Dictionary.com said:

retcon

/ret'kon/ [short for `retroactive continuity', from the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.comics]
1. n. The common situation in pulp fiction (esp. comics or soap operas) where a new story `reveals' things about events in previous stories, usually leaving the `facts' the same (thus preserving continuity) while completely changing their interpretation. For example, revealing that a whole season of "Dallas" was a dream was a retcon.
2. vt. To write such a story about a character or fictitious object. "Byrne has retconned Superman's cape so that it is no longer unbreakable." "Marvelman's old adventures were retconned into synthetic dreams." "Swamp Thing was retconned from a transformed person into a sentient vegetable." "Darth Vader was retconned into Luke Skywalker's father in "The Empire Strikes Back".

Bear with me on this.

I know that Ocarina of Time has seen many releases. There was its original release, plus its Player's Choice/Million Seller release on the N64 (which, for all intents and purposes, we'll count as one release, since the changes made in its rerelease were superficial). There was also its release on the Master Quest disc on Gamecube, which fans will remember if they pre-ordered Wind Waker. Nintendo also released Ocarina of Time in a Zelda compilation on Gamecube, which also featured Majora's Mask and the two NES Zelda games. The game was THEN released on the Wii's Virtual Console, and less than two years ago, the game saw an enhanced port/remake on the 3DS.

Now, I'm not saying that Nintendo needs to rerelease Ocarina of Time anytime soon. What I'm talking about can happen many years from now. However, since the release of Hyrule Historia, we now know Nintendo's official interpretation of the Zelda timeline.

At the end of Ocarina of Time, the timeline essentially splits into three.

Timeline A.) Link falls in the last battle with Ganon, and Hyrule goes into decline. A war takes place to seal away Ganon (though it is not explained whether or not a new Link is involved)
Timeline B.) Link successfully defeats Ganon, and Hyrule as it exists in Adult Link's timeline continues on without him.
Timeline C.) Link successfully defeats Ganon, and Link returns to being a child, so Ganon never obtained the Triforce in the first place.

If Nintendo wants to explain ANY of that in a game, how should they do this? As I see it, there are a couple ways they could handle it:

Option 1: In a future rerelease of Ocarina of Time or Ocarina of Time 3D, Nintendo offers up different endings to the game:
In this scenario, we deal with a new version of Ocarina of Time. It likely either receives yet another graphical overhaul, or maintains many of the assets of OoT 3D. This game contains a 'bad ending' in which Link loses. Whether or not such an ending is optional would be up to Nintendo. Perhaps it's not unlike some of the Castlevania games, where you have to see a bad ending before you can play to the game's 'true' finale. Perhaps you lose the final battle, but then wake up in the Sacred Realm, where Rauru and Zelda explain that you have fallen. Due to magical interference or other mumbo jumbo, that world is beyond saving, and the only way to defeat Ganon is for them to send Link back to the moment before the battle. Perhaps you have to do a little sidquest to get the light arrow. As an idea, they could simply have you try to fight Ganon before you play through the dungeon remixes in Ganon's Tower. You fight to Ganon and lose to him. You then have to go through that final remixed dungeon and obtain the Light Arrow, and are now fully equipped to defeat him and get the true ending. It wouldn't be unlike in the original Zelda, where you CAN confront Ganon without the prerequisite equipment.

In another ending to the game (where you defeat Ganon), they rewrite Zelda's dialogue. She basically explains that Link will get the chance to relive his life as a child, and regain the seven years that he missed in his slumber earlier in the game. She also explains that even though she can send him back, HER world will continue on, because the powers of the Ocarina of Time are limited when anyone but Link uses it. It really doesn't have to make all that much sense - it would just have to be some time travel babble that explains that the timeline will be split in two. They could even do a split screen of what exactly is happening.

Option 2: Create a new game that explains Nintendo's new Timeline Theory
In a new game, it starts off like a combination of Symphony of the Night and Mega Man X. You start off in the final battle with Ganon, being thrown RIGHT into the thick of things. Things play out similarly to the way they did in Ocarina of Time. However, there's no way you can defeat Ganon (much like Mega Man X' first battle against Vile). Ganon stops Link, and he maintains power of Hyrule for a short time. Zelda goes off into hiding, using her guise as Shiek to stay hidden among the remaining citizens of Hyrule. She goes on her own adventure and rallies the people and armies of Hyrule together, as they work together to seal Ganon away. With Link's absence, this proves to be quite difficult. Where before, only one hero stood in Ganon's way, now Zelda must rely on herself and a new alliance to put Ganon away for good.

That doesn't really HAVE to be the plot of the game. Perhaps you take control of Ganon from the very beginning, and you play an entire game from his perspective. The game could be darker, and have kind of a melancholy ending, as Ganon inevitably gets sealed away by the end of the game. We see how Ganon continues to transform from a cunning thief into more of the pig like beast that we see in a Link to the Past, the Oracle games, and the NES games. However the game plays out, all that matters is that it establishes a new story arc in which Link falls at the hands of Ganon.



Is this something Zelda fans even WANT Nintendo to touch? From a story perspective, there's a TON to mine here. There's also room for a lot of new gameplay opportunities, as Nintendo has given themselves a window where games can exist without Link. New gameplay tropes, new characters, new styles of gameplay, etc. If Nintendo retcons OoT, would you rather see them do that in a future rerelease of Ocarina of Time, or possibly in a new spin-off game? Or possibly both? Maybe this sealing war could be some sort of strategy game where you control the various armies of Hyrule. Maybe it could even be some sort of multiplayer game where the player creates their own character, be it Zora, Gerudo, Hylian, or Goron.

OR, is this something that's better left in the history books? Is it simply time to just move forward and put all this timeline stuff behind us? Would such a retcon only confuse future (and old) players who don't want to concern themselves with any of this?

What direction do you think Nintendo should take? Should they even take a direction?

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@TheBigG753

You mean *Eiji Aonuma* has been saying two timelines for years . Officially, Nintendo didn't really say boo. And the reason why the failure timeline fits in after OT (as opposed to 'anywhere') was because it lead directly into the Imprisoning War backstory of A Link to the Past.

Look I agree that it's possible, (heck even probable) that the triple split is a relatively recent idea. That still doesn't make it stupid. There's lots of fictional universes out there that will end up canon welding various plot threads together that weren't originally planned that way. It's a side effect of writing new material as you go along. Short of mapping out an entire saga from scratch years in advance, it's pretty much unavoidable.

As long as it doesn't ridiculously contradict what's gone before (and I really don't see that it has), all is cool IMO.

@Shadowlink

I was discussing this with a friend, and my position on that is that expanding on a Universe is fine but it needs to be done in an outward manner. Using Star Wars as an example, you have the original trilogy, the prequels, and now a sequel trilogy. I am okay with all of that. The problem is when you start getting in to inserting things after they have been established.

Apparently now Darth Vader has had 2 apprentices. Apparently Darth Maul has been resurrected no less than twice. One of them was as this thing:

Shadowlink said:

...I'm sure you've already gone through all this before...but what plot holes?

There's quite a number. I already explained the plot holes with the downfall timeline in my first post in this thread. To reiterate and summarize though: it just can't work without 1) making the adult timeline a "what-if" timeline as well, and 2) explaining away the things from the classic games that place them more naturally after one of the other branches of the timeline. Like I mentioned in my first post, the most recent version of ALttP GBA altered the story very slightly, and added the Four Sword into the game. We now find the Four Sword, broken into four pieces, and containing Shadow Links, in the Dark World. Having ALttP take place in a timeline completely separated from the Four Sword (much less a plausible reason for the Four Sword ending up in the Dark World with Shadow Links, which is something that FSA provides) doesn't make a lot of sense.

Apart from the downfall timeline, the split timeline itself (read: adult timeline) is a plot hole unless either 1) it's also a what-if timeline, 2) Zelda didn't send Link back to the past, but rather sent him to a completely different universe in which he had never been before and never existed before, 3) Zelda didn't send Link back to the past, but rather sent him to a completely different universe in which a different incarnation of him had existed before, but thanks to Zelda's magic, adult timeline Link was fused with this new universe Link, completely replacing and taking over the life of the new universe Link, or 4) there is no split and it's a single timeline. Those are the only ways to do it without plot holes (and the what-if timelines just seem like a cop-out when there are plenty of easy ways to make every game actually have happened).

Other plot holes:

SS taking place first - This doesn't make sense because 1) the Master Sword created in SS was created in a vastly different manner from the TP Master Sword, TWW Master Sword, or ALttP Master Sword. The origin stories for the Master Sword were extremely consistent amongst those three games, but SS's forging had almost no similarities at all to the other three. Forcing the SS Master Sword to be the same sword as the others introduces quite a few plot holes. 2) ALttP, OoT, and TP mention that when the goddesses created the world, they placed the Triforce in the Sacred Realm at the conclusion of creation. SS tells of the gods giving Hylia possession of the Triforce in the Light World. So clearly the events of SS can't take place close to the beginning of creation. 3) TMC makes it clear that monsters first appeared in the world of humans during its back story, and between TMC and its back story there were no monsters in Hyrule. So that excludes SS from taking place before TMC's back story or between TMC and it's back story. SS taking place first creates way too many plot holes. If the game takes place after Spirit Tracks or Adventure of Link, it's pretty plot hole free (as far as the timeline goes... it still has a few plot holes in its own self-contained story).

FS taking place early in the timeline - FSA makes it clear that only "years" separate FS and FSA. It also makes it clear that Hyrule was experiencing a time of peace between the events of FS and FSA. However, if OoT, MM, and TP take place in-between the two games, then there's no way you can justifiably say that the kingdom was at peace between the two games.

Oracles taking place between ALttP and LA - Link meets Zelda for the first time in ALttP. Link meets Zelda for the first time in Oracles. LA Link and ALttP Link are confirmed to be the same guy by LA. So ALttP -> OoX -> LA just doesn't work without the whole meeting-Zelda-for-the-first-time plot hole.

There are a few other inconveniences in Historia's timeline, mostly because of the separation and placements of each branch (e.g., the Four Sword thing in ALttP which would be cleaned up nicely if FSA took place right before ALttP), but those are the major plot holes without going into Historia's explanations for their placements (which contain some more plot holes themselves).

Shadowlink said:

It's dumb to have possibilities?

But the thing is that the downfall timeline doesn't even present new possibilities; not the way Nintendo is doing it, anyway. The only possibility that the downfall timeline presents would be the opportunity to see a game in which the hero failed, and now you either get to play as the villain who has just won, or you're playing as some pseudo-hero standing up against the villain. But Nintendo has already ruled that out by saying that the Imprisoning War just happens there.

If Nintendo was trying to open them up to more areas to place games in a timeline by coming up with the downfall, that was an act in futility. After all, a current, plausible single timeline already gives creators an infinite amount of options for new games. Even in something as simple as the time between TMC and OoT, there is room for an infinite number of games between those two alone. If you've already got room for infinite games, creating a new timeline isn't going to increase infinity.

Shadowlink said:

We've never had a full timeline before, and certainly nothing that contradicted what Hyrule Historia says.

Sure we have. Hyrule Historia alone is contradicted by almost every game in the franchise. I honestly don't think there's a single game that Hyrule Historia got all of the information right about. Maybe LoZ. I've seen errors with something that they've said regarding almost every other game. As for a full timeline, we actually did have one at one point. Miyamoto gave a full timeline once when OoT came out. And that timeline was OoT, LoZ, AoL, and ALttP, with LA taking place anywhere after OoT.

Shadowlink said:

And the reason why the failure timeline fits in after OT (as opposed to 'anywhere') was because it lead directly into the Imprisoning War backstory of A Link to the Past.

But it really doesn't. ALttP says the Imprisoning War starts because Ganon and his followers accidentally find the Sacred Realm on their own. Hyrule Historia says that the sages sealed him in there. ALttP says that Ganon and his followers found the whole Triforce in the Sacred Realm. Hyrule Historia says that Ganon got the whole Triforce from the dead Link and Zelda before being sealed in the Sacred Realm (which makes no sense in itself, given that there's no way the sages could have sealed a Ganon who has the full power of the Triforce away in the Sacred Realm when originally they needed Link to weaken him first, and that was when he only had one-third of the Triforce). ALttP also says that the people of Hyrule searched for the Master Sword and a hero to wield it when the war broke out. Hyrule Historia says everyone knew the hero was dead, and they put the Master Sword in a nearby temple (which also doesn't make a lot of sense given that only the Hero of Time was supposed to be able to wield it, so how did the people move it from dead Link's hand to this unnamed temple?). ALttP says that the war broke out because Ganon's wish transformed the Sacred Realm into the Dark World and caused monsters to start pouring out of the realm into the Light World. Historia doesn't mention any of that and, from what I remember, doesn't even mention what Ganon's wish upon getting the entire Triforce might have been. ALttP says that Ganon couldn't find his way out of the Dark World, and the sages merely placed a seal on the realm to keep Ganon's monsters from exiting the realm. Historia doesn't mention Ganon's monsters at all.

OoT (or the events that might take place after it in a downfall scenario) just don't fit as the Imprisoning War without drastically altering what ALttP says about it.

Shadowlink said:

Short of mapping out an entire saga from scratch years in advance, it's pretty much unavoidable.

But the thing is, right now all of these plot holes, inconsistencies, and difficulties ARE avoidable if Nintendo would just pay attention to what's actually in the games. The stories so far can be arranged in such a way as to get rid of all inter-related game contradictions (leaving only the self-contained game contradictions, specifically those in OoA and SS, as the sole inconsistencies in the franchise).

@V_s
We don't know why Hyrule Castle was moved inbetween OoT and Twilight Princess. Is that a plot hole too?
Do you understand how multiple universes work? Sending Link back would create one Link as an Adult and one as a Child. Sending Link back wouldn't cause Adult Link to change because he would take part in the universe where he wasn't sent back. Of course it's a what if scenario.
Don't you think after thousands of years there would be many many different stories about how the sword is forged?
The Dark World in FSA is not the same one as in ALttP.
Rauru probably moved the sword or Fi awoke to move it to it's appropriate placing.
OoT is not the imprisoning war, that takes place after OoT has finished.
Skyward Sword has to go first, there is no way it can be placed in any other time, otherwise the whole Link/Zelda/Ganon thing would not work.
I'm not too familiar with FSA, so I don't know if it should be placed where it is.


That's all for now, gotta get back to school work.

Pokefreak911 said:

We don't know why Hyrule Castle was moved inbetween OoT and Twilight Princess.

In a single timeline, we absolutely know why it was moved. The old one was destroyed. Of course there's also the possibility that Hyrule Castle didn't move, and the Temple of Time we see in TP isn't the same Temple of Time that we see in OoT since we're told that the OoT Temple of Time was built by the ancient sages, and the TP Temple of Time was built by the Oocca (which means that, unless Rauru is an Oocca in a pre-bird form, there are at least two different Temple of Times (and even Hyrule Historia says there's been at least two Temples of Time throughout history)).

Do you understand how multiple universes work? Sending Link back would create one Link as an Adult and one as a Child.

Yes, I understand how multiple universes work. And only sending Link back in time and not de-aging him would result in him still being an adult in the past. However, since we know that Link wasn't an adult in the past, and we know that Nintendo doesn't believe that the adult timeline got erased, and we know it's out of character for Zelda to kill off a parallel universe Link or strand her Link in a parallel universe in which he had never lived before, we can safely assume that Zelda used her power to revert Link back to the age he would have been at that point in the past when she sent him back in time.

Don't you think after thousands of years there would be many many different stories about how the sword is forged?

In our universe? Sure. In the Zelda universe? No way. No legend in the Zelda universe is ever wrong. Every single legend that can be substantiated by another game is substantiated by those games. For whatever reason, "legends" in the Zelda universe don't get altered with time. The word "legend" in the Zelda universe doesn't mean the same thing as it does in ours. Their version of the word has a definition more akin to history. This is similar to how the Zelda universe's word "human" isn't the same as our word "human". The Zelda word "human" means any largely humanoid creature, whether that be a Hylian, Gerudo, Sheikah, or a Hylian descendant that no longer has any of its ancestors' magic. That's not what "human" means in our universe. And since all of the evidence points towards every legend in the Zelda universe being accurate, there's no reason to believe that the Master Sword's origins were screwed up when virtually everything else remains consistent over that same amount of time.

The Dark World in FSA is not the same one as in ALttP.

Who said it was?

Rauru probably moved the sword or Fi awoke to move it to it's appropriate placing.

Rauru can't wield the sword. He's not the Hero of Time. And Fi stated in SS that her slumber would never end. She won't ever awaken again.

OoT is not the imprisoning war, that takes place after OoT has finished.

No one in this thread has claimed that OoT is the Imprisoning War, and I already explained why it is impossible for the Imprisoning War to take place immediately after OoT.

Skyward Sword has to go first, there is no way it can be placed in any other time, otherwise the whole Link/Zelda/Ganon thing would not work.

The Link/Zelda/Ganon thing already doesn't work if you're talking about Ganon being a reincarnation of Demise/Demise's hatred. It doesn't matter where in the timeline you place SS, it still doesn't work. We're told pretty explicitly in SS that Link's wish completely destroyed Demise. It eradicated every bit of him. His body, his hatred, his consciousness... all were destroyed by the Triforce. To say that Demise's hatred-fueled curse survived the Triforce is to say that Demise was stronger than the Triforce, and if that's true, then none of SS's plot makes any sense because Demise would have then had no reason to try to get the Triforce in the first place. Demise's curse only allowed the Imprisoned to keep being reborn. After the events of SS were over, Demise was dead for good.

@V_s

But this post and your previous one completely misses the point of the "Zelda timeline" as Nintendo sees it.

It's a framework in which Zelda games take place. A well of archetypes, tropes, and legends. If the best Zelda game they can come up with to make next happens to completely undermine both Hyrule Historia and every bit of in-game canon to date, they would go forward with it. Things like consistent geography, stable Triforce powers, definitive Master Sword origins, etc., serve absolutely no purpose as part of any grand unifying theory. They serve only to ground the series in a generally consistent reality.

Again, I've no doubt Nintendo thinks of this stuff, but there's so much evidence to suggest that it doesn't drive their game creating decisions in any meaningful way that it should not only be unsurprising that something like Hyrule Historia may be unsatisfying to people who have thought about this a great deal, it should also have been expected.

@Kal-El814 - I have never believed that the timeline drives Nintendo's game-creating decisions. It's very obvious that, at the very least, the people who give the interviews (read: Miyamoto and Aonuma) really don't care about the timeline and don't understand it either (they've gone on record saying that the logistics confuse them). But for some reason or another, Nintendo keeps making only sequels and prequels to existing games. And by either some miraculous stroke of luck or by some set of programmers who actually have played all of the games, are in charge of writing the scripts, never give any interviews, but still actually care about the timeline enough to make sure that the games can fit together without contradicting one another, the games are currently able to all fit together. They just can't fit together the way Nintendo has tried to fit them in Hyrule Historia.

You're misunderstanding my posts if you believe that I think the timeline drives the creation of any of the games. I'm not talking about Nintendo's intent. I'm talking about their finished products. And since this thread was asking about whether Nintendo should retool a finished product, I responded regarding the finished products.

And let's face it...the people at Nintendo (especially those involved with Zelda) have no problem changing their minds and contradicting past things they've said. Even Hyrule Historia contains a couple of sentences within it stating that it is not the end-all-be-all of canon. It's just one interpretation, and readers are encouraged to come up with their own interpretations. Hyrule Historia isn't canon. It's an interpretation of canon. Just as Hyrule Historia gets tons of things about the games wrong, soon enough we'll get a new game that gets tons of things about Hyrule Historia wrong. You can pretty much bank on that.

I really don't know anything about the Zelda Timeline. To be honest, the whole thing seems nearly as silly as making a Mario Timeline.

I think that only a very few Nintendo series are created with continuity in mind. In terms of the ones that people care about, mostly just Metroid.

I mean, it's kind of hard to deny that Nintendo just said "Okay, well, we have these old games that we didn't put much thought into regarding the story....let's just separate them all into their own thing so that we don't have to worry about connecting the new games to them. AND, if we have a game that doesn't really relate to anything at all, we'll just throw it on that timeline."

Still...regardless of what the timeline is, I guess my main point was that it'd be cool to see them fill in different pockets of history with games, rather than the typical "Link sets off to get the Triforce" story.

Like George Lucas!

Yeah, I'm not opposed to it. It's an interesting idea, I guess. If they could really nail it and tie everything together in a surprising, Sixth Sense kind of way, it would certainly be cool. But that just seems almost impossible to do.

A 2D/3D universe/time-hopping Zelda Generations title might do the trick.

And, while we're at it, I want Metroid 5!!

@V_s

I probably directed my post at you more specifically than I meant to, sorry about that!

That said I don't think that the in-game material supports a cohesive timeline anymore than the content of Hyrule Historia. I don't think the writers of Skyward Sword took any of the Four Sword/Minish Cap stuff in mind when they were plotting that game. I don't think the writers of Four Swords considered OoT when plotting that content for that game. Etc. I don't think it's a stretch to assume that some of these things line up because the plots for individual Zelda games deal with things at a high enough level that some synchronicity is to be expected.

I don't think Hyrule Historia is WRONG, though. It has Nintendo's blessing as canon. However I agree that doesn't mean all that much and they'd contradict it if they felt it made for a compelling game. We've seen this happen before. IGA did it with Castlevania, discarding a bunch of games as non-canon, then Konami did it again with Lords of Shadow. DmC did it for Devil May Cry, etc. If Nintendo says Hyrule Historia is canon, then it is.

@Kal-El814 I think Nintendo did want to disregard a bunch of games, but rather than do that, they just put them off to a separate timeline. I don't think it's a coincidence that the third timeline are all basically games that came out before 2001, that really don't have much of a connection to the modern games.

@PogueSquadron

Honestly, the weirdest thing about Hyrule Historia to me is plopping Minish Cap and Four Swords in between SS and OoT. There's no attempt in SS to link (homina homina homina) to any of the 4S/MC stuff, and there's no attempt in 4S/MC to effectively hook with OoT.

Link failing in OoT is weird too, I guess, as is the "happiest path" involving a follow up to Spirit Tracks. Ugh.

I think the next game should be a direct sequel to LoZ & The Adventure of Link timeline.

I mean, I think they should keep doing what they're doing - make a game that's self contained with enough nods in there that you can basically figure out when it takes place. But given some of these gaps they've created, I think there's an opportunity for some cool new stories and gameplay ideas. Maybe making a game without Link is blasphemy, but I think the series needs to get shaken up badly, and if it takes a spin-off game to truly do that, then I'm all for it. Then the main games could adopt some of the better ideas introduced in a spin-off. I think we've seen this done successfully in Mario, albeit not to such a huge degree. There are plenty of things in say, Yoshi's Island, that are still used in current Mario games, and I think the games are better for it (adding meaning to collecting 5 flowers/coins in each level, red coins, butt stomping, etc). edit: (I guess butt stomping was introduced in Wario Land, but the same principle applies)

If they made a game based around...say, Shiek, we'd have a game with a much more acrobatic character with her own abilities. Then maybe in a later game, they could appropriate some of that into Link's character. Right now, I just think they're too much in their own bubble when they make these games. They know how Link moves. They know how he uses items. They know how the world introduces puzzles to the player. They know how a dungeon is structured. I think they'd be much better off throwing a lot of that stuff out the window, and I think they'd feel more free about doing it with another character.

PogueSquadron said:

I mean, it's kind of hard to deny that Nintendo just said "Okay, well, we have these old games that we didn't put much thought into regarding the story....let's just separate them all into their own thing so that we don't have to worry about connecting the new games to them.

I slightly disagree. The fact that every Nintendo-made Zelda game has been a sequel or prequel to an already existing game at some point during its development seems to disagree with that notion. AoL was made as a sequel to LoZ. ALttP was made as a prequel to LoZ. LA wasn't made with the timeline in mind, but Koizumi made it so that LA was definitely a sequel to ALttP when he wrote the game's story in the instruction booklet. OoT was originally supposed to be a prequel to ALttP. MM was made as a sequel to OoT. TWW was made as a sequel to OoT. FSA was made as a sequel to FS and was originally supposed to be a prequel to ALttP. TP was made as a sequel to OoT. PH was made as a sequel to TWW. ST was made as a sequel to PH (or TWW, depending on how you want to look at it). SS was originally supposed to be a prequel to OoT.

So I disagree that Nintendo never intended these games to be connected. However, it is certainly true that Aonuma, who is currently in charge of Zelda and didn't come into the series until OoT, may have made a similar statement about them having all of those old games that he wasn't involved with, and he didn't know what to do with them because he hadn't played them or been a member of the teams that made them, so instead of playing the games to learn their stories and figure out where they have to go, he just decided to wing it.

Kal-El814 said:

That said I don't think that the in-game material supports a cohesive timeline anymore than the content of Hyrule Historia.

Why not? At the very least, they don't make a cohesive timeline impossible, unlike the content of Hyrule Historia.

Kal-El814 said:

I don't think the writers of Skyward Sword took any of the Four Sword/Minish Cap stuff in mind when they were plotting that game.

This is probably true, and it's certainly true that Aonuma himself must not have had either of those games in mind when SS was being plotted. On the other hand, the guy who directed SS is the same guy who directed TMC, so I'd be a little surprised if TMC wasn't on mind in some way when SS was being developed.

Kal-El814 said:

I don't think Hyrule Historia is WRONG, though. It has Nintendo's blessing as canon.

But does it really? Especially when Hyrule Historia itself says that it is just one interpretation of events that is subject to change, and that invites readers to interpret the timeline for themselves as well? That doesn't sound like canon to me. I understand canon to mean something that is held to be true within a certain universe. Historia is saying, "These things are probably true, but they may not be..." That sounds like Nintendo saying that Historia isn't canon in the technical definition of the word. Partially canon, at best.

PogueSquadron said:

I mean, I think they should keep doing what they're doing - make a game that's self contained with enough nods in there that you can basically figure out when it takes place.

Completely agreed. After ST and SS, I just don't trust Nintendo any more with a Zelda game that puts too much emphasis on story in a way that heavily relates to other games in the series.

To their credit, I actually like the stuff they allude to. The crumbling ruins, the technological aspects...I LIKE knowing that there was stuff going on before. I don't need to know what it is, but it's cool to see some history there.

Whenever I come across certain Zelda contradictions, I usually just try to figure that stuff happens that they don't show in a game. Like, even though the Master Sword forming is different in SS than we knew before, maybe the Goddess Sword was originally created to protect the Triforce, and for some reason it just became weak over time.

Regarding Hyrule Historia, I think we can all say that it's as much canon, for now, as the back of a Super Nintendo box description. It'll probably change over time.

@V_s

Those are my exact thoughts. See also Rosalina's story in Super Mario Galaxy or the Grandmother's story in Majora's Mask. They could even tie a miniquest on the game to discover the lost pages of in-game Hyrule Historia (i.e. Assassin's Creed's inspired mini-dungeons).

@gencid - Those sounds like great ways to implement the idea to me.

PogueSquadron said:

Regarding Hyrule Historia, I think we can all say that it's as much canon, for now, as the back of a Super Nintendo box description. It'll probably change over time.

Fred Ascare and Paula Abghoul 4-evar.