1st July 2008, 12:29 AM
I'd say their intentions for LTTP, stateside and Japanside were likely pretty much the same. From everything I've read regarding translation differences, it was only a number of religious references that were altered, and nothing that really alters any main story points. The interviews with some of the Japanese developers in those old issues of Nintendo power indicate there was no real difference in intention. It was meant as "before" in both locations. The Japanese instruction booklet lacked this information, but a number of these games lack the developer's commentary to tie it all together. The issue I have with saying OOT happened either before or after the imprisoning war, rather than being the imprisoning war, is that it doesn't really fit before as Ganon getting the triforce that had been hidden for centuries a while before doing the exact same thing in the imprisoning war sounds way off. Doing it AFTER he was imprisoned (to get imprisoned... again?) also seems really weird.
Yeah Wind Waker makes it very clear that the old Hyrule is a thing of the past and they had to find a new land to call Hyrule. I didn't have a problem with it. I liked that story. It is interesting to that that in the time of LTTP, the people would have forgotten that the stories of the past applied to a different land entirely, but it fits when you consider the Lost Woods in LTTP and onward having none of the magical properties of the Lost Woods in OOT.
That addition also helped to clear up a major inconsistancy in the shape of the land. LTTP and OOT's overworlds are substantially different from each other, and being different countries goes a long way to explaning that. However, it ONLY explains the difference in the land between those two specific games and does nothing to address all the changes the land went through between other games. Between LTTP and Zelda 1 for example (or if you want to think of it in reverse order for some reason, the problem is still there), what the heck happened? The worlds are still very different. LTTP's Hylia is in the southeeast corner of the map, and Zelda 1's is in the center. The desert is east of Lake Hylia in 1, and to the far west of it in LTTP. The Lost Woods are in the southwest corner in 1, with Death Mountain far to the north., while it's in the northwest corner in LTTP, with Death Mountain just to the east. Zelda 2 did explain that the part of Hyrule Link explores in Zelda 1 was just a small fraction of a much larger country, which he goes on to explore in Zelda 2. As far as I can tell from what's said in Zelda 2, Link travelled north of Death Mountain, setting that as the southern-most part of the Zelda 2 map with the desolate land he explored in the first game further south of that. It fits as throughout Zelda 2, there's no Lake Hylia, or Lost Woods, or any of the other landmark areas of the series.
However this won't save LTTP's geographical issues. No matter how you set it (or twist it, if you wish to presume that the maps in the series aren't always oriented in any particular compass direction), it just doesn't match up to the locations shown in 1 and 2. About the only saving grace is to assume an extremely vast "deep time" between LTTP and Zelda 1, long enough for wind and water to change the very shape of the land, perhaps shorter if you consider the strange effects of powerful magical beings doing things here and there. In fact, the LTTP player's guide (which, I checked, was in fact a translation or reworking of the Japanese player's guide, and is illustrated by a team of Japanese people) does make mention of time changing the land. (Actually that player's guide is pretty heavy on VERY intricate details of Hylian life and lore, as it's "hook" is that it's half-written as an archeological historical book, for example Link changing his hand dominance when facing left and right isn't a result of sprite mirroring, it's because of a superstitous Hylian belief that bad luck eminates from Death Mountain in the north and Link always keeps his shield facing that direction, well at least if you take the player's guide as a legitimate source on these story details, at any rate nothing in the guide is major enough to shed light on or contradict the timeline of events.)
So, okay, we don't know how much time has passed, and maybe a few centuries of changes is enough if magical incidents are considered. However, that still leaves other major issues in geographical consistancy.
Twilight Princess takes place in a non-flooded Hyrule. It actually does continue from the OOT world, they never left. So, it really makes one wonder when you see the layout in TP and how different it is from OOT. I know that the entire overworld was (needlessly if you ask me) mirrored between GCN and Wii versions. However, even flipping it around doesn't really let it match up with OOT's locations. Ordon Woods (which I might assume is the renamed Lost Woods) is still in the south, but that's it. Hyrule Castle is now in the very middle rather than the north. The desert is now exactly east (or west) of lake hylia rather than south of it, and death mountain is off in some new windy path. The problem with this is it being exactly a century after OOT really introduces a big time crunch for the land changing over time, too much for me anyway. An unspecified amount of time that allows for several hundred years at least? Sure, that's fine. A major disaster like in WW? That works. A mere century and the land changes this much with narry as much as a mention in the world? (A world that, I should remind you, has the events of the "spared world" OOT timeline still fresh enough for the details to be passed down about Ganondorf's attempted execution.) That's really tough to swallow. At best, I'd have to assume that in the century since then, human advancement is what changed the land so much. It certainly explains the human settlement of the Lost Woods and the canons and stage coaches and so on. Perhaps that combined with some small climate changes can cover it...
However, that's hardly anything compaired to the biggest geographical screw of them all, the "Vaati series" of games. Whatever issues the "Ganondorf series" of games may have, they are minor compaired to this series. Even between Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures, which the intro story of Adventures makes clear is the same Link, who's still a kid at that, is fairly different. The map of the first Four Swords has Death Mountain in the north, but nothing else recognizable. The rest of the land is locked in this odd sort of "active volcano right by a giant wall of ice" sort of weirdness (and it was primarily just meant as a video game to be played for it's own sake at the time, so it could be excused). Adventures ditches this landscape almost completely to match up a lot closer to what's in other Zelda games. That lets it match up to OOT a lot better (though not perfectly it can be worked with with the "changes over time" thing), but if their intention was a world that actually acknowledged the storyline of the first Four Swords, and it clearly was as the events of that game are detailed, then it fails utterly in explaining such a drastically changed landscape.
As you may know I try to work with plot holes as much as I can to come up with my own solutions for them. I'm a fiction apologist. However, there's nothing I can do to fix this. It's a geographical train wreck. About all I can do is to come up with something really extreme like the lands Link is visiting in the first Four Swords are actually in an alternate world created by, or at least inhabited by the fairies of the Zelda series (which would go a way towards explaining the landscape's almost comical layout of ice by volcano by forest by cave layout). However I am loathe to introduce an entire reality unless there's some good justification for it. Minish Cap doesn't fare much better. It at least has the good sense to distance itself very far from Four Swords in the distant past though, so it allows me to work with the time line a little better in terms of "geological changes over time". I let a lot of geographical issues go in the series (like how the heck certain rivers could possibly form in the shapes they do) only because the series does a very good job of explaining that in OOT, that they were literally dug out by a goddess. That'll go a long way to explaining initial geographical features, and magical events and further weathering satisfy me sufficiently most of the time, but that goes out the window with the FS/FSA games as they are.
Speaking of inconsistancy, I suppose everyone else has already came to this on their own but it bears mentioning that I don't take much issue with the fairies and monsters changing as they do between games. The fairies seem to be made OUT of magic, so I figure whatever form they take isn't so much locked in place so much as whatever form it is they feel like taking, and so the differences in appearence across the games can just be called fairy "fasion" for lack of a better word. The monsters are simple enough to explain as, generally, being made from dark forces and thus would be different depending on era. The advantage here is that each "era" of Hyrule is fairly consistant in the monsters it uses. Zelda 1 and 2 keep to similar monsters, and while OOT has pretty different ones, it shares the same ones with MM. That really helps this explanation work just fine.
Oh yes, I really have to wonder what those strange glowing beings are in TP. That is, the ones who's faces aren't attached to their faces. They are the ones that appparently decided to execute Ganondorf, but who are they? I must assume that when Ganondorf was confronted with the accusations of a couple of children he couldn't be captured by the Hylian guard (he was already an accomplished and very powerful wizard). They aren't once mentioned or seen in OOT. I figure whoever these deities are, their temple was in the desert so they might have only been called when the desert tribe themselves realized Ganondorf had betrayed everyone. I may have to replay TP to get more details on that event.
When were the Twili actually banished to the Twilight Realm anyway? Was it after OOT? The way they talk about it, it seems like it was long before those events... I still don't know who actually banished them. They say "the gods" but was it the great 3, or some lesser gods that did it? I figured that the 3 goddesses left Hyrule a long time ago, a set of Deist style gods that create a world and move on without looking back. If they actually are still watching over it, that can work, but I figure they really could have done a better job of, say, eliminating Ganon in WW without flooding the place. So, I figure it was the lesser gods they created that are being prayed to. They would have limited power and might be forced to do a flood to save the rest of the world from Ganon.
Ah yes, then there's the whole hylian/human thing. Minish Cap finally settled once and for all that hylians are humans that also have pointed ears. The rounded-ears variety of humans doesn't show up too much in the OOT era but seems more common in WW/TP, even more so in LTTP, and very common in 1 and 2.
Yeah Wind Waker makes it very clear that the old Hyrule is a thing of the past and they had to find a new land to call Hyrule. I didn't have a problem with it. I liked that story. It is interesting to that that in the time of LTTP, the people would have forgotten that the stories of the past applied to a different land entirely, but it fits when you consider the Lost Woods in LTTP and onward having none of the magical properties of the Lost Woods in OOT.
That addition also helped to clear up a major inconsistancy in the shape of the land. LTTP and OOT's overworlds are substantially different from each other, and being different countries goes a long way to explaning that. However, it ONLY explains the difference in the land between those two specific games and does nothing to address all the changes the land went through between other games. Between LTTP and Zelda 1 for example (or if you want to think of it in reverse order for some reason, the problem is still there), what the heck happened? The worlds are still very different. LTTP's Hylia is in the southeeast corner of the map, and Zelda 1's is in the center. The desert is east of Lake Hylia in 1, and to the far west of it in LTTP. The Lost Woods are in the southwest corner in 1, with Death Mountain far to the north., while it's in the northwest corner in LTTP, with Death Mountain just to the east. Zelda 2 did explain that the part of Hyrule Link explores in Zelda 1 was just a small fraction of a much larger country, which he goes on to explore in Zelda 2. As far as I can tell from what's said in Zelda 2, Link travelled north of Death Mountain, setting that as the southern-most part of the Zelda 2 map with the desolate land he explored in the first game further south of that. It fits as throughout Zelda 2, there's no Lake Hylia, or Lost Woods, or any of the other landmark areas of the series.
However this won't save LTTP's geographical issues. No matter how you set it (or twist it, if you wish to presume that the maps in the series aren't always oriented in any particular compass direction), it just doesn't match up to the locations shown in 1 and 2. About the only saving grace is to assume an extremely vast "deep time" between LTTP and Zelda 1, long enough for wind and water to change the very shape of the land, perhaps shorter if you consider the strange effects of powerful magical beings doing things here and there. In fact, the LTTP player's guide (which, I checked, was in fact a translation or reworking of the Japanese player's guide, and is illustrated by a team of Japanese people) does make mention of time changing the land. (Actually that player's guide is pretty heavy on VERY intricate details of Hylian life and lore, as it's "hook" is that it's half-written as an archeological historical book, for example Link changing his hand dominance when facing left and right isn't a result of sprite mirroring, it's because of a superstitous Hylian belief that bad luck eminates from Death Mountain in the north and Link always keeps his shield facing that direction, well at least if you take the player's guide as a legitimate source on these story details, at any rate nothing in the guide is major enough to shed light on or contradict the timeline of events.)
So, okay, we don't know how much time has passed, and maybe a few centuries of changes is enough if magical incidents are considered. However, that still leaves other major issues in geographical consistancy.
Twilight Princess takes place in a non-flooded Hyrule. It actually does continue from the OOT world, they never left. So, it really makes one wonder when you see the layout in TP and how different it is from OOT. I know that the entire overworld was (needlessly if you ask me) mirrored between GCN and Wii versions. However, even flipping it around doesn't really let it match up with OOT's locations. Ordon Woods (which I might assume is the renamed Lost Woods) is still in the south, but that's it. Hyrule Castle is now in the very middle rather than the north. The desert is now exactly east (or west) of lake hylia rather than south of it, and death mountain is off in some new windy path. The problem with this is it being exactly a century after OOT really introduces a big time crunch for the land changing over time, too much for me anyway. An unspecified amount of time that allows for several hundred years at least? Sure, that's fine. A major disaster like in WW? That works. A mere century and the land changes this much with narry as much as a mention in the world? (A world that, I should remind you, has the events of the "spared world" OOT timeline still fresh enough for the details to be passed down about Ganondorf's attempted execution.) That's really tough to swallow. At best, I'd have to assume that in the century since then, human advancement is what changed the land so much. It certainly explains the human settlement of the Lost Woods and the canons and stage coaches and so on. Perhaps that combined with some small climate changes can cover it...
However, that's hardly anything compaired to the biggest geographical screw of them all, the "Vaati series" of games. Whatever issues the "Ganondorf series" of games may have, they are minor compaired to this series. Even between Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures, which the intro story of Adventures makes clear is the same Link, who's still a kid at that, is fairly different. The map of the first Four Swords has Death Mountain in the north, but nothing else recognizable. The rest of the land is locked in this odd sort of "active volcano right by a giant wall of ice" sort of weirdness (and it was primarily just meant as a video game to be played for it's own sake at the time, so it could be excused). Adventures ditches this landscape almost completely to match up a lot closer to what's in other Zelda games. That lets it match up to OOT a lot better (though not perfectly it can be worked with with the "changes over time" thing), but if their intention was a world that actually acknowledged the storyline of the first Four Swords, and it clearly was as the events of that game are detailed, then it fails utterly in explaining such a drastically changed landscape.
As you may know I try to work with plot holes as much as I can to come up with my own solutions for them. I'm a fiction apologist. However, there's nothing I can do to fix this. It's a geographical train wreck. About all I can do is to come up with something really extreme like the lands Link is visiting in the first Four Swords are actually in an alternate world created by, or at least inhabited by the fairies of the Zelda series (which would go a way towards explaining the landscape's almost comical layout of ice by volcano by forest by cave layout). However I am loathe to introduce an entire reality unless there's some good justification for it. Minish Cap doesn't fare much better. It at least has the good sense to distance itself very far from Four Swords in the distant past though, so it allows me to work with the time line a little better in terms of "geological changes over time". I let a lot of geographical issues go in the series (like how the heck certain rivers could possibly form in the shapes they do) only because the series does a very good job of explaining that in OOT, that they were literally dug out by a goddess. That'll go a long way to explaining initial geographical features, and magical events and further weathering satisfy me sufficiently most of the time, but that goes out the window with the FS/FSA games as they are.
Speaking of inconsistancy, I suppose everyone else has already came to this on their own but it bears mentioning that I don't take much issue with the fairies and monsters changing as they do between games. The fairies seem to be made OUT of magic, so I figure whatever form they take isn't so much locked in place so much as whatever form it is they feel like taking, and so the differences in appearence across the games can just be called fairy "fasion" for lack of a better word. The monsters are simple enough to explain as, generally, being made from dark forces and thus would be different depending on era. The advantage here is that each "era" of Hyrule is fairly consistant in the monsters it uses. Zelda 1 and 2 keep to similar monsters, and while OOT has pretty different ones, it shares the same ones with MM. That really helps this explanation work just fine.
Oh yes, I really have to wonder what those strange glowing beings are in TP. That is, the ones who's faces aren't attached to their faces. They are the ones that appparently decided to execute Ganondorf, but who are they? I must assume that when Ganondorf was confronted with the accusations of a couple of children he couldn't be captured by the Hylian guard (he was already an accomplished and very powerful wizard). They aren't once mentioned or seen in OOT. I figure whoever these deities are, their temple was in the desert so they might have only been called when the desert tribe themselves realized Ganondorf had betrayed everyone. I may have to replay TP to get more details on that event.
When were the Twili actually banished to the Twilight Realm anyway? Was it after OOT? The way they talk about it, it seems like it was long before those events... I still don't know who actually banished them. They say "the gods" but was it the great 3, or some lesser gods that did it? I figured that the 3 goddesses left Hyrule a long time ago, a set of Deist style gods that create a world and move on without looking back. If they actually are still watching over it, that can work, but I figure they really could have done a better job of, say, eliminating Ganon in WW without flooding the place. So, I figure it was the lesser gods they created that are being prayed to. They would have limited power and might be forced to do a flood to save the rest of the world from Ganon.
Ah yes, then there's the whole hylian/human thing. Minish Cap finally settled once and for all that hylians are humans that also have pointed ears. The rounded-ears variety of humans doesn't show up too much in the OOT era but seems more common in WW/TP, even more so in LTTP, and very common in 1 and 2.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)