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Comment by InsideOutSanta | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure Nintendo itself said at one point that they don't have a clear chronological order and may not tie into each other properly, even though they later retconned an order.

Still, it's fun to try to figure out how the puzzle pieces might fit together even though they came out of different boxes.

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I've only played a handful of these games .. but do they work together as a theme or story progression or are they, as I suspect, pretty much independent rehashes with no real relationship other than making money and appeasing fans?

I played most Zelda games of the last 30 years.

To the exception of TOTK, I _never_ noticed any link (hehe) between different titles. I know there are some references, but I never catch them.

Even Majora's Mask, which is an official follow up occurring months after Ocarina of Time have a totally different story to tell that don't even try to continue the OoT story and is more just another completely independent story barely in the same universe.

I love the Zelda games, I consider myself a fan. But they are just that : good games. Each of those games do have interesting stories to tell, interesting universes to visit, but the overall "franchise" lore is totally uninteresting.

And honestly I don't think it's something bad, it means each game is free to go where it wants, and every game is free to have an universe as rich as it wants.

I see Zelda totally like I see mario : it's just universe codes, not a real lore. Nobody cares if Mario Galaxy happens before or after Mario 64 or Super Mario World. Zelda is the same for me. And that's cool.

Even TOTK which is meant to be a direct sequel to BotW is...only loosely connected. Like obviously the map is the same and characters kind of reference some of the events from BotW, but (frustratingly) it's like almost everyone underwent extensive lobotoby between the games and forgot 99% of what happened. The entire lore of the world gets rewritten too.

From what I understand - it's because Nintendo famously designs the game and gameplay systems first and then writes a story to match what they built. If the story doesn't work with the setting then...<shrug> - it's still a good game at the end of the day.

> no real relationship other than making money and appeasing fans

That's a very cynical and dare I say Hackernews take. You could also, less cynically, see them as unique pieces of art that have managed to carve a space in a field where, by necessity, a lot of money is needed to create it (AAA games).

Tears of the Kingdom is art. It's a beautiful, simple fairytale told through the medium of a huge open world game and there's something unique in being able to embody that story for so many hours. I haven't played any other Zelda games from the past ~20 years but if they're similarly artful (and by all accounts they are) we don't need to be cynical towards their simplicity or the fact that they're variations on a theme. Pretty much all human art (and business) is, after all.

I'm not cynical about the games, I'm cynical that the games have any relation to each other in their plots.

They say it’s because they create a game around good gameplay and write the story around it later.

Which is the correct way to design a game, I am not going to go full Carmack and say the story does not matter at all, but at their heart a computer game is a simulation, a complex machine full of intricate moving parts. Getting thees parts to mesh well is the most critical part. and the story however well or poorly written sort of sits unconnected on top of it, for the most part ornithological to the machine underneath. The bit you actually interact with.

It is why I consider excessive use of cutscenes a tell of poor game design, They stop the machine and pull the player out of the environment. They have their place, but generally should be avoided.

book: tell a story

movie: show, don't tell (big sin opening lore dump)

game: do, don't show (big sin cutscene)

I like "do, don't show" but I don't think that precludes a thin layer of gameplay over a story. Walking simulators are a prime example. The entire point of a walking simulator is the story, but the game doesn't progress without input from the player, unlike in a cutscene/movie. What Remains of Edith Finch is one of my favorite games, but the gameplay is pretty barebones.

They do have common themes. Sometimes, they (seem to) explicitly refer to each other, and sometimes, they make vague allusions to things you might interpret as having happened in other Zelda games. But overall, I think it's fair to call most Zelda games independent of each other.

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