/vr/ - Retro Games

I feel like the best way to organize the series probably isn't one connected timeline, but instead a couple separate continuities, based on games which are similar thematically or feature the same Link going on multiple adventures, with OoT being the only title involved in more than one due to the time travel. That way, things that don't necessarily add up would no longer directly contradict each other. Games that were the start of the timeline at one point (ALTTP, OoT, MC) would still be the beginning of their own timelines, and you don't have to try to cobble together some sort of cohesive multiverse out of Hyrule vs Sacred Realm/Dark World vs Twilight Realm vs Lorule vs Termina vs World of the Ocean King, etc etc.

>OoT (kid Link's time) < MM < TP
Ganondorf is prevented from taking over Hyrule
>OoT (future) < WW < PH < ST
Ganondorf took over for 7 years but was defeated by Link; Zelda sends Link back to live his childhood and the land is left without a hero when Ganon eventually escapes his seal
>MC < FS < FSA
Ganon is a desert nomad exiled by the rest of the Gerudo; only branch where Nintendo officially acknowledges he's not chronologically the same man from OoT
>ALTTP < Oracles < LA < ALBW < TFH < Z1 < Z2
Ganon, the leader of a band of thieves, accidentally found a way into the Sacred Realm and used the Triforce, but his new army of transformed Hylians was defeated by the Knights of Hyrule and he was sealed within the corrupted Sacred Realm by the Seven Wise Men
>SS < bits and pieces taken from every other game in the series, LoZ's Greatest Hits < BotW < TotK
-Hylia exists, a 4th main goddess directly responsible over Hyrule and its people
-every Zelda has divine blood and is directly descended from SS Zelda, who was a mortal reincarnation of Hylia
-Ganon is the manifestation of Demise's curse
-every Link is a vessel for the Spirit of the Hero
-the Master Sword houses a sapient spirit within it, who can still communicate with some people