Players must travel far into the past to reach a time before time travel was a thing of the past. Zelda franchise. from Ocarina of Time on Tears of the Kingdom, the concept of time travel keeps re-emerging as a core concept. However, despite what it is often seen in Zelda games, their actual rules and mechanics are rarely homogeneous.
Ironically, while time travel might be a cool plot device in the short term, it only makes things worse for Zelda time series. Whether due to minor conflicts between the games, or due to larger issues that conflict with the very concept of time travel itself, the Zelda The timeline became more complicated by incorporating time travel into its games. trouble, Zelda Many other impossible concepts were included before time travel was introduced, so fans had no choice but to accept its failures at face value as happily as they accepted the possibility of the powers of magic and three-headed Gleeoks.
How to Time Travel Throughout the Legend of Zelda Series
The first game to feature time travel in the Zelda The series is the N64’s Ocarina of Time. In that game, Link travels seven years into the future after pulling the Master Sword from the stone in the Temple of Time. However, this seven-year jump is not true time travel, as Link is simply locked inside the sacred realm for all that time until he is old enough to wield the Master Sword. Time travel in the more traditional sense only comes later in the game, when Link retrieves the Master Sword to take him back seven years.
on Majora’s Mask, Link can also travel back in time. This time, he traveled back in time by playing the Song of Time on his Ocarina. Link can also travel forward in time using the Song of Double Time. It is different from Twilight Princesswhere Link travels back in time through the Temple of Time through a portal. Twilight Princess‘ The method of time travel is the same as the one attached to Sword of Heavenwhose version of Link enters a portal to travel back in time while retaining his age and physical form. Oracle of Ages ALSO also follows a similar theme, as Link plays a magical harp that summons a portal that sends Link into the past. Especially, to enter the portal Oracle of AgesLink also retains his physical form and age, as he did with both Sword of Heaven and Twilight Princess.
The latest instance of time travel in The Legend of Zelda entered Tears of the Kingdom, and it’s not the simplest. In fact, the size of TOKTime travel is never fully explained, although there are at least two parallel time travel abilities both related to the Secret Stone of the Sage of Time. One method of time travel involves Princess Zelda first rewinding to the past, while the other involves using Link’s memory to send certain objects back in time. In both of these instances, only one object (or person, in Zelda’s case) is moved through time at a time, and the rest of the world continues to progress as normal.
The Inconstancies of Time Travel in the Zelda Games
While the use of time travel effectively adds complexity to the plot and gameplay of each individual game, the conflicts between the concepts of time travel in each game make things even more trivial for Zelda Timeline in general. Even if time travel is constant throughout Zelda series, it can make things complicated. The very fact that it is inconsistent makes things impossible to reconcile. For example, the future and the past timelines split afterwards Ocarina of Time, but they don’t share anywhere in the entire series. This is a problem because following the same logic, there should be countless timelines left after Link repeatedly resets time to. Majora’s Mask.
Another big controversy is about the issue of aging. on Yes, Link returns to his child form when he time travels backwards. However, Link does not age in any way when traveling back in time in any other game. A variable is in the Majora’s Mask. Since Link had only traveled three days in the past, there was no noticeable difference in his appearance. However, things become more inconsistent regarding Link’s physical state upon returning to the past. Not only does he not physically return to his Deku Scrub form, but he loses all the non-essential items he received before. These two facts seem to suggest that Majora’s MaskTime travel follows the rules of Ocarina of Time and Sword of Heaven simultaneously.
There is an interesting unifying thread between the Majora’s Mask and Ocarina of TimeThe concept of time travel that makes the games different from Oracle of Ages and Sword of Heaven. on before the two games, Link time travels directly, while in the latter two, he must step into a portal to travel back in time. This seems to give at least some sort of consistency to the time travel mechanic if it isn’t already Tears of the Kingdom. That’s because, at TOKPrincess Zelda directly travels through time (that is, without entering a portal) the same as Yes and MMbut he still maintains his age and physical shape as in SS, TP, MMand yea.
The Legend of Zelda Highlights the Problem of Time Travel as a Concept
Because the concept of time travel is inherently paradoxical – incorporated into many games, at many points, and in many ways – it should create issues for Zeldageneral account of. That’s the case even without the minor inconsistencies in how time travel works between games. The fact that it seems to have different rules in almost every iteration doesn’t help. Small inconsistencies aside, there are several paradoxes associated with time travel that help explain why. ZeldaLarger lore can be very difficult to navigate. Two famous problems with time travel that illustrate the inherent issues with its use in Zelda is the grandfather paradox and the butterfly effect.
The grandfather paradox states that time travel is impossible because if someone went back to the time before they were born and killed their grandfather, they would never have been born. But they must have been born because that’s where they killed their own grandfather. On the other hand, the butterfly effect states that the smallest possible change in the past – such as the death of a butterfly – should theoretically snowball to have an incalculably large effect in the future. On the one hand, the grandfather paradox highlights why time travel is simply not possible for Link. On the other hand, the butterfly effect means that Link even killing one measly moblin has to change the entire trajectory of Hyrule’s history forever.
One proposed solution to the grandfather’s paradox is the “post-selected model” of time travel, which concludes that no matter how hard a person tries to change the past, because it has already happened, nothing can be changed. o. In that scenario, if someone travels back in time and tries to kill their grandfather, they will fail no matter what they try. trouble, The Legend of Zelda clearly ignores the post-selected model because Link’s actions in the past always have an effect in the future.
The Legend of ZeldaTime travel conflicts have dire consequences for the overall lore of the series, which are all-but-reconcilable. Try though, even a game with the scope of Tears of the Kingdom one can only hope that things get more complicated, without solving the inherent problems that time travel can pose for any fictional universe. However, it seems that talking about Zelda’s timeline and lore is very interesting. It is completely irreversible, so the fans always have something to theorize about. Time travel to The Legend of Zelda essentially making his timeline like a puzzle without a solution. Good luck Nintendo, Zelda Fans love solving puzzles.