The Master Sword making Link go to the future is a random power pulled out of nowhere in the first place, so... Saying that it only works going forward doesn't make it more random. And no time travel means no time travel, so under this theory the Sword doesn't throw him forward, either.
Link isn't physically transported to the future when he pulls the sword. He is put to sleep in a coma inside the Sacred Realm, hibernating for seven years.
I honestly do not remember what Sheik says about the Master Sword's time travel, so I'd appreciate it if you could repeat it here.
Sheik tells Link how to use the sword to return him back to the moment when he last pulled the sword from its pedestal seven years back:
"You destroyed the wicked creatures that haunted the temple and awakened the Sage... But there are still other Sages who need your help. In order to awaken all the other Sages, you must become even more powerful. You must travel over mountains... under water... and even through time... If you want to return to your original time, return the Master Sword to the
Pedestal of Time. By doing this, you will travel back in time seven years.... The time will come when you will have to return here quickly... I will teach this to you for when that time comes... The song to return you to the Temple of Time...
The Prelude of Light... As long as you hold the
Ocarina of Time and the
Master Sword, you hold time itself in your hands... Link, we shall meet again!"
And then later at the Spirit Temple, when Sheik tells Link he must return to being a child in order to enter the temple:
"Past, present, future... The Master Sword is a ship with which you can sail upstream and downstream through time's river... The port for that ship is in the Temple of Time... To restore the Desert Colossus and enter the
Spirit Temple, you must travel back through time's flow... Listen to this
Requiem of Spirit... This melody will lead a child back to the desert."
Not sure why you're assuming that the Hero would follow the events of the game so closely if there's such a big difference... After all, we know that the hero failing results in an army fighting Ganon instead.
The imaginary "Link fails" branch of the Downfall timeline is something that simply doesn't happen when the game is played correctly. It's a ridiculous notion.
Uh. Not sure if you miswrote or if I misunderstood, but per the official timeline, the sealing at the end of Ocarina doesn't happen in the Downfall timeline.
Yes it does. In Hyrule Historia's made-up scenario, the book says Ganon still gets sealed anyway even after Link loses, on Page 92:
"Ganondorf the thief obtained the Triforce of Power and managed to get his hands on Princess Zelda. The Hero of Time, Link, challenged him in a battle that would determine Hyrule’s very existence, and lost. At last, Ganondorf found himself in the possession of the Triforce of Wisdom that dwelt within Princess Zelda, and the Triforce of Courage that dwelt in Link. His true power achieved, he transformed into the Demon King. The Seven Sages of Hyrule, led by Princess Zelda, sealed Ganon and the Triforce in the Sacred Realm as a final resort."
Incidentally, setting aside the notion of Link losing, the text also says that Ganondorf only first became the Demon King upon acquring all three pieces of the Triforce after taking them from Link and Zelda following Link's defeat, when in the game itself, Ganondorf was already the Demon King upon first acquiring just the Triforce of Power. He is referred to as such all throughout the game in the Japanese version, with the English version changing his title to "King of Evil" or "Evil King" instead because Nintendo of America wasn't yet okay with using the word "demon", as the first game to properly use the "Demon King" title in English was Spirit Tracks.
I don't think that the downfall timeline was created to explain why A Link to the Past mentioned an Imprisoning War when Ocarina of Time didn't have anything that could really be called a war even if you turned your head and squinted, but it is an explanation.
When OOT was in development, an interview explained that it was supposed to tell the story of the Imprisoning War mentioned in ALTTP's backstory. However, OOT's events don't actually line up with the events described in ALTTP's Imprisoning War. There are broad-stroke similarities, yes, but the finer details don't align (particularly Ganondorf being sealed away with only the Triforce of Power at the end of OOT, while ALTTP is explicit that he is in possession all three pieces during the entire game and has been ever since he first set foot inside the Sacred Realm before the Imprisoning War). Then, TWW came along and took ALTTP's place as the direct follow-up to OOT's Adult ending, leaving ALTTP nowhere else to go but at some vague point after OOT's Child Ending, presumably some time long after MM. But then TP came along and followed on from MM and killed Ganondorf at the end, leaving everyone now wondering just how ALTTP was supposed to still connect to OOT if TWW followed on from the Adult Ending while MM and TP followed on from the Child Ending, when the game only has two branching endings.
MY fix for this in my timeline is that Ganondorf simply gets resurrected at some point after his death in TP and later goes on to ignite the Imprisoning War that leads into ALTTP, as his dying words in TP (moreso in the Japanese version) seem to imply that his demise in TP is not the end of him, that he is confident that he'll be back:
English: "Do not think this ends here... The history of light and shadow will be written in blood!"
Japanese: "Do not think it all ends here. Instead, think of this as the beginning of a history of a blood-drenched struggle between light and darkness!"
He knows something. He is far too confident for a man who is at death's door after having just been stabbed in the chest with the Master Sword. So, I choose to read this as Nintendo's subtle hinting that there is more of Ganon yet to come in spite of his apparent death in TP, that he will be back to carry out a long history of good vs. evil that had already been witnessed across ALTTP > OoX > LA > Zelda 1 > Zelda 2 at the time of the TP's release, and which would be further expanded upon with ALBW and EoW being added between LA and Zelda 1 (as mentioned in my previous post, I put TFH on the Adult branch after ST, so I don't count it as part of the main branch's history).
And as explained in my timeline, I propose that the Dark Rites performed by Koume and Kotake provide a plausible answer as to how Ganondorf gets resurrected between TP and ALTTP, as when the two witches perform them in OoX to revive Ganon from his death in ALTTP, the two are so confident that the ritual will work that it feels like they're really familiar with it, as though they have performed this ritual at least once before. So, if one plays TP and then ALTTP, one is naturally left wondering how Ganon is suddenly alive again in ALTTP after he just died in TP, only for OoX to provide a reasonable possibility for how he previously came back from his death in TP by showing how he comes back yet again from his death in ALTTP.
Just for some background on what I'm talking about, here's the video I mentioned.
One of his points is that the Downfall timeline seems to be the "main" timeline of the series, which... Well, Nintendo does tend to treat it as more important than the other two. Which would make it really odd if it's the timeline caused by just failing, when time travel seems to be required to split a timeline.
I don't agree on TripleWario's specific theory,* but Ocarina's time travel has always struck me as weird on many different levels when I examined it, so tossing another theory at it can actually make it less strange.
*I honestly forgot that it was just that Link was healed before fighting Ganondorf. In my defense, Link was already at full health in the clip he showed.
I've seen that video, yeah, and I honestly don't buy it since it's still relying on an imaginary hypothetical "what-if" scenario that never happens in OOT when the game is played correctly.
My intention was to avoid
all diverging hypotheticals, to avoid
all branching "what-if" paths, sticking only to how the events of each game unfold when played out to their proper natural conclusions. And in OOT, the game has only two conclusions that are proper and natural, the Adult and Child endings, which is what I tried to stick to without just making up more branching paths that don't actually exist in the game when played properly.
bsky.app
Who else is hyped for the launch of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment available on Nov 6, only on #NintendoSwitch2?
