In the late hours of a Tuesday night, we got confirmation that Nintendo had officially placed The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom onto the Zelda timeline. It was to take place in the Decline Timeline, after Tri Force Heroes and prior to The Legend of Zelda.
The placement in the Decline Timeline makes logical sense. More interesting than the placement itself, though, is the fact it was placed at all. Famously, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom were not connected to the timeline, only to one another, and the developers have been notoriously cagey about giving details. When a timeline question comes up in an interview, it is an exercise in acrobatics as Aonuma flexes in every direction to avoid the question.
This lack of commitment to a placement for the open-world games, in conjunction with these interview non-answers, has understandably led to a prevalent belief that the Zelda team may be moving on from the official timeline.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom’s placement on the timeline proves that this is not the case. Rather, they still care about the timeline to some extent, and Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom really do just exist in their own continuity.
If Aonuma, Fujibayashi, and the rest of the Zelda team genuinely wanted to phase out the timeline, this was the perfect opportunity. You have a community fresh off a year of negative discourse around the timeline, two games in a row that weren’t placed, and a title in Echoes of Wisdom that was being (incorrectly) written off as a spinoff by a number of fans.
Nobody would have blinked an eye if Nintendo chose not to place Echoes of Wisdom on the timeline, and in fact, I think most of us expected them not to.
And yet, place it on the timeline they did. Because even if it isn’t as much as their rabid fanbase does, the Zelda team does care about the timeline to some degree.
In fandom discourse around the timeline, there is this tendency to read the Zelda team’s actions through one of two extreme lenses. Either they adhere to the timeline to the letter, or they don’t care about it at all. There seems to be no room for the in-between, which is unfortunate, because that in-between is where the Zelda team operates.
Interview after interview, they have clarified that the timeline is something they keep in mind, but not something they feel limited by. When it makes sense for them to place a game in the timeline, they will do so. When it doesn’t, the game will exist in its own continuity. This is exactly what we have seen with Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and Echoes of Wisdom.
The Zelda team will likely continue to use the timeline when they would like to, and avoid it when they feel limited by it. It makes sense to me.
How do you feel about Echoes of Wisdom’s timeline placement? Or the timeline in general? Did Nintendo get it right or wrong here? Let us know in the comments below!
Featured Image Credit: Nintendo
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