When it comes to long-standing franchises in the video game space, the writers and producers need to understand the story that came before to know where to move things going forward. However, there is an exception to that rule, and series like The Legend of Zelda is an excellent example of it. While they do have a “timeline” of sorts, it’s not as tied to each game as you would think. There have only been a few direct sequels in the past, and others have basically “reset” the timeline repeatedly regarding what happens in the games.
In a chat with Game Informer, Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma acknowledged that things with the timeline are important in the minds of fans, but for the game developers, they do things more “loosely” with it:
“As you mentioned, we realized that fans have a great time theorizing and enjoy thinking about where things fit on the timeline. That’s something that the development team recognizes and it considers, but to an extent. And I say, ‘to an extent’ because if we get too into the weeds or too detailed in that placement, it results in kind of creating restraints for our creativity; the process of creating new ideas becomes restricted because we’re so tied up and trying to make this fit into a very specific spot in the timeline. We do consider it, but not to an extent where we feel that our development process feels restricted or constrained.”
It’s easy to understand why he says things like that. After all, given that each story is special, and the need for sequels is few, they don’t really need to think about why things happen the way they do. The only exception was the “origin story” that we got via Skyward Sword. In that tale, we found out why the “cycle of reincarnation” happened. Demise, a being of pure evil, cursed the “blood of the goddess” and the “spirit of the hero” and promised that an incarnation of himself would follow them throughout time, and that’s what’s happened with the various versions of Ganondorf.
And as an official book noted, the series has branching timelines that can be a bit difficult to understand. So for Eiji Aonuma and the rest of the team, it doesn’t “suit them” to try to figure out placement when it’s not the most important thing. Making each game strong gameplay-wise and story-wise is much more vital.
