The Legend of Zelda

A thread about the Legend of Zelda series, i.e. the series I'm the biggest sucker for.

Starting off the discussion with lore talk, because I love how the series handles it's lore. Zelda don't give a fuck about lore. It has elements it will use and recycle, but it'll use those elements in inconsistent ways throughout the series. There's usually parallel worlds, but they're always different worlds. There's often time travel, but the mechanics are inconsistent. There's often lost technology, but what type of technology and who the makers are are vague. And of course, there's the absolutely galaxy-brain move of releasing a convoluted official timeline after years of debate, then silently switching the order of two games in the official timeline with a "yeah, we might change this more in the future; the timeline's not that important," and then immediately creating a game that doesn't fit into the established timeline in any way.

This is almost certainly by design, to feed into the "legend" angle of the series. There's lore, but it shifts constantly, depending on who tells the story. It's a really fun way of handling lore and just one of the things I love about the series.

You know, for the longest time it really bugged me that the 2 NES games were the furthest in the "timeline" due to the fact that the franchise loved to keep going back (LTTP being a prequel, Ocarina of time being a prequel to it, ect.). I loved how Wind Waker shook up the franchise "forever", but "LOL mutiple timelines" and it's sequels got shunted to portables and I never played them.

So it was kind of nice when Breath of the Wild came out and was like "Screw it, we're so far into the future it doesn't matter anymore!"

Also, enough of Ganondorf, bring back the pigman wizard Ganon as more than a fanservice final boss!

Honestly part of me wishes I could get back into the series, since I did enjoy OOT and MM as a kid, but I'm not sure how well it's formula would click with me these days.

God, I remember when I used to read full threads of folks debating whether the timeline was a split one or not.

And then you had the ever-so-rare auterist who went with the completely nonsensical Miyamoto order from that 90s interview he did, lmao.

I think the triple forked timeline thing they eventually went with makes about as much sense as any, but it still kind of bugs me, I got really used to the twin timeline theories and people slotting additional games into those for the minutest reasons.

On a slightly different subject: anyone ever read Eloze? I recall that fanfic being a particularly formative one in my fandom, though I remember little of it. Throwback to when fanfiction was hosted on cheap HTML sites instead of thrown into the swirling abysses of content aggregation that are fanfiction.net and AO3.

While I'm here, I'm gonna list my top five just for giggles:
1. A Link to the Past
2. Majora's Mask
3. Link's Awakening
4. Ocarina of Time
5. Wind Waker

Legend of Zelda game starring this bad boi when

I'd really like to know how Zelda and Ganon(dorf) would have turned out in that reality!

We're better off not knowing, I think. Certain mindrending potentialities are better left unplumbed.

It's pretty easy to imagine, since Link looks like a high school student, Ganon would be a jock and Zelda a bimbo.

Most of what I saw pre-SS was largely in agreement that the timeline was split, since Majora's Mask and Wind Waker pretty much confirm that, but I think there were a few attempts to do non-split timelines.

Also, while there's no way to prove it, a theory I had before an official timeline was released was were that there were actually two timelines (with one of the timelines being split), which is pretty close to what Nintendo ended up going with. The crux of the theory was (and still is, since Nintendo's allowing some Calvinballing of the timeline) that OoT and ALttP have such similar stories that they're actually the same story. If we go by a "historical timeline" theory, they're just parallel events happening in different worlds. If we go by an "Arthurian legend/oral history" theory, they're retellings of the same events by different people.

My top 5, off the top of my head, in no particular order, subject to change.
1. Majora's Mask
2. Link's Awakening
3. Breath of the Wild
4. LoZ
5. Oracle of Seasons

Zelda totally would have been the nerdy girl in glasses and a ponytail who becomes the prom queen after a make-over, come to think of it. That way they can pull the OoT Sheik twist again.

Oh, are we talking about high school interpretations of the Zelda canon from different eras?

DaLadybugMan wrote:
The crux of the theory was (and still is, since Nintendo's allowing some Calvinballing of the timeline) that OoT and ALttP have such similar stories that they're actually the same story. If we go by a "historical timeline" theory, they're just parallel events happening in different worlds. If we go by an "Arthurian legend/oral history" theory, they're retellings of the same events by different people.

I dig this theory, actually. Reminds me of the old one I saw thrown around that proposed pretty much all of the games were retelling the same legend over and over again, but certain direct connections between games make that untenable.

Does also raise an interesting question about what that interpretation means for Link's Awakening and Majora's Mask respectively as direct sequels to the aforementioned games. There aren't nearly as many shared details but perhaps a similar connecting line can be drawn between the two.

You could argue that the "direct sequel" to ALttP should be ALBW, which has even more similarities to Majora's Mask.

DaLadybugMan wrote:You could argue that the "direct sequel" to ALttP should be ALBW, which has even more similarities to Majora's Mask.

I suppose I can buy that as well, but in my mind Link's Awakening is a more direct sequel in the sense that its the same incarnation of Link. (iirc the Oracle games also star the ALttP Link, making him the incarnation that appears the most times in the series)

In addition, LA explicitly takes place in an alternate dimension/dream world like MM does, whereas ALBW quite literally is the same Light World and Dark World from its predecessor.

I also just have a personal bias against ALBW in general though. Some great ideas with execution I deeply dislike.

[quote="Wahmphi"]

DaLadybugMan wrote: ALBW quite literally is the same Light World and Dark World from its predecessor.

Some fair points that I can definitely concede, but this particular part is factually false. The Dark World in ALttP is a corrupted Sacred Realm. The Dark World in ALBW is Lorule.

Although if you're talking specifically about layout, yeah, okay, they're pretty much the same thing.

DaLadybugMan wrote:

Wahmphi wrote:

DaLadybugMan wrote: ALBW quite literally is the same Light World and Dark World from its predecessor.

Some fair points that I can definitely concede, but this particular part is factually false. The Dark World in ALttP is a corrupted Sacred Realm. The Dark World in ALBW is Lorule.

Although if you're talking specifically about layout, yeah, okay, they're pretty much the same thing.

Ah, right, I forgot that distinction. Do they ever specify from whence Lorule came? I seem to recall the ending of ALttP mentioning that the Sacred Realm returned to normal but if it doesn't it could theoretically be the same corrupted Sacred Realm.

Everything apart from looking near-identical to the corrupted Sacred Realm imply that it's essentially an alternate world in the vein of the Twilight Realm or Termina. IIRC it used to be prosperous like Hyrule, but it fell into ruin after their Triforce was destroyed.

DaLadybugMan wrote:Everything apart from looking near-identical to the corrupted Sacred Realm imply that it's essentially an alternate world in the vein of the Twilight Realm or Termina. IIRC it used to be prosperous like Hyrule, but it fell into ruin after their Triforce was destroyed.

Gotcha. Also skimming the wiki, apparently Lorule had its own Sacred Realm as well, so I'm totally off-base.

Now I'm vaguely unsatisfied, I want an explanation as to why it looks so much like the Dark World. This is baseless theorization, but maybe something about the Sacred Realm being corrupted caused a duplicate of Hyrule to be made?

Another thought is that it would be quite literally the same sort of mirror-world as Termina in that it reflects its counterpart; extrapolating on that, maybe their Sacred Realm looks like Hyrule while their Lorule looks like the corrupted Sacred Realm of Hyrule. A reflection of a reflection, if you will.  

Ah, I dunno. Need to suck it up and finish the game one of these days just to see if I can glean anything meaningful to that effect.

I'd like to replay more Zelda games but some of them make it hard, like Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess.

I think for now I'll just do Link's Awakening.

EvieSigma wrote:I'd like to replay more Zelda games but some of them make it hard, like Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess.

I think for now I'll just do Link's Awakening.

Which version of LA were you planning on playing?

MM is fantastic but I'll admit its opening is a painful chore, though not as much as Twilight Princess.

Wahmphi wrote:

EvieSigma wrote:I'd like to replay more Zelda games but some of them make it hard, like Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess.

I think for now I'll just do Link's Awakening.

Which version of LA were you planning on playing?

MM is fantastic but I'll admit its opening is a painful chore, though not as much as Twilight Princess.

Link's Awakening DX, though it would be the 3DS port. I might try the remake someday but it would have to be on sale.

EvieSigma wrote: Link's Awakening DX, though it would be the 3DS port. I might try the remake someday but it would have to be on sale.

Personally I dislike the remake for aesthetic reasons; having played DX through the 3DS port I'd say that's a good way to go.

Great game in general though, no matter where or how you play it, so I suspect the remake still retains what was good about the gameplay despite my bias against it.

Well, I started my DX playthrough tonight and I'm already at the Bottle Grotto so that's pretty good progress.

I don't think I could like ever play thought majora's mask ever again. the time constraint/timer based/timed events stufff just would make it way too fuckin stressful for me nowadays.

shame, because that game is just so good in every other aspect.

That was a huge reason I never did get around to playing it. That and once I finally got a chance to try OoT on Gamecube thanks to a pre-order disc, I didn't care for it and got stuck.