The history of The Legend of Zelda is a rather curious gibberish. In fact, that we are writing this article is no coincidence, since after the release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom you are probably wondering at what point in history the game is located, beyond being after Breath of the Wild.
In Softonic we get down to work to explain the history of The Legend of Zelda and how to understand its timelines.
A start for everyone
There are dozens of video games of The Legend of Zelda if we count individual releases, remakes and remasterings. However, we are going to stay with the first ones, that is, with those titles that make sense to the long Zelda plot.
The first thing we must be clear about is that everything starts from the same beginning: the legend of the goddesses, who created the world we inhabit. Once they left, they left as a legacy the Triforce, an object composed of three fragments that collected part of the gifts of these goddesses. Hylia, one of them, was in charge of guarding it… until evil arrived.
The Demise ravaged the created territory (later Hyrule) with his entourage to seize the power of the Triforce. After a long time of battle, Hylia managed to win, but this peace would not last forever.
From here we can begin to intermingle more concepts, but it would be reliarte too much, so stay with Link appears, the hero willing to save the world, and Princess Zelda, who is the first mortal incarnation of the goddess Hylia previously mentioned. In this sense, the chronological order of the games in this first block is as follows:
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
- The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
- The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The ocarina for everyone
Up to the moment mentioned above, everything makes some sense and logic. However, it is from Ocarina of Time onwards when the situation gets quite convoluted. At this point in departure, we have to stay with a key aspect: the story is bifurcated into three timelines depending on what would have happened in the game.
The first timeline is what happens if the hero, that is, Link, loses to Ganondorf / Ganon, the demon king. In this sense, the archenemy gets two of the three parts of the Triforce and the story unfolds from the following games in this order:
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
- The Legend of Zelda: The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes
- The Legend of Zelda
- The Adventure of Link
The second and third timelines are based on the assumption that the hero has won the battle against Ganondorf in Ocarina of Time, but in two situations: the first is with Link as a child, while the second is with Link as an adult.
Starting with the second, in this time period the Sacred Realm has been protected, but evil never rests and new dangers appear, with even a reincarnation of Ganondorf again. The games of this stage are three:
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures
As for the third one, here it is Ganondorf who is sealed, but not for long. The adult Link stage consists of these three games:
- The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
- The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
- The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
And where do Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom fit in?
Nintendo has always been quite wary of placing both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom chronologically. After all, after playing Breath of the Wild one sees that there are elements of games like The Wind Waker or Twilight Princess, but this would imply that the two timelines touch each other.
With the release of Tears of the Kingdom, and without going into spoilers (rest assured), it seems that everything is part of a new universe created by Breath of the Wild itself, that is, that has nothing to do with the previous timelines. In this way, Zelda as a saga would enter a new variant. And they are not few.
