I’m a pretty big fan of the Legend of Zelda series, it’s a big bill to make several of some of the best games of multiple eras in gaming history, and you could say this series as a whole takes pride in following such a legacy. It’s since become a main plot point, over history, when evil rises to take hold of Hyrule the land, a hero chosen by the triforce of courage appears and saves the world for another era. The same basic principles, reformatted across the ages... I don’t get it. Really, regardless of what Nintendo is going for, the Zelda timeline feels like it’s kinda a leap, loosely connecting the events of games together, when really, I would much easier accept a multi-dimension premise. You mean to tell me that across millenia the people of Hyrule commit to calling EVERY princess Zelda, that the hero of courage is consistently a blondie with sideburns like those and triangular eyebrows, that 95% of the time he has a green tunic with a stocking hat, and don’t even get me started with Ganondorf’s deviations. Still, if we want to take the timeline seriously, there is another way we can examine the passage of time, hopefully without getting a hypothetical ulcer, the development of the races and geography of the world, whether the kingdom of Hyrule or the lands that never get any publicity outside their respective games. I’m SURE that we’ll pinpoint some sense of continuity this way! This one’s for you Moss!



The earliest I’m willing to go back is the era of the goddess Hylia, described as the time immediately after the creation of the world and before the events of the earliest game in the timeline, Skyward Sword. Hylia utilized the triforce created from the union of Din, Nayru, and Farore’s powers, and with it kept peace over the races of the land. We get little to no information about the origins of these races and their history during this time, leading me to believe that we could go even further back in a future title. I may be bold, but maybe the next game to follow the style of Breath of the Wild’s open world formula will take place around this time? We never see this old land in its prime, so let’s glean what we can from the map of Skyward Sword.

The world can be dissected into three parts, first is the dense forest region containing the sealed grounds, Faron woods, and lake Floria in the south east, the region is inhabited by the parella and kikwi. Both of these races are notable for having a lot of backing evidence from both the game’s design and the developers as being the primitive versions of more familiar races, namely the kokiri or koroks, and zora. The presence of the sealed grounds is important, as we know that the island in Skyloft with the large statue of the goddess fits into the indented land like a glove. Judging by this, whatever human community was present during the goddess Hylia era had to be here, at the center of the map. Maybe there were less trees in the past where humans inhabited the area, you can see the trees in Faron woods and the forest around the sealed grounds are different, and beyond the Faron woods and lake Floria seems to be open plains. Oh, uh, speaking of which, let me take a moment to address something, humans and hylians do in fact co-exist in the series. In some games they are both present among each other, but as a rule of thumb, hylians have pointy elf ears and humans have our ears. Based on the wording in the game, I assume hylians are considered a sub-species of human.

To the north of this map is the Eldin volcano, it comes as it is, a volcano and little else. The mogmas and gorons both live around here, and it seems they have easy access to the Lanayru province as well. I find it astonishing that the gorons were around even back then, considering most of the other races either only appear in this game or evolve into more staple species we know. Then to the south west is the Lanayru province I mentioned. From what we understand the region used to be lush and by the side of a great sea, but now it’s all desert. The civilization here had a good grasp on technological advances... I get the feeling this will be a theme, ancient civilization, really good with tech, gets ruined, no advancements made to the next civilization over thousands of years, suddenly “WHOOOOAAAAH where’d all this technology come from????” All that was left were the robots used by the civilization, who continued development until the bitter end. Fortunately, they were mining out timeshift stones, a blue, time manipulating material bearing the marks of the sheikah... huh. These stones were not only a really sweet game mechanic, but also let us experience the region in its prime form.

I’m not sure how much time passed after the ancient battle when humans were lifted into Skyloft to protect the triforce and goddess sword, but seeing as the kikwi, mogmas, gorons, paralla, and robots were present for the war against Demise, I’d wager that around this time the Lanayru province had already fallen and the robots were all that was left, but still operating the region. I’ll recap one more time, the first human settlements were in the center of the land, Hylia’s realm, with the Faron woods east of that, the Lanayru desert to the west, and Eldin volcano/mountain range to the north. I’d like to use this setup as our benchmark to judge the shift of Hyrule over time. So how does the next game interpret Hyrule?

After the events of Skyward Sword unfolded, the first kingdom of Hyrule was established, and the triforce was placed in the sacred realm. Many games will recount that many twisted souls seeked to enter the sacred realm for the powers the triforce granted, and in this early age, the sage of light from Ocarina of Time, Rauru, took the master sword in order to seal the entry way to the sacred realm within the newly constructed temple of time. Hyrule castle would be constructed around that temple, ruled by the royal bloodline of the goddess. It was like this for a long time, but to catch you up to speed for the events of The Minish Cap, at some point in history evil shadow creatures infested the realm, and Hyrule was only saved when the picori, or minish, descended from the sky to grant the hero at that time the light force, which was later sealed in Zelda’s lineage, and the picori blade, which the hero used to stuff all the evil monsters of the land into... a chest. Like a reverse Pandora’s box.

Now that we’re caught up to speed, how does the region compare? Well, there’s a volcano to the north west, already a bad sign for Lanayru. Just south of that is a swamp, and east of that swamp is the castle town. East from there is your typical forest, and another mountain. I’m willing to give the map a pass for consistency, assuming the Minish Cap takes place over a small portion of the land, not including any western desert. Makes sense, the whole premise of the game is turning small, and Hyrule may very well still be in development. Speaking of small, I’d like to discuss those picori. They say the little shoe gnomes came from the sky, and you can actually access that sky in the game, meeting the wind tribe. If you ask me, these guys are the residents of Skyloft who wanted to get back to the sky after seeing what the surface was like. We know they had to have touched down at some point, since the wind ruins exist in the first place, which makes me wonder if there’s a distinct difference between sky world purists and these guys who went to and from the surface.

But what about the picori? Is it possible they were around since the ancient battle? After all, the light force is an integral part of Zelda lore, despite only being referenced here. It comes from the life force of all living things, and everytime you see Zelda do something like stun Ganon with light or stick a bunch of glowy arrows into him, that’s the light force’s doing. I noticed these picori have some birdish traits, long snouts and a feather tail, along with the typical pointed ears. That and those beady eyes, it makes me think they share a kinship with loftwings, kind of like that bonding garble they were talking about in the opening acts of Skyward Sword that no one really cared about once the plot actually started. If this were the case, it makes sense to think that Hylia would entrust the light force and four-sword to this rather obscure and secretive race, tasking them to use the power of those artifacts when they saw fit. This is also the first appearance of the deku scrubs. I’m pretty sure they come from the same family as octoroks. They really get around, coming from land or sea, so I’m sure some terrestrial octoroks evolved to straight up emerge from trees and live in flowers. In the Palace of Winds you can also find gyorgs, you know, like the shark beasts in Wind Waker and the boss in Majora’s Mask, both of which are sea creatures. Levias and the wind fish prove that there have been fish who fly through the sky, it’s interesting to think that if these gyorgs are related to the ones further down the line, it implies that the fish in the sea evolved from fish in the sky. I am not discussing the lakitu though.

A biggoron appears in this game, a reoccurring character for sure, but I think it makes sense for there to be giant gorons. You know whales, right? They’re fricken huge. Back in the day, whales were much smaller, often hunted down by the giant sharks at the time, but once these mega sharks went extinct there was far less threat to them, allowing them to gradually swell up to these immense sizes. I think I can relate them to this methodology, as gorons are really resilient beings, only ever threatened by the most dangerous creatures of the realm, of which there are often few. Of course, there’s no point to being absolutely MASSIVE when it just takes up resources, but what are the biggorons good for? They smith some of the best equipment in the world, and typically live near mountains and volcanos. See where I’m going with this? If you’re big enough to, say, heat a blade within a whole volcano, I’d say that would amp up the quality of your sword.

After the events of The Minish Cap, Vaati returns as a powerful dark force. In a huge power trip, he refers to himself as a great wind mage and kidnaps maidens, bringing them to his wind palace until a hero wielding the four-sword defeats him, using the sword’s power to split himself into four people and then cooperating with himself to seal the evil mage within the four-sword. And thus, the land once again experiences peace.

Now let me tell you about the next game in the timeline, Four Swords. Vaati returns as a powerful dark force. In a huge power trip, he refers to himself as a great wind mage and kidnaps maidens, bringing them to his wind palace until a hero wielding the four-sword defeats him, using the sword’s power to split himself into four people and then cooperating with himself to seal the evil mage within the four-sword. And thus, the land once again experiences peace.

I told you the timeline didn’t make any sense.

You may notice I’m being lenient here and skipping through this portion of the timeline, well that’s because we don’t get any real notable developments in terms of change, that’s because I’m focusing on whether the enemies or environment really adjust from game to game. Any enemies I’m disregarding now will be saved for a later time when we have more to look over, or they’re like the chuchu and dark nut, and are that consistent between games. Or maybe they’re like the hikkun, you guys remember the hikkun right?

Then the Hyrulean civil war took place, that’s about all the exposition we get. There’s no concrete proof as to what happened over the course of this war, who was fighting and why, but we do know that once Hyrule was re-unified, Ganondorf, king of the Gerudo, swore allegiance to the king, either in the wake of a taxing conflict or because Harkinian was all like “we’d like to have you over for dinner, are you in?” And then Ganondorf gave the Grinch smile when he came up with an idea to take over Hyrule. Now to address the similarities between the map of Hyrule in Ocarina of Time compared to our standard, and what do you know? The forest containing the descendants of the kikwi, kokiri taking a more human like form, and wetlands containing the zora, descendants of the parella, are to the east. The goron mountains are a bit more to the east as well, but still maintain their northern positioning, and at long last, we are reunited with our glorious desert, and it’s certainly gone over some big changes in its absence.

We can start by addressing the trademark people of the desert, the gerudo. I’m fairly certain they, like the Hylians, stem from basic humans, though perhaps they have since underwent notable changes in biology to be classified as a different species. They’re all female, every last one, except for the once in a century occurrence when a male is born. I find that incredible, that they create a male so rarely, yet so consistently at the same time. Some may question how a race made entirely of females can reproduce, but I think it’s obvious. I know I’m skipping ahead here, but you know how in Breath of the Wild no males are allowed in the gerudo city? You either have to disguise yourself as a woman... or be a goron. Yeah, they let the gorons inside despite the fact we’ve never once seen a female gor...... the races interbreed, case closed. By those standards, we can assume the gerudo mothers either create female gerudo or male gorons, and it is very possible Ganondorf, under this assumption, is a cross breed of gerudo and goron genes. The very ambassador of power, and he shares the traits of a highly skilled and versatile warrior race and another incredibly powerful and resilient race? It would check out. Not sure where the pig genes come in though...

Any things from the Lanayru desert of Skyward Sword may have been lost, quite literally, to the sands of time. The main areas here are the haunted wasteland and desert colossus, the latter supposedly being Ganondorf’s base of operations prior to becoming the biggest face in Hyrule. That desert colossus was said to be the goddess of the people of the desert, likely including the Gerudo in addition to any other potential civilizations long gone. This will actually become a bit of a recurring element as well, throughout history, there remains elements of other gods and goddesses aside from Hylia. The most notable of course are Din, Nayru, and Farore, who actually created the world and have frequent manifestations in Zelda games, possibly similar to Zelda’s connection with Hylia. What does this mean for the other gods then? Well, I’d like to liken the procedure to a certain other game made by an independent development team of which I have not been able to shut up about as of recent, and say that Hylia stood her claim on Hyrule and then refused to have any other god present in her land. As such, gods like the desert colossus were pushed back, and continued operations in more desolate corners of the land. Remember how the desert has been gone since Skyward Sword? That’s probably because only now, after the civil war, is the desert initiating in relationships with the kingdom of Hyrule. The idea of other kingdoms being formed from the guidance of other gods, similar to Hylia planting her golden child in a grand triforce-related prophecy, is definitely a concept I’d like to keep in mind for the future. Maybe Twinrova are involved somehow? Who knows?



Other than all of that, things are pretty standard for now. It would seem that Ocarina of Time was just playing it safe, the only really unique enemy to come out from the flagship 64 title was the lizards and everything inside Jabu Jabu’s belly. It’s at the climax of “oot” when the timeline gets completely ridiculous though, and in a weird twist of fate, at least compared to other games that poke at the idea of time travel, Zelda games are somewhat more accurate than usual. There’s a split in different versions of the timeline, three we’re familiar with, and possibly more, maybe even splitting from the main timeline at a different point. In one timeline Link loses to Ganon, and Zelda and the sages must force him away in the sacred realm, the timeline that plays out in the game is that Link defeats Ganon and goes back to the past to warn everyone of Ganondorf’s plan, and alternatively Link could have remained in the future and allow events to carry on from there. There’s still clearly a LOT to talk about, but I’m going to split those into separate threads and hold off for now. There’s a lot more I plan on evaluating later on, as I throw my hat into the big mass of Zelda spaghetti. Next time, we’re going back to our roots, the timeline that contains all the games before Ocarina of Time... which canonically happened after Ocarina of Time. Cya then? Trust me, we haven’t even gotten into the good stuff. Except for maybe the Goron intercourse.

Well, I gave all that a read, and we spoke about it in PMs. I'm going to say what I said earlier if I recall correctly.

Nintendo really doesn't care about the timeline. The best evidence I can give you comes from Hyrule Historia itself. If you have a copy of the book, one of the first things you'll notice is how much it promotes Skyward Sword at the time. The front of the book is full of concept art and descriptions in great disproportion compared to the rest of the games. (OOT and MM get so little concept artwork in this book.)

If you want a coherent Zelda Timeline that was actually made with some thought, then here it is:

Ocarina of Time
Majora's Mask
Twilight Princess


That's it.

The handheld games that use Twinrova and came out on the GBC? Can't fit that in. BOTW? The game takes place at least ten thousand years away from any other known game in the timeline (presumably after OOT) and it still references events from multiple "timelines."

The very fact that they need to use split timelines shows that Nintendo just doesn't care about continuity in the grand scheme of it.

Zelda quit having a meaningful story a long time ago. It ended with Twilight Princess, and while Skyward Sword attempts to have such a story, the concepts, huge swap to Japanese themes and abandonment of many core themes makes it stick out like a sore thumb. You want to see the real origin of spirituality in the Zelda universe? Look up celtic stuff. Look up the original three goddesses and Epona. Look up anything remotely European and you'll get a clear idea.


The Goddess Hylia almost makes sense, because she could represent the fourth and separated piece of the triforce we see on the Hylian Shield in OOT. But then this game went ahead and told us that Link is just reincarnated every new life in every new game. I can't tell you how much I hate this idea--that the salvation plan in Hyrule is nothing but a perpetual cycle where Ganondorf (Who is repossessed by Demise) will keep bringing Hyrule to ruin, and a child will keep stopping him.

It's so dull. It lacks depth. It makes the Goddesses people to be hated. BOTW really took Skyward Sword's terrible ideas and blew it through the roof. You want to see how much Nintendo cares about the story and timeline? Here you go?

According to the canon in BOTW, Link was able to best master swordsmen when he was only four years old. Not ten--not eight--but four years old. This is worse than Anakin Skywalker blowing up the Trade Federation ship. I'm already pissed off the Dragon Prince is trying to do the same thing on Netflix. (I'm not talking about Ezran--but the child queen who had two moms.)

There are other offenses. . . like making every single one of the other champions die, or making the guardians go rouge with weak explanations. BOTW is the worst story I've ever seen in a Zelda game, it's fortunate that the gameplay is good.


On your general article though. . . You want to say the the Picori created what essentially became the goddess sword one day? Sure, that works for me. Want to say the Gorons and Geruado are the same species? I'm not on that boat because in OOT we are informed that Geruados get boyfriends from Hyrule Castle Town thanks to a gossip stone. The map from SS all the way to TP are generally similar enough for me to say are the same general area. What I cannot accept is how drastically the inhabitants have changed between SS and OOT. Kiwi, Mogmas and other well established races simply vanish? Yeah right, one century is not enough time for any culture in our human history to disappear when they've held land for a large period of time. A race doesn't just disappear like that for nothing. And they don't just give up the land they own without a fight. TP is somewhat guilty of this as well regarding the Kokiri, but at least they are hidden in the Lost Woods were people presumably get lost. I'm just guessing there though.

So yeah, I really, really don't care for SS or anything made after the fact. All of the sudden we get a Japanese and an Eastern look on the franchise when that had little to do with it's conception. It's okay to reinvent a series, but why would you do that when people already love so much about OOT and MM? Come on--those titles are revered masterpieces. I just can't believe Nintendo wants to pretend that they are coherently making "sequals" that are all part of the same series. At least Final Fantasy will admit it's a different universe every time. (Well. . . most of the time.)

Zelda is a series I held close to my heart. . . but as a result, I've come to criticize it after playing way better written games like KOTOR, or Hollow Knight. You made a cool little article and I like it. I even agree with most of it, but don't pretend that Nintendo knows what they are doing. You can find so many small inconsistencies that it's erratic. I don't consider the series intertwined very well at all, at least not in recent years. You could easily Divide Zeld up into Four different universes. I do the following:


Universe 1.

Zelda 1 and 2. (Pretty simple.)


Universe 2.

OOT
MM
TP
LTTP (Alternate timeline option. . . I think. Still hate alternate timelines though.)


Universe 3.

Anything with Toon Link. Funny thing is, the story is actually pretty consistent with these games, as each one tends to directly reference the last. So it's more than the art choice that stays the same.


Universe 4.

Everything else that doesn't fit. Stuff is based around SS and BOTW.


There, problems solved. God job looking this over. I still believe most of what's "canon" is really stupid and an after thought, starting as early as Wind Waker, but it's whatever. Damn, I wish the series just kept using the same art style and maybe kept using the same Link it was using in OOT and MM. Even as much as I like TP, I think that game needs help and was an over correction. (Kindof like how Shadow the Hedgehog was an over-correction, but I digress.)

I know that was pretty negative, but that rant felt good. Thanks for giving me a place to post it. : P

Sword Legion :
By all means, feel free to rant. You bring up certain points that certainly hold merit, and it's a pretty relatable idea. I said it right from the start: I don't get the timeline. If they said the Zelda series was about parallel universes no one would have argued. Sounds lazy, but if anything, each standalone entry is its own tale unfolding. And like I alluded to in the beginning, HOW DOES BEEDLE KEEP COMING BACK!?

In any case I'll continue adding to this series of unfortunately flawed predictions until I get to the end. There was more stuff I planned on discussing, each topic in its time, the adaptions of the, uh, "blins" and other species, what can be considered consistent or drastically changed, and how a few characters MAY be able to appear in multiple games. I never promised the hard facts.

Don't get me started on the narrative of BotW yet, if not for the amazing game behind it, if you showed me the script and said "that's a Zelder game" I would have spat it back at you.