GameTrailers: Demystifying Zelda’s Chronology

Anybody remember Mike (TSA) Damiani? He’s the guy who used to run the once-great TheHylia and created the GANNON-BANNED joke way back when. Turns out since then he’s moved on to bigger and better things and is now writing for GameTrailers!

Whether as a response to our recent timeline posting or purely by coincidence, he published an article called “Demystifying Zelda’s Chronology” yesterday that goes a little more in-depth to make a case that the series does, indeed, have a true chronology, citing the contributions of various writers and the efforts undertaken by Aonuma since The Wind Waker to more closely connect the games. It’s a really good and informative read – even I learned a thing or two! – so check it out.

I think what I find most interesting about this piece is its insight into the history of the series’ lore, and how the work done in the NES and SNES days was often stifled or repressed and at this point seems largely to have been forgotten. It’s something I took a keen interest in a few days ago when writing about the importance of fansites these days.

The tale of Zelda’s confusing chronology gets really interesting when development on A Link to the Past began. Nintendo brought on new writers for the third entry. Kensuke Tanabe took over the reigns for the story, and a recent hire named Yoshiaki Koizumi, who’d go on to be the director of Super Mario Galaxy, was given the task of writing the game’s manual as his first assignment. Though Tanabe is usually credited as being most directly responsible for Zelda’s storyline during these early years, it was actually Koizumi, with his background in film and storyboarding and a desire to bring powerful drama to video games, who did much of the heavy lifting. Zelda was his big chance to realize these ambitions.

According to Koizumi, the staff wasn’t quite sure what to do with the narrative in A Link to the Past when he was brought on, so he took it upon himself to create a more in-depth backstory that appeared in the manual. His work in the manual would eventually become the backbone of the series. It was a similar situation when he began work on Link’s Awakening—Koizumi found there was virtually no story in place, so he was given free rein to cook one up. The concepts of Koholint Island and the slumbering Wind Fish’s dream were all his doing. What many of you probably aren’t clear on is how the actual process of creating the story went down. Koizumi was responsible for actually coming up with the ideas for the story and the scenario, while Tanabe actually just assisted Koizumi with the script writing.

There’s a lot more where this came from, so check out the article at the source for the full overview!

Source: GameTrailers – MikeGT’s GamePad