What is your unpopular Zelda opinion?

[Ashley the Witch]

Agahnim you mean, the Hylian Sorceror who is also Ganon.

Yep.

 

[RickKTish]

A link to the past exists as a prequel to LOZ. You can't just put ALTTP after LOZ and say "see it works now"
the same ganon exists now in two completely different time periods, and in the wrong order

Please present to me a comprehensive list of events, items, references, etc. in the text of LttP and LoZ-- meaning in the information present within the games themselves and their manuals, not any other source like word of the creators or the Hyrule Historia and associated books-- which connect the two. I'm well aware that LttP was intended as a prequel to LoZ, but having played through all three games-- LttP, loz, and aol-- several times, I don't remember anything that actually made it feel like the worlds were actually connected beyond belonging to the same franchise.
If you can come up with a list at all I will be very impressed; if any of the items on it cannot be explained by absolutely any means besides LoZ being the direct sequel to LttP, I will concede that it belongs where Nintendo has placed it and could not be justified at the beginning or anywhere else in the timeline. I am willing to be convinced, but I will require evidence.

Edit: I should clarify, I'm looking for watsonian explanations, not doylian ones; if it exists in a form referring to the games in the form of a text ("this is a prequel to our other game which we, the creators, created!") it's inherently only valid by word of God, not by internal consistency. I'm looking for in-text, in-universe reasoning, not "I speak therefore it is" reasoning

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

Please present to me a comprehensive list of events, items, references, etc. in the text of LttP and LoZ-- meaning in the information present within the games themselves and their manuals, not any other source like word of the creators or the Hyrule Historia and associated books-- which connect the two. I'm well aware that LttP was intended as a prequel to LoZ, but having played through all three games-- LttP, loz, and aol-- several times, I don't remember anything that actually made it feel like the worlds were actually connected beyond belonging to the same franchise.
If you can come up with a list at all I will be very impressed; if any of the items on it cannot be explained by absolutely any means besides LoZ being the direct sequel to LttP, I will concede that it belongs where Nintendo has placed it and could not be justified at the beginning or anywhere else in the timeline. I am willing to be convinced, but I will require evidence.

Edit: I should clarify, I'm looking for watsonian explanations, not doylian ones; if it exists in a form referring to the games in the form of a text ("this is a prequel to our other game which we, the creators, created!") it's inherently only valid by word of God, not by internal consistency. I'm looking for in-text, in-universe reasoning, not "I speak therefore it is" reasoning

So in other words, your word on the series holds more weight than the creators themselves

 

[RickKTish]

So in other words, your word on the series holds more weight than the creators themselves

ehhh, kind of not really but also not not really. See, what we're engaging in here really comes down to the question of Death of the Author vs Authorial Intent. On the one hand, word of god exists for a reason: authors have intent when they create a piece of media. Sometimes, though, because authors are flawed, those intents don't always come across as well as they want it to. So when an author steps in to clarify something about the media outside of the creation itself, it brings into question how valid an interpretation that particular thing is with relation to the media. Think JK Rowling announcing that Dumbledore was always gay, she just didn't put it in the books because Harry didn't care about it enough to notice. Does that mean that Dumbledore is actually a gay character? Well, kind of; Rowling Word of Goded it into being, but also kind of not, because the text itself doesn't necessarily reflect that claim. Reading knitting magazines does not make one gay, nor does having a derogatory posthumous autobiography explicitly not make any kind of claims as to the nature of your former relationship with your friend-turned-rival-turned-epic-backstory. If my moderately homophobic mother who was uncomfortable with Moana because Tamatoa was flamboyant and therefore, in her mind, came across as gay, couldn't pick up on it, it was too subtle to really even call it an implication.
I'm claiming a similar thing with Nintendo, though it's perhaps less of a hot topic issue and is obviously further complicated by both questions of translation accuracy and Nintendo's own infamous silence on just about every topic imaginable. Nintendo claims that the games fit into the timeline prescribed in the Hyrule Historia and adjacent books. This is a fine authorial claim, to point to and say "Look! We made connections between the things!" but the question I'm asking is whether that claim is supported by the text itself-- in this case, the evidence available within the games they've actually produced. Claiming that Link to the Past is a prequel to the Legend of Zelda is all fine and dandy, but what makes something a prequel? Does the author simply pointing at it and saying "look! I made a prequel!" automatically qualify that thing as a prequel, or are there other qualities that are necessary to define that work as being prequel to another thing, rather than merely another story that takes place in the same place in another time?
I would argue that a prequel ought to have bearing on the actual plot of a story. For instance, Ocarina of Time is clearly a prequel to both Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, because the events of OoT have a clear, causal tie to the events of both of those games. The connection to ALttP is a little shakier, because the vague connection of the sages between the games is less clearly directly connected. Certainly, both games have sages and a Triforce, but the description given in the LttP manual and the actual plot of OoT are not-so-slightly skewed from one another and it can be difficult, though not impossible, to reconcile the two. Still, claiming that these stories, in-text (or in-game, as the case may be) are in fact legends and that details may have shifted over time gives the misalignments enough in-universe explanation for the differences to be forgivable, so it still kind of makes sense to claim that OoT is a prequel to ALttP, albeit in a timeline that is only implied as a possibility rather than one we as the player ever actually get to view or interact with, which puts it on pretty shaky ground for the in-text-ness of its existence.
Now I ask you, what bearing does the plot of ALttP have on the plot of the Legend of Zelda or The Adventure of Link?
The answer, insofar as I can tell, is essentially none. They share several common elements-- most notably the names of the characters and the existence of the triforce-- but no clear direct threads. Nothing in LoZ or AoL implies the existence of former heroes, a special sword, previous encounters with the "prince of darkness" or "king of evil" Ganon beyond that particular link's own adventure, sages (the role the old men serve in AoL is much more akin to those of the great fairies in OoT-- giving the player spells-- than to the sages present in either OoT or LttP), or any previous interactions between a hero and the triforce. The closest thing we get is the existence of Agahnim as a sorcerer, but there is almost no similarity whatsoever between Agahnim's plot and that of the sorcerer who put Zelda I to sleep-- enough so that I hesitated over writing "almost".
Now it's important to acknowledge that Nintendo may have intentionally left out any potentially connecting threads in their creation of LttP out of concern over alienating new players who wouldn't get the references. Clearly, they've long since grown out of that mindset, but it seems entirely plausible, comparing the similarities and differences between LoZ/AoL, LttP, and OoT, that they decided to take the loose descriptions they'd given in the previously released game's manual and go completely ham with it so that it wouldn't necessarily be recognizeable, but it also wouldn't necessarily be unrecognizable either. Whether or not keeping direct ties out of the so-called prequels in order to keep new players interested was intentional, this still produces the effect that LttP and OoT can only loosely be called prequels to the games that came before them. They come across as separate iterations within the same world rather than directly connected stories whose events have effects upon one another. You can't call Tamora Pierce's Alanna books the prequels to the Wild Magic books just because they take place in the same world and some of the characters show up in both; the events of the Alanna books have no direct bearing on the events of the Wild Magic books beyond the occasional easter egg that shows up for readers to point at and say "aha! I got that reference!" In much the same way, LttP and OoT contain loose easter eggs referencing their so-called "sequels," but have no direct bearing on the events that take place in those stories. Again, LttP can only exist after OoT if something that never actually happens on-screen occurs: Link losing and the world and war against Ganon continuing afterward. LttP fails to meet the most basic requirement of a prequel: it doesn't set up LoZ. Which means that Nintendo can gesture nonchalantly to their authoritatively intended timeline all day, but it will always remain unjustified in the text.
In the end, I truly don't think it matters all that much; we've all known the timeline put forward by the Hyrule Historia and its counterparts has holes in it since it was first published, and that will probably never change Nintendo's stance on its authenticity and accuracy. But the point of this forum is to share unpopular opinions, and I have presented mine. I would much rather explore the possibilities presented by the information available in the text itself than rely on information the characters living in those worlds would have no access to in order to make sense of the ideas and stories within the Zelda franchise, and you don't have to share that opinion. That would be precisely why it is unpopular. But that doesn't make my approach or claim any less legitimate than Nintendo's; we are merely enacting the age-old battle of striving to answer the question of who defines the meaning of a work more: the person who wrote it, or the person who reads (or plays) it? I think we both have a share, but mine has to rely a lot more on exploration than declaration, which is so much more fun, don't you think?

Edit: TL;DR:
If Nintendo says something that doesn't match with what Nintendo wrote in the game itself, I'm going to go with what's in the game itself over what Nintendo claims they meant it to say.

 

[Mikey the Moblin]

Congratulations or sorry that happened

 

[Daku Rinku]

ehhh, kind of not really but also not not really. See, what we're engaging in here really comes down to the question of Death of the Author vs Authorial Intent. On the one hand, word of god exists for a reason: authors have intent when they create a piece of media. Sometimes, though, because authors are flawed, those intents don't always come across as well as they want it to. So when an author steps in to clarify something about the media outside of the creation itself, it brings into question how valid an interpretation that particular thing is with relation to the media. Think JK Rowling announcing that Dumbledore was always gay, she just didn't put it in the books because Harry didn't care about it enough to notice. Does that mean that Dumbledore is actually a gay character? Well, kind of; Rowling Word of Goded it into being, but also kind of not, because the text itself doesn't necessarily reflect that claim. Reading knitting magazines does not make one gay, nor does having a derogatory posthumous autobiography explicitly not make any kind of claims as to the nature of your former relationship with your friend-turned-rival-turned-epic-backstory. If my moderately homophobic mother who was uncomfortable with Moana because Tamatoa was flamboyant and therefore, in her mind, came across as gay, couldn't pick up on it, it was too subtle to really even call it an implication.
I'm claiming a similar thing with Nintendo, though it's perhaps less of a hot topic issue and is obviously further complicated by both questions of translation accuracy and Nintendo's own infamous silence on just about every topic imaginable. Nintendo claims that the games fit into the timeline prescribed in the Hyrule Historia and adjacent books. This is a fine authorial claim, to point to and say "Look! We made connections between the things!" but the question I'm asking is whether that claim is supported by the text itself-- in this case, the evidence available within the games they've actually produced. Claiming that Link to the Past is a prequel to the Legend of Zelda is all fine and dandy, but what makes something a prequel? Does the author simply pointing at it and saying "look! I made a prequel!" automatically qualify that thing as a prequel, or are there other qualities that are necessary to define that work as being prequel to another thing, rather than merely another story that takes place in the same place in another time?
I would argue that a prequel ought to have bearing on the actual plot of a story. For instance, Ocarina of Time is clearly a prequel to both Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, because the events of OoT have a clear, causal tie to the events of both of those games. The connection to ALttP is a little shakier, because the vague connection of the sages between the games is less clearly directly connected. Certainly, both games have sages and a Triforce, but the description given in the LttP manual and the actual plot of OoT are not-so-slightly skewed from one another and it can be difficult, though not impossible, to reconcile the two. Still, claiming that these stories, in-text (or in-game, as the case may be) are in fact legends and that details may have shifted over time gives the misalignments enough in-universe explanation for the differences to be forgivable, so it still kind of makes sense to claim that OoT is a prequel to ALttP, albeit in a timeline that is only implied as a possibility rather than one we as the player ever actually get to view or interact with, which puts it on pretty shaky ground for the in-text-ness of its existence.
Now I ask you, what bearing does the plot of ALttP have on the plot of the Legend of Zelda or The Adventure of Link?
The answer, insofar as I can tell, is essentially none. They share several common elements-- most notably the names of the characters and the existence of the triforce-- but no clear direct threads. Nothing in LoZ or AoL implies the existence of former heroes, a special sword, previous encounters with the "prince of darkness" or "king of evil" Ganon beyond that particular link's own adventure, sages (the role the old men serve in AoL is much more akin to those of the great fairies in OoT-- giving the player spells-- than to the sages present in either OoT or LttP), or any previous interactions between a hero and the triforce. The closest thing we get is the existence of Agahnim as a sorcerer, but there is almost no similarity whatsoever between Agahnim's plot and that of the sorcerer who put Zelda I to sleep-- enough so that I hesitated over writing "almost".
Now it's important to acknowledge that Nintendo may have intentionally left out any potentially connecting threads in their creation of LttP out of concern over alienating new players who wouldn't get the references. Clearly, they've long since grown out of that mindset, but it seems entirely plausible, comparing the similarities and differences between LoZ/AoL, LttP, and OoT, that they decided to take the loose descriptions they'd given in the previously released game's manual and go completely ham with it so that it wouldn't necessarily be recognizeable, but it also wouldn't necessarily be unrecognizable either. Whether or not keeping direct ties out of the so-called prequels in order to keep new players interested was intentional, this still produces the effect that LttP and OoT can only loosely be called prequels to the games that came before them. They come across as separate iterations within the same world rather than directly connected stories whose events have effects upon one another. You can't call Tamora Pierce's Alanna books the prequels to the Wild Magic books just because they take place in the same world and some of the characters show up in both; the events of the Alanna books have no direct bearing on the events of the Wild Magic books beyond the occasional easter egg that shows up for readers to point at and say "aha! I got that reference!" In much the same way, LttP and OoT contain loose easter eggs referencing their so-called "sequels," but have no direct bearing on the events that take place in those stories. Again, LttP can only exist after OoT if something that never actually happens on-screen occurs: Link losing and the world and war against Ganon continuing afterward. LttP fails to meet the most basic requirement of a prequel: it doesn't set up LoZ. Which means that Nintendo can gesture nonchalantly to their authoritatively intended timeline all day, but it will always remain unjustified in the text.
In the end, I truly don't think it matters all that much; we've all known the timeline put forward by the Hyrule Historia and its counterparts has holes in it since it was first published, and that will probably never change Nintendo's stance on its authenticity and accuracy. But the point of this forum is to share unpopular opinions, and I have presented mine. I would much rather explore the possibilities presented by the information available in the text itself than rely on information the characters living in those worlds would have no access to in order to make sense of the ideas and stories within the Zelda franchise, and you don't have to share that opinion. That would be precisely why it is unpopular. But that doesn't make my approach or claim any less legitimate than Nintendo's; we are merely enacting the age-old battle of striving to answer the question of who owns a work more: the person who wrote it, or the person who reads it. I think we both have a share, but mine has to rely a lot more on exploration than declaration, which is so much more fun, don't you think?

Author intent is very real, Frank Herbert meant for Paul Atreides in Dune to be a dark messiah and cautionary tale about religious fanaticism & politics. The result was that many did not get that point, and saw Paul instead as a good messiah, which is immortalized in the 1984 film with Patrick Stewart and Sting. Herbert seeing the issue with his intent being missed had to write a second book, Dune Messiah, to drive the point home about Paul being a dark savior.

 

[thePlinko]

The 360 degree movement of LBW just makes the entire game feel less precise. I’d much rather they stick to 8 directions for all 2D games that aren’t controlled with a touchscreen.