| mZuzek said: The way you put it it's almost like they didn't deliberately make Zelda 2 after Zelda 1, A Link to the Past before both and the GB/GBC games right after it, Ocarina of Time before all of them and Majora's Mask, Twilight Princess and The Wind Waker as OoT sequels, and Skyward Sword as the prequel to everything and Phantom Hourglass as the sequel to The Wind Waker with Spirit Tracks coming after it and A Link Between Worlds after the Link to the Past saga games. There was always a timeline. Sure, there are plotholes here and there, but most of it was intentional going all the way back to the 80's titles. And no matter how much you hate the official timeline, it's still there, it's still official, and nothing you say will change that. Edit: and I'm directing this to all of you timeline haters. |
You are partially right... but one thing that should be noted is that a number of games were originally positioned differently from how they now are. Miyamoto himself said, after OoT released, that the sequence went OoT -> Zelda 1 -> Zelda 2 -> LttP, with LA appearing anywhere in the sequence (although most accept that LA Link is the same as LttP Link)... he later changed this to put LttP before Zelda 1.
And that's because, under Miyamoto, there was no real timeline. Miyamoto has always operated on an "each game is actually independent" approach to storyline development, with the timeline being fluid as each new game could change the order. It was under Aonuma that a proper timeline was developed.
It's fairly clear that the original intent was to have OoT's "official ending" (of Ganondorf trapped in the Sacred Realm) as the explanation for how the Dark World came to be in LttP. Aonuma had a different idea, and thus the multiple timelines came to be.
So while you can say that "there was always a timeline", and it's strictly true, it misses an important detail. The Timeline wasn't "official" until recently (with the release of the Hyrule Historia). Before then, it was nothing more than a guide, something developed to help them fit the mythology together and help spark story ideas, but subject to change as game details are tweaked. And it's not like there aren't still holes created by the official timeline.
