Zelda's biggest sin/mistake

[Spirit]

If you were to speak from your own personal opinion, what would you say has been the Zelda series' biggest sin/mistake?

Has the series done something so bad that your faith in the series was heavily shaken?

If yes then what was it and has the series managed to recover in your eyes?

 

[mαrkαsscoρ]

making this thing canon

 

[Princess Niki]

Allowing the CD-i games to be a thing.

 

[Quin]

making this thing canon

^same but for other reasons. There are so many things that personally bothered me about TFH that I gave up on the series. I came back soon after with BOTW (glad I did) and bought and completed it anyway, just for the collections sake. Its not a bad game as long as you meet the requirements (LOCAL with 2 other good friends) but still for sure the low point of the (canon) series.

 

[Hero of Pizza Time]

This might not really count for a "Zelda mistake" but it was a "Nintendo mistake" that involved Zelda: Teaming up with Phillips and leaving Sony. Not only did this result in the horrendous CD-i Zelda games, but it also was responsible for creating Nintendo's biggest threat, the PlayStation. I mean I like a lot of PlayStation games but this did not go well for Nintendo.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

 

[Jirohnagi]

Biggest sin/mistake? The timeline, if nintendo had never confirmed the timeline or even made allusions to it existing they could've kept the series going ad infinitum and no one would overly care if they labeled a game as a remake because fans could happily work it into their timeline theories. Look at BOTW that game feels so much like a big ol reboot to the series because of their stance of it being 10,000 years beyond any established timeline, does no one else feel like this is nintendos attempt to kill the sodding timeline once and for all.

 

[YIGAhim]

THe timeline, TFH, or Teaming with fricking Philips.

 

[Cfrock]

The biggest sin is SS because they deserve to go to Hell for it.

Biggest mistake... My knee jerk response is to say the timeline, but I think what I really mean by that is validating continuity at all. A few years ago I cared, I really did. I theorised, I tried to find the connections, I tried to make things fit. But the reality is that they don't, they never have, and they never will. Nintendo don't care about continuity. They love dropping in little references and things for long-time fans, but as far as a linear, cohesive story goes, Zelda has never had that. There are isolated pockets of continuity, sure, like OoT-MM, OoT-WW-PH-ST, or ALttP-ALBW, but these 'continuity bubbles' don't overlap. At least that was true before the official timeline canonised a series-wide continuity.

Now, instead of people discussing connections and trying to fit the games together, we have arguments about whether the timeline is even canon or not, people getting stressed because they don't like it for this reason or that reason, and massive, unignorable contradictions that are now lore. Zelda is a series that doesn't need lore, it doesn't need narrative depth, and it works better to keep each game isolated, story-wise, because that leaves Nintendo the space to do what they want without automatically pissing a large swathe of fans off with contradictions, retcons, or things that can't make sense. Validating continuity implies there are answers to the questions many fans have, when that simply isn't true because Nintendo never gave anything a second thought. They created a wild goose chase with the timeline, and they shouldn't have.

WW said it best:

This is but one of the legends of which the people speak...

They should have canonised that. Instead, they just antagonised their audience.

 

[Victor]

the koroks,i don't know why but i still refuse to this day to accept them as the future of kokiris. kokiris had personality. it's literally tree stumps with leaves masks. i prefer that they simply vanished instead of becoming those little abominations.

 

[Alita the Pun]

the koroks,i don't know why but i still refuse to this day to accept them as the future of kokiris. kokiris had personality. it's literally tree stumps with leaves masks. i prefer that they simply vanished instead of becoming those little abominations.

I like you victor

 

[DarkestLink]

In a general sense? Relying on gimmicks and having no faith in their own series.

In a more narrow sense? Removing dungeons. The removal of dungeons completely kills any identity Zelda ever had as a video game series and now the only thing that bonds the games are story elements if even that.

 

[Castle]

Wind Waker wasn't the series' biggest mistake, but it was the first big mistake. No. Not even Zelda II and the Philips games compare. Zelda II is good shut up. The Cd-i games aren't even Zelda and can be ignored so shut up. Wind Waker was the first time ninty decided 3/5th of their brain matter were unnecessary and chucked it to release a Zelda game that has no reason to be a Zelda game (and every reason being its own game).

Everything, with the sole exception of Twilight Princess, has been downhill from there. Waker lead to Suckward lead to Breath and now the series no longer has an identity because ninty has no idea what it is anymore and has forgotten what it was. They're too stupid and lazy to put any iota of basic f-king effort into anything they do and that includes Zelda.

Suckward was their biggest mistake. Breath is their biggest misstep. But Waker is where this hard veer towards lazy directionless horrendously out of touch ignorance began.

 

[Victor]

Wind Waker wasn't the series' biggest mistake, but it was the first big mistake. No. Not even Zelda II and the Philips games compare. Zelda II is good shut up. The Cd-i games aren't even Zelda and can be ignored so shut up. Wind Waker was the first time ninty decided 3/5th of their brain matter were unnecessary and chucked it to release a Zelda game that has no reason to be a Zelda game (and every reason being its own game).

i think i can understand your anger about skyward sword,but why is wind waker so bad?the lore?the gameplay? one of the few things i don't like about the windwaker timeline are the koroks but that's me.

 

[Vanessa28]

The freaking timeline. They try to fill the flaws with more flaws. I do love the games *coughcoughSSnotincluded* but Nintendo screws the timeline up so much it's not even fun anymore. Or maybe it is fun to watch them shoot in their own foot.