Hyrule Town Square
- Thread starter Caldwin
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Somewhere around here are posts of me wishing Gleeok would make it into a 3D Zelda and Shadewing warning me about wishing on a monkey's paw, but I can't seem to find it.
No reason I bring that up really. It's just that since that last trip to Lake Hylia, I can't seem to find my ass.
No reason I bring that up really. It's just that since that last trip to Lake Hylia, I can't seem to find my ass.
So... yeah. Despite my having made a whole nine-post long explanation of the Zelda timeline, in which BOTW and TOTK were placed at the end of the Child Timeline, I no longer agree with that decision. After going through all of TOTK's storyline, I'm now convinced that BOTW and TOTK are together a full continuity reboot set in their own universe completely separate from the splitting timeline of the first 18 canonical games.
While BOTW contained references to both SS and OOT that suggested there was some shared history in BOTW, TOTK pretty much throws everything out the window to make both it and BOTW unable fit on any branch of either the official timeline or the fan-revised one that I had gone over. We now just have to take all those references as merely fan service Easter eggs and say that only some events similar to those of SS and OOT happened in BOTW/TOTK's past, but not the exact same events whole cloth.
BOTW and TOTK are basically like what Transformers Animated was to the other TF cartoons that preceded it. And I am okay with that.
While BOTW contained references to both SS and OOT that suggested there was some shared history in BOTW, TOTK pretty much throws everything out the window to make both it and BOTW unable fit on any branch of either the official timeline or the fan-revised one that I had gone over. We now just have to take all those references as merely fan service Easter eggs and say that only some events similar to those of SS and OOT happened in BOTW/TOTK's past, but not the exact same events whole cloth.
BOTW and TOTK are basically like what Transformers Animated was to the other TF cartoons that preceded it. And I am okay with that.
I've been under the assumption for quite some time that the whole timeline thing was nonsense anyway, despite what Nintendo claims. It's more of a re-telling and re-interpetation of the same series of stories over and over. Only games that REALLY link together properly are the ones that explicitly work that way due to being direct sequels. Everything else has always had to kind of be cludged in one way or another(IIRC, Nintendo themselves have move games around in the OFFICIAL timeline, when it suited them). Best to simply think of Hyrule as an uncollapsed quantum state that could have an unlimited number of results, though MOST will result in some sort of Zelda, Link and Ganon situation.
Technically, it was the people who made the books, who are a third party rather than Nintendo proper.
And all that was moved was the two Oracle games, which the Historia first placed between ALTTP and LA, but the Encyclopedia just traded places between the Oracles and LA, placing the former after the latter.
But, yeah, TOTK is the one that broke all sense of chronology. Its backstory paints too different a picture from what games like ALTTP, OOT, FSA, TMC, TP, and SS all said about Hyrule's history to let it fit with any of them. And there's no room for yet another timeline split to simply branch it and BOTW off into another direction, as it just conflicts too much with pretty much every one of the most important games, lore-wise, in the established timeline.
There's a whole bunch of videos on YouTube where people are practically jumping for joy over how TOTK supposedly "fixes" or "solves" the Zelda timeline and how "it all makes sense now" and "they didn't retcon anything!" And every one of these videos is full of the most ridiculous claims ever, saying things like "BOTW and TOTK take place before SS!" or "TOTK proves the timeline branches converged together!" or "TOTK's backstory is perfectly connected to everything!" and I'm am just losing my mind over how nonsensical all of these videos are. Like, some of them try to explain the quantum mechanics behind how TOTK makes everything all make sense now, and I am just baffled by some of the things they are saying. It's clear that these guys really do not get how quantum mechanics works, especially in regards to the Zelda series, and all these videos are doing are just making my head hurt. So much.
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the BotW universe goes something like this....
Creation of the world
(time skip of unknown duration)
Arrival of the Zonai
(time skip of unknown duration)
Founding of Hyrule (Not sure if the bulk of the Zonai left before or after this event, ToTK doesn't make it clear, but by the time of the imprisoning war they were few in number)
Rise of Ganon
Imprisoning War
(time skip of unknown duration)
Loss of Zonai tech and the Rise of the Sheikah and their technology(unknown duration)
Calamity Ganon stopped by Hyrule forces using advanced Sheikah tech(guardians and devine beasts)
Roughly 10,000 year gap in which most knowledge of Sheikah tech was lost
Events depicted in BotW
Events depicted in the Link portions of TotK
You COULD conceivably shoehorn in some of the previous games into a couple of those gaps, but it would be messy and you'd still have to try and explain some major discrepancies. As far as putting all this in before SS.... I just don't see how that would work. Heck the OFFICIAL Zelda website doesn't seem to slot the BotW series into the timeline at all, at least not currently.
(haven't finished TotK yet, so I may have some gaps that are explained in portions I haven't gotten to yet)
Creation of the world
(time skip of unknown duration)
Arrival of the Zonai
(time skip of unknown duration)
Founding of Hyrule (Not sure if the bulk of the Zonai left before or after this event, ToTK doesn't make it clear, but by the time of the imprisoning war they were few in number)
Rise of Ganon
Imprisoning War
(time skip of unknown duration)
Loss of Zonai tech and the Rise of the Sheikah and their technology(unknown duration)
Calamity Ganon stopped by Hyrule forces using advanced Sheikah tech(guardians and devine beasts)
Roughly 10,000 year gap in which most knowledge of Sheikah tech was lost
Events depicted in BotW
Events depicted in the Link portions of TotK
You COULD conceivably shoehorn in some of the previous games into a couple of those gaps, but it would be messy and you'd still have to try and explain some major discrepancies. As far as putting all this in before SS.... I just don't see how that would work. Heck the OFFICIAL Zelda website doesn't seem to slot the BotW series into the timeline at all, at least not currently.
(haven't finished TotK yet, so I may have some gaps that are explained in portions I haven't gotten to yet)
No one wins when it comes to Zelda timelines.
Right. The events of SS could maybe slot into that first time skip before the Zonai arrive, but that's a big "maybe". The sound effect of Fi from SS is heard coming from the Master Sword in both BOTW and TOTK, and the Great Deku Tree alludes to the Master Sword having been created by a goddess, which was the case in SS where it was originally the Goddess Sword created by Hylia, so perhaps some kind of events similar to SS transpired during that gap.
The biggest issues come from
Ganondorf and the Imprisoning War both existing during the reign of Hyrule Kingdom's original founders, and the simple fact that the Imprisoning War detailed in this game resembles absolutely nothing that was detailed about the Imprisoning War in either ALTTP proper or in Hyrule Historia's revisionist history account of it.
There is also the fact that BOTW had the following inscription found on one of its Zora Stone Monuments:
This is obviously a reference to the Adult Era events of OOT, but in no way does TOTK's backstory allow for those events (at least, as we know them) to transpire at any point in TOTK's history. If anything, now the "evil man" mentioned can no longer be Ganondorf but someone else instead, which would then enable these events to have occurred at some point during the third time skip given above, but it's still fairly messy now thanks to TOTK's new backstory contradicting OOT on almost every level.
Though, I will give TOTK this: It almost, almost, seemed like it was going to answer a mystery that Twilight Princess introduced but didn't fully answer. In TP, it was said that, according to legend, a race of people who were closer to the gods than the Hylians were the ones who founded Hyrule, and that these people were the ones who built a great civilization in the sky. TP wanted us to think that it was talking about the Oocca (those creepy chickens with human heads), but it was never actually explicit about that. Fans also suspected that these people could have been the Wind Tribe from TMC, who were said in that game to have once been very close to the royal family in the kingdom's early days, before they too left the surface and ascended into the sky to make a home for themselves in the clouds. But now, TOTK goes and reveals that none other than the Zonai were the closest race to the gods, came down from their prosperous civilization in the sky, and helped to found the kingdom of Hyrule on the surface. BUT, by making the Zonai a bunch of goat people, that pretty much debunks any hopes there were of the Zonai potentially having any inherent connection to either the Wind Tribe or the Oocca.
Agreed. The arguments I've seen people make is that there are already ruins of a civilization all over the surface when Link first arrives there in SS. But the whole point of that game's timeframe is that it's supposed to take place before the kingdom of Hyrule first came about. Those ruins are supposed to be leftover from the ancient people who worshipped Goddess Hylia before she gathered many of them together and rose them into the sky on Skyloft. The implication about those who remained behind on the surface is that those people became the Sheikah. There was no Hyrule before SS.
Yeah, Nintendo were deliberately ambiguous about BOTW's timeline placement during all that time before TOTK first went into development. They didn't want to put it on any of the three timeline branches since they felt doing so would potentially stifle their creative freedom when making the game.
And now along comes TOTK with its own brand new account for the history of its Hyrule, and it just shows that Nintendo's Zelda team just did not care about making it fit with any of the pre-BOTW games this time.
Ergo, I'm content to let these two remain a separate continuity altogether, while the first 18 games may continue to stick to their three-pronged timeline as is (specifically, the fan-crafted one I went over before, not the "official" one with its dumb Downfall split and dumb placement of FSA).
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Yes, becuase we dont have anything like fish evolving into birds or elves becoming trees....
The Kokiri were forest spirits of a sort, them 'dying' may be transformation: in the child era they became monkeys that have Kokiri symbols and help Link in Twilight Princess, in the adult era they became Koroks and in the distant past they were Kikwi who were recycled into Kokiri and onwards.
As for Rito, they are different in both games, the ones in BOTW are birdlike and have wings, the ones in TWW are more human and require Valoo's scale to grow their wings, what's notable is in OOT you can get a 'Zora scale' to help dive deeper which implies scales off Valoo and Jabu Jabu/Jabun were important to their being.
It's also been speculated there were Zora in Wind Waker as a freshwater aquatic species, they may have been trapped on Greatfish Island with Lord Juban and wiped out by Ganon who had frozen them before, or they may have been frozen in time in Hyrule beneath the Great Sea,
As for Rito, they are different in both games, the ones in BOTW are birdlike and have wings, the ones in TWW are more human and require Valoo's scale to grow their wings, what's notable is in OOT you can get a 'Zora scale' to help dive deeper which implies scales off Valoo and Jabu Jabu/Jabun were important to their being.
It's also been speculated there were Zora in Wind Waker as a freshwater aquatic species, they may have been trapped on Greatfish Island with Lord Juban and wiped out by Ganon who had frozen them before, or they may have been frozen in time in Hyrule beneath the Great Sea,
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Goal: Find Korok seeds to expand inventory
Result: Spend the entire time in the depths turning on more lights and creating a death bot to to combat gloom infected enemies because you rode a dragon down one of the chasm holes
Korok seeds found in the 3 hours I played 0!!!!
Result: Spend the entire time in the depths turning on more lights and creating a death bot to to combat gloom infected enemies because you rode a dragon down one of the chasm holes
Korok seeds found in the 3 hours I played 0!!!!
I know some of how that is, with my current back pain. This game is about the only thing that keeps me sane and distracted on something other then the pain; but even then there is only so much I can do before the pain wins.
While perusing the Zelda Universe forums, I came across this very interesting observation:
Also, I should probably address something:
This kind of chronological minutia is my jam!
This got me thinking.The Zonai architecture seen in TotK, specifically the newly added ruins in the sky, surface, and the depths, look very different from the Zonai ruins in BotW. The new ones are a lot more angular (reminiscent of Twili architecture).
However, I noticed something interesting when I was exploring the Spring of Courage. I found one Zonai serpent statue that is chipped away, revealing what looks more like the BOTW Zonai architecture. Here are the pictures:
Why is this? At first I thought the difference in architecture was just Nintendo not caring or forgetting, but the fact that the TotK architecture is being covered up by BotW architecture tells me that Nintendo is very much aware of the inconsistency. I'm not sure if this is tied to a quest, but if it is, please let me know.
Between the Barbarian set, the architecture, and the Ancient Hero's Aspects having non-Zonai and non-Hylian traits (the tail, the animalistic feet), I'm starting to wonder if the Zonai that we learn about in BotW is an offshoot of the Zonai that we get to know in TotK because they're not anything like they're described in BotW. Now, that could be explained by history being lost, but it's pretty clear-cut that the architecture is not the same. Maybe the fact that they're covering up TotK-style Zonai architecture shows that this theoretical offshoot was not on good terms with the original Zonai people.
The memories imply that the entirety of Hyrule Kingdom as ruled by King Rauru and Queen Sonia was all located on what would later become known as the Great Plateau. The Zonai ruins in Faron are a very long ways away from the plateau. Rauru and Mineru are implied to be the only two Zonai still alive remaining in Hyrule at the time we see them in the memories, but we're never told anything about the Zonai civilization that evidently once existed in Faron.
Perhaps they were indeed an offshoot of the Zonai who helped found Hyrule, and because they settled so far away from Hyrule's jurisdiction, Rauru and Mineru may not have ever been aware (at least, during their respective lifetimes) that said civilization ever came to be, with them and everyone else possibly believing that the Zonai who left the kingdom to go elsewhere had simply died out. Or the Faron Zonai could have even come straight down to there from the sky separately from the Hyrulean Zonai without the latter ever knowing about them at all.
Either way, it's likely that the Faron Zonai civilization wasn't discovered by the kingdom of Hyrule until the kingdom had expanded its borders far enough to find the civilization's ruins (after all, by the present time of BOTW/TOTK, the kingdom occupies all of the land that stretches out to the coastline beyond Faron). This would mean that, when the memories tell us that Rauru and Mineru are the last of the Zonai, that may not be entirely true after all, unbeknownst to everyone seen in those memories.
Perhaps they were indeed an offshoot of the Zonai who helped found Hyrule, and because they settled so far away from Hyrule's jurisdiction, Rauru and Mineru may not have ever been aware (at least, during their respective lifetimes) that said civilization ever came to be, with them and everyone else possibly believing that the Zonai who left the kingdom to go elsewhere had simply died out. Or the Faron Zonai could have even come straight down to there from the sky separately from the Hyrulean Zonai without the latter ever knowing about them at all.
Either way, it's likely that the Faron Zonai civilization wasn't discovered by the kingdom of Hyrule until the kingdom had expanded its borders far enough to find the civilization's ruins (after all, by the present time of BOTW/TOTK, the kingdom occupies all of the land that stretches out to the coastline beyond Faron). This would mean that, when the memories tell us that Rauru and Mineru are the last of the Zonai, that may not be entirely true after all, unbeknownst to everyone seen in those memories.
Also, I should probably address something:
Keep in mind that y'all are talking to a guy who has a pretty extensive understanding of the sprawling Japanese Generation 1 Transformers timeline. Or even, I'm the guy who literally wrote the entire text of the TFWiki article covering the BotCon Beast Era expanded universe timeline, even taking into account every single retcon (even the most insane ones) made by all of the BotCon Beast Era media.
This kind of chronological minutia is my jam!
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