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Khuutra on 22 December 2011
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Mr Khan said:
Khuutra said:
Now that I think on it, perhaps it's not the act of time travel in itself that creates the new timelines, it's the act of changing the past. We know in Ocarina of Time that the Song of Storms was part of a contained time loop, where Link had to go back in time and play the song so he could learn it, which frees up the sequence involving the bottom of the well (he's also responsible for unleashing Bongo Bongo, no less).

No, where Link really changes the timeline is probably when he steals the Silver Gauntlets. This wasn't a self-contained loop; if it were, we'd have to pick up the Gauntlets in the future, but also go back in time to obtain them so we could get them in the future. Instead he removes the Gauntlets from one timeline altogether. That is probably what created the third timeline, one where Link wasn't there to defeat Ganon.

I can see that logic, but to a point it works on a stable loop if you think in terms of multiple lines: up to the first encounter with the Spirit Temple, the silver gauntlets did not exist in the adult timeline (and that they did not exist because child link had already plundered them), and that this place where the silver gauntlets did not exist but 5 of the 6 sages were liberated continued to exist after adult link went back in time and created a new timeline wherein the silver gauntlets existed because he had them, enabling the liberation of Nabooru and fulfillment of the fight against Ganondorf immediately.


Neither of yoru last two posts are strictly true. The SIlver Gauntlets always existed, the problem is that Link created a timeline where he spontaneously ceased to exist by removing them and bringing them forward, since he couldn't get them himself in the present.

And it's not required that Ganondorf go into the Sacred Realm in the child timeline. It's plainly illustrated and confirmed in the Historia that the original Triforce split carried back retroactively; Link has the Triforce of Courage in the very end of Ocarina of Time.