You can stop arguing about where The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom fit on the timeline, as Nintendo has settled it.
There are some Zelda games that are very obviously connected to another another in various ways, with titles like Majora’s Mask obviously being a sequel to Ocarina of Time, and A Link to the Past, A Link Between Worlds, and Link’s Awakening all featuring the same Link and Zelda. But for the most part, the timeline, despite being a thing Nintendo canonised with the release of The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia back in 2011, really isn’t all that important. It’s fun to think about the ways the games’ respective histories might have influenced one another, but it’s not that important – even still, people have argued about where Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom might fit on said timeline. As it turns it, they don’t sit anywhere.
As reported by Vooks, Nintendo appears to have shared a new look at Zelda’s history at Nintendo Live 2024 in Sydney, where you can quite clearly see that Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom have been cordoned off from the rest of them. There isn’t even a line in between them, suggesting they’re not all that connected themselves, and considering how Tears of the Kingdom hardly acknowledges Breath of the Wild, that tracks honestly.
Ever since Breath of the Wild came out in 2017, fans have been wondering where it might fit, given the various references to pretty much all of the games, across all the games’ main timelines. Tears of the Kingdom didn’t clear things up that much either, but if you’re a lorehead that gets off this kind of thing, you have your answer at the very least, even if it might be frustrating or disappointing for some of you. Oh well! I’m sure you’ll all be very normal about it.
