The timeline is far from a good thing.
I have to accept that Alttp and the original are what-if? You mean they never actually occurred, but someone thought them up for no good reason? Who came up with that?
Well the "What If" scenario was probably the only way Nintendo could make this work without going into an ultra complicated way to create a flawless Timeline.
Of course they occurred, the Defeated Timeline is a what if, yes, but it's a variant, if you look at the Multiverse Theory, it shows that changes in that moment lead to an alternate universe in which a different event occurred to the original set. The Defeated Timeline is just an alternate set of events, much like the difference between the Adult and Child Timelines. The only difference between them was the fact that we never seen how the Defeated Timeline played out actually in a game, so we can't relate to the events and accept it.
ihateghirahim said:
The Defeated timeline also assumes the Hero of time was defeated in OoT. Way to show respect to a character and the best game ever.
Yes he was defeated, it's of course a bit of a shock, but Link has been defeated before right? Every time we hit the game over screen it occurs; however, for game's sake we progress to tell the presented story the way it's meant to go. Having a protagonist die could be a great plot point, it's been done a lot before in story telling and it seems to work on an emotional level. You connect to that character, so much so that you feel something for them when something happens. I think a plot were we see Link dying at the hands of Ganondorf could work on that level, it also differs from the cliché that good always overcomes evil.
I'm sure
Ocarina of Time being the best is a topic that can be heavily debated
ihateghirahim said:
Why are WW and MM on different timelines when WW clearly references MM, and the events that occurred there, in its opening?
References are nothing more than trivia in my opinion, especially with
Majora's Mask and
The Wind Waker. There is no established link between the two except for these trivial references that serve their purpose. Look at
Skyward Sword for example, that game made a ton of references to games years ahead.
ihateghirahim said:
Why can't their be a single timeline? I could make in a day that would be better than the one we got? It's so confusing, franchise trashing, and simply unappealing that it should never have been put to print. I cannot believe couldn't come up with something more sensical than this. I wish they'd left things ambiguous if this the best we got.
Well I'd like to see you try for sure, I've seen many single Timelines before and they defy what happens in
Ocarina of Time. Nintendo confirmed this split a while back. What's actually wrong with the set of events? You have many connections that we already knew about:
Adventure of Link was a confirmed sequel to the original
Legend of Zelda,
A Link to the Past was confirmed to be a prequel to the original game and
Link's Awakening, plus the
Oracles, were largely perceived - due to in-game and manual evidence - to be sequels to the latter game. Then we have the
Ocarina of Time, confirmed to be the first chronological game at that time -
Majora's Mask was also a direct sequel to this. Then we have
The Wind Waker, a game that we knew proceeded
Ocarina of Time and we knew of its two sequels. So there you have a lot of games that legitimately connected, not to mention that
Skyward Sword was confirmed as the overall prequel.
The only complication was the split up of the
Four Swords games, three games that seem slightly foreign and in their own sort of tale. So when it was confirmed that
Four Swords Adventures was separate from the latter two, then it seemed odd. However, I tried to legitimise it's place somewhat in this
thread . Honestly, the games connect largely as people expected, but how the connected as one entire series of games was the big question and it was answered by
Hyrule Historia. I have no qualms with the connections, there are no
real flaws.