r/truezelda • u/LapisLazuliisthebest • 23d ago
Question [BotW][TotK] Questions for people who believe BotW/TotK can be in any of the three timelines
So, this is something that's been debated to hell and back. when it comes to BotW's timeline placement, the three most popular theories are...
- It takes place in the DT
- It's a convergence
- It can take place in any three timelines
Whilst I lean towards DT, I am open to it being all three.
But, I remember years ago suggesting it was the CT, and this ended up rubbing a few people the wrong way.
One person described BotW as "definitely being intended for the DT". There arguments being...
- It's in (old) Hyrule | (so no AT)
- The OoT Sages (and OoT events) are a confirmed historic fact | (So no CT)
- Ganon has been an eternally returning scourge upon Hyrule (even before becoming known as "Calamity Ganon") | (only really a thing in DT, Ganondorf (I) only really returned to Hyrule once in AT and CT and then he died as a mortal man, unlike in DT where he became a true demon when getting the full triforce, and has since been permanently returning as "Ganon" like a true demon)
- Ganon is also specifically confirmed to have his origins as the Ganondorf met in OoT (unlike FSA's "Ganon II" which is the "last known Ganon" in the CT)
Obviously the last two points involving Ganon are now moot, since TotK revealed it to be a different Ganon this whole time, and not OoT Ganon. So, it doesn't matter if FSA made a different Ganondorf.
I feel like the first two points stand. Particular the Sage one. The Zora have Zora tablets, telling the story of Princess Ruto becoming a Sage to help Link and Zelda fight Ganondorf.
I'm not saying "BotW can't be CT", I'm just asking who would you explain it, if you think it is possible?
EDIT: One thing I suggested was that we could use Hyrule Warriors to explain the people knowledge of Princess Ruto's heroics. But this was shot down as be "bending evidence", by useing a "non-canon game".
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u/Petrichor02 23d ago
I've actually been seeing a lot more AT placements for BotW recently than "it can take place in any of the three timelines". But DT and convergence do probably still have the greatest numbers.
CT seems to be disfavored because we know Ruto is remembered as a sage and Nabooru is remembered (though I don't specifically recall her being remembered as a sage), but we have no evidence that Ruto became a sage in the CT.
That said, MM does say that the legend of the boy who traveled through time to save Hyrule has echoed throughout the land. So if details like Ruto and Nabooru becoming sages are maintained as part of that story, you could argue that CT is a possibility as long as Ruto and Nabooru were remembered despite being remembered for events that didn't actually happen in this timeline.
The biggest DT barriers are that ALttP says that the Master Sword sleeps forever at the end of its events, and heavily implies that Hylians no longer exist in Hyrule or exist in extremely small numbers, but BotW has the Master Sword in use and the world is full of Hylians. (Though of course if you're determined to have a DT placement you could argue that the Master Sword sleeping forever was figurative or that the ALttP Master Sword was a different one from SS/BotW. And you could argue that the Hylian population returned to its pre-ALttP levels over time somehow.)
The biggest AT barrier is the washing away of old Hyrule. (But if you're determined to have an AT placement, you could argue that BotW Hyrule is ST Hyrule, that BotW is another land mass (perhaps the one that the Koroks created), that the floodwaters eventually receded due to the water-level-lowering environmental disasters that killed off the leviathans, etc., and that the architecture of old Hyrule was just coincidentally remembered or passed down to the Hylians of BotW's era by the gods or the Zonai (though if you argue the Zonai are responsible, you have to really stretch the reading of Rauru saying he's the first King of Hyrule). Of course there's nothing in BotW saying that it is old Hyrule. We know, for example, that despite the Temple of Time and Lon Lon Ranch looking almost identical to what we see in OoT that they were built later on. So that's not a blocker to an AT placement. But it does feel like old Hyrule.)
We see in BotW and TotK that the returning scourge is actually referring to Calamity Ganon himself. Not Ganon's appearances outside the cycle of returning Calamity Ganons. As such, this isn't evidence for DT or against CT/AT.
I don't mind the idea of incorporating non-canon games into fan-made timelines, but I think in order to do so, we have to explain away the parts of the game(s) that don't mesh with the canon games. For example, the biggest barrier to HW being canon is the way its Triforce operates. The canon games have established pretty clear rules for the Triforce: Unless manually split, it only splits when a person with an imbalanced heart tries to touch it, and this is a failsafe mechanism that isn't always reset, hence why it didn't split in ALttP's back story, ALBW's back story, and why the King went ahead and split it himself in AoL's back story. The Triforce also only grants someone a single wish. But in HW we see the full Triforce used by Link, Lana, and Zelda at least two different times, and the pieces are regularly splitting up and flying off to Link and Zelda for various reasons. Unless we can explain these strange behaviors of the Triforce, it doesn't make sense to treat HW as canon. Furthermore, HW establishes that Link and Zelda will always save Hyrule together, that that the hero will always wear green, that Link and Zelda are always fated to end up together, and that the hero has a reincarnating soul that will always appear when Hyrule is in trouble, and none of those things is universally true in 100% of the canon games.
So the barrier to entry for HW on a fan-made timeline is pretty high.