And then we come to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, where we meet Ganondorf. Well, safe until a “countless eras”-long civil war broke out in Hyrule (according to the Hyrule Historia). A new reincarnation of Link - four of him, technically - beats Vaati again, leaving Hyrule safe for a while. Many generations later, during Four Swords, Vaati escapes and kidnaps the current reincarnation of Princess Zelda, this time in an attempt to force her into marriage.

Link is triumphant and locks Vaati away for a while. In it, an evil sorcerer named Vaati wants to use the Light Force inside Zelda (presumably her reincarnated divine blood) for evil reasons. Demise was the big bad defeated by Link, but at the end, Demise kind of morphs into a proto-Ganon.Īn indeterminate amount of time later, we get The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)Ĭhronologically speaking, the earliest game in the Zelda series is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, where we learn that Zelda is a reincarnated goddess - the goddess Hylia, original protector of the Triforce.The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (2002).The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (2004).The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011).And then there’s the matter of the three branching paths. Still, even working off of this official timeline, there’s a lot of wiggle room and confusion as to where exactly Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom belong. Here, according to most primary sources - including the definitive tome that is Hyrule Historia - is the timeline for the Legend of Zelda: Graphic: Jeffrey Parkin/Polygon But there’s still a generally accepted chronology. So, yeah, the Legend of Zelda timeline: pretty complicated, and certainly up for some debate.

The Legend of Zelda series in chronological order

Myths and fairy tales don’t have to be perfectly consistent, after all. This is made explicit in the book The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – Creating a Champion: “Hyrule’s recurring periods of prosperity and decline have made it impossible to tell which legends are historical fact and which are mere fairy tale.” That doesn’t negate the previous timeline as established in Hyrule Historia, but it gives room to explain any inconsistencies with the wave of a hand. (The creative team behind the Zelda series had an eyes-only, confidential version of the timeline sometime before 2003.) That official timeline rearranges the games into a cohesive-ish timeline that branches into three possible outcomes.īut things get complicated when we get to Breath of the Wild. Thankfully, in 2011, we got the first officially published timeline in The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia.

Zelda ocarina of time version 1.0