After almost six years, the long-awaited sequel to the Switch launch title and open-world giant The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released on May 12, 2023. It marks the 19th game in the series and has been more hotly anticipated than almost any other title since its announcement at E3 2019. It’s no coincidence that the announcement trailer is one of the most successful videos on the American Nintendo YouTube channel.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is probably the greatest adventure in the now 38-year history of the kingdom of Hyrule and its hero Link. Over time, a detailed timeline has developed around the series, in which Tears of the Kingdom also finds its place – and of course The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, the official 20th Zelda installment, which will probably be smaller than Tears of the Kingdom, but completely reinterprets the series thanks to Zelda instead of Link in the lead role.
To bring you up to speed, in this special we will go through the Zelda timeline from beginning to end and explain and see where the various adventures fit into the history of Hyrule.
It’s complicated
The breakdown of the Legend of Zelda timeline is more complicated than you might think. The simple reason for this is that no public timeline was actually planned at the beginning. Until 2011, there was only an internal team version that was only intended to provide orientation for the developers. The first official timeline for the Zelda universe was finally published in the great Zelda encyclopedia The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia.
Since up to this point there had been little attempt to put the various games in a coherent sequence, a meaningful timeline had to be spun around them, which made the end result very complicated. Although all of the games in the series are connected in some way, there are different timelines in the course of the story in which different titles are set.
The reason for this is that there are several time jumps in individual games and sometimes long breaks between different parts, which made it difficult to create a meaningful concept. After the original timeline, which includes the games Skyward Sword, The Minish Cap, Four Swords and Ocarina of Time, the beam splits into three different new timelines.
The first is that of the fallen hero and includes A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, Oracle of Seasons/Oracle of Ages, A Link Between Worlds, Tri Force Heroes, The Legend of Zelda and The Adventure of Link.
This timeline is contrasted with that of the triumphant hero, which is then split into the childhood and adult timelines. Majora’s Mask, Twilight Princess and Four Swords Adventures can be integrated into the former, while The Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks find a home in the latter.
But where are the two open-world spin-offs Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom? These two games play a special role in the timeline, as they are set more than 10,000 years after the previous games.
They also cannot be assigned to a specific timeline, so each player has to decide for themselves which title takes place before Breath of the Wild. However, there are some clues that link the two Switch titles with their predecessors. More on that later. First of all, we should clarify which adventure of the brave warrior marks the beginning of the story of Hyrule.
A long time ago, in a land high above the clouds
At the top of the timeline is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, released for the Wii in 2011 and remastered for the Nintendo Switch in 2022. It is the beginning of Link’s adventures and the first building block of the timeline.
Source: Nintendo The main setting of the game is Cloud Keep, a city high up in the air that was created by the goddess Hylia several thousand years before the actual action. It served as a place of refuge for the people of Hyrule during the great war between good and evil, which took place long before the action of Skyward Sword and in which the goddess was able to win after endless battles with the help of her followers and defeat the dark forces.
Link and Zelda were born and grew up in this city. They and all the other residents of Cloud Keep have long since forgotten that the land of Hyrule still exists on the ground beneath them. At the beginning of the game, Zelda is nothing more than Link’s childhood friend and the daughter of the school principal. However, as the story progresses, we learn for the first time that she is the future ruler of Hyrule and the reincarnation of the goddess Hylia herself.
In Skyward Sword, Link is also chosen for the first time to be the legendary hero he was in the many games that came before. After Zelda is pulled down by a dark tornado into Hyrule, which the inhabitants of the Cloud Keep call Earthland, while flying with her cloud bird, and Link is left alone, he meets the sword spirit Phai a short time later.
He leads Link to the sword of the goddess Hylia and explains to him that he is the chosen hero who must protect the land of Hyrule from the return of evil. With Phai as his support, Link travels to Earthland to save Zelda.
Unlike in the chronologically later games, Ganon(dorf) is not the villain in Skyward Sword. In fact, the dark demon lord does not even exist in this game. The role of the main antagonist is taken by the Deathbringer. He is considered the king of the demons and was once sealed in the earth by the goddess Hylia.
The Dark Lord Girahim wants to reverse this and bring his master back. That is why he has kidnapped Zelda, as he needs her divine power to break the seal. This is exactly what we have to prevent in Skyward Sword.
Source: Nintendo Many of the well-known elements of the series are explained in the course of the story. For example, the Sword of the Goddess becomes the holy banishing sword at the end of the game, also known as the Master Sword in most of the later parts. We also learn the history of the Triforce for the first time and why it is so important in the fight against evil.
In the final battle against the Deathbringer, just before he is finally sent to the afterlife with the help of the Master Sword, he conjures up a curse that will haunt Link and Zelda forever. This curse manifests itself as Ganondorf, the well-known villain of the following games, who from this point on appears as the main antagonist.
Skyward Sword is in many ways the introduction to the entire franchise, as many elements that were already known before are only explained here. It also introduces the official timeline, which at least at this point is still fairly linear.
A big difficulty, however, is that many gaps between individual games are only filled by narratives. Often the plot of a game begins without any real connection to the previous part, and this connection is only created through the relevant background knowledge over the course of the game. This is also the case with the second title in the timeline.
After defeating the Deathbringer, the inhabitants of Cloud Lair settle in the rediscovered Hyrule. After that, there is peace in the land for a few years until a war breaks out, which is only dealt with in the backstory of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which chronologically actually takes place much later.
In this war, the Triforce was locked away in the Temple of Light and sealed with the Master Sword for the safety of the entire land. In the era of prosperity that followed, the Kingdom of Hyrule was established and made to flourish, all before the prequel of the timeline-technically second game even began.
Of talking hats and an unusually large number of links
After Skyward Sword, the next title to be classified is the Game Boy Advance title The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap from 2004. It is based on the legend of the Minish, which we learn about over the course of the game. At some point, Hyrule was plagued by evil entities, whereupon the magical people of the Minish appeared and created a special sword and the Force, an equivalent of the Triforce, with which the evil attackers could be locked away. In honor of this triumph, a ceremony is held every year that allows the best swordsman to touch the sword of the Minish.
Source: Nintendo It is during this event that the story of The Minish Cap begins. Although Ganondorf was more or less introduced in the first game, he does not appear here. Instead, the corrupted Minish sorcerer Vaati plays the evil main role. He destroys the magic sword and petrifies Princess Zelda so that she does not get in the way of his search for the Force. In order to save the princess, Link must repair the sword.
To do this, he must find the Minish people, who are capable of doing this as their creators. He is helped by the magician Ezelo, who was turned into a talking hat by Vaati. With him, Link can shrink himself to a tiny size and thus interact with the equally tiny Minish.
Before the release of Skyward Sword and the official timeline, many people considered The Minish Cap to be the first game in the series because it would explain the green pointed cap that Link wears in almost all games. After all, Ezelo has exactly the same design and Link would have simply adopted it in the sequels. However, since he already wears such a cap in Skyward Sword, this theory was shelved.
