Show HN: The Zelda timeline to catch up before the Ocarina of Time remake
10 hours ago (legendofhyrule.com)
I made this ahead of the Ocarina of Time remake which comes out in 17 days. I remember the feeling of playing it as a kid but I hadn’t kept up with the story so I built a timeline to catch up before the Door of Time reopens.
Nintendo’s own timeline is the authority here (Hyrule Historia and their chronicle page). The fun part was rethinking how to visualize it. It branches at the end of Ocarina into three eras depending on whether Link wins or loses, so each era is its own thread on the cloth. The threads meet again much later with Breath of the Wild.
I had a lot of help from Claude. I’d often thought about building things like this but never found the time between the day job and the rest of life.
I don't consider it to be one unified story at all, I mean some of the series obviously are connected, but the rest are, as the name suggests, legends about Zelda. Unconnected unreliable narrations about some sort of heroic past events. Everybody agrees about the characters involved but as to what exactly happened, that is lost to time. So each culture is now telling the story a different way, emphasizing whatever is important to them.
I consider as a sort of modern equivalent to the coyote stories. or Paul Bunyan, Finn McCool, Gilgamesh, Or really, any legendary heroic epic passed along by oral storytelling.
So it is fun to try to fit it into some sort of unified timeline. But I don't think it is, that is not how they were actually written and we would loose most of the interesting storytelling flexibility if that is how they write them in the future.
While I agree in spirit and think that was true for most of the games when written, there has been an official timeline published by Nintendo[1,2] since 2011 (and the idea was apparently around internally since 2002).
I would be surprised if it did not have some impact on the writing of the games, though of course there is (as of yet) no explicit reference to the timeline in the games.
[1]: https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda_timeline [2]: https://zelda.nintendo.com/about/
Sure but the Nintendo timeline is just another retelling of the legends of Zelda, an unreliable meta story of a past (or future) that is lost to time
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Many of the games include histories within the current telling, histories which include past versions of Gannon, Link, and/or Zelda.
It's pretty clear that the cyclic nature is a part of the story.
I prefer this interpretation, but there is just so much textual content in the games which support a unified branching timeline for most of the games. You can start with the explicit chronologies you have and mostly put them together like a puzzle. Zelda games which don't explicitly position themselves in chronological relationship to another Zelda game are the exception (like OoS/OoA or the Four Swords timelines).
This is not a deep-Zelda-nerd take, this is mostly working with simple connections like "Zelda 2 is a sequel to Zelda 1".
I think most Nintendo IPs are about playing around with the same motifs, ideas, narratives, and gameplay elements. Metroid is another series where this is very evident, with half of the games being spiritually a remake of a game which game before. A timeline doesn't preclude the Zelda series as a story about the cyclical nature of conflict, about archetypes reappearing throughout history, or as a legend passed over generations.
That's similar the way I think about James Bond. He's not one singular person, but a code name given to an agent in deep cover. The agent, the person changes through the decades, but the name lives on.
I don't think most Japanese media is as concerned with fitting things into a canon as much as American media is. Like, in Gundam, you have 0079, Thunderbolt, and Origin all allegedly in the UC canon, but there's pretty significant deviations in Thunderbolt and Origin from 0079 so they're not really the same timelines. American comics will also have multiple timelines or universes, but they'll make it clear which one each individual series goes with, and have crossover events explicitly acknowledging the existence of the different canons. Japanese media doesn't tend to do that, and I think trying to fit it into a coherent timeline is a fool's errand
Japan doesn't seem to take the hero fantasy thing as seriously. It seems to be more about escapism in general and what the show and characters are "about," even if that's not really very deep to begin with.
What are you talking about? The timeline is official and published by Nintendo, a Japanese company. It's not some fan theory.
It's questionable that it's not literally just a fan theory. For years fans were trying to put the Zelda games on a single timeline, and Nintendo just didn't care. The split timeline was one of the top theories of how everything can be put together, based off of a single developer comment that implied a 2 way split instead of a 3 way split: https://zelda-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Split_Timeline
Then Hyrule Hostoria came out as a collectable. I would put good money on a conversation during its writing that went like this "What else can we put in here?" "Maybe a timeline of the games?" "Yeah, sure. What's the official one?" "There isn't one. The fans have a fun split timeline one." "Oh neat. Yeah work out the details. Now has anyone found that Wind Waker concept art yet?"
A common flaw I see in media literacy is operating like the author has pulled a completely coherent story from a different universe and simply written it down, as opposed to a creative process. Nintendo has never cared about the timeline, nor developing a single coherent story across all of the Zelda games. Some games are sequals, prequels, or have direct references. The timeline itself is purely from non-game sources, and is obviously not a factor when they design a new game.
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Yes, but published very much due to fan pressure, and clearly figured out to match the games rather than being designed up front. Nintendo perhaps more than other Japanese companies intentionally avoids letting existing lore constrain their creativity on new games. That apparently is changing however, as now that Nintendo has successfully launched a cinematic arm they have said they want the movies to be a source of canon that the games will reinforce, a markedly different strategy than they've used previously.
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I do not want to rain on your parade, but I find attempts to impose a coherent timeline on Zelda miss the opportunity to engage with it as a legend, a story told over and over with certain essential parts but many changing interpretations. How our very familiarity with the story creates the opportunity for surprise. There are so many fictional worlds with sprawling lore, and so few that engage with the retelling of stories and myths like Zelda does.
I agree, but Nintendo greatly damaged opposition efforts to timelining by... endorsing one. In an artbook, of all places.
Eh, even before 2011 with the official timeline and the Skyward Sword prequel-to-all-games, there was plenty of textual content to support a timeline.
AoL was a sequel to LoZ. ALttP was a prequel to LoZ. LA was a sequel to ALttP.
OoT is explicitly a prequel to ALttP.
OoT splits into at least two timelines. MM explicitly follows the child Link who preempted Ganon's ascension. WW explicitly has you fight the Ganon defeated by adult Link. TP explicitly places itself as a sequel to the "child timeline" and so also a sequel to MM.
The only games which lacked an explicit placement to the rest were the Four Swords series and the Oracle games. Not small exceptions, but exceptions none the less, and that's only if you ignore interviews. (And interviews would give you Minish Cap preceding Four Swords preceding Ocarina of Time.)
What’s the word for trying to do cluster analysis on what is actually randomly distributed data? The games do have obvious similarities and sometimes refer to each other, but they’re independent events.
Nintendo now maintains/updates an official timeline: https://zelda.nintendo.com/about/
Sure but that's a retcon. They didn't have this in mind when they made the games.
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this is more so a corporate acquihire of fan fiction writers
Zelda canon was never that deep when each game was written
writers had no secret timeline or their own deep interest in the prior writers rendition
they have a loose setting and other people that chose the writer to have near complete license to do whatever they want with it
and even that’s a negotiation, writers often have their own backlogged story already that they adapt to existing IP retroactively
whatever it doesn’t matter, I’m just surprised people are actually spending energy on this for this franchise. If this is what “fun” looks like now, it’s fine
I'm pretty sure Nintendo itself said at one point that they don't have a clear chronological order and may not tie into each other properly, even though they later retconned an order.
Still, it's fun to try to figure out how the puzzle pieces might fit together even though they came out of different boxes.
I've only played a handful of these games .. but do they work together as a theme or story progression or are they, as I suspect, pretty much independent rehashes with no real relationship other than making money and appeasing fans?
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If they have obvious similarities, they aren't randomly distributed data
Correlation does not imply causation.
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https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
https://xkcd.com/111/
The second graph on the spurious correlations page bugs me, that has a plausible explanation! (cultural prestige / zeitgeist centralizing on the hard sciences)
Love the site, though I'll always prefer this attempt at explaining the Zelda timeline by Brian David Gilbert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-25c8Rsobw
Thanks! I’ll check it out
I’m not a fan of the chronological approach, but I like this project. It’s beautifully done, I found it interesting to explore
I prefer to think of LoZ without a coherent timeline. Just 3 archetypal souls finding each other again and again and again...
I just wanted to say thank you, you made my day brighter because you reminded me the remake comes out in 17 days and you got me to reconnect with one of my favourite games.
Seems like a lot of folks here are eager to discuss about interpretation and opinion, I take that as Nintendo did a great job providing enough to keep everyone engaged into the dream and fantasy behind it.
Cheers To more Zelda!
Thank you! This is my favourite comment from the thread. You caught the heart of it.
This is like watching trailers about a movie before going to the movie. Letting it wreck your wonderment. If you've never played OOT I suggest you just take it in on its own merit. Then go back and look at this. Let it surprise you. We don't do this enough.
Also, it's almost an open secret that the the Nintendo development teams weren't really thinking in terms of a coherent timeline until later when they published some book mainly because they saw an opportunity to make money and sell merch to a bunch of nerds rather than to truly give a history to a bunch of somewhat related but fairly disjointed games all from the same franchise. They only pretend there's a timeline cause it sells games and books. Not cause there really is. What's worse is that the Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom games really throw a wrench in the works.
TLDR: enjoy these games on their own merit and know that only few titles are meant to be really connected in some way. Like Ocarina of Time <-> Majora's Mask and/or Breath of the Wild <-> Tears of the Kingdom . As for the rest there's slight references to each other but not really much linking them.
I played Legend of Zelda, Adventure of Link, A Link to the Past, and Ocarina of Time to conclusion. I haven't really played any Zelda games since then, except maybe for a few minutes for a few of them.
I'm a little surprised to hear that Ocarina of Time is getting a remake. I take it it's going to be a Switch 2 exclusive?
If you are still interested in the franchise and in video games, what I can tell you is that the Zelda franchise ages like good wine.
In other words : if you have good memories of your experiences with those games, do yourself the favor of playing the other titles, they are equally good.
It’s the second remake for OoT (it had a DS version as well). It holds similar status to FF7 in that it was the first 3D version of its franchise and brought a lot of new blood into the fanbase.
Yes
Don't forget to include:
- Link: The Faces of Evil
- Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon
- Link's Crossbow Training
- the various Hyrule Warriors games
Good luck! :)
Per a scholar in the field [0], clearly The Legend of Zelda Monopoly is the pin which holds the entire Zelda timeline together!
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-25c8Rsobw
I thought the Hyrule Warriors games were not canon. Did I get that wrong?
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is canon.
i think the second one is canon but it has time travel and stuff so it's also basically not
(the second one wasn't very good..but the first is a great game and runs even better on Switch 2.)
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Apocrypha!
Zelda is not a continuous story. It’s a retelling of the same stories over and over with new elements.
Western audiences just love literalism.
I enjoyed it, but for things like this, I would actually like to know what your genuine contribution was and what Claude did for you. It just makes me appreciate it more when I know that a human made the effort of investing their own creativity and thought into the writing or design.
So you’re saying your appreciation of a thing can only be attributed in retrospect after learning about how it was created and what human labors went into it and will be subjectively assigned based on your own personal beliefs around that contribution.
Seems a bit weird. To me, it’s enough that someone has a thought of something they wish existed and now it does exist. How they bring it into existence isn’t of much importance to me. The AI didn’t dream this into existence, but it may very well have performed 99.9% of the creative work, but the human provided the spark in the form of that instruction to do so. With nearly all creative works, I can appreciate the craft but also I don’t have to; I can just appreciate the output.
Why? What does it matter for a random video game visualization?
Yeah I was surprised there was a timeline and all
... and then comes the movie, and it's canon weight is going to blow it all up
This is really fun! Great design!
Thank you! It was a hoot to let my ideas run and have fun.
This is a lovely website, but the premise is entirely incorrect (that there's anything you need to know going in), and also spoils details from the game which this is supposedly background for.
Nobody should be discussing the timeline before playing the games. And not from some kind of purity perspective, but just because it's nerd shit that you won't get anything out of until you do. I really enjoy thinking and talking about the timeline, but I'm under no illusion that it's anything more than after-the-fact fanfiction.
Isn't it just "Zelda runs off to be with Ganondorf, pretends she is happy when Link saves her", same schtick as Mario?
No, in many of the games it’s not like she’s a damsel in distress, and usually helps like to defeat ganon
Having trouble loading the link
No matter how much you load Link he is just as nimble and spry. Encumbrance isn't an issue in the Zelda games
Links Awakening is its own world Link didn't do any of that other stuff he was just an adventurous dude who found himself on an island and that was the most remarkable thing about his life and he was still just a normal dude after.
I don't think you need to "catch up," every Zelda game is self-contained. Also, it's a remake of a game you already played, so you already know the story. If anything, coming in fresh would be a benefit.
Idk why we can't enjoy Zelda games for what they are - each game has recurring core cast, similar mythological archetypes & thematic motifs, and similar gameplay, but are all independent of each other. Even the games that are direct sequels to each other are still very independent.
We can enjoy them for what they are. A bunch of fans arguing online doesn’t detract from the majority who will just play the game and enjoy it.
Why does the timeline split into 3 after OOT?
In Ocarina of Time, Link has the ability to travel back and forth to the future, taking on an adult form. As an adult, he defeats Ganon and seals him away, with Ganon swearing to return one day.
But then Link returns to his childhood time. As a child, Link warns Zelda about Ganon, and preempts the future (where Ganon takes power and adult Link defeats him) from happening. So, there are at least two timelines.
Majora's Mask follows this child Link in one of the few explicit sequels in the series.
But then Wind Waker faces off against the Ganon defeated by adult Link. This is explicitly referenced in the text but it's not so clear-cut a sequel.
Meanwhile, Ocarina of Time was explicitly a prequel to A Link to the Past (depicting the events described in ALttP's backstory). But (1) some events don't quite line up and (2) the continuity of games established in the other timelines can't really neatly fit the ALttP-LA-OoS/OoA-LoZ-LA chronology. So a third timeline is just the neatest way to do it.
None of this really matters for playing or understanding the games, though. With the exception of Majora's Mask (and Phantom Hourglass / Spirit Tracks to a lesser extent), each Zelda game can be enjoyed as someones first Zelda.
Weird design choice by Nintendo. Imo, the whole timeline thing is a very clear afterthought for legend of zelda, most games have little to no relation to each other.
Well, I feel like Nintendo just makes games and they've never cared much about lore. I feel the weird choice is by gamers, for continuing to care about this "timeline" which is so clearly a post-hoc rationalization.
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There's a story?
Sorry everyone here is dumping on you, I think kids these days say some like “go touch grass” when this kind of thing happens.
I think this is neat and honestly the perfect use of an LLM, just some for-fun project to visualize something completely inconsequential and nostalgic.
Somehow is devolved into dunking on the west and other unfortunate “better than thou” comments.
Thank you for the kind words. I'm not fazed by the discussion. I just hope both teams have fun.
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I'm gonna be the annoying guy and ask... Why? There's an official timeline page and if you want more details there's a page on a community maintained wiki (even independent from the hell that is wikia/fandom/whatever their current name is). I understand there's sense of accomplishment in personal projects... But a lot of this seems to be done by AI anyway, and that's my main gripe. Why are we wasting computing like this? To me this feels on par to using AI for things that can otherwise be easily looked up on a search engine (as long as your SE lets you filter through the slop)
I'm sorry if this feels like a personal attack - it really isn't my intention, but why are we pretending that things like this have no impact? And yes I know massive AI usage in corporate environments, slop image/video generation, etc have much more impact and that even that is still small compared to the amount of compute used from training (EDIT: and yes, what i'm mad about is specifically the environmental impact from this wasted compute). But that argument feels a lot like "my single vote doesn't count". Could we try to not make it worse? Sorry for being a party pooper i guess.
</rant>
What a rollercoaster.