The Legend of Zelda series has always had fan interest in the series timeline, namely debating where which games belonged. While Nintendo did publish an official timeline a few years ago, the fact is that with every new game, the timeline is forced to change. Interestingly enough, the developers have taken notice of the fan interest, and commented on the matte.
In an interview with GamesRadar, Breath of the Wild director Hideomaro Fujibayashi said.
“I wouldn’t say that we’re not concerned with the timeline. It’s obviously something that we know is very important to people, and they do a lot of research on. But I think at this point, we’re not really at the stage where we want to talk about where Breath of the Wild is in the timeline. I think, as with the pixelated food, it’s something that at this point we want to leave up to people’s imaginations.”
Eiji Aonuma, then went even further by saying that Nintendo :doesn’t create games and then start thinking about where it fits in the timeline”. According to Aonuma, Nintendo prefers “to leave things to the imagination most of the time.”
“We published a book with the timeline, but we definitely got comments from users saying, ‘Is this really accurate? I think this should be this way. It’s different.’ And history is always kind of imaginative. It’s left to the person who writes the book. So that’s how we approach it as well. It’s not necessarily that we come up with a game and think, ‘Oh, this is where it fits in the timeline.’ Honestly, lately, we’re kind of scared to say exactly where things are in the timeline for that reason. But we like to leave things to the imagination most of the time.”
Nintendo’s approach to the timeline is for lack of a better term, a very Nintendo approach to things. But what do you all think of this?