Daily Debate: Has The Zelda Timeline Become More of a Burden than a Benefit?
Posted on September 10 2024 by Sean Gadus
The ordering and timeline of the games in the Zelda series has been a subject of significant debate for decades. While the connections between the Zelda games and their placement across a timeline were the subject of fan speculation for years, Nintendo published an official timeline in the 2011 book Hyrule Historia. Though the timeline section of the Hyrule Historia ended some debates about the connections between different games, each subsequent Zelda game has led to more questions and arguments about the structure of the timeline. Just recently, a graphic at Nintendo Live 2024 Sydney sparked major confusion about the timeline, with some news outlets incorrectly reporting that the graphic represented an update to the timeline, despite the fact that it simply reflected a version of the timeline present on Nintendo’s official Zelda portal since 2023.
With all of the debate and discussion that the Zelda timeline has caused, it is apt to question whether the Zelda timeline become more of a burden than a benefit for the series and its fans.
While I have never been a huge supporter of the Zelda timeline, I do not feel that the concept of a Zelda timeline was by itself necessarily a bad thing. There is a clear logic to discussing or explaining how different games in the series are connected to each other. That being said, the way that Nintendo and fans have engaged with the Zelda timeline since 2011 has made me feel like the timeline has become more of a burden than a benefit.
One of the first questions fans and reporters ask whenever a Zelda game is announced is where the project fits on the Zelda timeline, a question Nintendo has been increasing resistant to answering clearly. The lack of clarity from Nintendo often leads passionate fans to scrutinize early footage from trailers, overanalyze quotes from developers (quotes that are often translated from Japanese to English), or scrutinizing graphics on Nintendo’s website. For Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo has been evasive and vague about where the games exist on the official timeline. While the recent Nintendo Live 2024 Sydney timeline controversy illustrates a failure by some websites and content creators to do their journalistic due diligence, the controversy also illustrates how complicated the discourse around the timeline has become. At this point, it feels like the best thing Nintendo can do is only discuss chronology if a new game is a direct sequel or clear prequel to an existing Zelda project.
What do you think? Has the Zelda timeline become more of a burden than a benefit? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Sean Gadus is a Senior Editor at Zelda Dungeon. His first Zelda game was Ocarina of Time, and he loves all of the 3D Zelda games from 1998-2011. He is currently replaying the narrative ghost story Oxenfree, and taking his first stab at playing Dark Souls. He wants to help build a kinder, more compassionate world. You can check out his other written work at The-Artifice.com.
