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Show HN: The Zelda timeline to catch up before the Ocarina of Time remake

60 points jsomau 3 hours ago 20 comments

I made this ahead of the Ocarina of Time remake which comes out in 17 days. I remember the feeling of playing it as a kid but I hadn’t kept up with the story so I built a timeline to catch up before the Door of Time reopens.

Nintendo’s own timeline is the authority here (Hyrule Historia and their chronicle page). The fun part was rethinking how to visualize it. It branches at the end of Ocarina into three eras depending on whether Link wins or loses, so each era is its own thread on the cloth. The threads meet again much later with Breath of the Wild.

I had a lot of help from Claude. I’d often thought about building things like this but never found the time between the day job and the rest of life.

sharkbot 1 hour ago | parent

Don't forget to include:

- Link: The Faces of Evil

- Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon

- Link's Crossbow Training

- the various Hyrule Warriors games

Good luck! :)

BewareTheYiga 1 hour ago | parent

I thought the Hyrule Warriors games were not canon. Did I get that wrong?

xnx 1 hour ago | parent

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is canon.

whateveracct 1 hour ago | parent

i think the second one is canon but it has time travel and stuff so it's also basically not

(the second one wasn't very good..but the first is a great game and runs even better on Switch 2.)

xnx 33 minutes ago | parent

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity gets a "Definitive Edition" Feb 25, 2027. Will be interesting to see if gameplay improves.

yunruse 42 minutes ago | parent

Per a scholar in the field [0], clearly The Legend of Zelda Monopoly is the pin which holds the entire Zelda timeline together!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-25c8Rsobw

cubefox 14 minutes ago | parent

Apocrypha!

cr125rider 1 hour ago | parent

This is really fun! Great design!

hyperhello 1 hour ago | parent

What’s the word for trying to do cluster analysis on what is actually randomly distributed data? The games do have obvious similarities and sometimes refer to each other, but they’re independent events.

InsideOutSanta 1 hour ago | parent

I'm pretty sure Nintendo itself said at one point that they don't have a clear chronological order and may not tie into each other properly, even though they later retconned an order.

Still, it's fun to try to figure out how the puzzle pieces might fit together even though they came out of different boxes.

SubiculumCode 16 minutes ago | parent

I've only played a handful of these games .. but do they work together as a theme or story progression or are they, as I suspect, pretty much independent rehashes with no real relationship other than making money and appeasing fans?

pjerem 3 minutes ago | parent

I played most Zelda games of the last 30 years.

To the exception of TOTK, I _never_ noticed any link (hehe) between different titles. I know there are some references, but I never catch them.

Even Majora's Mask, which is an official follow up occurring months after Ocarina of Time have a totally different story to tell that don't even try to continue the OoT story and is more just another completely independent story barely in the same universe.

I love the Zelda games, I consider myself a fan. But they are just that : good games. Each of those games do have interesting stories to tell, interesting universes to visit, but the overall "franchise" lore is totally uninteresting.

And honestly I don't think it's something bad, it means each game is free to go where it wants, and every game is free to have an universe as rich as it wants.

I see Zelda totally like I see mario : it's just universe codes, not a real lore. Nobody cares if Mario Galaxy happens before or after Mario 64 or Super Mario World. Zelda is the same for me. And that's cool.

gchamonlive 48 minutes ago | parent

If they have obvious similarities, they aren't randomly distributed data

xnx 39 minutes ago | parent

Nintendo now maintains/updates an official timeline: https://zelda.nintendo.com/about/

bspammer 31 minutes ago | parent

Sure but that's a retcon. They didn't have this in mind when they made the games.

candlemas 55 minutes ago | parent

There's a story?

bovermyer 47 minutes ago | parent

I played Legend of Zelda, Adventure of Link, A Link to the Past, and Ocarina of Time to conclusion. I haven't really played any Zelda games since then, except maybe for a few minutes for a few of them.

I'm a little surprised to hear that Ocarina of Time is getting a remake. I take it it's going to be a Switch 2 exclusive?

xnx 41 minutes ago | parent

Yes

petarb 30 minutes ago | parent

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