Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Actually, even before the time line, more games had direct sequels besides Zelda 1.

A Link to the Past has all three GB(C) games as direct sequels, Ocarina of Time has Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker has both DS games.

Yup the wind waker, Twilight Princess and alttp all have variations of the events from ocarina of time as back story.

While I agree that they forced some of the games into the timeline for the sake of the book, claiming they didn't intend to have some sort of timeline (at least by the time they made OoT) would be naive.

@DiscoGentleman: It's not my opinion, but my observation. It wasn't until Wind Waker that Nintendo started to think about the possibility of a timeline. Games released before WW, and even some after, were never made with a timeline in mind. The position within the timeline is irrelevant for the game as well, there's little story that overlaps the entire franchise and it doesn't affect individual games.

From what we can tell; before the official timeline was revealed, there were multiple fan-made versions of the timeline (all turned out to be wrong). That alone tells us that it's impossible to tell when the games took place, apart from the direct sequels. So even if we had Zelda U, right now, it would still be impossible to tell when the game happened during the timeline. Knowing, or hoping, where Zelda U falls in the timeline is therefore trivial, because it tells us absolutely nothing about the game.

Oh well, people are just trying to talk about something, anything, related to this game. Let them speculate about the timeline, what could go wrong?

It's true that the timeline wasn't official until the book, but it is quite clear that Twilight Princess and Wind Waker were always intended as distant sequels to Ocarina of Time, that Ocarina of Time was intended as a loose prequel to Link to the Past, and that Skyward Sword was a prequel to everything.

And then Majora's Mask is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time. And Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks are direct sequels to Wind Waker. And the Oracle games and Link's Awakening are direct sequels to Link to the Past.

The timeline was all but laid out before Hyrule Historia. All the book did was draw a chart and piece together the few remaining games that had no other connections.

Besides, all the ones that count as real Zelda games by our patriarch Haru were officially connected before HH.

Good job turning my argument into a hyperbole. I never said it isn't allowed, nor did I ever say that its associated lore is trivial.

They probably haven't decided when the game takes place, and we know little to nothing about the game, so personally I think the discussion about when the game is going to take place is futile, but if you want to discuss this, feel free to do so.

And if anyone wants to get technical, here's an official statement from Hyrule Historia, the only source that confirms the current timeline: ''This chronicle merely collects information that is believed to be true at this time, and there are many obscured and unanswered secrets that still lie within the tale. As the stories and storytellers of Hyrule change, so, too, does its history. Hyrule's history is a continuously woven tapestry of events. Changes that seem inconsequential, disregarded without even a shrug, could evolve at some point to hatch new legends and, perhaps, change this tapestry of history itself.''

That mostly just means:

"Disclaimer: We can and will add more games to the timeline as they're made available and reserve the right to move the existing games around as we see fit."

All of those are examples of "sequels" that could've quite plausibly had their lore contrived after the project was already completed. The simple test in my mind is just: would the "sequel" be equally as good if its "prequel" was deleted from history (and your memory)? In nearly every example of a Zelda sequel, the answer to that is yes. In fact, a lot of the lore connection between those games are almost deliberately made to be incongruous to their former selves (e.g happy mask salesman, skull kid, linebeck)

This just in, everyone. Disagreement will assumed to be 10x as extreme as it was so I look correct.

Well, yeah. Nintendo has made it clear that they're not the kind of developer that builds a game around a story, it's always the other way around.

Nice gif. And I hope Zelda U is a Twilight Princess AND Hyrule Warriors (combat) successor.

Honestly at this point, I just want to hear some news or details on the game.

Cool.

Not cool.

@Haru17: I don't get your last gif...

@Aromaiden: I totally agree. We need some news and information for looking forward to the game.

If this Zelda is going to be more open and less linear, a Twilight Princess 2.0 is already out of the question. I assume it's going to be a completely different game in that sense. Like what Skyward Sword was, but hopefully better...

@gaming_24_7 It's just TP Link reacting to being mentioned.

Let's just hope that, in terms of Twilight Princess, Zelda U has more of this;

And less of this;

To be fair the fan-made versions didn't think that Nintendo would pull the "Fallen Hero" copout.

In all honesty it works for the game series. You just don't like the possibility of Link falling in the last battle.

I don't like it because they pulled the concept out of of thin air so they could put the games that had minimal to no connection with OoT into one group (the Four Swords trilogy being exempt for whatever reason). It's not something that actually happens in OoT other than the player getting a standard game over, and now Nintendo has given itself the authority to pull the same stunt with any game in the series if they so please.

This is my biggest concern with open world games, they tend to lack direction to the point where I find myself checking the map every 5 seconds. Having a huge sandbox to play around in and go wherever you want is great and all but if the level design doesn't give you any hints in terms of paths and landmarks it can be very hard to tell what direction to go in. Hopefully the level design is clever enough to alleviate this problem.