I’m confused on the story in Totk. I know totk is after BotW, but I’m curious about the other events in the game. The game talks about a war, which is the imprisoning war. This would put it squarely in the “hero is defeated” timeline before the events of a link to the past.
“7 sages seal away Ganon in the imprisoning war”
What is confusing me however is that Rauru is claimed to be the first king of Hyrule. Hyrule however was founded well before the imprisoning war. It was actually founded shortly after the bandaging of the twili and sealing of the sacred realm. Now, in the timeline it states that sage Rauru seals the sacred realm to protect the tri-force. But that isn’t the imprisoning war, nor do I think it’s the same Rauru. But it also states that Skyward Sword Zelda’s descendants founded Hyrule shortly after the sealing of the sacred realm. Skyward Sword Zelda wasn’t a Zonai though.
Does anyone understand the timeline enough to explain what I am missing? It just feels like Rauru is too many people
Don’t trust Nintendo, there is no timeline. This series is about recurring themes, not about one continuous nation and royal line.
I can see why a lot of people say that. It really does start to break apart under a not-so-fine microscope. I was kind of hoping there was something I was missing that would explain why it didn’t make sense but maybe not…
I wanted to love Totk but it just doesn’t feel like Zelda… I miss the days of the wind waker. Legend of Zelda the wind waker was my all time favorite Zelda game I’m really hoping they go back to those style of games but with newer shed graphics (obviously)
Honestly, I loved TotK. But it made me dislike BotW. I love BotW when it released, but TotK made it feel incomplete. So many people were worried about Totk being glorified DLC but what it ended up making was BotW into the early release beta.
But I do enjoy older games as well. I remember playing a link to the past growing up and getting lost in the puzzles. We actually broke the game in one of the dungeons by using a key on the wrong door and soft locking the game in an unbeatable state. Had to start everything over lol. That was the age when some of these games were actually difficult though. Playing oracle of ages on switch and I am flying through it. With about 30 minutes of play time I got the first dungeon completed pretty easily. I think Zelda has evolved quite a few times and each generation of players has their “golden years”
That’s awesome! A link to the past was fun. I think the remake was really well done also in the new art style. I do like both Botw and Totk but it just doesn’t feel like Zelda in my opinion. Idk something about waking up early before school and playing wind waker and begging my mom to skip school just to play it 😂 those years are behind me now but I guess it’s just a nostalgia thing
Nobody understands the timeline. Not even Nintendo. If you want proof of that check out this video that goes over the history of Zelda timelines. That’s right. Someone made a video not about the timeline itself, but about all the times Nintendo changed the timeline.
Personally, I just go with the stance that each game is a “Legend” of Zelda. Just like how real life has stories of the past that may or may not have happened either as written or even at all. Sometimes those stories even reference older stories and the legends continue on.
This really is how Nintendo should’ve done it, instead of releasing a timeline at all. We can still have the origin story of the Master Sword, and of Ganon, and of the cycle of reincarnation, and the Goddess Hylia, and they can all have elements that reference each other, but they don’t have to be completely consistent.
I feel like that should be the case, but Nintendo has put themselves in the corner by releasing an “official” timeline. But this would have been pretty easy to fix by simply not calling Rauru the first king of Hyrule. And not making him Zonai. If he’d been a Hylian king that wasn’t the first it would make perfect sense…
I thought for sure that was going to be Brian David Gilbert’s video :- https://youtu.be/Q-25c8Rsobw
Short easy answer, the “Timeline” has always been a bunch of bullshit and none of the games have ever existed in the same universe. Save for the games that are explicitly direct sequels (e.g., ToTK, Majora’s Mask, Phantom Hourglass, etc.) they are all stand-alone stories. I don’t understand why people can’t wrap their heads around the idea that stories can be retold with the same character archetypes without being directly related to each other.
IMO the best way to think of this is like the Wheel Of Time series. It’s an eternal struggle between archetypes that keeps happening over many millenia.
“The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again”
It’s mildly infuriating how much BotW referenced back to previous games and fit itself into the existing timeline map, and TotK simply… ignores all of that.
For what it’s worth, in my head, I just consider this Hyrule, founded by Rauru, as a whole different kingdom from those that came before. If we get reincarnations of Link and Zelda and Ganondorf, why not the whole kingdom? That just puts BotW and TotK super far forward in time, so far that whatever preivous Hyrule(s) we’ve known are dead and gone.
BotW didn’t fit in any one timeline. It had components from all the timelines. However, they said it occurred at the end of all 3 timelines. So my headcannon was that there was a large merging event that combined the timelines back to 1. And I expected it to be a “reset” where games would only reference the story from that point forward to kind of “clean up” the past lore without dealing with it. That clearly didn’t happen since TotK was all about history
What I want to know is, if the Rito were around for the founding of Hyrule, where were they in OoT and TP?
They were away looking for the missing third Oracle game
The story is a Legend with a lot of details embellished or forgotten over the course of history. It is possible to put together an overall idea of how the history went, but you can’t trust any single game as totally accurate.
I’ve been wondering this too and watching lots of YouTube videos of people explaining their take. Truth is nobody knows and everyone is head canoning how TOTK fits. But I particularly like this video that describes the idea of a dragonbreak having merged the timelines back into one.
This would explain why the Tri-Force is missing. I hope there’s a third game that explains why people seem to have forgotten it’s existence.
