GameCentral looks through the Zelda series’ history, to see if you need to play any games before you start the Ocarina Of Time remake.
While many fans of The Legend Of Zelda are looking forward to experiencing childhood favourite Ocarina Of Time all over again, once the remake launches on November 5, those who only got into the series in recent years, through Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom, may find it a surprisingly daunting prospect.
If you’re curious as to why it’s widely regarded as one of the greatest video games ever made, as well as what the original Zelda formula was before Breath Of The Wild’s massive overhaul, the remake should prove the perfect way to find out.
But another question that may plague you, as is the case with a lot of long running franchises these days, is this: do you need to play any other games beforehand, to understand the story?
The Zelda series has a long and rather complex timeline, detailing precisely when each game takes place, with some acting as direct follow-ups to previous ones and others being largely unconnected. You can see it for yourself on Nintendo’s official website if you haven’t already.
Rather than break it down in excruciating detail, we’re going to sum up the bare essentials you need to know before starting Ocarina Of Time as well as whether there are any games you should play right after.
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Do you need to play anything else to understand the Ocarina Of Time remake?
Short answer: no. Apologies for burying the lede, but in an age where people can be put off from jumping into a long running franchise out of fear they won’t understand the plot, or who anyone is, we can assure you that is not a problem for the Zelda games.
Characters may share names and roles throughout the games, with Link and Zelda being the most common, but they’re often completely different characters with the same name – either ancestors or from another reality.
When it comes to Ocarina Of Time specifically, not only is its story very simple (and will likely remain so even with the remake promising to flesh things out a bit), but it’s also entirely self-contained and has no overt connections to any of the games that come before it in the timeline.
If you are the sort of person who would like to dive deeper into the wider lore of the Zelda series, though, there is one game you’ll want to play and that’s The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
Originally released for the Wii in 2011, it’s more readily available via its 2021 Switch remaster and is chronologically the first Zelda game. At the time, Nintendo even made a point of highlighting how this game serves as an origin story for the Master Sword, which frequently appears throughout the series as Link’s go-to weapon for fighting evil.
Without spoiling too much, Skyward Sword also provides an explanation for why recurring villain Ganondorf keeps popping up to antagonise Link and Zelda. Like those two, it’s not the exact same Ganondorf every time (usually, but we’ll get to that later), but rather he is regularly reincarnated in a new form to threaten the land of Hyrule.
What about the Skyward Sword manga?
If you really want to get into the weeds, Skyward Sword received a prequel manga that’s included in the Hyrule Historia encyclopaedia. It’s only 32 pages, so the story is very simple, even by the standards of the series, but it does depict the earliest incarnation of Link and how he met the goddess Hylia, who once oversaw the land of Hyrule.
Mount Hylia in Breath Of The Wild is named after her and that game’s goddess statues, which can increase your health and stamina, are meant to be made in her image.
The manga also explains that it was Hylia who ensured Link’s spirit would be eternally reincarnated. She also discarded her divinity to be reborn as a mortal, that mortal being Zelda. So, that’s why multiple versions of these two keep appearing throughout time. Although none of the actual games ever make reference to this, so it’s not clear if Nintendo still considers it canon.
Is there a sequel to Ocarina Of Time?
If you’ve looked at the timeline, you’ll know Ocarina Of Time is in a weird spot, since it splits off into three different timeline branches; each with their own games. As a result, it has a few games that follow-up on its story, but in different ways.
This is due to the nature of Ocarina Of Time’s ending. As a quick explainer, in Ocarina Of Time, Link starts the game as a child but is later sent seven years into the future, where Ganondorf has successfully conquered Hyrule. Link defeats him and the game ends with Link returning to his original time.
So, both Link’s original timeline as a child and the future timeline he saved as an adult co-exist. This is why they’re officially referred to as the Child and Adult eras.
To try and keep things simple, we’re going to break the different Ocarina Of Time sequels up by era.
The Legend Of Zelda’s Child era
The Child era is where the most traditional Ocarina Of Time sequel – The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – takes place. This game sees Link embark on a new adventure shortly after the events of Ocarina Of Time.
However, if you’re looking for a direct continuation of Ocarina Of Time’s storyline, you won’t find it here. While it does feature the same Link, it sees him warped to the land of Termina – a strange parallel version of Hyrule – and the events that transpire have no ties to Ocarina Of Time.
Zelda doesn’t make any appearances outside of one flashback and Ganondorf isn’t so much as referenced, with the new villain, Majora, being an independent entity. And while you’ll see plenty of side characters that look identical to ones from Ocarina Of Time, this is because Majora’s Mask was built by re-using most of Ocarina Of Time’s assets.
Majora’s Mask is one of the best Zelda games, though, so you should play it anyway. If you can find a copy, the 3DS remake offers some great quality of life touches, but the original N64 game is easier to access through the classics catalogue, for Switch Online subscribers.
Alternatively, there’s The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which is set after Majora’s Mask but is more meaningfully tied to Ocarina Of Time’s plot.
Although it’s never shown in-game, nor in any supplementary material, it’s presumed Link used his knowledge of the future to warn Hyrule’s royal family about Ganondorf’s machinations, leading to the villain’s imprisonment.
We see this imprisonment in the backstory of Twilight Princess, where Ganondorf is sentenced to death. He survives his execution, however, and is instead banished to another realm, which kicks off the events of the game proper and leads to his eventual return many years later, having kept himself alive through dark magic.
So, while he sports a slightly different design, Twilight Princess’ Ganondorf is meant to be the same one from Ocarina Of Time, whose plans to conquer Hyrule were thwarted before they even began. The Link and Zelda he battles are new incarnations, though, and not the same ones from Ocarina Of Time.
The only other tie-in to Ocarina Of Time is the Hero’s Shade, a minor character who teaches you new combat techniques. He is, in fact, the same Link from Ocarina Of Time and Majora’s Mask, who is now a restless spirit following his death. How he died has never been elaborated on and he only comments on how he regrets never passing down his knowledge.
Twilight Princess is unfortunately not that easy to play nowadays, since there’s no modern re-release for the Switch or Switch 2. You’ll have to track down an old physical copy, either for the original game on GameCube and Wii or the HD remaster for the Wii U.
The Legend Of Zelda’s Adult era
In the Adult era of Ocarina Of Time, Ganondorf was sealed away after his defeat at Link’s hands. Following that game’s events, however, the seal eventually broke and since there was no incarnation of Link around to stop him, the gods themselves flooded the world, sealing Ganondorf once again, along with most of Hyrule.
This is the backstory for The Legend Of Zelda: The Wind Waker, which eventually sees Ganondorf break free to try and conquer the world. To reiterate, this is the same Ganondorf from Ocarina Of Time, but the one who successfully took over Hyrule and was defeated.
That’s the only real connection between Ocarina Of Time and The Wind Waker as, once again, many years have passed in the interim, and the latter stars new incarnations of Link and Zelda.
Ironically, the original GameCube version of The Wind Waker is more accessible than the Wii U remaster since it’s available in the classics catalogue for Switch Online subscribers, but only on Switch 2.
While both the Child and Adult eras continued to see further games, those are completely removed from Ocarina Of Time’s story. In the Adult Era, Ganondorf doesn’t even feature in any games set after The Wind Waker.
What about the Hero is Defeated timeline?
Yes, there is a third timeline after Ocarina Of Time; one that posits a scenario where Link lost and Ganondorf successfully obtained ultimate power, transforming into his demon beast Ganon form.
Supplementary material says that Zelda and Ocarina Of Time’s Seven Sages still managed to seal him away, which leads into SNES game The Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past. That game has two worlds to explore and one of them – the Dark World – is a result of Ganon’s presence corrupting the world he was sealed in.
Beyond that, there’s absolutely no story content tying A Link To the Past to Ocarina Of Time, but just like Majora’s Mask, it’s one of the series’ best entries so we highly recommend playing it through the Switch Online’s classics catalogue.
Does The Legend Of Zelda timeline matter?
In case it wasn’t already apparent, no, the Zelda timeline isn’t something you should seriously consider when approaching the games. Aside from everything we just explained, Nintendo itself isn’t as obsessively concerned with it as some fans are.
Fans had long speculated what the Zelda timeline looked like through the 1990s and 2000s, and though members of the Zelda team did touch upon it occasionally in interviews, it wasn’t until 2011 that an official timeline was published to coincide with Skyward Sword’s launch as the chronologically first game.
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While the timeline has consistently been updated with (most) subsequent releases, it’s clearly not that important of a factor when it comes to developing new games. Or at least not from Nintendo’s point of view.
Tears Of The Kingdom director Hidemaro Fujibayashi said as much in a 2023 interview with Game Informer, explaining that deciding where each Zelda game fits in the timeline is only something the team considers to an extent.
‘If we get too into the weeds or too detailed in that placement, it results in kind of creating restraints for our creativity; the process of creating new ideas becomes restricted because we’re so tied up and trying to make this fit into a very specific spot in the timeline,’ said Fujibayashi.
It’s such a minor point during each game’s development that we have a sneaking suspicion that Nintendo’s been trying to further downplay what little significance the timeline has ever since Breath Of The Wild came out in 2017.
For starters, neither Breath Of The Wild nor Tears Of The Kingdom have an exact placement on the timeline. They’re completely sequestered off from the other games; the implication being they’re set so far in the future that they could potentially follow any of the three branches. Or that they’re completely separate alternate realities.
It’s a similar situation for every new Zelda game to have released in the last nine years that isn’t a remake or re-release. The Cadence Of Hyrule spin-off isn’t considered an official part of the timeline (probably because it wasn’t made internally at Nintendo) and while the latter two Hyrule Warriors games – Age Of Calamity and Age Of Imprisonment – are, they’re just simple prequels to Breath Of The Wild and Tears Of The Kingdom
The only new entry to make it onto the timeline was 2024’s The Legend Of Zelda: Echoes Of Wisdom, which takes place during the Hero is Defeated era, right between Tri-Force Heroes and the very first Zelda game.
While an interesting factoid for fans, this placement doesn’t inform Echoes Of Wisdom’s premise or story whatsoever. Nintendo could decide to retcon it to take place elsewhere on the timeline and it’d make no difference.
How much you want to engage with Zelda’s chronology is entirely up to you, but the key takeaway is that there’s no ‘correct’ way of starting the series… though there is a wrong way and that’s through the Phillips CD-i games, which are so embarrassingly bad that Nintendo likes to pretend they never happened.
Whether the Ocarina Of Time remake is your first Zelda ever or your only experience is with Breath Of The Wild, you’re not missing out on years’ worth of vital lore and backstory. And unless Nintendo later announces Ocarina Of Time 2: Electric Boogaloo, you don’t need to worry about not understanding the next game’s plot if you skip the remake.
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