Breath of the Wild BotW's timeline ambiguity is on purpose/for the fans?

[Spirit]

Breath of the Wild has again sidestepped a timeline placement with the reveal of new footage.

We have elements from most major Zelda games, right handed Link and the same scabbard of the Master Sword from SS. Castle Town from OoT/TP, Koroks from Wind Waker, the Sacred Grove of ALttP and much more besides.

There are many theories each with evidence that directly contradicts any placement that one could settle on. Right now for Zelda theorists placing this game comes down picking and choosing which evidence you feel is more important.

But what if this game is purposefully ambigious, what if it is making it a mission to exist within numerous placements at once?

What if nintendo want it that way? What if, instead of it going in just one place, or being convergeance or a reboot, that it potentially exists in more than one place.

And it'll be a gift to the fans for them to personally decide where they want this game to go?

We know Aonuma cares more for the story than Shigsy and that Shigsy hasnt been too involved with BotW meaning Aonuma perhaps has addressed the fan criticism of the master timeline and decided that BotW should be designed in a way that it could be placed almost anywhere?

 

[Ventus]

what if its a timeline convergence, we've already seen OoT, what looks like TP Castle Town Fountain, and of course TWW elemnts...this could be a ganon of the Ages so to speak. but they wouldn't want this to be in the public news, wait until the release to give a big warm surprise to the fans, this is good for business actually.......

 

[Nicolai]

I wholly believe this. I've believed for a long time that Aonuma personally planned for this game to divide and confuse the timeline-theorist community. It's keeping us guessing, and its only fueling our excitement.

However, haven't we seen far more connections to Twilight Princess from this trailer? The resemblance of those ruins near the castle to Twilight Princess's castle town is almost dead on. This combined with the bridge at lake Hylia... if you think about it, whenever the connection is about a similar looking location, it's always TP.

A lot of people are also saying that these bird people look a lot more like the bird people from TP's murals than the Rito do. Though, if you ask me, that's a matter of opinion.

what if its a timeline convergence...

I remember way back when the timeline first came out, whenever I brought up a possible timeline-convergence, people laughed. Now everyone's talking about it. Just sayin'

 

[hwrdjacob]

I really think whoever is writing the game (Aonuma or otherwise) just flipped the middle finger to HH.

I will say Nintendo has been surprisingly reluctant to show pretty much any connection to the AT that can't be hand waved though, and they've been belligerently insistent on both the game being connected to TP and to the NES games. I really think they just finally gave HH an explicit middle finger (whereas ALBW gave it some subtle ones). I think it could be a "convergence" in the sense this might have something other than HH's placements in mind and they're going to in some way retcon the placements of some games, which would explain why it seems to be mostly focused on both TP and the first 3 games/ALBW

 

[Spirit]

I wholly believe this. I've believed for a long time that Aonuma personally planned for this game to divide and confuse the timeline-theorist community. It's keeping us guessing, and its only fueling our excitement.

However, haven't we seen far more connections to Twilight Princess from this trailer? The resemblance of those ruins near the castle to Twilight Princess's castle town is almost dead on. This combined with the bridge at lake Hylia... if you think about it, whenever the connection is about a similar looking location, it's always TP.

A lot of people are also saying that these bird people look a lot more like the bird people from TP's murals than the Rito do. Though, if you ask me, that's a matter of opinion.


I remember way back when the timeline first came out, whenever I brought up a possible timeline-convergence, people laughed. Now everyone's talking about it. Just sayin'

True, we also wolf Link (if its considered canon) but while there are a lot of TP links there are numerous other places too linking to other games. I thinm when new material is released its easy for us to spot the places from TP because they are rather dramatic and unique. We have bridges and fountains rather than vague mountains in the distance from Zelda 1's art.

But then you have the sacred grove of alttp. Although there is more than enough room for a sacred grove to be in TPs timeline if the ToT we saw continues to crumble, those white wild flowers could grow there too...

The child timline and a TP connection is looking strong... and while locations seem to match up, the NPCs and story dont.

Its like locations are TP
NPCs are WW
Story is LoZ etc...

Like i say BoTW is pulling from everywhere and when we think we know where we are something crops up and contradicts it. Which is why perhaps it could go anywhere. Which i think i may subscribe to until the next trailer

 

[hwrdjacob]

True, we also wolf Link (if its considered canon) but while there are a lot of TP links there are numerous other places too linking to other games. I thinm when new material is released its easy for us to spot the places from TP because they are rather dramatic and unique. We have bridges and fountains rather than vague mountains in the distance from Zelda 1's art.

But then you have the sacred grove of alttp. Although there is more than enough room for a sacred grove to be in TPs timeline if the ToT we saw continues to crumble, those white wild flowers could grow there too...

The child timline and a TP connection is looking strong... and while locations seem to match up, the NPCs and story dont.

Its like locations are TP
NPCs are WW
Story is LoZ etc...

Like i say BoTW is pulling from everywhere and when we think we know where we are something crops up and contradicts it. Which is why perhaps it could go anywhere. Which i think i may subscribe to until the next trailer

Several things-

Nintendo made a tweet around Halloween where the tweet can literally say "the same locations" as LoZ depending on how you translate it, coupled with a bunch of images comparing screenshots of LoZ to BotW showing images like Spectacle Rock, Ganon's chamber remains, what seems to be dungeon 5 (the island locked one) from LoZ, and more. So no, it hasn't been solely TP-Esque locations. Theres been numerous locations Nintendo has specifically highlighted as being from LoZ specifically

The fact they went out of their way to draw attention to that and continue to belligerently insist on connecting it to the NES games is pretty telling

On the flip side, Aonuma has been talking out of both sides of his mouth- he's said its connected to TP one moment, then literally turns around the very same day and says it's connected to the NES games. This is why I genuinely think BotW might end up reestablishing a connection between TP/FSA and ALttP/The NES games that once existed, and severing the flimsy connection between OoT and ALttP HH conjured up.

Honestly the only 100% provably WW NPCs I've seen are the Koroks- the old man looks much more like the hooded man Sprite from OoX than the King of Hyrule- and Koroks are stupidly easy to hand wave anyway, and would even solve the mystery of the magical disappearing forest children.

Also Nintendo in general has gone out of their way to establish Amiibos are canon to everything, but they come physically from our world or the world the amiibos are centered on (hence why, my prime example I like to use, the Smash Trophies show up in FE fates). So Wolf Link is probably the selfsame one you saved to your amiibo, and the fact he's beamed in by the Shiekah slate supports this.

FRIENDLY REMINDER THE MASTER SWORD SHEATH HAS THE SAME DESIGN IN BOTH TP, SS, AND ALBW

 

[Dio]

Breath of the Wild has again sidestepped a timeline placement with the reveal of new footage.

We have elements from most major Zelda games, right handed Link and the same scabbard of the Master Sword from SS. Castle Town from OoT/TP, Koroks from Wind Waker, the Sacred Grove of ALttP and much more besides.

There are many theories each with evidence that directly contradicts any placement that one could settle on. Right now for Zelda theorists placing this game comes down picking and choosing which evidence you feel is more important.

But what if this game is purposefully ambigious, what if it is making it a mission to exist within numerous placements at once?

What if nintendo want it that way? What if, instead of it going in just one place, or being convergeance or a reboot, that it potentially exists in more than one place.

And it'll be a gift to the fans for them to personally decide where they want this game to go?

We know Aonuma cares more for the story than Shigsy and that Shigsy hasnt been too involved with BotW meaning Aonuma perhaps has addressed the fan criticism of the master timeline and decided that BotW should be designed in a way that it could be placed almost anywhere?

It could be the case that he made it ambiguous to seemingly go anywhere in the timeline and then refuse to say so the fans can decide. But I don't think that is the case. Aounuma does care about story and I believe he has a plan for this one in the timeline and he is going to tell us where it goes in due course, however I see the ambiguity with what we have seen so far as a gift to the fans. He must know we love to theorise about this kind of thing. Look at the discussion being generated from just a small trailer. He probably receives tons of fan theories in his mail and knows a lot of the popular fan ideas are. If he went out and told us outright where BoTW was placed we wouldn't be having a lot of this discussion to begin with.

 

[Justac00lguy]

The Zelda series feigns it's lore depth on mystery and ambiguity. It's not a world with tons of history and backstory; it's a series of self contained stories throughout a vague timeline. The lore is mostly built upon imagination and theorising. So this all intentional as the series has always been.

 

[Nicolai]

True, we also wolf Link (if its considered canon) but while there are a lot of TP links there are numerous other places too linking to other games. I thinm when new material is released its easy for us to spot the places from TP because they are rather dramatic and unique. We have bridges and fountains rather than vague mountains in the distance from Zelda 1's art.

But then you have the sacred grove of alttp. Although there is more than enough room for a sacred grove to be in TPs timeline if the ToT we saw continues to crumble, those white wild flowers could grow there too...

The child timline and a TP connection is looking strong... and while locations seem to match up, the NPCs and story dont.

Its like locations are TP
NPCs are WW
Story is LoZ etc...

Like i say BoTW is pulling from everywhere and when we think we know where we are something crops up and contradicts it. Which is why perhaps it could go anywhere. Which i think i may subscribe to until the next trailer

To clarify, I was speaking mostly about the recent trailer we just got. The two big timeline clues we got (Bird People and Hyrule Castle Town) were both TP, which I feel contradicts an implication in your original post that this new trailer was all over the place like the last one.

I'm still holding out on it either explaining the downfall of OoT better, or it being the beginning of a mega reboot as a result of a timeline split from Skyward Sword, but starting much further in the future, like HMK thinks.