1. When he says they "constructed a timeline," does that mean it's their own timeline, without knowing EAD's, or that they knew EAD's timeline and constructed it in a presentable detailed fashion? Aonuma said the document was only accessible by three people, so I think the former is most likely true. How does this affect our trust of NoA?
I unfortunately did not push him on this. I just wasn't anticipating talking to him until I actually saw him and even then, obviously discussion was focused on Ocarina of Time 3D.
Although, the strange thing about Dan Owsen. He's not just a Nintendo of America representative. He was the lead man of the translation and he worked in Japan for awhile. He was a member of the development team and not just somebody that adjusted material later. He mentioned to me specifically, as well as in an old interview, how the Japanese folks told him to be deliberately vague when it came to specific things. This included storyline aspects, but it also included secrets within the games.
When I was talking to Dan about the new 'Visions' mode in Ocarina of Time 3D, he mentioned that the developers felt it was important with Ocarina of Time originally, that not too much was given out to the gamer. The developers felt it was important to allow the gamers to solve puzzles themselves, and after hearing that familiar jingle, have a sense of accomplishment for having figured it out. This is a HUGE part of what Zelda is all about and I think this works for both secrets and for the overarching storyline between the games. To me, even though those two topics might be a tad unrelated, the developers are consistent in their thought process.
2. It would have been nice to know if in EAD's response they mentioned if NoA's timeline was correct or not. Since NoA now has their own 'secret' timeline document, can we expect more connections in the localized versions of future games? Could these conflict with the Japanese versions?
Dan said it twice that the developers had a Timeline, so my guess is that he is aware of the 'secret' timeline. Perhaps he doesn't know the content of it, but I think he knows it exists. I'm not sure if NoA's timeline that they wanted to release was accurate w/ that secret timeline, but I don't think that matters too much. Since if it was, or it wasn't, the Japanese response would still be the same, and Dan would still have likely told me the same thing. What it says on that official timeline, doesn't really mean much, since even if there is an official timeline, it's more important to them that it is vague to allow gamers to create their own timeline.
That being said, I don't think we'll be seeing anymore specifics from the localization team in future gamers to connect a timeline. We probably will see a handful of references as we've seen in recent games, but they'll be more like ode's to the other titles. Just letting the player's think, YA WOW, I remember that from that other Zelda Game!
