1st July 2008, 12:08 PM
It's like Teraptus in the DragonStrike movie, Ganon can move the walls... :)
(If you haven't seen it before, the greatest D&D movie ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8LBpMuSTrQ )
Really though, most of your post there is just a very long way of saying "Every game has a completely different world map that does not line up with the other games, even the ones that are supposedly set in the same worlds." And that is very indisputably true.
I've always had a big problem with those "The people forgot" stories, really. An epic journey from one land to another, and the founding of a new society? People aren't going to forget that. Even before writing, oral stories lasted for centuries and beyond... it is surprising how well people DID remember the important things. Just think of the Illiad and the Odyssey. They are books hundreds of pages long, but were transmitted from person to person for centuries before they were ever written down.
Unless something amazingly catastrophic happened, people don't "just forget" things like that...
Of course we do have lots of missing pieces of history (we don't know what happened in most of history, really), as once a people dissolve or are subsumed into another group their individual history is often lost, and the distant past does eventually descend into myth and legend -- see for instance all the theories the Romans had for the early days of their city -- but even so, those legends are generally assumed to contain at least some truth. I'm sure many great events are completely unknown, but... the propensity for fantasy authors (games, books, etc) to just say "and then over the centuries people forgot" is, I would say, stupid. Things just don't really work like that. Whether through oral history or written, people remember! Stuff like this is in so many things, and it's always stupid. It basically proves that whoever wrote that story has absolutely no idea how oral history works.
The only exception would be if said societies were actually wiped out.
I bet you're thinking about this way more than Nintendo ever has. I mean I do like discussing the Zelda story, but... it's hard to take it so seriously (as you do there) when it seems so obvious that Nintendo does not. Just look at all those geographical problems, for instance. Beyond the most basic elements -- "this part in the north, probably, etc", the world changes each time not because of any of the ways you try to explain it, but simply because each time they make a new overworld and don't care about keeping it accurate when compared to the other games. That really is the answer... they don't care, and don't care about even coming up with an explanation to explain it. Because the difference between OoT and the later games in overworld design is no different than the differences between the other games. WW's "they went to a new place" wasn't explaining why the map changed, it was simply trying to tell an interesting story, because each Zelda game really is self-contained (unless it's a direct sequel).
TP vs. OoT is maybe the most obviously ridiculous case of that. As you say, the two world maps have absolutely nothing worth mentioning in common, despite being in "the exact same world". There is no way to logically explain this, so I'm not even going to try.
Note that, however, originally the game DID reflect OoT's overworld more, before TP was repeatedly overhauled. Go watch the first trailer again, it clearly showed a few OoT locations in it. They just ditched that later on in favor of a completely different map that they liked more, but had less to do with the original design... because they care more about each game on its own than the continuity.
The same goes for the Twili in the adult timeline -- they never existed there, because they were created specifically for TP... I guess they could make some game with the Twili in the adult timeline, but just because TP says "they are there and have been for a long time" doesn't mean Nintendo is actually going to follow through on that to the logical conclusion for the other timeline, if there is such a thing. (maybe they should, but will they? Likely not.)
A Mana-style "the stories are all different versions of the same world unless we directly say it's a sequel so we don't need to bother with a timeline" style thing would have done wonders for the Zelda series, I think, as stupid as that excuse is... (if you won't actually try to make a logical universe)
Ah... so this would explain the "FS is actually a sidestory" theory, then, perhaps.
Guns in (JRPG) fantasy worlds exist, but don't work as well as guns do in real life. People prefer to carry around really big swords, because swords deflect bullets like lightsabers and guns are useless when compared to someone with a 20 foot long sword!
Zelda just takes from that tradition, I would say, though admittedly it is just cannons and not handguns too. And yes, guns did take a few centuries to reach wide use, and did start off as just cannons... but that stage didn't last anywhere near as it does in your average fantasy game or show. (Western fantasy isn't immune to this either, of course... why is it that only Dwarves have guns, and they're not really any better than swords? :))
Note that some other Zelda games have cannons too -- Oracles, for example.
We really don't know whether this is true or not, though... I don't think we should just assume that it was translated exactly.
No, you've probably just got several more games in between, perfectly explaining all of the relevant situations! :)
(If you haven't seen it before, the greatest D&D movie ever: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8LBpMuSTrQ )
Really though, most of your post there is just a very long way of saying "Every game has a completely different world map that does not line up with the other games, even the ones that are supposedly set in the same worlds." And that is very indisputably true.
Quote: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.
I've always had a big problem with those "The people forgot" stories, really. An epic journey from one land to another, and the founding of a new society? People aren't going to forget that. Even before writing, oral stories lasted for centuries and beyond... it is surprising how well people DID remember the important things. Just think of the Illiad and the Odyssey. They are books hundreds of pages long, but were transmitted from person to person for centuries before they were ever written down.
Unless something amazingly catastrophic happened, people don't "just forget" things like that...
Of course we do have lots of missing pieces of history (we don't know what happened in most of history, really), as once a people dissolve or are subsumed into another group their individual history is often lost, and the distant past does eventually descend into myth and legend -- see for instance all the theories the Romans had for the early days of their city -- but even so, those legends are generally assumed to contain at least some truth. I'm sure many great events are completely unknown, but... the propensity for fantasy authors (games, books, etc) to just say "and then over the centuries people forgot" is, I would say, stupid. Things just don't really work like that. Whether through oral history or written, people remember! Stuff like this is in so many things, and it's always stupid. It basically proves that whoever wrote that story has absolutely no idea how oral history works.
The only exception would be if said societies were actually wiped out.
Quote: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.
I bet you're thinking about this way more than Nintendo ever has. I mean I do like discussing the Zelda story, but... it's hard to take it so seriously (as you do there) when it seems so obvious that Nintendo does not. Just look at all those geographical problems, for instance. Beyond the most basic elements -- "this part in the north, probably, etc", the world changes each time not because of any of the ways you try to explain it, but simply because each time they make a new overworld and don't care about keeping it accurate when compared to the other games. That really is the answer... they don't care, and don't care about even coming up with an explanation to explain it. Because the difference between OoT and the later games in overworld design is no different than the differences between the other games. WW's "they went to a new place" wasn't explaining why the map changed, it was simply trying to tell an interesting story, because each Zelda game really is self-contained (unless it's a direct sequel).
TP vs. OoT is maybe the most obviously ridiculous case of that. As you say, the two world maps have absolutely nothing worth mentioning in common, despite being in "the exact same world". There is no way to logically explain this, so I'm not even going to try.
Note that, however, originally the game DID reflect OoT's overworld more, before TP was repeatedly overhauled. Go watch the first trailer again, it clearly showed a few OoT locations in it. They just ditched that later on in favor of a completely different map that they liked more, but had less to do with the original design... because they care more about each game on its own than the continuity.
The same goes for the Twili in the adult timeline -- they never existed there, because they were created specifically for TP... I guess they could make some game with the Twili in the adult timeline, but just because TP says "they are there and have been for a long time" doesn't mean Nintendo is actually going to follow through on that to the logical conclusion for the other timeline, if there is such a thing. (maybe they should, but will they? Likely not.)
A Mana-style "the stories are all different versions of the same world unless we directly say it's a sequel so we don't need to bother with a timeline" style thing would have done wonders for the Zelda series, I think, as stupid as that excuse is... (if you won't actually try to make a logical universe)
Quote: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.
Ah... so this would explain the "FS is actually a sidestory" theory, then, perhaps.
Quote: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...
Guns in (JRPG) fantasy worlds exist, but don't work as well as guns do in real life. People prefer to carry around really big swords, because swords deflect bullets like lightsabers and guns are useless when compared to someone with a 20 foot long sword!
Zelda just takes from that tradition, I would say, though admittedly it is just cannons and not handguns too. And yes, guns did take a few centuries to reach wide use, and did start off as just cannons... but that stage didn't last anywhere near as it does in your average fantasy game or show. (Western fantasy isn't immune to this either, of course... why is it that only Dwarves have guns, and they're not really any better than swords? :))
Note that some other Zelda games have cannons too -- Oracles, for example.
Quote: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.
We really don't know whether this is true or not, though... I don't think we should just assume that it was translated exactly.
Quote: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.
No, you've probably just got several more games in between, perfectly explaining all of the relevant situations! :)