Duggie_Brown said: I honestly don't know how this whole time line thing started. I personally gave it no thought what so ever and just viewed each title as a unique adventure by itself with familiar names and places, much like other games like the Final Fantasy series.



When did people start caring what Zelda titles followed which story wise? I think as you can see by the chart above that know of it makes any real sense and feels forced.



I guess it's not a massive issue if people feel the need to connect all games, but personally I'd just prefer the odd Zelda title to follow another one loosely, much like how Majora's Mask followed Ocarina of Time. Click to expand...

The Zelda games have always been referenced as connected storywise. Zelda 2 was a direct sequel to the first game, while a Link to the Past was stated to be a prequel to Zelda 1 in an interview and even game box. And then Ocarina of Time was said to be a prequel to a Link to the Past.The main issue that resulted in the split timeline confusion was just Nintendo wanting various sequels to Ocarina of Time while ignoring the NES/SNES games with those. So we got the split timeline, although the first quotes about it indicated only two branches (around Wind Waker's release), but I guess going after OoT's nostalgia with Twilight Princess forced them to go with three branches for the overall timeline since they wanted yet another game directly following up Ocarina of Time and with Ganondorf, even though Ganondorf was supposed to remain sealed until aLttP in the timeline of the NES/SNES games.