GamesRadar reports that Nintendo internally had a massive timeline document dating back to 2003, detailing the chronological order and lore connections between each entry in The Legend of Zelda. But in a recent interview, Shigeru Miyamoto stated that this hasn’t been a priority for them — and fans immediately lost it.
Games Were Never Designed Around the Timeline From the Start
Miyamoto’s stance is clear: Nintendo’s approach to The Legend of Zelda has always been “gameplay first.” The priority is making sure each individual game is fun, and only then does it get slotted into the timeline. In other words, the timeline is more like an archive filed retroactively — not a blueprint planned in advance.
But This Explanation Only Made Fans More Frustrated
The community response was blunt: Nintendo published a book called Hyrule Historia and sold it as official canon with a complete timeline — and now you’re saying it’s not that important? It’s a case of the official stance being presented, then immediately walked back. That “what I say goes, but also doesn’t” flexibility has directly shaken the expectation framework fans have built over the years.
That Said, Some Fans Are on Nintendo’s Side
Another camp argues that Nintendo has been clear since the Wii U era: the timeline exists to satisfy fan curiosity, not to constrain game design. Forcing every new game to conform to established canon logic would limit creative freedom — and that might not actually be a good thing.
In short, fans can keep doing their timeline archaeology — but they probably shouldn’t treat the conclusions as Nintendo’s final word. The underlying logic is simple: make great games first, and sort out the timeline later.