More Miyamoto wisdom

[A Black Falcon]

The interviews I'm talking about weren't with translators (well okay in a manner of speaking), they were with the creators. They are the ones who originally intended it to take place back then. Religious references aside (seriously, that angel statue in Zelda 2 is a "trophie", riiight... even as a kid I thought it was a religious icon, though I didn't know that icon meant anything other than windows 3.1 desktop thing).

The thing is, there is a major story element that also forces LTTP to take place before Zelda 1. As I said, the triforce is nowhere to be found until Link himself finds it in Ganon's possession, and the story indicates that before that, it was never controlled by Hyrule. So, there's no place between OOT and LTTP for Zeldas 1 and 2 to take place, as a major story point in THOSE games is that Hyrule HAS been in possession of the triforce for a long time. Either it takes place after LTTP, or we have to strike that story from the record. It seems pretty clear that LTTP was meant as an explanation of, on top of where Ganon came from, also how Hyrule came to control the Triforce.

True. The only question is what the Japanese version's text actually said... was it directly translated, censorship aside, or was it changed? This doesn't affect the US series timeline of course, but that is the question... I can't find anything that answers that question.

That said, there are some niggling issues with other story points. I mean Four Swords (and Four Swords Adventures mentioning the events of Four Swords) talk about how the first time Vaati emerged, he kidnapped "many maidens", but in Minnish Cap the only person he kidnaps at all is Zelda herself.

Huh... will they do another game with Vaati sometime?

Also a number of details of the imprisoning war seem "off" from the OOT telling. Knights fighting to the last to defend the sages as they cast their spells? A king getting the sages together instead of Link? The Master Sword being "forged" during the war to combat the triforce? None of that ever happened in OOT. The intent is clear, and the storyline really doesn't allow for much if any wiggle room in where all these stories are placed (I still say LA has the most wiggle room of all of them as it being placed after any of the games doesn't really contradict any major story points, but I prefer after LTTP as that was original intent). However, these details should be handled. The only thing I can figure is that a number of lines in LTTP talk about time shrouding the past, so we can perhaps assume that certain details changed in each new telling. Instead of just Zelda, the legend makes him out to kidnap all sorts of women. Surely many soldiers and the king himself ended up dead in the war to stop Ganon when he gained Number1 Triforce Power (to use the bad english of the Zelda 2 intro scroll). Retellings might have obscured that. The problem with this explanation is we know exactly how retellings obscured that story from Wind Waker, which didn't talk about a king or sages, just a young lad in green clothes who travelled through time. It would seem odd that over time all details except the green hero would be lost and then after even more time THOSE details would be lost but the rest in some form would suddenly be restored. Then again, one thing we know for sure. In MOST of these stories, all hints of a past Link are somehow erased from history, and in any cases where a previous Link is acknowledged, the name of that hero is lost.

And those are exactly the kind of questions that open up the holes I mentioned, so someone could say "Well, the answer is that the war LttP describes is a different war, not in any of the games, not the events of OoT." Because OoT didn't have knights fighting for Hyrule or any of that stuff... just Link and Zelda, pretty much. If anything else happened, it happened in the background off screen... but given the importance of the events described in LttP, that doesn't quite seem like a satisfying answer. "The telling changed over time" is a reasonable answer, but as you say, not an entirely satisfying one.

Your point about the WW version vs. the LttP version is also interesting... I hadn't thought of that, but yeah, you're right. Why would the telling change so dramatically, to add many elements nonexistent in the older telling while removing other key parts that had been intact earlier? Stories can change, sure, but going from "a long time later, the key points of the story were remembered" to "a long time after that, the story was radically different"... doesn't quite work. I do think that even so the Imprisoning War is probably the events of OoT, but the inconsistencies are annoying.

Also, it's less than satisfying to think that the Hyrule in LttP/LoZ/AoL isn't actually the Hyrule of OoT, if you follow the "WW says how the people went to a new, but similar, land and called that Hyrule" story, if I'm remembering it right... it seems like the same place, but isn't? :(