Zelda authors

I wrote this in a PM response to LOZ Historian's first post in his thread, The Word From Above Counts Today. The reason I'm posting it as a new thread rather then in the old is because it's a different track then that thread had, from what I can tell. Plus a response to a first post ten pages into a thread doesn't work to well. Anyways, I figured this was something some of you should/wmight want to see, so here you go:



Interesting article. I agree, more or less, with your conclusions regarding Miyamoto and Capcom's Flagship development team. Aonuma... I'm not so sure about. He seems to have more interest in the overarching timeline then Miyamoto ever did, to be true. But has his interest cleared anything up for us? I wouldn't say so. Up to and including MM, the timeline was straightforward: OoT-MM-LttP-LA-LoZ-AoL. There were a couple inconsistencies here and there, but most could be explained awya and those that couldn't were very minor. The only real confusion stemmed from OoT's ending, but it wasn't that bad, in retrospect.

The Flagship developed games, again, offered some problems and inconsistencies, but nothing huge. The Oracles can satisfactorily be placed in almost any timeline, for instance. The Minish Cap only becomes confusing if you assume that the Light Force is the Triforce, but if you don't do that, it, too, is relatively easy to place almost anywhere. And the original Four Swords? It has the simpliest of all the Zelda stories, and, at the time of it's release, it had absolutely no connections to outside games at all. It could literally go ANYWHERE.

The games that screwed up the timeline the most were The Wind Waker, and Four Swords Adventures, both of which were done under Aonuma's guidance.

But this is all assuming that it is even Aonuma and Miyamoto who wrote the stories and such. Which is not true. In the Zelda games, gameplay, theme, and atmosphere come first, and the storyline is designed to work around those things... And Miyamoto/Aonuma have, throughout their careers, had a lot of influence on those factors. But they are not the ones who sit down and write the stories.

Kensuke Tanabe is primarily responsible for the stories of LttP, LA, and OoT, I know that for certain. I believe he was responsible for LoZ and AoL as well, but I don't know for sure.

Majora's Mask, I don't know, but I believe it was someone else.

Mitsuhiro Takano and Hajime Takahashi are responsible for the story of tWW. Takano moreso, I think, but I'm not sure.

Aya Kyogoku and Daiji Imai are responsible for the script and the story of FSA.

Another thing to take into consideration is translation... Leslie Swan, Jeff Miller, Dan Owsen... those are big names to take into consideration. Leslie Swan has been involved with most of the Zelda games. Dan Owsen translated LttP and it's manual, and other stuff. But in all cases, except the first two games, localization involved teams of people, teams which change from game to game.

And finally, you have the people involved in writing the manuals and such, which are very rarely the same people who did anything else. Then again, the last time a manual was very influential was with Link's Awakening, so it's not as important.

My point is, throughout the course of the series history, there has always been many, many people who have their hands in the story. Moreso now then there were in the older games. That is why I take anything that anybody says in an interview or something with a grain of salt. Zelda's overarching story is a team effort involving a ton of people, and there is no one who can be considered in charge of it. There is no author you can point at and say, "he's a definitive source." Once, Kensuke Tanabe was that person, but not anymore. He has not been writing any of the stories or script since Ocarina of Time, as far as I know. We're free to pick and choose what we consider canonical sources, and that differs from person to person. That, combined with the lack of any authoritative figure, means that there is no true timeline, and whether any timeline works or not depends entirely upon your view of what is and is not canon.

It's sort of interesting, if you look at the chain of scriptwriters for the various games:

A Link to the Past Script -- Kensuke Tanabe
Ocarina of Time Script -- Kensuke Tanabe, Toru Osawa
Majora's Mask Script -- Mitsuhiro Takano (Coordinator for OoT)
The Wind Waker Script-- Mitsuhiro Takano, Hajime Takahashi

We sort of get a chain of command, here. Tanabe is primarily responsible for ALttP and OoT, then command passes to Takano, who was a Coordinator for OoT and who would have worked with Tanabe and Osawa and probably knows the directions they intended to head with the story of at least OoT (this is probably why most of the recent console games have dealt with the story of Oot), and would have continued this through MM and TWW.

Ideally, anyway. We all know that this Grand Plan utterly wrecked.

Originally Posted by l-o-s

The games that screwed up the timeline the most were The Wind Waker, and Four Swords Adventures, both of which were done under Aonuma's guidance.

I'll agree that TWW seems to have muddied up the timeline upon its release, but FSA can remedy the confusion, if the details are integrated properly (you can argue all day about whether this was effectively done within the game or not).

One of the biggest inconsistencies between OoT and ALttP, considering that OoT was supposedly written as the Imprisoning War, was that ALttP itself depicts Ganon as being in possession of the whole Triforce while he is in the Sages' seal, and OoT depicts him as holding only the Triforce of Power. Obviously the developers must remedy this--so they have a few options. They can have Ganon somehow gain the rest of the Triforce and be resealed (or a number of other similar things), or they can kill off Ganon and come up with a new story as to how he was revived/reincarnated, then came to have the Triforce and be stuck in the Sacred Realm/Dark World in ALttP. Nintendo seems to have gone with the latter--TWW ends with a fairly clearly dead Ganon.

Of course, given the fact that Hyrule is now flooded, how are we supposed to reach ALttP?--the developers added in a few statements on the forests somehow creating "one land" again to answer that, then pretty much left the Flood idea alone and went on to other things. They never really explored this whole "Ganon being revived" thing until FSA--a new Ganon, reborn in the body of a new Gerudo prince, takes an object of immense power and spreads darkness across the land. Seven Maidens come to seal him away in a sword, and close the portals to the Dark World.

While this doesn't lead precisely into ALttP, it does leave us with enough of the formula to get the basic picture--seven magically-endowed individuals seal portals to the Dark World and the Knights of Hyrule are exterminated somewhat alongside this. Couple that with the return of items such as the Moon Pearl and a Mirror and of locales like the Eastern Palace and the 2D Hyrule Castle and Kakariko Village, and it's pretty obvious that FSA is meant to lead into ALttP. How Ganon gets into the Golden Land to take the Triforce is another story, but we can guess that he probably escapes from the Four Sword seal, as he does with all seals, and for whatever reason "cannot discover how to return to the World of Light" upon transforming the Sacred Realm.

I'll admit that the series under Aonuma seems to be taking a bit of a roundabout approach to the general storyline continuity, but at least he's fairly consistent about it. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some sort of prequel to LoZ sometime after the release of TP and PH.

Note I don't have much to post now but I will come back later when I have more time.

Now.

First off I dod not claim that the producers made the storylines. They were the directors as I said they were over the production of the game. Secondly I would like to note that there is an interview where Anouma said that he would make the timeline appear more visable in the near future. That could be mean't by anything: relating in-game refernces, similiar gameplay techniques, the mauals prologues, major itmes that appear in one game and another, ect. We just don't know. But until then you may see how we Wise Men have in corperated theories off of these areas to give insight to not only a historical conection to the games but what Anouma is using to make the timeline become more visable.

You two, especially Lionharted, may have a point. I don't know which would be worse; that the timeline is so screwed up because it keeps switching management, or because it's just plain bad planning all along

But I am still convinced that there are simply too many people involved in all this for me to trust any individual or even smaller groups of people. The only way I would trust a quote or interview for storyline info would be if all of these people got together, and released some statements as a group. Which obviously won't be happening.

Yeah--it's pretty clear [at least, to me] what each new game is supposed to be trying to accomplish in terms of storyline. How that accomplishment is relevant to the 'collective' storyline [let alone to one another] is what baffles me. I mean, seriously--without FSA, it would have been impossible to connect the Four Sword saga "back" to the timeline. And FSA does a shabby job at best. We can at least tell that the intent is to reconnect to ALttP, something that OoT now fails at utterly because of the awkwardly-placed TWW. But what the hell does the game accomplish, other than this?--well, if not for this game, I'd be $50 richer. =/

Quick question LionHarted (without beginning a debate)?

Imagine FSA was not released yet. How does OoT (at this point in time) utterly fail to connect to ALTTP when TWW and the SW story can both be used to explain how the Hylian civilisation died out?

OoT was written as the Seal War story, as Mr. Osawa revealed, but the developers dug themselves into a hole by introducing the Triforce-splitting concept when ALttP clearly doesn't feature a split Triforce (the Seal War story doesn't give enough details for any of the "extra details" in OoT to cause any breaks in consistency with the Seal War story itself). So, again, like I said, they had to reconcile the state of things in ALttP to what had actually happened in the games up to that point. Given the fact that Ganon in ALttP also was said to have not been able to return to the Light World in the first place when he is clearly able to in OoT, as well, it would have made more sense to simply kill off the "first Ganon", then introduce another who could go on to fulfill what parts of the story that OoT could/did not. TWW fulfilled the first half of this, but then we wound up without a Ganon. FSA introduces a "second Ganon"--the "ancient demon reborn."

There's no reason to have a second "Seal War" involving the Triforce when there's already a mini-war in FSA that accomplishes everything that we hear about within the context of ALttP--extermination of the Knights and the sealing of a Dark World by Sages (and, if our idea of the Dark World merging with the Sacred Realm is true, a sealed Dark World merging with the Sacred Realm would result in a world that Ganon is unable to escape from--setting up perfectly for Ganon's being stuck there in ALttP).

This leaves us with another problem, though--where did Ganon in LoZ/AoL come from? Either Nintendo will just leave the classic series alone--villains in early videogames tended not to have detailed backstories due to console limitations--or they'll go back and add an "origins" story as well.

This leaves us with another problem, though--where did Ganon in LoZ/AoL come from? Either Nintendo will just leave the classic series alone--villains in early videogames tended not to have detailed backstories due to console limitations--or they'll go back and add an "origins" story as well.

Nintendo cannot make a Zelda game unless there is a Hero for the player to represent. If Nintendo want Ganon to be resurrected/reincarnated to take over Hyrule in LoZ, they cannot show this in game form without some sort of seal situation (like FSA). They could remake LoZ with an introduction describing the revival, but I seriously doubt that will ever happen. I think Nintendo is content with establishing Ganon's revival in LoZ by establishing the possibility of revival in AoL and BS Zelda 2.

Anyway, your reasoning is that TWW must have messed up the timeline because OoT was implied to be the SW by a developer. However, it has been stated a lot on ZU that developer comments are not always reliable ("FS is the oldest game in the timeline" for example) and do not reflect changes to the script later on in timeline development. Then remember that quote by Aonouma that some of FSA's development team had worked on ALTTP but that he wasn't fully aware of connections to ALTTP that they may have established? Then there was the quote that the main developers didn't care about what Ganon's final form in OoT should look like so it was individually decided to be a Pig, to fit with ALTTP. (Both sources were provided by you at different plaes on ZU, but I can't find either of them... ARRRGGGHH!) Can we even establish that all the developers have the same timeline understanding when the games are actually in development? If Aonouma's quote that FS was the "oldest game in the timeline" was vetoed by Miyamoto (as I think you also mentioned), why can't Osawa's quote also be vetoed?

Looking at the SW, I see all the contradictions you pointed out in your last post, the implication of a long lost Hylian civilisation and the fact that no Hero is referenced to exist in the SW. Then there is the fact that Ganondorf dies in TWW. From this, I can develop a conclusion that TWW relates to without any examples of official retconning.

1) OoT is universally decided sometime after it's release not to be the SW, to fix the contradictions.
2) TWW is made to explain the loss of the Hylian civilisation and the Sacred Realm, as referenced in ALTTP/SW.
3) No Hero is referenced in the SW, so the SW does not necessarily have to take place in game form. ALTTP's manual could very well be describing all the events that occur before the Hero DOES appear in ALTTP, just like the Hero only appeared in LoZ.

I know you think that FSA makes a second SW irrelevant, so I won't argue with FSA in context. However, the timeline does work well without FSA.

Originally Posted by jhurvid

Nintendo cannot make a Zelda game unless there is a Hero for the player to represent. If Nintendo want Ganon to be resurrected/reincarnated to take over Hyrule in LoZ, they cannot show this in game form without some sort of seal situation (like FSA). They could remake LoZ with an introduction describing the revival, but I seriously doubt that will ever happen. I think Nintendo is content with establishing Ganon's revival in LoZ by establishing the possibility of revival in AoL and BS Zelda 2.

True, dat. Touché.

Anyway, your reasoning is that TWW must have messed up the timeline because OoT was implied to be the SW by a developer.

"Implied"--no, more like outright stated.

Then remember that quote by Aonouma that some of FSA's development team had worked on ALTTP but that he wasn't fully aware of connections to ALTTP that they may have established?

Of course not, but the developer that made the statements is the script writer, and would have known full well what was going on with the story, since he was, you know, writing it.

Can we even establish that all the developers have the same timeline understanding when the games are actually in development?

In terms of the storyline, the only developer with a real understanding of what's going on is the script writer (or script writers), hence why I (and l-o-s) place statements by people like Mr. Osawa and Mr. Tanabe over those of people like Mr. Aonuma.

If Aonouma's quote that FS was the "oldest game in the timeline" was vetoed by Miyamoto (as I think you also mentioned), why can't Osawa's quote also be vetoed?

Two reasons:

1) Aonuma didn't have anything to do with FS;
2) Osawa actually was involved with the storyline he was commenting on, and the comments were made post-facto, after the game had already been released (referring to Aonuma's comments on FSA, here)

1) OoT is decided sometime after it's release not to be the SW, to fix the contradictions.

What contradictions, though? The contradictions don't lie in OoT--they lie in OoT's connection to ALttP. It would be easier to simply disconnect the Seal War from ALttP, and replace it with FSA.

2) TWW is made to explain the loss of the Hylian civilisation and the Sacred Realm, as referenced in ALTTP/SW.

It is heavily implied that the Hylian civilization and the legends of the Sacred Realm existed in the time of the Seal War, and that these aspects of Hyrulean culture vanished some time afterwards. Read the intro to ALttP, and you'll see what I mean. The intro is told as though the legends of the Sacred Realm existed at the time of Ganon's invasion of the Sacred Realm and his attacks on Hyrule. The context of ALttP clearly connects the decline of the Hylian civilization with the loss of the Sacred Realm lore, which, as you said, we see in TWW.

3) No Hero is referenced in the SW, so the SW does not necessarily have to take place in game form. ALTTP's manual could very well be describing all the events that occur before the Hero DOES appear in ALTTP, just like the Hero only appeared in LoZ.

That's entirely possible. I just don't see the need for creating an additional event when we've already got one--no, two--that fit the criteria of either 1) representing the Seal War or 2) leading into ALttP.

However, the timeline does work well without FSA.

I know this quite well, actually--I just don't see what the point of most of the major plot events in FSA would be if not to set up for ALttP.

Originally Posted by LionHarted

Of course not, but the developer that made the statements is the script writer, and would have known full well what was going on with the story, since he was, you know, writing it.

In terms of the storyline, the only developer with a real understanding of what's going on is the script writer (or script writers), hence why I (and l-o-s) place statements by people like Mr. Osawa and Mr. Tanabe over those of people like Mr. Aonuma.

True, but what if individual developers are adding their own elements to the game that aren't realised by others? Could the graphical connections between ALTTP and FSA have been created by the designers without informing the scriptwriters for example? Could the different scriptwriters have developed the script with different ideas in mind. The fact that there is no universal understanding by everyone on the development team puts into question every developer statement that comes into our hands.

What contradictions, though? The contradictions don't lie in OoT--they lie in OoT's connection to ALttP. It would be easier to simply disconnect the Seal War from ALttP, and replace it with FSA.

I meant the contradictions in the OoT-ALTTP connection. But if OoT =/= SW, then TWW can be used to disconnect the games by itself.

It is heavily implied that the Hylian civilization and the legends of the Sacred Realm existed in the time of the Seal War, and that these aspects of Hyrulean culture vanished some time afterwards. Read the intro to ALttP, and you'll see what I mean. The intro is told as though the legends of the Sacred Realm existed at the time of Ganon's invasion of the Sacred Realm and his attacks on Hyrule. The context of ALttP clearly connects the decline of the Hylian civilization with the loss of the Sacred Realm lore, which, as you said, we see in TWW.

ALTTP's intro never implies connection to the Hylians at all. It just retells the SW story in a few sentences as a way of confirming what events are in store for the player. The Sacred Realm was "discovered" by Ganondorf after the location was lost in time. People knew that it existed from the Hylian relics, but they didn't know where.

I know this quite well, actually--I just don't see what the point of most of the major plot events in FSA would be if not to set up for ALttP.

Games lead into each other but not always in a direct fashion. For example, OoT didn't fully explain how it's events were related to ALTTP until TWW was made to explain the loss of the Hylians and the Sacred Realm. I really don't see FSA's ending lead into ALTTP like you do, so I think that after TP and PH are released, a sequel will be made that will tie up the Four Sword and the Magic Trident.

Originally Posted by jhurvid

ALTTP's intro never implies connection to the Hylians at all. It just retells the SW story in a few sentences as a way of confirming what events are in store for the player. The Sacred Realm was "discovered" by Ganondorf after location was lost in time. People knew that it existed from the Hylian relics, but they didn't know where.

The idea that the Master Sword is mentioned as one of these relics, while also being mentioned as being somewhat connected to the Seal War, seems to suggest to me that it was intended to have been an ancient relic from the Seal War era.

These two quotes more or less demonstrate the connection I'm trying to make:

Originally Posted by TWW intro

This is but one of the legends of which the people speak... Long ago, there existed a kingdom where a golden power lay hidden. It was a prosperous land blessed with green forests, tall mountains, and peace. But one day a man of great evil found the golden power and took it for himself... With its strength at his command, he spread darkness across the kingdom. But then, when all hope had died, and the hour of doom seemed at hand...a young boy clothed in green appeared as if from nowhere. Wielding the blade of evil's bane, he sealed the dark one away and gave the land light.

Originally Posted by ALttP intro

Long ago, in the beautiful kingdom of Hyrule surrounded by mountains and forests... legends told of an omnipotent and omniscient Golden Power that resided in a hidden land. Many people aggressively sought to enter the hidden Golden Land... But no one ever returned. One day evil power began to flow from the Golden Land... So the King commanded seven Sages to seal the gate to the Land of the Golden Power. That seal should have remained for all time...

If you look only at the bolded parts of the intro stories to TWW and ALttP--they're shockingly similar. Now, given, one mentions Ganon directly, while the other mentions "many people aggressively" searching for the entrance, but we know that the two go hand-in-hand in the Seal War story. It's only the emphasis placed on the resolution to the problem that differ--one focuses on the Hero and ignores the Sages, the other focuses on the Sages and ignores the Hero.

Lol, very good point. The two introductions certainly look too similar to be unintentional...
Maybe we need to see more information before we can really come to a complete decision. But I think I'll argue my current understanding of events until then.

Maybe you guys have already tried, but I think you should ask LoZ's creator about the timeline. If he doesn't know, it means there isn't one, and you can quit worrying about it.