Before I started watching Star Trek, I had heard about it on the Big Bang Theory. The way it was talked about, I was expecting a franchise with very airtight and complex lore. In reality, it’s kind of a muddled mess. And really, it’s better the creators don’t worry too much about continuity, why let continuity get in the way of a good story? It doesn’t make sense that half the cast of the original series had encountered Trelane before but in the end, does it really matter?
Anyway, fans of big franchises who keep track of all the lore and act as though it’s all consistent, put way more thought into continuity than the creators.
The creator of Alien Earth said something like he doesn’t care about lore and that he’s not going to limit himself to what Prometheus and the other Alien movies said. And I’m happy for that, some IPs are better as just interpretations of the same universe that strict historical accounts where everything have to check out.
Exactly, good for him. Storytelling isn’t religion, your new story isn’t supposed to cause a schism. What you choose to carry forward (or not) from a pre-existing body of work can be really meaningful on its own. Like some versions of Terminator treat time travel as a way to show that you can change the future (hopeful) and some of them do the hackneyed bit about fate conspiring to force an outcome (deliberately rehashing the copyrightable nouns of the franchise for cheap nostalgia).
Then why tie yourself to a franchise? Just make your story and not be a part of that franchise.
My thesis is that storytelling as a whole is about ideas and themes more than it is about particular nouns. I reject the idea that so much weight should be given to the components of storytelling that can be made into intellectual property. And sometimes you do want to tell a story that uses a compellingly iconic thing; Giger’s xenomorph is an incredibly compelling creature that resonates across decades because it has so much psychological weight. If you tried to tell an Alien story with anything else people would notice and ask “why didn’t they just make an Alien film?” and if the answer is “because they had interesting ideas that couldn’t be incorporated into the exact continuity of a dozen different films made across four decades”, that to me is a poor reason not to tell a good story.
This bugs me a little with Legend of Zelda fandom. The timeline is nonsense and the lore doesn’t matter.
I have played probably a dozen Legends of Zelda over my lifetime and I could not explain a single thing to you about the lore. When I was talking with my friends about the new Legend of Zelda movie, someone mentioned that there are multiple generations of Link and Zelda, and not just the same Link and Zelda falling in to some kind of cryo sleep or being reincarnated or whatever and it was literally the first time I tried to piece together the lore and like… there’s nothing in my memory but 3 decades of skipping dialogues as fast as possible. Did we ever find out conclusively if all of reality is but a dream on the eyelid of the wind fish? Hell if I know, even though I played that game through like six times.
Nintendo didn’t care about lore and continuity, just in creating unique and interesting gameplay. They were genuinely surprised when people started fan theories connecting all the Zelda games together.
So they eventually whipped up a generic lore, stating there was a prophecy that Link and Zelda would always be reincarnated at some point in history when they’re needed most. Ganon too; he’s the personification and embodiment of all evil and can never be truly destroyed, only defeated for a time. He will always come back in some form or another.
Skyward Sword is canonically the first game in the franchise, showing how the prophecy started and how they ended up stuck in an infinite loop of reincarnations for all time.
An official timeline was created at one point over a decade ago, which Nintendo promoted to officially tie all the games together into a branching timeline of events. I believe they actually published an official timeline book around that time too. Although I hear it’s already contradicting some of the current lore and may no longer be considered canon by Nintendo.
It’s actually been a while since I looked into the Zelda timeline, so if anyone here is more up to speed on it, let us know!
Technically at this point, Tears of the Kingdom marks both the earliest and the latest entries in the series. Both BotW and TotK are set in futures where all of the previous Zelda games happened, all timelines converging.
The only reason there is a timeline for Zelda is because people wouldn’t stop bothering Nintendo about it. Even Shiggy said he regrets making that because now they, somewhat, have to follow it or else people will riot.
I never saw a need for an overall Zelda timeline, rather that each game is a variation on the theme. Like with Mario; I don’t really consider the past games “canon” to newer ones except in the vague sense that the characters have a history together.
I just treat every LoZ game as if it’s the only one in the series. I couldn’t care less about the other games when i’m playing one. The only game that felt repetitive, or derivative, was TotK…because BotW was so good.
Exactly. Within the world of TotK/BotW, Twilight Princess is just folklore: yet another “Legend of Zelda”, one legend among many.
Similarly, think of all the self-contradictory narratives surrounding the founding of the United States of America:
- The Book of Mormon (1830)
- The Patriot (2000)
- National Treasure (2004)
- Assassin’s Creed III (2012)
- Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012)
- Hamilton (2015)
- The 1776 Report (2020)
- President Curtis (2026)
Trying to integrate Majora’s Mask into some sort of consistent Legend of Zelda branched timeline makes my brain hurt in the same way as when I try to make a non-contradictory timeline of all these other works.
