Zelda Timeline Featuring Breath Of The Wild And Tears Of The Kingdom Spotted

If Nintendo states that BotW and TotK comprise an extended dream sequence by Link (or Zelda) in one of the established timelines, they're gonna have to contend with a lot of peeved fans.

I’m so sad that Nintendo has to keep up with this “official timeline nonsense” instead of pulling a soul calibur and just saying “A tale of 3 souls eternally retold” because that’s what it really is. (4 if you count Impa whom I feel is bound to Zelda.) That timeline mess limits them creatively. And it’s just to appease a bunch of randos on the internet.

So many franchises that just want to make games and were originally built on a shoestring story now have to pretend there was some full master plan all along. Meanwhile devs that plan for trilogy games (or longer) get shut down leaving folks with unfinished stories. Sigh.

I'll defend this until I die. Breath of the Wild was a love-letter to the franchise. For newbies, it was a new introduction to the series that embraced the popularity of the open-world concept. For oldies, it had all the nods to previous games. With Tears of the Kingdom, they decided to history-build this new world to mixed results. Regardless, Breath and Tears should be seen as their own universe that has naming and story coincidences tied to the the other timeline(s).

Strange - I thought the most compelling evidence placed them in one of the decline timelines. This seems to show the opposite.

I wish Nintendo would stop commenting on the timeline if they don’t actually care about it. Don’t get me wrong, I love piecing it all together into a coherent timeline and would be thrilled for Nintendo to clarify if they actually made effort. But multiverse thinking is the lamest of creative crutches and presently, fans do a better job than Nintendo at actually forming coherence. Nintendo should commit to an actual plot or leave it to fans, not try to have it both ways.

Also, don’t buy their narrative about story limiting their creativity, because you can fit any kind of plot into whatever gameplay they come up with. They could easily have made BotW or TotK as a sequel to any previous game they wanted with only minor tweaks in the plot.

I appreciate breath of the wild and tears of the Kingdom not having a connection line either....

Note that BotW and TotK don't even have a line connecting them.
This proves that I care more about the timeline than Nintendo.

I couldn’t care if it was connected or not, I just needed answers and answers I have at long last! My theorizing continues.

Unless the games are a stated sequel it’s best to ignore the Zelda timeline altogether. It gives you less of a headache

This isn't really anything new. The website always had BotW and TotK in their own section because Nintendo didn't want to place them anywhere specific. I still feel like it's at the very end of the Downfall timeline though, given that the games share more in common with games in that timeline.

I do wonder how they'll fit Echoes of Wisdom in the timeline.

I feel like something is amiss with this timeLINE.

I don't see a big problem with the timelime, it is so lose with its arms and time between some titles, that it doesn't hinder them to come up with a story.

I like the small Parts of older Games they put in the newer ones.

Edit: Btw. a full fleshed out Universe you can read up on a Wiki is boring.
Stuff must stay in the unknown to keep it interesting.

Take Doom, simple Story.
Hell breaks out.
Hell, incomprehensible for mortal beings, Horrors we can't imagine with Stuff and Logic beyond everything we know about Physics and the Universe.
Than Doom Eternal made Hell to Aliens, grounding it and making it boring.

@Ryu_Niiyama the opposite for me. Nintendo needs to double down in the timeline connections. So glad they are doing it despite miyamoto and aonuma's best efforts in destroying it. Some of us require more than gameplay to enjoy a game. Personally I've been there since the beginning and I'm getting tired of the "tale of 3 souls retold" with no direction whatsoever.

Awh man they've changed it AGAIN, previously to this they claimed breath of the wild was so far into the future it happened in ALL THREE timelines which I thought was incredibly interesting lore wise - like no matter what they were destined to happen. Dont get ne started on the lack of Age of Calamity either, it would have been so easy to slot that in before breath of the wild with a divergent timeline that splits off into the future. A second case of Win/Lose timelines that result in breath of the wild happening in only one. I know realistically it doesnt matter and its never affected my enjoyment of the games but it is a lot of fun to try and figure out why nintendo puts certain games where and having two of them separated entirely is a little boring.

The only time I really pay attention to a timeline in Zelda is with direct sequels, where it is either the same Link and Zelda (e.g Oot and MM or WW and TPH) or in the same world at different times (e.g ALTTP and ALBW).

My head-canon has always been that, aside from direct sequels, all the games’ stories are independent. After all, the series is called ‘The Legend’ which implies that although there are themes running throughout them all, the story changes depending on who is telling it. I always imagined different people telling the story around a campfire, with it changing depending on time and tradition, each person telling their own version of ‘The Legend of Zelda’.

Is it wishful thinking to hope this means they actually consider BotW/TotK their own thing and plan on continuing the main series at some point? Of course it is, but that's not going to stop me.

My personal theory is that the BOTW/TOTK timeline is a timeline that resulted in a merger of the other three timelines. Ganon found a way to cross timelines and joined forces with his alternate selves to destroy Link and Zelda in all other timelines. This started to cause the fabric of reality to fall apart.

What few Links and Zeldas were left would have to unite and face off against the Ganons, who then amplified their power by merging with one another, becoming Calamity Ganon in the process. Link and Zelda do the same, and ultimately merge victorious.

However, in order to save reality, they must merge their timelines together to create a brand new one: the one we see in BOTW and TOTK. This is why we see elements and references from various games throughout the series, such as why the Rito and the Zora live alongside each other instead of the former being descendants of the latter as they are in TWW.

Nintendo should never have perpetuated the timeline nonsense to begin with in any official capacity. Throw some references in there for the really obsessed fans to speculate about, sure, but most normal people are going to recognize the majority of entries are unique experiences that are utilizing similar themes and characters in different ways.

Looks cool.

I really hope on the switch 2 we can finally choose who we want to play with. Swordfighter link with His unique abilities. (Allrounder) Zelda as the magician. And the Heroes (Gordon for strength and unique rolling abilities) zora (unique swimming / underwater abilities) etc etc. And you have to use them all for certain missions that Link alone cant do.

@Ralizah
That needless reference that pretty much started all this in Wind Waker’s intro was a massive mistake, everything went from loosely connected but not really to loudly proclaiming that there are alternate timelines that sets of games exist in. The end result of this is Nintendo being so afraid not to alienate people who didn’t play previous games that TOTK avoids openly talking about the events of the previous game when it really needs to.

I never understood the need for the timeline to begin with. Why can't people just treat them like the stories they are. LEGENDS, which don't require all this timeline nonsense. I'm glad they seem to be done with it themselves, by placing the new games outside of the established timeline, which is already one big convoluted mess that makes very little sense.

Never cared about the timeline but now I kind of want a game that connects all of it and moves forward or end it.
Xenoblade 3s ending comes to mind. A great ending to a saga.

See I'm weird but if BOTW and TOTK were part of a different timeline then surely they should be below/above the divergent timeline with its own horizontal line and not to the side of two of them separated with a verticle line?

That's pretty much how I'd show those entries taking place in the far future of some unified timeline (kid+adult)

@SalvorHardin I found it weird too that TotK is a direct sequel where the entire world apparently suffers from a severe case of amnesia. Why even make a direct sequel if you're going to do that? Just make a reboot like Super Mario Galaxy 2, in that case.

Although I'd argue TotK is a much stronger (narrative) experience when you treat it like a soft reboot as opposed to a proper story sequel.

I've given up on accepting Nintendo's Zelda timeline for a multitude of reasons. I'd rather go back to the era of fan-made timelines, those are more fun and feel more accurate than what Nintendo has now concocted. For example, I'd put the Minish Cap Trilogy on its own separate timeline branch just because they are so thematically different than the other Zeldas. Likewise, AOC, BOTW, & TOTK exist in their own separate timeline branch (fork technically). I wouldn't be surprised if the next Zelda game also exists in its own unique break-off.

I still think they missed a trick with making hyrule warriors non canon. They could have used that as the reunification even that BotW and Tears followed on from

Honestly isn’t worth caring about the timeline and it never really has been worth bothering with. It’s an absolute mess and I doubt the developers/writers over the years have ever cared about the chronology of the series aside from Skyward Sword where they used its place in the timeline as a selling point for the game. Better just to treat each game as its own thing unless it’s a direct sequel/prequel to another title.

On that note though, while I don’t care about an overall timeline I do think if they’re going to make direct sequels they should connect in a satisfying way. The worst aspect of TotK by far was how intangible its connection to BotW was. Felt like the events of that game were completely ignored, but then you’d find references to it here and there. I really didn’t understand why they went in that direction.

This is fine. I like the existence of the timeline, but for different reasons. Connecting them all together via some plot, is not what I’m interested in, and Nintendo hasn’t been pushing that either.

I see it as more of a way to place the game releases in a loose story order. The first two are in the Decline era. I think that’s fun. Nintendo hasn’t come out with some info dump trying to explain why, they just placed it there and moved on to the next thing.

Now the possible movie/tv show? That’ll probably over-explain everything lol

@Ryu_Niiyama As far back as 1998 Miyamoto stated that there was always a timeline for the series, they just didn't want to release it to the public at that point. They've shifted some games around from time to time, but it's always been a planned thing.

BOTW and TOTK conform to its own continuity whilst still referencing each of the 3 split timelines.

Whether or not these other games sit within the timeframe of the 10,000 years of history that the BOTW and TOTK’s lore span is anyone’s guess. It could well be that they just are set far in the future.

You also have conflicts with two different “Imprisoning Wars” which are totally seperate things, and let’s not forget that despite Skyward Sword (being the “beginning”) it still alludes to other events happening waaaaay before the game starts with high conceptual technology similar to Zonai tech being used prior to Demise and his War.

I’ve more or less come to accept that the best way to look at all of these games “history” is via the clue in the Title - “The Legend of Zelda: Insert Subtitle” - Legends are stories being passed down and retold to us (the player) to experience.

The unreliable narrator (aka Nintendo) is whom we have to trust, So when you treat each game as a fable or myth rather than an exact history it becomes a lot easier to process the game placement… ie - there isn’t any.

Zelda games are stories based on legends, so whilst they all could have happened, in terms of “history” making sense it’s probably not going to be the “truth” to what we’ve been playing.

It also would go some way to explain BOTW and TOTK sitting outside this “continuity”. Those games reference everything with visual Easter eggs and clues all over the place which would mean if you wanted to believe it, that there is a possibly that the true Zelda history is in these two games alone and the fables of the other titles are simply told within BOTW’s and TOTK’s own established events but as myths and legends.

@JohnnyMind I’ll repeat my previous assertion that the “limiting creativity” line is just an excuse. There’s no mechanic, enemy, or dungeon that couldn’t be applied to whatever timeline plot you want. You could have Ultrahand, Fuse, Ascend, Recall, and LBW wall-merging all on the BotW engine and still set the story as a sequel to Twilight Princess or Oracles.
Because by their own admission the plot isn’t a major focus. So why would it limit what they can do in other regards?

@Tyranexx I’ve always felt it was a mistake to place Oracles as the LttP Link because she obviously introduces herself to him when she appears in that game.
In other regards it does fit though, when considering the Triforce is united and accessible to Link, Ganon is dead, and Hyrule is at peace. Just doesn’t need to be the same Link, or Zelda, or both.

Good. Keep them separate from the other zelda games. Maybe the next FINISHED zelda game can go in the timeline.

My headcanon has always been Hyrule Warriors end result of their multiverse explosion is the unified timeline that leads to Breath of the Wild having clear references to all 3 timelines. No problem for me.

@thor8467 I don't really like these 2 Zelda's simply due to lack of dungeons and classic puzzle solving items that are not physicals base.

@Ryu_Niiyama Definitely. Zelda is one of the series most akin to the concept of a tale, or a legend (ohwait) – stories that are told, retold and mutate in its flourishes, but inherently tell the same basic concept: Link, the courageous swordsman, fights across many foes and suffers various perils to save Zelda from a certain peril – usually Ganon. Truly a hero's journey.

And while Echoes of Wisdom isn't really telling the story from that aspect, it is like the recent subversions we've seen with movies in classic (late 1800's - early 1900's) stories like Pinnochio or Alice in Wonderland. Using the story as a fakeout for a different way to retell it.

@nukatha Right? That jumped out to me too. They are the most obviously one-into-the-next games in the series.

So, not only are BotW and TotK in their own universe...but they don't even connect to each other. That explains why a lot of people were mad that TotK basically treated BotW as if it didn't happen. Makes me even more glad I didn't actually play TotK tbh. It feels more lazy than anything, and it explains why stuff like the Sheikah tech was completely missing from TotK.

BotW/TotK being in their own universes also explains why so many things don't legitimately make sense when considering previous games. For example, Sheikah being alive and Zora and Rito existing at the same time. I wouldn't be surprised if Echoes of Wisdom doesn't fit anywhere either considering Sheikah seem to be alive in that game too. Guess Aonuma decided he doesn't care about making games fit anywhere in the timeline anymore lol. Shouldn't have bothered connecting all the games only to abandon it later on

@Dinglehopper The thing is there are plenty of callbacks to BotW and things that directly follow on from events in that game but the bigger things (like what happened to the shrines/towers/Divine Beasts) are completely glossed over. It’s so weird.

Clearly they just wanted to re-use the world and characters but didn’t care about how the story would fit into it. Ridiculous really when they could have explained much of it pretty easily, they could have just said they destroyed the Sheikah tech like towers and Divine Beasts because they were unsafe to keep around after the calamity decayed them or something.

Probably an element of not wanting newcomers to feel lost when starting TotK too, which is pretty ridiculous in its own right- I’d bet the vast majority of people who played TotK had already played BotW.

They're sort of lined up with Zelda 1 and Zelda 2, which would support my theory that botw and totk are "remakes" of the first two games. First game, Hyrule is in ruins and we rescue Zelda from Ganon. Second game Ganon is reborn and we rescue an ancient Zelda who has been sleeping for thousands of years. There are a lot of discrepancies but the story was just in the instruction booklet anyway.

If they're pulling away from the official timeline now, they can start to make more "non-Hyrule" games. Because honestly sticking within the same kingdom and all the staples it has to include feels like it stifles the creativity of the world and story somewhat. Some of the best Zelda's weren't in Hyrule.

@Dinglehopper just because there isn't a line connected between them on the chart doesn't mean BOTW and TOTK are not connected.

TOTK is a literally a direct sequel set 5 years after BOTW. Exact same world, characters and progression of ideologies and world building which has happened within the timeframe.

Despite the oddities of not explaining away a few things with some simple lines of dialogue (looking at you Shiekah remnants), I always found it super strange when players claim it's a reset and the that the game pretends BOTW didn't happen. This is simply not true.

There are plenty of characters that reference BOTW's events throughout the game and also recognise Link for actions he took against the Calamity. There's even a statue of Link and Sidon in place of Mipha in the Zora Palace to represent their efforts against Van Rutah. The pit that Master Kogah fell into in BOTW has him land in the Depths which is followed up on as a big side quest in TOTK, there are major characters that return to help link (the Champions descendants)... and then there's Ganondorf. Hyrule Castle is a failsafe for holding Ganondorf prisoner for 10,000 years. Defeating his ethereal malice only served to weaken the barrier which leads into the events of the second game. I could go on.

I think these two titles are probably one of very few instances where Nintendo make it pretty clear it's a sequel.

I won't commit to comment much on the "lazy sequel" argument though. I think TOTK's overall content, production and new ideas speak for itself and prove how much effort was put in over the 6 years of development.

Surprised to see all the timeline hate here. I just view it as an interesting tidbit. It's mostly held together by ductape anyway, and can be retconned whenever needed by the developers, so it's not something to take too seriously.

Arlo has the most satisfying timeline explanation for BotW, the Jurassic Park 2 theory. In which he theorized that BOTW is not a merger of the timelines despite elements of each existing in it.
Rather because of the cyclical nature of these stories, any number of events is bound to happen on any timeline, and in this event BotW is the natural end result of any timeline.

I like this, it’s about as satisfying of a connection that they could make, and then let’s the off the hook for placement. Honestly it could even make Breath of the Wild the new jumping off point for new stories… at least it could before TotK. Which I think is the most willful disregard of the timeline yet, as it doesn’t even meaningfully connect to its direct predecessor! I think I ultimately agree with @Dark_isatari that Nintendo can not have a timeline if they want to, but when they half-a$$ it the series is honestly worse

I thought this was notable at Nintendo Live Sydney. Sadly like most people attending the event I was overwhelmed by several hour long queues.

@BIG3 I mean, teeeechnically there's the story in the first Hyrule Warriors. I think that's about the best we're gonna get.

Wait, there was a civil war?

Ah yes this clears things up

So till confirmed, BOTW and TOTK are their own spaceline outside of the main timeline, got it.

I will disregard this entirely, just like all the other silly timelines.

Guys, I know it's not your fault but I'm Brazilian and can't access tweets anymore, so for these articles a printscreen would be very much appreciated.... I was curious to see it. Thanks 🙃

It appears unclear if Nintendo is saying it is a separate timeline or that either path in the hero triumphant timeline leads to it. Hopefully will get clarified upon official release.

@Ryu_Niiyama I read that in the Soul Calibur II's narrator's voice & now I hear the intro theme in my brain. I love that.

It's a legend. It's expected to be retold in different ways through the ages. Committing the games to a timeline will just make it go the way of Castlevania, with convoluted and sometimes lame excuses as to why Dracula keeps breaking his revive-every-century schtick.