u/Petrichor02

I'm sure most, if not all, of us on this subreddit have seen fan timelines that use Hyrule Warriors as a key piece that converges all timelines together and restores the Zelda franchise to a unified timeline model. But ignoring the parts of HW that make it difficult to take as canon and the other obvious potential issues with the theory, there's still one issue with this model that I've never seen touched upon, and it's the fact that HW arguably creates anywhere between three (four in Legends/Definitive Edition) and an infinite number of splits in its own right. By including HW in a timeline, we're introducing more splits into the timeline, not fewer.

HW's back story tells us that at some point in the past, a hero defeated Ganon and split Ganon's soul into four pieces. One was left in the present, guarded by the powers of the Master Sword and the Temple in which the blade was laid to rest. And the other three were placed at various points in the past.

The problem with this is that if they were placed in the past, that means they should still be around in the present. In other words, imagine you buy an apple. Then you go back in time three days and decide to hide that apple in your refrigerator. When you travel back to the present, that apple is still going to be in your refrigerator, just three days older than it should be (assuming no one in your house came by and ate it within those three days). If nothing happened to Ganon's soul fragments between OoT/TP/SS and HW, all of those soul fragments would still exist in the world of HW. And HW shows us that those soul fragments just all being present at the same time in HW was enough to break the seals on them.

So that implies that the soul fragments weren't just hidden in the past. They must have been hidden in alternate timelines. Which likely means that placing those soul fragments in their respective eras created branches in each of those eras. On top of that, the events of HW pull characters from those eras, have them experience the events of HW, and then return them to their respective eras without wiping their memories of what happened in HW or resetting things so that their travel to the HW era wouldn't affect their own eras. As such, HW basically causes the following:

OoT era: A fragment of Ganon's soul is hidden in the Water Temple. Darunia is brainwashed into kidnapping an adult Ruto (so this is probably happening while the Hero of Time is still asleep in the Sacred Realm). Monsters are pouring out of the Water Temple. Darunia is returned to his rightful mind, Ruto is freed, the monsters are stopped, Ganon's soul fragment escapes, Darunia and Ruto fight against Cia and eventually HW Ganondorf, and then they return to their own time.

TP era: A fragment of Ganon's soul is hidden in the Palace of Twilight in the Twilight Realm. Cia transforms Midna into an imp form, Zant is made to work for Cia, the Twilight Realm begins to spread across Hyrule (so this must be near the beginning of TP since Midna has only just been transformed and hasn't met Link yet, which likely means TP Ganondorf is still imprisoned in the Twilight Realm, but maybe he has made contact with Zant at this point since Zant decided to challenge Midna through force unless Zant got his powers from Cia instead of Ganondorf this time (though Cia's Tale makes that questionable)), somehow Agitha knows about the Twilight Realm despite it and its effects being invisible to most Hylians in TP, Agitha and Midna are recruited to fight against Cia and eventually HW Ganondorf, and then they return to their time, Midna apparently still stuck in her imp form (unless Cia becoming good again at the end of the game caused her spell to be undone off-screen), and Zant dead, which means unless TP Ganondorf is somehow able to escape the Twilight Realm because of the events of HW, the events of TP aren't really going to happen now in this timeline.

SS era: A fragment of Ganon's soul is hidden in the Sealed Temple. SS Impa is nowhere in sight, so it's unclear what happened to her. The Goddess Sword is still in its pedestal with Fi, so the events of present SS haven't happened yet (weirdly though, the Groosenator is present at the Sealed Temple; maybe Hylia told Impa to build it since the events of HW may now prevent him from coming to the surface?). Ghirahim somehow makes it to Skyloft (maybe with Cia's help if Cia's Tale is a separate timeline itself; otherwise we have no explanation for how he made it up there). HW Link and Fi save Skyloft (SS Link isn't mentioned, so it's unclear how long before the events of SS this event is happening; if this isn't happening almost immediately after Hylia sealed Demise, then it arguably breaks the SS time loop). Ghirahim escapes to the Sealed Grounds and releases the Imprisoned. The Imprisoned is defeated rather than being resealed, and Ghirahim is recruited by Cia. Fi is recruited, experiences HW, and fights against Cia and HW Ganondorf before returning to the SS era. With Ghirahim defeated before Link finds the Master Sword, presumably SS Zelda will have a much easier passage to being found by Impa, recovering her Hylia memories, and wishing on the Triforce (maybe to prevent Demise from ever reincarnating). But it's unclear if the Master Sword would be forged in this timeline since the Gate of Time doesn't need to be activated. (Interestingly, it's actually active during HW.)

TWW era: Tetra is on Windfall Island while her crew apparently isn't since we're told the dimensional event separated her from her crew, but it pulled the entire Windfall Island through. This never happens in or after TWW, so this split presumably takes place shortly before TWW. Tetra ends up meeting Daphnes early, meets HW Link and Zelda, and the Helmaroc King and a Phantom Ganon are destroyed before Tetra and Daphnes return home. Presumably without the Helmaroc King pre-TWW, TWW Ganondorf has a much harder time finding pieces of the Triforce. Aryll likely doesn't get kidnapped. And Tetra and Daphnes (and Link if they go recruit him) likely have a much greater amount of time to prepare to fight TWW Ganondorf than they did in TWW.

Cia's Tale is billed as if it's the unseen adventure Cia went on prior to and during HW, but a lot of the details don't quite match. We see that Midna is already an imp when Cia first meets her in Cia's Tale. (We also see Agitha in the Palace of Twilight without her being turned into a spirit somehow.) We see that Ghirahim managed to summon the Imprisoned to Skyloft when Cia goes there to recruit him, and the Imprisoned ends up being defeated in Skyloft. So I'm not sure whether to approach this as an embellishment of what actually happened, completely non-canon to HW, or a separate iteration of HW.

As to that last point, consider that if the timeline leads to HW, any split in the past could also lead to the events of a different HW. So since HW Sheik remembers the era of the Hero of Time as history, we can assume that HW at least takes place after it. But when you look at what the events of HW may have changed about the OoT era, there aren't many substantial changes. Maybe Darunia and Ruto now rise up against OoT Ganondorf because they have extra fighting experience, but if that doesn't happen, their new timeline branch will inevitably lead to another HW, which will create another OoT branch which will lead to another HW which will create another OoT branch, ad infinitum.

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So all of that to say, I have questions:

1. If HW did indeed create at least four branches in the timeline, what do the downstream futures of those branches look like in your opinion? How do the HW changes affect or prevent the events of later games that would have fallen after those changed games in their original timelines?

2. Is there any way to interpret HW (other than simply dismissing it as illogical or non-canon) in a way that realistically doesn't result in infinite timeline branches?

3. What is Cia's Tale since it doesn't line up with the main game on its face? Is it an embellishment? Non-canon to HW? Another timeline's version of HW? Or are we to assume that the differences can be explained away? Midna incorrectly assumes that Cia is responsible for her imp transformation, and the Imprisoned was able to be killed twice in a short timespan, once in Skyloft and once in the Sealed Grounds?

4. What is the darkness that is coming out of the Master Sword's pedestal at the end of the game? We know that it's separate from Ganon because it reaches out from the pedestal to break the seal on the fourth piece of Ganon's soul. I know this question has nothing to do with the rest of the post, but this has always bothered me about the game, so I'm curious about people's interpretation.

5. If it took the entire Triforce to merge the OoT/TP/SS eras with Hyrule, how was Phantom Ganon able to merge TWW with HW Hyrule with just the Triforce of Power? How did Phantom Ganon end up in HW Hyrule and in possession of Cia's body? I guess it's possible that the Gates of Souls opened up throughout many different eras, which is why Majora's Mask Skull Kid and Termina's moon are also able to appear in the story despite that era not specifically being pulled in. So maybe he just came through on his own, helped out behind-the-scenes, and then hid until HW Ganondorf's defeat.

I know it's a bit foolhardy to try to make sense of a game whose story clearly wasn't written to make complete sense, but I'm interested to see how well we can do to make it functional.

As most people here will know, Navi Trackers is a minigame grouped in with just the Japanese and Korean versions of Four Swords Adventures. However, in researching the game I've come across some information that I'm having trouble verifying, so I'm hoping someone has first-hand or close enough experience to confirm.

1. Because the main point of the game is for 2-4 friends to run around a map finding characters, Nintendo decided to have each player character play as a different colored Link. A handful of sites talking about the game claim that the Red Link, Blue Link, and Purple Link of this game are actually member's of Tetra's Pirate Crew just dressed up as Link. But in most of the stages I've seen playthroughs of, the four Links are searching for members of Tetra's Pirate Crew. In fact, all of them appear to be on the map at the same time as the four Links (with the possible exception of Gonzo; I saw him talking to Tetra, but didn't see him hiding with the rest of the pirate crew on the map in the gameplay videos I watched).

So if Tetra only has six pirates in her crew apart from herself, and at least five of them are out in the map waiting to be found by the four Links, is it true that the justification for the other three Links is that they're somehow members of Tetra's pirate crew dressed up as Link? Does she have other pirates on her ship that are just always off-screen until this game? Or are we supposed to suspend our disbelief and assume that when a pirate is found, he then goes off and dresses up as one of the Links you aren't playing as, letting one of the Links then take off his costume so he can be found? Or is this claim that they're members of Tetra's crew just bogus?

2. I've also read that there's a single player mode where you play against a CPU-controlled Tingle. I can't find any footage of this at all. Granted, most people who bother to go to the links to track this game down and put footage of it up on YouTube are likely the ones who are going to want to try out its multiplayer mode, but I just thought it was strange that I couldn't find any video of Link going up against Tingle in this game to verify that claim. Can anyone else confirm?

3. Every wiki that talks about the game says that the Links are trying to find members of Tetra's pirate crew. However, in one version of the game that I saw, there was a round where the people to be found were people from Dragon Roost Island instead, e.g., Medli, Komali, Baito, and the Rito Chieftain, and another round where you had to find various Koroks. Is this something that normally happens in the game, or was this a mod? I just never see it reported in any of the retrospectives about the game that the players normally search for anyone other than Tetra's crew, and this version of the game did have a language mod, so I wasn't sure if the non-Tetra's-crew appearances were legitimate or not.

4. Most wikis and articles that talk about the game's story present it as a sort of sequel to TWW. However, Tetra isn't the only character that speaks to the player while playing. Salvatore and Sue-Belle do as well. But I also saw one playthrough where the King of Red Lions is the character speaking to the player. Is this legitimate? And if so, wouldn't that mean that the game has to take place during the events of TWW, not after?

In TP there is a single reference to a series of prolonged wars, and I'm curious as to people's interpretation of these wars.

One of the Gorons in TP says:

>That belonged to the tribe that protected the Hylian royal family long ago. They worked in secret, so they lived in a lonely, forgotten place. But I heard that tribe dwindled in the prolonged wars...

He's clearly talking about the Sheikah here.

Impaz gives us a little more to go on when she says:

>My name is Impaz. I'm the last resident of this poor village. My name comes from the great one who built this village so long ago... This village was once the secret home of a proud tribe who served the royal family... But it fell into decline, and became infested with dangerous beasts. It's become an awful place...

OoT also gives us the following information about the Sheikah people:

>They say that Princess Zelda's nanny is actually one of the Sheikah, who many thought had died out.

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>Have you heard the legend of the "Shadow Folk"? They are the Sheikah...the shadows of the Hylians. They say they swore allegiance to the King of Hyrule and guarded the Royal Family. But with the long peace, no one has seen a Sheikah around here for a long time. However... I heard there is one Sheikah woman living in the castle...

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>I am Sheik. Survivor of the Sheikahs...

To summarize: OoT tells us that there used to be many Sheikah, but during times of violence, they defended the Royal Family, and many thought that the Sheikah tribe died out. But it came to be known that other Sheikah survived, including Impa and, eventually, Sheik (hence why Impa likely believed Ganondorf wouldn't suspect anything was off with Sheik). TP's Impaz is a descendant of the OoT Sheikah, so they were never completely wiped out, but their numbers dwindled during "the prolonged wars".

In OoT we are only told about a single war that took place before its events, and so many people believe that this is the conflict that wiped out most of the Sheikah. But TP tells us that multiple wars diminished their numbers. So when did these wars take place?

Did all of the wars take place before OoT with the pre-OoT fierce war merely being the last of the prolonged wars? Is the pre-OoT fierce war one of the prolonged wars, but others occurred between OoT and TP thus diminishing their numbers down to just Impaz? Or are the prolonged wars completely distinct from the OoT fierce war, taking place entirely between OoT and TP after the Sheikah tribe had returned to some prominence?