Writtten by TheMissingLink

So you might have seen this juicy little tidbit [SIGNIFICANT SPOILERS] work its way through the Zelda community a few weeks ago; however, if you haven’t, and you’re too afraid to click the link, here’s the scoop in as spoiler-free a way that I can say it. Apparently good ol’ Eiji (known to many as Aonuma-san) went and had a good little talk with the Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream about all things Zelda. As is prone to happen in present-day discussions about Zelda (for reasons I’ll never understand why), the subject of the timeline was brought up. For about the eleventy billionth time, the talking heads of Nintendo were asked how all of the Zelda games related with one another. And as always, the interviewee proudly proclaims that the most recent Zelda game—in this case, Twilight Princess—takes place roughly 100 years after Ocarina of Time…

But what makes this iteration of the classic timeline question different? It’s the fact that Aonuma didn’t silence himself after saying just that…

Yes, for the first time since the days of Ocarina, Nintendo tipped their hands about how the timeline is completely set up. Aonuma, as has been reported a long time ago, told us that he was working on the timeline, trying to make the story work out just so… and now the fruits of his labour are starting to come to fruition. So what did he say? Well, I think showing it is perhaps the best strategy:



There it is in all its grandeur: the Aonuma Standard Timeline (or AST for short).

Yes, people have been predicting this sort of thing back when Wind Waker came out. The timeline has officially been fragmented into two. Some of you are saying “big surprise, there,” I can imagine. As we all know, Wind Waker has always had its fair share of problems fitting in nicely with its brother and sister Zelda titles. For starters, it clearly takes place after Ocarina of Time—roughly 100 years, if you believe the first interview that discussed the notion—and continues the story of the original Ganondorf. They specifically mentioned the breaking of the seal, the seal that the seven sages and Link worked so hard to create. Of course, this caused major problems with trying to fit A Link to the Past into the grand scheme of things… because the pig we all love to hate was still being held back by the Seven Wise Men’s seal (later changed to the Seven Sage’s Seal within the version that came with Four Swords). Wind Waker didn’t put Ganondorf back behind bars to fix this either, nooooo. He’s trapped in a statue now, quite a different story, no?

This is, of course, not to mention the flooding of Hyrule, washing away that familiar Hyrule as we knew it. And by gosh, when you see such strong relationships between Ocarina’s and Past’s geography, well… yeah, it seems to defy that connection like a slap in the face.

So the solution? “Let’s not make Wind Waker count.” Of course, I’m being rather facetious and sarcastic saying it that way, but from the right angle, it looks very much like that. Wind Waker was hauled off into its own separate timeline so that the rest of the games could trod on as if nothing had ever happened to Hyrule. (Because nothing ever did happen to Hyrule.) The hardest part of this was the evidence; other than that one tiny detail at the end of Ocarina, the party out in Hyrule Field, there wasn’t any bit of evidence to back it up… nor would there ever be. (The last thing Nintendo would do would be to make a Zelda game where Link zipped back and forth between multiple timelines; even the fans of the series would get confused!) That is… unless Shiggy or Eiji said something about it…

And know we have it. So that solves it, ne? No more rampant timeline debates? Please, you’ve got to be joking!

After the bombshell that was this interview dropped, the timeline forums of major Zelda websites exploded with activity. Quite literally, old rivalries and annoyances were brought up again; some people who were on the “right side” started laughing and mocking the other people who were not. Praises were sung and nighttime vigils were held, hoping that the interview would turn out to be a sham. (It was, after all, the beginning of the April magazine cycle.) You might think I’m exaggerating when I write it this way; I assure you that I’m not. Timelining, as sad as I am to admit it, is very serious business to some people. (I, thankfully, am not one of those.)

Once everything had settled, some people finally realised that… surprise! No one won. (Actually, I’d like to think that I won, but for the sake of simplicity, I’m not going to be a braggart.) All the people who tried to connect the games in one straight line lost by default. All the people who thought there was a timeline split all these years… soon realised that there was problems with this monstrosity. The AST, you see, still doesn’t get Link to the Past to fit properly. (For this reason, you could also call the AST the “Aonuma Standard Split” for a much more inappropriate acronym, yet that acronym is ironically much closer to describing the frustrating part of this timeline!) I’m not going to reveal how Twilight Princess fails to connect to Link to the Past here because to do that would force me to spoil the game for some… and I don’t want to mark this a spoiler topic, but trust me on it. Link to the Past doesn’t fit in either timeline cleanly no matter where you put it. (The proof is left as an exercise for the reader.) To get it to fit at all, one has to start adding their own bits and pieces of story to the canon in order to make it fit in with the series, something that is derided in most timeliner circles.

(Gee, I wonder who advocated that idea a while back. Hmmm….)

And so how have people gotten around this one? Forum conversations have reached levels of absurdity the likes of which I have not previously seen. One of the prevailing schools of thought actually suggests having a third timeline to take care of all of Miyamoto’s games… as if that makes things any more elegant. Some people have been clinging desperately to every precious word of the canon, hoping that will save them. (Alas, I think not.) And some people have just flat out given up trying to adjust to Nintendo’s timeline whims, saying that they’ll believe what they always believed. (They’re probably the biggest winners of the whole ordeal, really.)

But yet here we are at a crossroads, a state of change within the Zelda series. There has been an obvious attempt to string the Zelda series together for quite some time now—since the days of Ocarina. Story now matters; timeline, at some very small level, now matters. But before Ocarina, it didn’t matter. They were just generating games in one of the most well known gaming franchises on the planet without any regard to what was going on. If they connected, that’s awesome; if not, so be it.

Shigeru Miyamoto doesn’t care about timeline; Eiji Aonuma obviously does. And so we’re left with a big question: What do we do now? Now that there’s finally an official direction on this, albeit one that is far from complete (and just shy of contradictory!), what do we do with that?

Quite frankly, I don’t think it matters one bit what we decide to do, either individually or as a community. We can all fall in line behind the Nintendo bigwigs and rigorously follow the glorious AST forever. We can make Zelda timeline clubs and force every member to spend some time every day praying to Din, Nayru, and Farore at the little Nintendo shrine in the corner of the meeting hall, praying that the AST timeline will continue to make sense and be followed with each passing game, and that’ll work remarkably well… until they decide to change direction again, of course. And a change in direction is bound to happen one of these days; Nintendo isn’t actually known for colouring within the lines. (I mean, can you believe that at one point people actually thought there was just one Link who had many adventures? That thought is laughable now!) And then once that happens, everything we “know” about Zelda will be wrong again, and so we have to start over. No matter what we believe, Nintendo will do their thing their way in order to appeal Zelda to the largest amount of people possible.

As far as what I’m going to do, well, this ol’ dog I don’t think can be taught any new tricks. I can talk about the Split Timeline until I’m blue in the face; I can even argue and defend it if I wanted. But I’ve spent way too much time talking about a deprecated timeline that I just don’t have the heart to change. So as far as I’m concerned, I think I can be content to take my timeline and stick it right up their Aonuma Standard Split… if you know what I mean.