TPHD carvings depict an adult timeline split?

[DragonEleven]

Hey, so this the newest addition I've found to an ongoing theory I have for the timeline placement of BotW... I might post that theory in full at some point, but for now I'll just keep it to this.

I'm sure you'd all have seen the mysterious carvings that were added to the HD remake of Twilight Princess, but these have typically been ignored as the presence of both Rito and Zora doesn't make sense... they cannot co-exist in the same timeline, but what if the carvings aren't showing a single timeline?
The second and third images each show Link with only one of his parents, so what if that is the key factor that separates these two timelines?

Because of the Rito and Zora, this split must occur prior to the Great Flood, which the people of Hyrule were warned about by the Goddesses, in order to give them time to evacuate to safety. This is likely what is depicted in the first image, with the Triforce representing the Goddesses issuing their warning, which would have put Link in a position where he would have to chose which of his parents he would stay with.
His mother would have been evacuated with the other civilians, and if Link had stayed with her, then he would never have faced Ganon, so no-one would have known that this Link existed, and the Goddesses would have gone ahead with the Great Flood. This would therefore lead to the evolution off the Zora into the Rito, and the events of Wind Waker onwards.
His father, on the other hand, would likely have been a soldier, so would have stayed behind to help fend off Ganon and his minions. If Link had stayed with him, then he would inevitably have ended up facing Ganon at some point, and with the hero having appeared, the Goddesses would have cancelled the Great Flood, so the Zora would never have needed to evolve into the Rito. It is in this timeline that I think BotW may take place.


Please let me know what you think about this theory... I don't usually post my theories to forums like this, but I'd really like to get some feedback on this one in particular.

 

[DeactivatedUser2]

How would the Hylians have made the carvings of Link and his mother if they didn't know he had existed

 

[DragonEleven]

How would the Hylians have made the carvings of Link and his mother if they didn't know he had existed

Probably wasn't the best explanation... people would have know about them, it's just that they wouldn't have known their significance, which would be why they were never mentioned in the backstory of WW.
Whoever did create the carvings must have known their significance even though no-one else did, and that ties in to the question of how someone in the child timeline would even have knowledge of not one, but two different adult timelines.
There's no way of telling for sure, but if I had to guess I'd say they were probably a time traveller who was somehow able to hop between timelines by going back to the point at which they split.
Edit: Of course, it could have just been a prophecy made before the timelines split in OoT.

 

[fermian]

Although they are never seen ingame, the zora (fish) could be thriving somewhere in the great sea and likewise the ruto may be hiding out somewhere in the TP timeline, perhaps even flying to safer pastures the moment the twilight beings began the invascion.

The real question is why the very few gorons who survived a mass extinction (ie flood) appear to be on vacation..

 

[DeactivatedUser2]

Although they are never seen ingame, the zora (fish) could be thriving somewhere in the great sea and likewise the ruto may be hiding out somewhere in the TP timeline, perhaps even flying to safer pastures the moment the twilight beings began the invascion.

The real question is why the very few gorons who survived a mass extinction (ie flood) appear to be on vacation..

What? The Rito evolved FROM the Zora because of the Goddesses' Will in the Adult Timeline.

 

[fermian]

What? The Rito evolved FROM the Zora because of the Goddesses' Will in the Adult Timeline.

What I meant was both ww and tp take place some time after oot and it is possible for both the evolved form (ruto) and unevolved form (zora) to exist in both timelines. Just because some changed doesn't necessarily mean they all changed and, as I said, fish are quite fond of water and birds are free to ditch town. The kokiri, on the otherhand, are very humanlike and thus were forced to leave their little skice of paradise and many assume that reason alone is what lead to their evolution.

 

[DeactivatedUser2]

What I meant was both ww and tp take place some time after oot and it is possible for both the evolved form (ruto) and unevolved form (zora) to exist in both timelines. Just because some changed doesn't necessarily mean they all changed and, as I said, fish are quite fond of water and birds are free to ditch town. The kokiri, on the otherhand, are very humanlike and thus were forced to leave their little skice of paradise and many assume that reason alone is what lead to their evolution.

But it isn't possible for them both to exist in both timelines. ALL of the Zora were changed in the Adult Timeline because the Goddesses wanted that to happen. The Ritos simply don't exist during Twilight Princess.

 

[Dio]

The carvings were an Easter egg and whilst possible the new game takes place on the Child Timeline with these supposed connections to TP, BoTW could very well also take place on the adult Timeline and the carvings depicting Rito are simply there to hint at that. There is salt rock from an ancient sea found in BoTW's overworld even hinting at a post flood game on the Adult timeline.

The Oocca. Also depicted in the carving, would exist and dwell within the City In The Sky in all splits of the timeline, so their presence doesn't really help us determine anything. All we can take from it is the possibility of their presence in BoTW.

 

[DragonEleven]

The carvings were an Easter egg and whilst possible the new game takes place on the Child Timeline with these supposed connections to TP, BoTW could very well also take place on the adult Timeline and the carvings depicting Rito are simply there to hint at that. There is salt rock from an ancient sea found in BoTW's overworld even hinting at a post flood game on the Adult timeline.

The Oocca. Also depicted in the carving, would exist and dwell within the City In The Sky in all splits of the timeline, so their presence doesn't really help us determine anything. All we can take from it is the possibility of their presence in BoTW.

It's widely accepted that the Zora were forced to evolve so that they wouldn't be able to reach the sunken Hyrule... there is no other logical explanation for them to become the Rito, as unlike the Kokiri, they would have been able to live on the Great Sea without a problem... this is very specific, making it highly unlikely that any other situation would be able to cause this transformation, making the Rito almost certainly exclusive to the adult timeline (specifically the Great Flood branch, assuming that the carvings do depict a split that occurs before that).

Despite what many people assume, the salt rock in BotW may not actually be from the Great Flood, as it is quite likely that Hyrule had been flooded long before the Great Flood... before even Skyward Sword, as we glimpse in the Lanayru Sand Sea. People have argued that it was only the desert that was flooded before, but if we look at the BotW map we can clearly see that water flows across Hyrule from the desert in the west to the ocean in the east, meaning that the desert is clearly on higher ground than the majority of Hyrule, so if the water level had risen high enough to flood the desert, it would almost certainly have flooded the rest of Hyrule first.

But I agree about the Oocca (hence why I didn't mention the one in the carving... it's irrelevant).

 

[hwrdjacob]

Since it's basically confirmed the Oocca evolved from the Skyloftians (especially based on them sharing the same Japanese name "Tribe of the Sky People") how do we know the "Rito" isn't just an Oocca in the middle of their evolutionary path?

 

[DragonEleven]

Since it's basically confirmed the Oocca evolved from the Skyloftians (especially based on them sharing the same Japanese name "Tribe of the Sky People") how do we know the "Rito" isn't just an Oocca in the middle of their evolutionary path?

It actually states in-game that the Oocca existed before the Hylians/Skyloftians, which confirms that your theory is incorrect.
And the Japanese names quite often only use a description to refer to different races, rather than giving them a formal name... both the Oocca and the Skyloftians can be described as 'tribes of sky people', but there is no reason to assume that there is only one such tribe.
As for the Rito... it is stated quite clearly both in Wind Waker and the Hyrule Historia that they evolved from the Zora, and we see both Zora and Oocca in Twilight Princess, making it impossible for the Rito to have evolved into the Oocca.

 

[hwrdjacob]

It actually states in-game that the Oocca existed before the Hylians/Skyloftians, which confirms that your theory is incorrect.
And the Japanese names quite often only use a description to refer to different races, rather than giving them a formal name... both the Oocca and the Skyloftians can be described as 'tribes of sky people', but there is no reason to assume that there is only one such tribe.
As for the Rito... it is stated quite clearly both in Wind Waker and the Hyrule Historia that they evolved from the Zora, and we see both Zora and Oocca in Twilight Princess, making it impossible for the Rito to have evolved into the Oocca.

It doesn't say they existed prior to the Skyloftians explicitly assuming they're meant to be the same, in fact the Japanese version explicitly calls Hylians the descendants of the "Sky Tribe" in reference to the "Oocca" and says Hyrule's capital city wasn't castle town, but rather the City in the Sky (Skyloft) at one point, the Dominion Rod being used to communicate the capitol's will (again, probably Skyloft) to the citizens below before they became so disconnected (possibly due to their evolution) that the City in the Sky was abandoned and Hyrule Castle was created

Also I put Rito in quotation marks to emphasize the fact saying its a Rito is an assumption

 

[DragonEleven]

It doesn't say they existed prior to the Skyloftians explicitly assuming they're meant to be the same, in fact the Japanese version explicitly calls Hylians the descendants of the "Sky Tribe" in reference to the "Oocca" and says Hyrule's capital city wasn't castle town, but rather the City in the Sky (Skyloft) at one point, the Dominion Rod being used to communicate the capitol's will (again, probably Skyloft) to the citizens below before they became so disconnected (possibly due to their evolution) that the City in the Sky was abandoned and Hyrule Castle was created

I'm not aware of anywhere that talks about the Hylians being descendants of the Oocca, so I'm inclined to think that you may be referring to a mis-translation of what was actually said (e.g. predecessors mistakenly being translated to ancestors).
I am aware that the English version of TP mistakenly says that the Oocca created the Hylians, but the Japanese version only says they created Hyrule (with the City in the Sky being created as the capital at this time)... so I know that there have been some misunderstandings because of this.