotW because, again, Nintendo doesn't actually care about the timeline: ''everything before the Breath of the Wild backstory has faded to myth.''
I hope the timeline isn't the reason you bought one or both of those books anon!

The hero fails split is so fucking stupid that I am still 100% convinced that the only reason they came up with it was to make sure that they had an official timeline that literally no one would have ever guessed before it was revealed.

1/4 of the series is just a "what if?" scenario because of it. And then it doesn't even matter anyway because every game after the timeline just ignores the timeline now.

>>8965236
Still better than trying to insert a random collection of games in the space between OoT and LttP.

The idea of a Zelda timeline is without question one of the dumbest things I think I've seen. It's not even just about the logic of it, it just so retarded as a concept. Why can't people just accept things as they are.

>>8960582
Who the fuck keeps reviving all these evil gods and kings?

Mike Matei is right.
There is no "timeline".
It's all the exact same story told from a different storyteller's POV about THE "LEGEND" OF ZELDA.
Why do Americans ruin everything?

>>8960617
Correct, the games can reference each other but a timeline is just fan fiction at best

>>8965571
Yeah, he is right. Even if we don't take into account the fact that Mike's dick is really fucking big and therefore his opinion is always the only correct one

I guess, I'm the only one or at least one of few, who disregards any sort of time line for this series.
In my opinion, they're all the ""same"".
Or rather, they all have the same origin but as time goes on, legends get told differently or redefined and perhaps the people from Kakariko know this legend differently than the Zoras do.

>>8967368
Same but I still sort of treat Skyward Sword as the first game chronologically. I mean, I don't think about Fi every time I obtain the Master Sword in ALttP or some shit but I still think it's a good origin story

>>8966757
I expect nothing less from the original Loco Bandito.