Ah, the Zelda timeline. Never before in gaming has so much angst been generated over something that matters so little. Yet we all love to debate where each game falls into Nintendo’s bonkers, multiverse timeline, and that’s exactly what fans are doing for The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom.
When the game was first revealed, Reddit user Dreyfus2006 put up a post trying to decipher exactly where on the timeline it fell, and fans have been trying to sus it out ever since. The going theory at the moment is that the game falls on the “Downfall Timeline,” which is the timeline in which Link is defeated in Ocarina of Time and leads to the events of A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, A Link Between Worlds, the original The Legend of Zelda, and nearly all the other 2D Zelda games. There are a few reasons for this, with the most obvious being that the game is a top-down Zelda game like most of the games in the Downfall Timeline and in the art style of the Link’s Awakening Switch remake.
However, there are plenty of other hints fans have found that place it in this part of the Zelda timeline as well. The map, which we’ve gotten a good look at through trailers, feels very in line with the maps from A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds. There are some changes, like the giant volcano, Great Deku Tree, and Ocean Zora, but map changes for a Zelda sequel are pretty common because playing the same map over and over again is boring. Design-wise, Ganon also looks very similar to the Ganon found in those games.
Related: All Top-Down Zelda Games, Ranked From Worst to Best
But while are pretty certain then that the game falls within that branch of the timeline, where exactly is up for debate. Dreyfus2006 posits that the game is a direct sequel to Link’s Awakening, featuring the same Link successfully returning from his shipwreck and adventure with the Wind Fish in his dream. That theory gets on a bit of shaky ground since there’s no story mechanism at the moment for Ganon being alive after his defeat in A Link to the Past, but that’s hardly stopped Nintendo before. User mariosmentor claims that the game is a direct prequel to The Legend of Zelda, with Zelda’s rescue of Link actually bringing Ganon back to Hyrule as well and leading to the events of that game.
No matter who turns out to be right, none of it really matters. Nintendo’s official timeline already has so many plotholes in it that not even Roc’s Feather could help you jump over them. And that’s even mentioning that the latest two games, Breathe of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, are possibly not even part of the official Zelda timeline, given new details from the recently released The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom – Master Works. In short, the rules are made up; Zelda is a myth, told 100 different ways, being crammed into a timeline for no reason other than to have one.