OK. So we finally got an official timeline in the Hyrule Historia source book last year. Anyone else thinks that it seems bit... "wrong"?
If you haven't seen it yet this is it:
After reading most of the book I'm still left with some doubt as to how well this was actually thought out. My primary problems are the entire idea of an alternate reality based on a game over at a particular point in Ocarina of time that is never played out in the game and the placement of the Minish Cap, Four Swords, and Four Swords Adventure.
Starting with the "Hero Defeated" alternate timeline. This seems like a cop out. It's like they couldn't come up with a good way to connect that branch with the rest of the games. Personally I can't say that I really have a better alternative. The problem is that there many inconsistencies between the Imprisoning War mentioned in the intro of Zelda 3 and the events of OoT. I have heard that Four Swords Adventure was originally intended to be the Sealing War and this has been somewhat supported by text from the game that was cut. It has been said that Shigeru Miyamoto thought the game was too close to Zelda 3 and wanted it to be more interesting. If true then that seems to be the point from which the game started getting the Four Sword related features. I still need to research sources for this, but it is well documented that Miyamoto-san is more concerned with game play than plot and timeline issues.
As for the placement of the Four Swords related games it just seems wrong. Primarily because of the absence of the Master Sword and Triforce and the inclusion of force gems in some other games. Here's the thing, I've heard arguments for and against the placement of Minish Cap and Four Swords between Skyward Sword and Ocarina of Time. Honestly, the arguments against just make more sense because of them completely ignoring the Triforce and the Master Sword. It just feels shoehorned here. It would make more sense for those games and Four Sword Adventure to happen in a spot where the Triforce and the Master Sword have been sealed away and no one knows about them any more. Namely, after The Wind Waker.
Here's what makes a lot more sense to me:
Skyward Sword -----> Ocarina of Time -> (Split Timeline)
Ocarina of Time (Adult Timeline) ---> Wind Waker -> Spirit Tracks ---> The Minish Cap ---> Four Swords ---> Four Swords Adventure
Ocarina of Time (Child Timeline) -> Majora's Mask ---> Twilight Princess
Ocarina of Time (Alt. Timeline) ---> A Link to the Past --> A Link Between Worlds ---> Legend of Zelda -> Adventure of Link -> Oracles -> Link's Awakening
You can see here that I rearranged the Alternate timeline some. The reason for this is that all that crap in Link's Awakening about Link from Zelda 3 leaving to go training is bullshit made up by Nintendo of America (I seriously hate it when the US offices make shit up) and the Triforce's three parts are split up some time before LoZ and are only brought back together after AoL. Plus the Triforce parts are still separate at the beginning of the Oracle games and the game ends with Link sailing home to Hyrule on a ship which is how LA starts.
Even with the official timeline "explaining" why they chose the order they did (they really do a rotten job of it) there are still tons of inconsistencies that point to the unavoidable conclusion that made all this shit up some time around the production of Ocarina of Time and never really put much thought into the timeline at all before then. It seems pretty half-assed, too. Many of the connections they make in Hyrule Historia are only because they said so in that text without much of anything in the games concretely supporting those decisions.
Then there's Twilight Princess which almost seems like it was supposed to bridge the gap between OoT and tWW. But that doesn't really work if for no other reason that Ganondorf is defeated at the end. Honestly, this game is a bit of a mess. You have the ghost of a the Hero of Time who never passed on his skills which points to it being connected to an alternate reality where he was defeated. You have Ganondorf being tried and being sealed away which points to the child ending in OoT. If they had used the Dark World instead of the Twilight Realm, then it would have made a lot more sense and it could lead into ALttP without much issue.
So pretty much everything surrounding OoT, as far as the timeline is concerned, is a bit of a cluster fuck. There are a lot of translation efforts that have been and are being worked on throughout the interwebz that sheds some light on some of these issues, but I haven't even begun to delve into all of that. But suffice to say there were some really shitty translations even up to the point of Twilight Princess. Interlopers? There were no "Interlopers" in the original Japanese script they are just normal Hylian magic users who got greedy!
So what do you guys think? What are some of your theories? What can you point out to support or debunk my timeline or the official one?