Rotating for one true Hyrule

I've been working on a theory about a common landscape, spanning several of the Zelda titles. Essentially, in almost every game, there have been areas just out of reach or out of sight, so by overlapping them I hoped to fill in the missing parts. Anyhow, I'd appreciate any thoughts about that subject from the people here.

It would be simple enough to say the games are not meant to connect, but where is the fun in that? The theorizing comes into play with how exactly to overlap them. Naturally they don't scale for distance. TP landscape is just way more expansive than OOT, and WW is tricky due to moisture. Well, this is something I worked on quite a while back, and admittedly made little progress since then, but having been reminded of it recently, I feel more resolute to continue with the unified map. The following is what I have so far.

Twilight Princess was the most recent material available, so it was my starting point. I used the gamecube orientation, because of the Wii being mirrored like it is. With that, I first set out to connect Wind Waker, simply because it was the second most recent. As you can imagine, this is problematic, mainly because of all the water. My desire was basically to get landmarks to line up with each other, but WW lacks many of the common landmarks. After a bit of effort, I managed to get an awfully good connection between the two. The downside was, I had to rotate Wind Waker counter clockwise by around 45 degrees. Figured I could change my mind later, so I pressed on the way it was.

Next was Ocarina of Time. Death mountain was there, so it became the key point of reference. With only slight rotation, it managed to more or less line up with the TP map. The WW map was already there, and I was a little surprised that it still seemed to line up, and even connected a bit with OOT.

Now Majora's Mask. I never really bought the whole alternate dimension theory, partly because there are just too many other more plausible ways for Hyrule to be separate from Termina. Besides, I can't show other dimensions on a map, and if I didn't like the alignment I could always throw it out. I knew I couldn't overlap MM over OOT, but it seemed like the edges fit together, putting Termina west of Hyrule. Looking at how TP effected the whole thing, MM still fit very well, and nailing it into place was the rotated WW map, which had a couple of reasonably good landmark congruences.

Lastly I added a map of Zelda-2. Okay, it's older, and not in 3d, but I don't care about that. To line it up, I pretty much just lined up Death Mountain and the Cemetery, and let everything else fall where it may. Oddly it still lined up in a sensible way. Unfortunately it required rotating it even further than the WW map.

I took a look at a map of A Link to The Past, and honestly it just didn't fit. It has a lot of good landmarks, but it doesn't even line up with it's self, let alone other maps. If one is willing to distort it sufficiently, it does bear huge resemblance to a southern portion of the map on TP, but not in a proportional way that was useful in this project.

Having done all that, here are some of the fun ways that things overlap:
-Tower of the Gods (WW) is where Hyrule Castle (TP) is.
-Dragon Roost Mountain (WW) is slightly north of Zora Domain (TP)
-Castle Town (OOT), Ruto Town (Z-II) and Link's Oasis (WW) are in the same place.
-Temple of Time (TP) is at Stonewatcher Island (WW).
-Water Temple (OOT) is at Shark Island (WW).
-Ordon Ranch (TP) is at Outset Island (WW).
-Ordon Village (TP) is dead set in the direction Calatia is supposed to be in (Z-II), keeping in mind the map rotation.
-Cliff Plateau Isle (WW) is on Death Mountain (OOT, TP, Z-II).
-Windfall Island (WW) is where the Abandoned Mansion (TP) is.
-The Goron Shrine (MM) is where the North Fairy Island (WW) is.
-Ikana Valley (MM) is where the Mother and Child Isles (WW) are.
-Forsaken Fortress (WW) is in Woodfall (MM).
-Stone Towers (MM), Arbitor's Grounds (TP), and the Desert Colossus (OOT), are near one another in a common desert, in what appears to be a larger set of ruins.

Now there are some items of conflict. For one thing , the lake moves. Now it may be reasonable to conclude that the lake did in fact move, as Hyrule seems to be in perpetual volcanic turmoil. Where the lake was in OOT, is now that huge rope bridge in TP. Another thing, Hyrule castle moves between OOT and TP. Of course depending on your temporal perspective, the Castle was destroyed in OOT, and castles can be rebuilt elsewhere. The location of OOT's castle is in an inaccessible area of TP, so there is no visual comparison to be made, but one might assume that ruins are there.

Alright, how about the whole rotation thing? Not sure how to think of it. In Wind Waker I can make the excuse that altering the landscape might have been part of flooding, and for Zelda 2 I can just say that it was a squished down square map. The explanation that I like best though, is the thought that Hyrule may rotate gradually as time passes. The relative rotations of the various maps can then lead to a rough key of how much time passes between games.

Okay thats I can think of at the moment. Feel free to debate it, disagree with it, whichever. I look forward to all discussion.

That's some seriously hardcore effort, man. The map is kinda hard to read, though I guess that's pretty unavoidable.

Overall, I see no reason this should not make sense, as the rotation can easily be explained by a change of orientation in each game.

The only thing I can think of people having trouble with is that you put Termina beside Hyrule. I'm pretty sure Nintendo officially stated that MM was set in a parallel universe.

I think it's a good theory, and I agree with it; any chance you could add the original LoZ to the mix?

My goal is to end up with a nice drawing for everything, in SVG format, possibly without labeling of any kind.

Well the original is sort-of accounted for by Zelda 2, but the original was a very thin rectangle. I had a map of the original, but when I put it over it just didn't add or subtract from anything. It was just sort-of meaningless to have in there.

The whole other dimension idea just seems so dismissive, like they said that because they didn't want to be asked about it later. It just seems to make so much sense to me to place it west. It makes it look like there might be some kind of lost grand civilization that once spanned the entire desert area, and when that civilization ended, travel across that area died.

I'm not too sure whether to believe the map areas are correct, but you have done some serious hard core work there. I'm impressed!

But I think Nintendo changes the landscaping everytime. They would want to put Link's beginning of each adventure on the Southern area of the map. I think they do this because it seems to feel better if you make your character start from the bottom to the top. I don't think that they would start them there deliberately. But for a better feel in the start of the game. It would just be weird if you started from the top to bottom etc.

I think the maps are just made in a common cliche. Start from the bottom, the mountains always being on the top of the map, villages and lakes at random areas etc.

I'm sure you are completely correct, but there just isn't as much fun in leaving it at that.

You stole one of my projects! ;O;
Nah just kidding, but I've done something similar. I even had very similar results.
But I just used TP and OoT (and added WW for fun, to see if some things make sense).
I think I'll draw it one day, but at the moment I don't have time...
I personally think it makes more sense for Termina to be an alternate dimension. (how do you explain two sets of identical twin witches in one dimension?)

Anyway, I love how much effort you put in it.

That map is interesting whether its correct or not is an other question but it looked like it took a while to make. It gives me things to pondour on anyway.

I've seen something similar to this before but it was not as in depth as this.

Originally Posted by bitterlime

You stole one of my projects! ;O;
Nah just kidding, but I've done something similar. I even had very similar results.
But I just used TP and OoT (and added WW for fun, to see if some things make sense).
I think I'll draw it one day, but at the moment I don't have time...
I personally think it makes more sense for Termina to be an alternate dimension. (how do you explain two sets of identical twin witches in one dimension?)

Anyway, I love how much effort you put in it.

I guess they could have actually been quadruplets, but what I think would be a fun explanation is that after the twins were killed, they resurrected themselves, and after seeing that Gannondorf had been defeated, moved away to near Woodfall to lay low and gather strength.

Remember how they lived an an elevated wooden hut in the swamp? Remember the out-of-place wood room at the top of Forsaken Fortress? Creepy, huh?

That's pretty damn good dude; I understood it perfectly.

Very interesting, though it may have been better for the Geography thread, but nice work nonetheless, my problems?

I feel Majora's mask was pretty unnessicary, but if you want to include it, fine. My big problem is that there is no aLttP or FSA there. Kind of weird to not include them... but otherwise good job!

Yeah, I kinda wish I had noticed the Geography Thread before I made this one. I guess I got carried away typing up the long explanation.

I did reference LTTP while working, but really didn't put it on here. I don't think it will be a simple overlay for it, because it is a condensed rectangular place. Due to it's shape, I don't think it's too awful that I think I'd like to account for it by dissecting it's notable features, and placing them where they seem to make sense. In a lot of ways it seems like TP pulled a tremendous amount of it's geography from LTTP, so a lot of things are accounted for already. I kinda feel like the Desert of Mystery should be accounted for distinctly, possibly as a region at the southern edge of the Gerudo Desert. Gerudo Desert does seem to be an area that isn't exhaustively explorable in any of the games, so connecting them doesn't seem like much of a leap. As for Kakariko Village, it seems to be a recurring name in the games, and I'm a little up in the air over whether the LTTP village should be considered a different village than the others or not. These villages seem to die out and spring up generationally, so I don't think it would be too absurd to place a Kakariko Village in the forest a bit south of the TP temple of time and just west of the OOT lake's former location. The TP temple seems to bare way more than an incidental similarity to the LTTP temple, so I figure it is the same place. The placement of the LTTP Kakariko Village seems initially like it might conflict with the placement of Desert of Mystery, because the map if LTTP shows it dead south of Kakariko Village and I want to put it west, but if I follow the path I notice that the final part of the approach to the DoM is sustained western travel, so I don't think moving it west to coincide with the Gerudo Desert is really that big of a conflict.

As for FSA, I'm not sure how to approach it at the moment. Any advice on the subject would be greatly appreciated. Seeing how it's square and condensed, I figure a loose dissection approach is probably best.

I would agree, seeing at FSA and aLttP share nearly identical maps, it should be fine to just do one. Also, my suggestion would be to just pull the different areas and place them where they should be, still in respect to their current areas. Dissection as you said.

Might you be a cartographer? You are good at this, lol.

It's sort of identical, but they are different enough that it may mean choosing which interpretation is more appropriate in some places, and maybe a fusing of key features for other areas. That might be where time lines come into place. Unfortunately I'm not too confident about any particular interpretation.

I really like this theory, more then any of the others, even though I think you could've left out termina, this was convincing enough without it.

If you could include all of the games, I would run with it. Not including some of the games ruins the whole thing. You did well with what you have though.

Termina is a parrallel universe, not another area of Hyrule. How do you explain the same people being in Termina in MM and Hyrule in OoT if they happened at the same time?

I've been gradually thinking on how to get more of the games in there, but a lot of the older games and the portable games use memory conserving rectangular maps that can't be taken literally, so a flat overlay like the map above doesn't really fly for them.

yeahhhhh but it would be really cool if u could get every one

This thread hasn't been posted in for well over a year. Please don't revive threads that have been inactive for more than a month.

^ It was fun to see humulos' sig though. Remember all those people that are now gone?