Everyone is curious as to how The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild fits into The Legend of Zelda timeline which is complex and intricate thing. Nintendo has recently released a new version of the timeline on the Japanese Zelda series portal. The latest Zelda game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been placed at the end, but as Siliconera reports, it is not connected to any of the three timelines. Instead, the game is separated, but still at the very end. Japanese publication Famitsu caught up with producer Eiji Aonuma and director Hidemaro Fujibayashi to find out what the changes meant. Here’s their reply:
Eiji Aonuma, series producer: “Well of course it’s at the very end. But, I get what you’re asking, it’s which timeline is it the end of?”
Hidemaro Fujibayashi, director: “That’s… up to the player’s imagination, isn’t it?”
Aonuma: “Hyrule’s history changes with time. When we think of the next game and what we want to do with it, we might think, “Oh, this’ll fit well”, and place it neatly into the timeline, but sometimes we think, “Oh crap”, and have to change the placement. Actually, the decided history has been tweaked many times.” (laughs)
Fujibayashi: “Lately within the company, a term called ‘New Translation’ has cropped up. (laughs) Strictly speaking, we don’t change it, but rather new information and truths come to light.”
Famitsu: I see, so the way to interpret the lore of Breath of the Wild is still up for academic debate. (laughs)
Fujibayashi: “That’s why you should pay attention to future studies as well! Please look forward to it.” (laughs)
I figured it to be the end but also a connection not so isolated..
I’m very happy about this. I prefer the vague up to interpretation approach to a rigid non sensical story. I always found people’s need for a defined canon in Zelda and other games, movies, etc. a little odd. Like they are literally just stories that’s vaguely connect. There is no Trueax timeline because it’s fiction. But I confess that I am one of the people who wouldn’t be fine with zero cutscenes in Zelda, so story isnt exactly why i play video games…. at all. Also I hope from now on we can get past the split timeline crap and place every game after BOTW
Mean the to type WOULD be fine with zero cutscenes
*meant to type
Why do people want a defined canon? Because some people actually like consistency with their stories. It’s why people hate Star Trek Discovery, for instance. (Those initials: S.T.D. I don’t think they thought that name through. If the show is as shitty as I keep hearing with how it pisses all over canon, STD is ultimately very fitting.)
lol, what a cop out
They’ve went back to “I dunno, make it up yourself”
Pingback: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Now Has an Official Place in the Series’ Timeline… Sort Of – Mark Swarrts
At first, this sounds like a lazy cop out. But this: Fujibayashi: “That’s why you should pay attention to future studies as well! Please look forward to it.” (laughs) I want to say this is a hint that revealing which timeline Breath of the Wild is connected to will spoil the next major game in the franchise. Could they actually have a story planned out (pre-production) for the next big entry this time around instead of coming up with a story in post-production? Breath of the Wild did some massive changes to how they made the gameplay so maybe a sequel (or a prequel (Dun, dun, dunnn!)) will do some changes to how they approach a story. New director, new development team, new ways of making a Legend of Zelda game. If this is the case, I’m glad the new director knows you can do a story driven game & STILL have it be an open world game.
Excuuuuse me, Princess.
Zelda referenced Twilight Princess in her dialogue in the game without being very subtle, pretty firmly placing this as the end of the Child Link Timeline.
Even so it doesn’t make very much difference. The amount of time that has to take place between this game and any previous one is pretty ridiculous, as they FIRST need to have developed a society sufficiently technologically advanced to make all the Guardians and towers and shrines, then have all those things get destroyed and become artifacts, then have enough time go by for everyone to have forgotten about them, and finally the time it takes the Hylian royal family in the game to discover, excavate, research, and activate said ancient tech. You’re looking at thousands upon thousands upon thousands of years. Enough time that there isn’t actually any real continuity with any of the events that aren’t shared by all three timelines. So the whole thing is kind of pointless.
They’re just going to keep making the games as if there’s no timeline anyway.
10,000 years is plenty of time for all of that to occur. I mean, we only took around 200 years (maybe less) to get where we are today. Imagine how far we can get in another 200 years if technology continues to improve at the rate it’s going. Besides, the tech used to create the Guardians & such was tech that the Sheikah created if I remember correctly. Maybe after the Hyrulean Civil War that occurred before the events of Ocarina of Time, most of the Sheikah founded a hidden village & used some tech to hide their civilization from the rest of the world (ala Wakanda of Marvel) while continuing to advance beyond the rest of the world, but the rise of Calamity Ganon forced them out of hiding which led to the creation of the guardians & such. It would also explain why the Sheikah are still around after all of these centuries even though by the time Ocarina of Time occurred, the Hylians considered the Sheikah almost extinct with Impa being the only one left. Or maybe the Sheikah have always been more advanced than the rest of their world (ala Atlantis, minus the destruction of their civilization) and most remained hidden while a select few were allowed to be in plain sight (aka the Sheikah assigned to protect the goddess Hylia’s incarnation Zelda & the family bloodline that followed.) Nintendo has left plenty of things open to interpretation (whether by complete accident or on purpose to give future writers & directors a chance to put their own spin on the history of the Zelda games) between games with the Legend of Zelda series that anyone can come up with their own ideas & such. The more things that remain a mystery with the Legend of Zelda series, the less likely a future director/writer will be painted into a corner of what they can & can’t do with their Zelda game/story. If you read what Aonuma & Fujibayashi are saying closely, it seems this actually is the case. (I could be interpreting this interview wrong but, even if I were to be right, it’s not like they’d admit it, anyway; Nintendo loves their secrets. And as much as it annoys me sometimes, this company has always done a damn good job at keeping most things secret til they want you to know about it and they are fucking awesome in that regard.)
Of course, bad lore and half ass timeline for a bad game.
Cool. i was looking for salt for my fries
I don’t care much, I just wanna be a hero baby, iiiii can beeee you hero BABY, I can feel your pain mmmm laa laaa
I think it would be cool if BotW somehow recombined the timelines. I know that is not how timelines work, but *bleep* it, that’s what I want.
It’s fantasy. Who gives a shit if recombining timelines is not accurate? lol Alternate timelines/dimensions is still in the realm of fantasy as well even though there is the multi-verse theory in Science.
Joking & scientific theorizing aside, there is one way to recombine the timelines for which we have The Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds to thank for.
*Spoilers if you haven’t played that game all the way through.* Two of the alternate timelines’ Triforces get destroyed, along with both Lorule’s Triforces so that they can’t be used to wish for the Triforces of Hyrule to be restored (like what they did at the end of LBW when Hyrule’s Triforce was used to restore Lorule’s), and to save the denizens of both timelines, the goddesses open a portal to the Hyrule & Lorule that still retain their Triforces for the surviving refugees to flee to.
Anyway, I actually want this to happen myself. Let’s just recombine the timelines somehow. We can still keep all of the canon that’s existed up to this point since the events of all three timelines still occurred. It’s just the dimensions they occurred in no longer exist.
This hurts my brain and definitely makes me not want to play any of the games past Majoras mask. What the fuck happened to the content and replay factor of the series? Highly disappointed in this…
It may sound ridiculous, but if you consider Hyrule Warriors released before this which was all about portals through time and timelines being opened, then seeing BotW as a convergence of timelines makes sense. It’s almost like the split wasn’t sustainable anymore as there are remnants from all three timelines in BotW. Additionally, Skyward Sword, the last console 3d Zelda Game, was the first in the timeline. It only makes sense that BotW is the last. Convergence makes the most sense IMO.
Hyrule Warriors & Link Between Worlds are two games that could be used to explain the convergence of the 3 timelines. Link Between Worlds revealed that destroying the Triforce causes the world it belongs to to slowly wither & die. Just have someone destroy the Triforces of two of the timelines (along with Lorule’s Triforce so no one can use it to restore Hyrule’s,) and, to save the denizens of the dying worlds, use the time portals from Hyrule Warriors as a means of letting them travel to the Hyrule that isn’t crumbling because of the loss of it’s Triforce. Of course, this would require either A) making Hyrule Warriors canon (an idea that will no doubt piss off some people) or B) making a new Legend of Zelda game set 10k years before BotW that makes the timeline portals of Hyrule Warriors canon.
Like I said before, revealing which timeline BotW is connected to would be, in itself, a spoiler for a future game if a plan for a future Zelda game is to converge the timelines back into one.
Pingback: US: Nintendo Switch Starter Pack Game Bundles Coming September | My Nintendo News