When it comes to the Zelda timeline, the latest two games have stumped fans for a while. After all, with both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom including elements from all over the series, there was no clear place they could fit in the series’ chronology. There were outfits and items from all 3 timelines, enemies and species from the same, and stories that felt like a mixture of everything under the sun.
So, fan speculation ran rife. Were they just set thousands of years after the other games, with history having gotten lost to history in the meantime? Were they alternate universe games, like the Hyrule Warriors titles? Perhaps a timeline merge, like the good ending of Majora’s Mask?
All of these were plausible in their own right, and all of them could have been reasonable solutions here.
But now we have our answer. Yep, according to Nintendo’s latest timeline at Nintendo Live Sydney, the two Wild Era games are set in a different timeline branch entirely. Here’s a picture showing the timeline as of Tears of the Kingdom:
As you can see, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are on a branch of their own. They’re not connected to the other games at all, and stuck off to the side of the timeline display as a result of that.
And they’re also not connected to each other either. So there’s a chance the two games might not even directly follow on from each other, depending on whether you consider the official site’s timeline as more or less accurate than the Nintendo Live one.
Unlike the Nintendo Live one, the official site’s one has BoTW and TotK being directly connected
Either way though, it seems we now have an answer. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are in their own timeline branch, and don’t fully connect to any of the previous games in the series.
So, what do you think about it? Are you happy to see the wild games standing alone here? How is this branch connected to the rest of the series? Will Echoes of Wisdom be on this branch, or one of the older ones?
Leave your thoughts in the comments below, or on our Discord server today!
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