Mr Khan said:
F0X said:
S.Peelman said:
F0X said:
The Zelda timeline is not even an actual timeline to begin with. It's really a Zelda multiverse in which Nintendo's writers can get away with anything and everything. |
Recently, a timeline was sort of made canon because of it's inclusion in the 'Hyrule Historia' book, which is an official Nintendo release. This basically also confirmes all games occur in the same universe, over a span of many millenia.
You are right that the timeline is not an actual literal telling of history, like in say Star Wars, however. The book mentions a sort of clause. All stories in the games are 'Legends', like the titles say, which means they have been passed down for like thousends of generations and because stories change over time, details can differ between games. For example, to Wind Waker, something like Ocarina of Time happened. To NES Zelda (the original), something like A Link to the Past happened. And so on. The splitting in OoT occurs because of supernatural means, the way the timeline splits from OoT to ALttP is still a matter of debate though as it is not explicitely said in the book. Most have interpreted it as 'Link dies', of which I'm not a fan off, that way you could have a million timelines.
So yes, Nintendo writers can get away with anything  .
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Unfortunately, believeing that they exist in the same universe also means a giant gap or inconsistency in continuity. Remember the part in Ocarina of Time in which Link failed and Hyrule wasn't saved? I didn't. Because it didn't happen. The split timeline thing happened. That's perfectly acceptable. But since Link didn't fail in OoT's storyline, there's a plot inconsistency.
Unless, of course, the Zelda timeline is a multiverse. In that case, anything is possible. You could get a Game Over in Ocarina of Time and, oh, there's a branch universe created in which A Link to the Past takes place. If I could fix my problem with embedding videos, I have one that explains this idea rather well...
...nope. Okay, here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1TSpfPFNlE
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Khuutra once cited an interesting theory whereby the theft of the Silver Gauntlets created a third timeline, one equivalent to Link simply failing (but not getting killed), because the theft of the Silver Gauntlets did not occur in a stable time loop like the draining of the Kakariko Well did. The silver gauntlets are, presumably, unstolen in the first future, and Link has to go back to get them, leaving behind a world where five of the six sages were liberated and the hero of time simply vanished from time to acquire a needed tool. Thus we would have Ganondorf's victory, but also Sages empowered to stop him (creating the war referenced in LttP's backstory)
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