This is a totally new take on *Legend of Zelda Lore* which is very *impressive* to say the least. One of the questions I have is: Are you going to be playing *Breath Of The Wild* at any point in the near future and what's your next game going to be? Just to let you know: I absolutely *LOVE* this brand *NEW* format of yours and cannot *WAIT* to see what's coming up next... By the way, I'm halfway done with your *LATEST* playthrough, but needed to stop because I didn't want it to end!!! ~ JonseyG 👲💖

@mollysheehan-uz3sy I'm glad you enjoyed the video! I actually think it would be pretty fun to replay Breath of the Wild at some point, so that's definitely a suggestion I'll be keeping in mind. After I focus on uploading some more videos to this channel, I'll be able to start up my next playthrough over on Game Geist.

I look forward to seeing your next video!!! ~ JonseyG 👲💖

I do!

i believe that its a case of history repeating itself, skyward sword WAS and is the first game, and tears is the last. but somewhere before breath of the wild, the events after skyward sword repeated, likely multiple times, once per time line split which is why things from three time likes are there. at the end of each time line split, things repeated.

I'm aware of that, the entire location doesn't seem to be the same either, but instead a recreation. Or perhaps it actually IS the Sealed Temple, but it's an alternate version of it that only exists within BotW/TotK's unique timeline.

i don't know, i feel like details like size scaling can kind of just be chalked up to art style, so i don't find that definitive per se

@Envy_May Normally, I would agree, but in the case of the Mother Goddess Statue, the base of it in Skyward Sword contained the entrance to the Goddess Sword, which requires the statue itself to be the size that it is. This is completely absent in BotW/TotK.

Very well put. Thanks for the comment, it was a good read!

If we go talk to Impa again at the Forgotten Temple after getting the last Tear on Rist Peninsula, we get this dialogue: "And the geoglyphs were drawn by an ancient people who touched those memories and saw visions, as you [Link] did". As far as I can tell, the geoglyph chamber wasn't built yet when Rauru gave the Secret Stones to the Sages (it looks like that wall is still solid in the memories), so that means that the ancient peoples who saw the memories and drew the geoglyphs also built the room in the Forgotten Temple, probably as a way to guide Link to the "legendary sword"

i think totk and botw take place after skyward sword

This is correct, the Goddess Statues can indeed move themselves and each other. The only question I have is, if the Mother Goddess Statue was somewhere else in that cutscene at the time, then where was it and why? We know that the Zonai did already have Goddess Statues around in their time period thanks to the one found in the Temple of Time on the Great Sky Islands, so why wasn't there one in the Forgotten Temple? I feel like the Zonai just didn't put one there at all originally and only until the following Hylian civilization came along, the ones who discovered the Light Dragons Tears and made a map of it in the Secret Stone chamber, that they were the ones who eventually put that Goddess Statue there.

@@GossipGeist it's hard to say where and why, but I have some theories. My guess is this is where the secret stones would've been kept for a long time, considering the zonai built a room back in the back. Sonia is also a priestess of the goddess hylia, so it's quite possible that there's a working relationship between rauru and the goddess statues. it might even have been a long standing relationship between the zonai and the statues, so the statue could have been another layer of security almost for the secret stone room, and to access it you need permission from the goddess statue. When it comes to link accessing the room there are no more stones in it so there's no need to guard it once ganondorf's seal had full broken. As for where the statue goes, there's a long standing tradition in the technology of the wilds era to appear and disappear, the ancient arrows for example, and teleporting. In SS, there's the Silent realm which I think is a real possibility of where all this tech is accessing to bend space and make things disappear. The goddess already has a tie to that realm, so it's quite possible to make the statue go there. I also think that there's an unidentified amount of time between the imprisoning war and when Zelda gets the sword where she and the sages make as much preparation at they can for an insurmountable future situation, one that helps resolve when she does get the master sword, which she didn't know she would. Preparation would include raising the temple of time and researching dragonification in depth. They likely had records of it, esp in the royal family to know what happens and why it is taboo. They had at least three examples of it happening, and it might be well known that dragons shed tears of memory after swallowing their stones, so it's quite possible that Zelda and Mineru, knowing it'd happen, made plans for the geoglyphs and another room in the temple of time to be made. She also knows link's tendencies and likely had heard about him searching for his memories in the years between the game, so she knows she can leave them for him to find.

The other thing that stood out to me as odd is the fact that in Skyward Sword, that Mother Goddess Statue is MUCH bigger and even has the doorway to the Goddess Sword hidden inside the base of it, which is completely absent in the BotW/TotK counterpart. They 100% reused the assets for the Springs but they didn't do the same thing for the Mother Goddess Statue for some reason 🤔

​@@GossipGeist Ooh, yeah, that's a good point! To be fair, maybe the discrepancies could just be artistic liberties or whatever, but I'm glad that you mentioned that, haha. ^_^

Maybe whoever scoped it out, thought restoration costs would be astronomical...

Hyrule is like an onion. Every 10,000 years or so, a new layer is placed on top of the previous one, covering up all of the civilizational advancements of the previous layer. Either that, or bad dudes just keep on flattening everything.

@@GossipGeist Both are funny to me because it makes me think Hyrule is effectively the weird mostly isolated country bumpkin of the world that keep hitting setbacks whenever their about to advance.

@@GossipGeist speaking of layers, I looked closer at the walls in the Depths recently after reading a Yiga clan journal that said they looked artificial, and the walls look a lot like rock strata. Does this mean that the walls of the Depths are the geological remnants of all the past eras of Hyrule?

​@Sarah_H Isn't this what the game says the entire time? Old mines that were used by the zonai, which are apparently the original founders of hyrule. But people need to stop trying to twist a timeline out of every reference to any other game. Different devs and designers have different ideas. There are different Links just like there are different Mickey Mouse versions (detective, adventurer, etc)

@@borstenpinsel the Zonai were obviously down in the Depths using the mines but the game never tells us how the Depths were formed. If the walls are the remnants of past iterations of the Hyrulean landmass then that space must have somehow been hollowed out for the Zonai to have even been able to build down there, and there must've been some kind of magic at play for the Depths to be an exact mirror of the overworld And the legendary outfits + gear from previous games are ALSO in the Depths. Because they're remnants of past Hyrules and the Zonai found them and hid them away, OR because they were created by the Zonai/Depths civilization based on old legends, but then that wouldn't make sense with the item descriptions like the Tingle set which says that "a man who believed he was the very reincarnation of a fairy" "treasured this shirt"

Good old TotK. Gotta love it!

Ugh, the Hobbit movies... in the book, Bullroarer Took really did knock off the Goblin King Golfimbuls head and knock it down a rabbit hole this creating the game of golf.

This. The Wild games are only canon to each other - they're just anthology games filled with Easter eggs from the others.

I simply didn’t think Zelda team had the guts to do that. My initial read was to take the “founding of the Kingdom of Hyrule” at face value, and retcons would have to be baggage to be sorted out by theorists. Refounding is a big weight off the shoulders of theorists at least.

@@cato3277 but why??? Like all we have to do is make the conclusion that rauru is wrong, which isn't even hard to do when we look into his character in depth and realize that rauru isnt wise, he isn't much of a smart character either and how both sonia and mineru, who are the smart characters, seem to lack in knowledge about the past and what occurred before the founding. Like, is understanding that some characters are unreliable narrators and that some events might not happen when we think they do that much more radical than completely foregoing the continuity we have established for 30+ years and assuming that it was either changed completely or broken into 2 different ones? Even Fujibayashi has spoken that there is a possibility pf there being a history of destruction on the kingdom of Hyrule before its founding and even in game there there is the tale of the stormwind ark which says there was an upheaval in a time long before the founding of Hyrule.

@dreamer1292 no I agree with refounding now. I just thought Zelda team was lazy with storytelling and bad at consistency, so maybe they should be taken at face value. I was wrong.

@@cato3277 Glad you understood it, this mistake is something that so many people do, they take on phrase at face value and think that the entire lore is built around it and then will analyze the game and realize that that detail they put so much faith into doesn't make sense. But instead of seeing it as an opportunity to do more research and look for more clues, people will just give up and say that it doesn't matter. Which is so weird, because whenever I see people saying the lore in totk doesn't make sense its always the same arguments and theories, its quite weird.

@@dreamer1292 I wish Fujibayashi just didn't handwave poor writing mistakes (the Sheikah tech). It makes me think they don't think that deep into the lore, at all. Not surprising as they're game designers first, but I still think they need a consistency director.

I completely agree here. Pretty much all of the references found throughout both BotW and TotK are simply just that, nothing more than a reference. There's nothing about any of them (except for a very select few) that are deeper than surface level. If you even attempt to try and make a genuine connection between the reference and the original, you're immediately met with glaring issues that render it either impossible or extremely improbable. It's difficult for me to see BotW/TotK actually belonging to the official timeline in any realistic sense, but as a theorist, I'm keeping my mind open to the possibility and will always keep searching for ways that might be able to make it all work.

I mean, if people tried to think outside the box and look at interviews, they would see how bote and totk are still in the far future and that hyrule at some point was destroyed and refounded

Like "how can the Goddess Sword exist alongside the Master Sword"?

The Temple of Time in BOTW is meant to be the one from OoT, and at the time that BOTW came out the Zonai didn't exist; it was just the name of one of the sets of ruins throughout the game with the same construction - the same as the Shrines all have different names. The Zonai are a retcon even where BOTW is concerned, let alone the previous games. Neither is canon to any of the timelines, with TOTK barely even being canon to BOTW.

@hanburgundy4317 But it isn't the same one from OoT. It's meant to reference it, but not meant to be the exact same one. For one, while they look similar on the outside, the OoT one had brown brick whereas the BOTW one had Grey brick, and the OoT temple also had the big silo looking room in the back where the master sword was, and the BotW one is blatantly lacking this feature. Not to mention the interiors look nothing alike (you can see the BotW temple undamaged in Age of Calamity). While I have some issues with lore in TotK, this really isn't that big of a deal. It was never explicitly stated anywhere that these reference locations are the original locations they're based on, they're just there to get people who played the older games to go "hey I recognize that." Like, it is impossible for the wooden fences at the Ranch Ruins to be the exact same from Lon Lon Ranch in OoT, but you can still look at it and go "hey I recognize what that's supposed to be" Also, aside from the shiekah tech stuff, TotK does a pretty fine job at being a sequel to BotW, and honestly Zelda lore has never been super consistent in the past, so even if it does contradict some minor things in previous games, it's really not that big of a deal.

I think they put Lon Lon Ranch from OoT in the game only because they felt like they had to do it for some reason. It being there at all and in the seemingly impossible condition that it's in just makes zero sense.

​@@GossipGeist This. Lon Lon Ranch isn't even present in Twilight Princess, which is only hundreds of years after OoT and not the 10,000+ years after that BOTW and TOTK take place in. Likewise, The Wild games can't predate OoT either, as places, names, weapons, armor, etc. from games that take place during or after OoT are all in BOTW and TOTK. Add in that things from EVERY timeline exist in the Wild Games regardless of the exclusivity of each timeline, and we're left with one conclusion: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom aren't canon to anything but themselves. They exist in their own universe lol

The site doesn't separate anything, this is complete misinformation.

BOTW already conflicts heavily with the existing lore of the three timelines, but TOTK takes it a step further, and it even causes issues or provides retcons to what happened or existed in BOTW

I think the main long-time fans and general audience for the Zelda franchise are fascinated more by the world building, characters and linear, dungeon driven puzzle solving than the much more open ended gameplay found in BotW/TotK. Both games are indeed incredible with TotK improving upon BotW's gameplay significantly, there's no arguing that. It's just a different type of gameplay than the previous Zelda games in the series, so people naturally feel a little alienated about it. TotK did attempt to bring back the old school gameplay style with the Sage dungeons, but it still just isn’t quite there yet. If the gameplay is generally considered to be great though, then the only thing left to really criticize is the story and lore that the games brought to the table, which is why it might seem like all you ever see being talked about when it comes to TotK is the story.

@@GossipGeist I think you should really look into refounding theory. Claiming totk and botw dont fit into the timeline despite the devs, books and even in game information saying otherwise is quite the bad take.

@dreamer1292 I do not have one single stance on the Timeline placements of BotW and TotK. I simply present new ideas as they come to mind. I've made other videos in which I have claimed that these two games are a refounding, a convergence, and more.

@@GossipGeist well, Im sorry but this theory is just disingenuous and kinda beats the point of the previous ones, plus it really relies on a single nit picked piece of evidence. Like, please dont take this as a hate comment but as a criticism to the theory and the video format. On a broader scope of theories, its not only easily proven wrong, but basically just feeds on the idea that the lore is flawed and that "Nintendo doesn't care". On the scope of just the theory itself its just a nothing burger, and as I said, relies on nit picked evidence and also requires to chalk up so much stuff as "contradiction", or "just easter eggs" and "fan service", like seriously, saying it just doesn't fit simply doesn't make sense unless you want it to make sense due to an overwhelming amount of evidence saying otherwise. I wish this video was longer, had more solid evidence, more evidence than just a location and at least tried to address the things that contradict it. The overall gossip bytes should moreso be reserved for curious easter eggs with speculation, not necessarily formulating a whole theory over a minimal detail that is barely looked into, makes it seem you didn't put much thought into it.

@dreamer1292 Your entire approach to these theories is always negative from the start, automatically dismissing anything that doesn't fit with your personal beliefs, even on my previous videos, so it's hard to believe you when you claim that you aren't being hateful in your comments. I will admit that this video could have benefited more from a more thorough explanation, that much is true. When it comes to my content, I take the word "theorist" very literally and seriously. That is what I am. Nothing more or less. I do not have any personal opinions on my theories, I merely present them, as they are, in an unbiased, factual (rarely hypothetical) evidence driven manner. If this is not the type of presentation style that you enjoy, then I'm sorry, but that's just how I operate.

that literally the plot of Hyrule Warriors

@@alkhemia23 Really? Which one? I might have to try it out.

@@yoyopiah5047 first one

You're probably on the right track with your assessment. Elements from Fi's theme can be heard in the music that plays inside of the Forgotten Temple, which could either imply that it is indeed the Sealed Temple or its just an easter egg in a video game. I'm thinking that the Forgotten Temple IS the Sealed Temple, but it's the one that belongs to the isolated timeline in which only BotW/TotK take place in. The Seven Sages can be seen referenced through their medallions in the Sealed Temple in Skyward Sword, so it wouldn't surprise me that in this new secondary timeline, with its own unique flow of events, the Sealed Temple took on a different form and function.

@@GossipGeist For sure. Timeline is probably the wrong word though. In this case it'd be its own separate universe. Which would make it easier for Nintendo to deal with timeline shenanigans :D

Zonai Rauru is already just an Easter egg to the original Rauru - the Hylian Sage of Light - and wasn't created until they started working on TOTK. Hell, the Zonai weren't even a people when they made BOTW; "Zonai Ruins" was the name of a place, of one set of ruins all with their own names but all with the same designs and construction style, but fans kept speculating about "the Zonai" and made countless KZfaq videos about it so Nintendo caved.

@@hanburgundy4317 Just a THEORY, buddy

@@tommisabre666 I know - did I come off as rude? Lol I'm sorry if I did. Text doesn't display tone well.

The cutscene where Zelda shows Mineru the damaged Master Sword is much more concrete evidence that neither Rauru nor Mineru knew anything about the weapon.

If they knew about the sword then they would have used it against ganondorf in the past. They only know of the sword because zelda told them about it.

@@GossipGeist oh your right, I forgot about this cutscene. Oh well, I'll have to check the Japanese text.

@@dreamer1292 If this was the original founding of Hyrule, by this point in time the master sword is supposedly the key locking the sacred realm. Using it would open it and risking another interloper war. If it is a refounding, then no one knows where the master sword is and Rauru doesn't know things present in his own kingdom, wich kinda sucks for a king of his supposed stature 😆

@@lipedax @lipedax its as simple as them keeping stories about those ancient days, have you read creating a champion? They address the fact that only the Gerudo have recorded history that dates back from before 10.000 years ago with records of kings, ganondorfs and ganons writen on it but they were too muddled to distinguish and also the gerudo have more gerudo history than hyrulean history since they were always a people that would come go from the territory of Hyrule due to living in a desert, plus it should be noted that according to Gerudo history, there has been no king ever since the one that became the calamity, so totk ganondorf was the last ganondorf. The gorons dont keep their records and use statues and oral tradition so there isnt much known about their past, they have a statue of darunia and remember that he was a goron chiefe who aided a hero. The rito literally dont have any written history or any records and its all tales and songs they pass on. The zoras only kept the tales of princess ruto but even in game, they know ruto wanted to marry a hylian man and that she aided a hero, they did not know what kingdom was at the time, and in totk we learn that the zora have a tradition to keep recorded history in stone BUT those stones can easily get damaged over time and that a new king can essentially rewrite history to their will and therefore and well, sidon just overwrites his fathers feats, with his own stories and feats, so zora also have very few preserved historical records. Sheikah are the ones with the most preserved history of Hyrule with records of many cycles of battles with the calamity but very much kept hidden secrets that nobody know. And hyrule, they lost most of their recorded history due to the many cycles fighting and war. It should be noted that in totk, the tale of the stormwind ark (spirit temple), which depicts events from long before the founding, has a mention of the zonai facing an upheaval and that ganondorf (from the gerudo, who are the only race with prederved history) says the zonai prerished when he was talking to rauru in the throne room cutscene(in the jp version) That the water temple is the only reason zoras domain is set in lanayru which creating a champion puts the zora settling in the lanayru region as an event that happened long after OoT So even at the time of the founding we see in totk, OoT and the previous games happened very far back in the past and only some tales and names of some specific events are remembered. The fact that there was an upheaval long before the founding and that all races seemingly were at their lowest point in technology, already proves that the ancient zonai knew about the previous civilization abd bonded with them and that something destroyed their civilization and many generations passed until rauru and mineru showed up. This also explains why they know of the triforce, the hyrulean crest, goddess hylia and its symbolism, ancient zonai also praised the triforce. And here is why Rauru doesn't actually know anything about the triforce, rauru doesn't know the location of the triforce nor the master sword, if he lived around the time it was sealed by the other Rauru then he would have seen the creation of the temple of time we see in oot and would know of the sacred realm, which are secrets only the royal family knew about, the same royal family rauru "started". And btw you are mosquoting the interview, Fujibayashi doesn't mention any war, he is referring to information that can be found in game, about how hyrule was filled with demons(the monsters) in the past and that Rauru and Sonia did a pilgrimage to seal the demons in the shrines of light, there was no mention of triforce and no master sword either. Plus if you watched the video you would know that the master sword is not on the forgotten temple nor in the temple of time, which already beat raurus founding being the one that happened before minish cap and oot. As for hylian ears, good thing you noticed, first off, onlu sonia has abnormally longer ears than we have seen hylians have but since she has royal blood and was considered pure enough that she was a priestes even before rauru and mineru showed up, he already carried blood from the previous royal family. Second, the creating a champion book does note that the people of Hyrule had longer ears since they were closer to the gods, except the gerudo who only started having pointy ears when they started to mingle with hylians and became part of Hyrule which we see happening at the time of the founding where Hyrule and the gerudo had their best relationship and even aided against ganondorf collectively. While ganondorf (the gerudo least close to the gods) has round ears. Also again on the writing thing, not only zonai knew how to write in ancient hylian, but the Gerudo knew too, and considering the Gerudo had ancient hyrulean writing at the time of the founding and so did the zonai(I already explained why), then the ancient hylian writings being preserved is not a plot hole. Also you say Rauru not knowing about the sword would be bad because he is the king of the land, but you are aware that Rauru is not a good nor wise king, you cna even find in game that there are records of him abandoning his duties to hunt and leaving the work to sonia, also rauru despite being a veteran secret stone user didn't know a thing about draconification, he severely underestimated ganondorf and was arrogant to the point of leaving him unpunished despite ganondorf attacking his kingdom and openly mocking his lineage and his rule in front of everyone while pledging for an alliance. Rauru also made some very critical mistakes in story like assuming zelda comes from a past where she didn't time travel, "keeping a close eye" on ganondorf despite zelda and sonia knowing he was evil and were already planning to deal with him, his lack of knowledge about secret stone users that is inferior to even sonia who got her stone before rauru and the fact that according to ganondorf, the stone passes down knowledge to its user but less experienced users seem to not be able to access that greater knowledge, which sonia, mineru and ganondorf do seem to display. And here is the thing, even mineru and sonia are unaware of the past because for them these events are so old that they feel as tales and legends, mineru even refer to as a draconification as a tale, and when she talks about the ancient zonai, she just says that "they were the ones your people believed to be gods" meaning mineru also lacks knowledge about her own race due to how far back things happened. Which is odd since by the time of OoT there was still knowledge from the founding of Hyrule and the events that lead to it. And again, Fujibayashi already said (when asked about his opinion of refounding theory) that there was a possibility of the kingdom of Hyrule having a history of destruction before the kingdom founded by Rauru. There is simply no way rauru was the founder of the hyrule we see in OoT and everything points out to it being a refounding, and refounding requires no retcons, no reboots, and only has some plot holes which aren't major, they are just there because we dont have specific details to how some events lead to certain outcomes.

They made the mistake, then, of directly connecting several games, creating the timelines based around OoT as the focal point, and creating SS as the prequel that started the reincarnation cycle. Up until then, everything worked, and it worked in tandem with the others. Now, it's very clear that BOTW and TOTK are just anthology games filled with Easter eggs and that the devs do not care about story, lore, or continuity.

Is the creation myth different? From what I understand, people just worship Hylia only now.

It's very well deserved!

@@GossipGeist Thank You

To further the theory, it is sais that Rauru in TOTK is the first Hyrule King. But we also know it would be unlikely, since the Rito race already existed Zelda devs already made it clear that Hyrule was destroyed and rebuilt many time before (i.e. Spirit Track), why wouldn't it'll be the case again? Events of TOTK past take place many years after a would happen timeline merge at the end, when Hyrule was already in ruinx and Rauru "built" Hyrule and became it's "first" king To me, this theory is more viable

Zonai Rauru's time was after every other game, though - and I mean EVERY other game, as places, names, weapons, armor, etc. from every timeline exist in the Wild Era.

Hylia was suggested to be the Goddess of Time and existed alongside the three Golden Goddesses.

SS has no branching timeline; it's a closed loop, as evidenced by Impa's bracelet. They made it a narrative point to show.

@@UltimateTobi The Tree of Life disproves that; also you are neglecting that before changes to the past were made, Zelda could have given Impa the bracelet for other reasons instead. Same situation for the supposed "grandfather paradox" with the Song of Storms in OoT. An SS timeline split is possible because it follows the same specific rules laid out by OoT for a split to occur. Nowhere else in the series are these requirements fulfilled besides OoT and SS.

​@@hintonempire1178 If the killing of Demise is supposed to be the split (because that is the major event that'd have changed things), we know that can't be because Zelda gives Impa the bracelet after we defeat Demise. And from then on, it's a continous line to the present. There's also ever only one young and old Impa. A split would mean that we have two young and old Impas, one old where we return to, one old that remains alone. I am also not making a technical case in how time travel would work in this case. I am making a narrative point and their focus on this is supposed to show us that, oh look, it's the same Impa all along and she has always had it. We can chalk the tree up to gameplay reasons, because we'd have the fruit from the get-go if it were there from the start. We know that, technically speaking, all kinds of time travel is iffy, because we run into paradoxes, but we can make a case for this narratively speaking. And I think the intend is clear.

@@UltimateTobi Characters dying does not split timelines. OoT explicitly states what causes a timeline split: "You must lay the Master Sword to rest and close the Door of Time... However, by doing so the road between time will be closed." In SS, the Gate of Time close and the Master Sword is laid to rest at the end of the game whilst there were still differences between the past and the present. (this is because the Gate is still open the whole time the Demise stuff was happening; i.e. the road between times is still open) There are no paradoxes because there are plenty of reasons that can explain all of these topics without having to resort to the lazy "paradox" excuse.

@@hintonempire1178 "The road between time will be closed" does not mean it'll split, it means you can't time travel anymore. There's also the extravagant way of traveling by being sent back by Zelda. All we see is Zelda sending us back and then us standing infront of an already laid-to-rest-MS. The implication being we've been sent back to a point before we drew the sword (much earlier in fact, because Zelda was still in the court yard). There were also two Gates of Time, one got destroyed by Impa, before the 2nd one got opened, thus closing "the road between time". Maybe a split already happened there. I don't think we get anywhere by trying to nail it down to "closing roads between time." Also: there's always a paradox where time travel is involved. It's the nature of time travel. It's no excuse, but it's an inevitable pitfall and I'd argue to put narrative above technicality. OoT also made it narratively pretty clear that we have two different endings, one continuing during the staff credits (the future where everyone celebrates) and one where Link is sent back and warns Zelda. And we got one direct and two indirect sequels confirming both endings, thus two separate timelines are born. (A side note to characters dying or not dying creating timelines, I think Nintendo disagrees with you there, because in order for the Downfall Timeline to exist, Link needs to die.) Sorry to say I am not convinced.

I may be completely misunderstanding something tho

I'm of this theory too. Not getting into, we don't know if Rauru and Sonia don't know of the sword - it's only mentioned in a cut scene where Rauru says "And the legendary sword he carries". No mention that they aren't aware of the Master Sword at all, just not aware of Link himself. Like the Kingdom it could have been lost then refound again. The Sealed Temple - we know the Bargainer statues and the Hylia statues are somehow linked - meaning they can and do move. Size differences can be corrosion over time - or it split into the smaller statues at some point. There are loads of ways for everything to fit in the timeline. We already know multiple temples of Time can exist too - as there are TWO in TotK. Until we get a game with the master sword between SS and OoT we won't know the exact circumstances either.

Refounding theory is something that should be getting more mainstream, its has no contradictions and is supported by the devs

Ew.

I'll accept pretty much anything at this point. I'll even accept BotW and TotK being all a dream, the same as Link's Awakening.

Ew to act like the current timelines are good enough. Reboot and do it right, or dont do a "timeline" at all,. just confirm what we already know and what has been hinted at, each game is basically it's own universe.@@UltimateTobi

@@NotSoSvenn Then they'd have to try again, because even as a direct sequel, TotK isn't congruent with BotW in a lot of cases. In this context, the timelines are good enough.

Nintendo should just be clear about it

We need Koizumi back, we thought Fujibayashi would take the series in the right direction. We were wrong.

@@nworder4life I mean that kinds depends on what type of Zelda fan you are the rest of totk was pretty awesome but in terms for story yeah there needs to be some MAJOR reforms

Nah, the games can take place in timeline just fine, people are just on full copium about totk and oot Rauru being different characters that that the botw Hyrule is a refounding, despite even the devs raising that point being a valid possibility.

Lore isn't lame at all hwat. It's just as good as the rest of the series. Especially the depths.

@@chargegarg8234 Not just the individual game story, the lore has been practically forgotten.