Don't forget, she was intended to be an entirely new character and not Link's gender-swapped counterpart.
Linkle, Linkle, twiddle start,
How fans wonder where thou art.
How fans wonder where thou art.
Almost all Zelda games feature different incarnations of Link. They're multiple characters. Only the direct sequels feature the same Link (Majora's Mask has the same Link as Ocarina of Time for example)
I think it's pretty fair to say that Nintendo's (or anyone else's) timeline of the LoZ series is bollocks and the games have little to do with each other unless they're direct sequels. I don't see a reason why those games couldn't feature a choice between a male and a female protagonist because ultimately it wouldn't even matter story-wise - much like Mario, Link will never actually get laid, no matter how many fanfics the fans write about that.
It's very simple, really. The game developers made games that were fun, but their fans are needy nerds who always look for continuity of some sort, so they've wrapped up a convoluted timeline "because time travel" to please them.
I guarantee that no series that has started as early as in the 80'ies has a pre-set timeline - they merely added content to the games as time went by. I can assure you that nobody was thinking 20+ years ahead when they were making the first LoZ game.
Essentially they've connected all the direct sequels together into timelines and inserted bullshit between them when needs be.
Miyamoto made Ocarina of Time and intended it to be a prequel, origin story of sorts. Nobody ever thought anything about time travel or split-timelines until he said so. He said that Ocarina of Time actually had two endings and Wind Waker took place in one of them. Heck, there are references to Ocarina of Time in A Link to The Past (actually obviously they took the material and made Ocarina based on that, but it's still pretty clever).
The timeline is fine I think - it connects all the games but they still are pretty individual. Nobody needs to play anything in order.
Obviously they've strung things together - what I said was that they had no intention to create a timeline of any kind when they begun making the games and they merely created one because it was requested by the fans. I think that almost each and every LoZ game can be picked up and played without playing other LoZ games before because they are self-contained wholes by design. Rarely do you require context for what's happening, which is a strong characteristic of what I call "coherent stories".
Take Mass Effect for instance. If you pick up Mass Effect 3 without playing Mass Effect 1 or 2 before, you will have fun playing the game, but some of the events and facts will be completely alien (no pun intended) to you because the game expects you to be familiar with the story - the timeline of events that occured prior to the plot of Mass Effect 3. This does not happen in LoZ games because they're self-contained wholes - individual stories from beginning to end, with a few exceptions.
Yeah I never did understand why Nintendo tried to make a timeline for LoZ, it didn't need one but it made a great book 
Besides most 80's games that made it till now have bullshyt storylines/timelines now because of this same common mistake . . . . . . . I'm looking at you Castlevania! (fucking shyt reboots)
Besides most 80's games that made it till now have bullshyt storylines/timelines now because of this same common mistake . . . . . . . I'm looking at you Castlevania! (fucking shyt reboots)
Pretty much. You can only expect so much in terms of continuity when no continuity was planned from the start, really. It's not a situation like with, say, Star Wars, where you have a clear pre-set continuity and supplementary material grows around it - here you have a bucket of randomly-shaped pieces that you have to put together into an image, except you don't know what that image is yet.Yeah I never did understand why Nintendo tried to make a timeline for LoZ, it didn't need one but it made a great book
Not for nothing but if you save the princess and all of Hyrule every time (almost) there leaves little for storyline/timeline except "Well hey Link you need to beat this pig's ass again, . . . . can ya do it?"
Sure then, let's see.
The first game was made, it was a hit, and they decided to create a direct sequel.
Then they made ALttP to be a prequel to those two games (it even says so in the back of the game's box)
Then they decided to make Ocarina of Time be a prequel to everything and an origin story. They made Majora's Mask as a sequel to Ocarina.
When Wind Waker came around and Miyamoto made that quote about it being in a different timeline, that was the birth of "Zelda Theorizing" by the fans. Because until then it was a straight line kinda of thing and nobody argued over it. Heck, Miyamoto and Aonuma said they had a master document containing the timeline by the time Twilight Princess was released. Fans obviously were speculating.
I don't see how the fans affected these decisions.
Pretty sure that Mega Man games have something very important in common in their each respective sub-series... they're numbered. Clearly they were intended to be sorted in a chronological fashion from the start, so your point is null and void.
How about "seeing that each and every of those games is a self-contained whole from start to finish"? How is Ocarina of Time "intended as a prequel" in any shape or form if Link in LttP clearly has no combat experience? And is the Master Sword made of Dragon Balls? Because it clearly disperses each time it's used, or at the very least, Link is very prone to lose timeless artifacts of immense power.
Again, the timeline was created to appease the fans. Games in the series that are not direct sequels are simply spin-offs of the same formula. Almost every game has its own unique Link who has no recollection of any previous events whatsoever - the "because time travel" excuse is an old and tired one and "because multiverse" is better, but still unnecessary.
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