Comment by shermantanktop
3 days ago
Sometimes? I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure these games were generally not built with a hefty bible full of inviolable lore. Plot and continuity errors are common enough to show that.
Some people are very invested in making sense of things that just don’t have a ton of intention and meaning behind them.
The timeline's always been a mess, but it has been something that has been given serious thought since at least the late 90s.
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/forum/threads/the-truth-behind-...
https://old.reddit.com/r/truezelda/comments/sejcwx/newly_tra...
https://old.reddit.com/r/zelda/comments/6866wt/addressing_th...
That's not to say that there is a capital C canon that constrains all subsequent installments to be 100% self consistent. They seem to enjoy the freedom of being able to change things to fit their vision for the next installment. I just don't think it's correct to say there's no thought at all put into the head revision of the canon.
I read through those links (ha) and I agree, they knew the overall story was interesting to players, but intentionally elevated story over continuity. That was my original point.
The same debates happen about early games made with far less intention and artistry. For those games I’d be surprised if there was much care about canon at all.
Especially when the studio which made game v1 was fired and a new studio was asked to take some random game in development and update the sprite to look like v1’s box art. And 40 years later people are arguing about timelines and character arcs?
The developers of the Zelda series always tried to make new games fit the previous one's lore.
The devs themselves put a ton of effort on making these games kinda fit with each other at the time they were making each new installment, it wasn't a retroactive thing. They just weren't super pedantic about it until the official timeline came out.