Nintendo has tried to convince us for years that The Legend of Zelda games fit into a larger continuity that sometimes splits off into multiple different timelines, but with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, the company seems to have given up.
Vooks reports that an updated The Legend of Zelda timeline on display at Nintendo Live 2024 in Sydney lists both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom as standalone games, disconnected from any existing Zelda timeline, meaning no previous games come before or after the events of the Nintendo Switch releases.
The new timeline reportedly has the usual lineup of a somewhat linear course of events leading up to Ocarina of Time, at which point the timeline split off into three different branches where things get a little unruly. But Nintendo's been known to have tinkered with the timeline over the years, so maybe it just hasn't made an official decision on where the newer entries land.
Either way, I think that's the greatest indication that we shouldn't place too much importance on the Zelda timeline. I like the idea that The Legend of Zelda games are connected in a kind of cyclical sense. Zelda, Link, and Ganon - Hyrule's sort of Holy Trinity - are doomed to a fate of rebirth, only to repeat the same battles for the rest of time. I don't like the idea that one Zelda game leads directly to the next, largely because the games themselves don't usually care about such details either, unless they happen to be a rare direct sequel like Tears of the Kingdom.
Nintendo did recently announce that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Master Works, a big art and lore book, would feature a new timeline for fans to scratch their heads over, but it's only out in Japan so far and we've yet to see any proper translations.
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