Nintendo's recent announcement that the story of the latest Legend of Zelda title will be explored again in the upcoming Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity has quickly grabbed the attention of fans. As players had anticipated announcements for Breath of the Wild 2, a deeper dive into the somewhat more vaguely mentioned Calamity and how it effects everything from the Hyrule royal family to the guardians in Breath of the Wild is still always welcome.
However, with this new prequel, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity raises a few questions about the Legend of Zelda timeline and the effective canon of the original Hyrule Warriors. Considering that both the Switch and Wii U versions of the original game succeeded as a Dynasty Warriors type game with a Zelda skin overlaying everything, it is surprising that Nintendo hasn't considered the title as part of the series canon.
Hyrule Warriors Deemed Non-Canon
The story of the first Hyrule Warriors is one of the more confusing of the series, grabbing different elements and Links from across multiple timelines in order to explain the cast of characters available to play as in the game. As a result of the complicated story and the way it almost seems to interrupt important events in the series, Nintendo has mostly considered the game to be non-canon as to not muck up the timeline any more than necessary. This can be confirmed in the multiple releases of the Hyrule Historia, a series of books with development and lore info from throughout the Zelda series, which has omitted Hyrule Warriors from the official Legend of Zelda timeline.
It isn't uncommon for spin-off titles to not be considered canon, especially when the game takes on an entirely different series' gameplay style in the way Hyrule Warriors embraces the Dynasty Warriors system. Nintendo likely wouldn't include Cadence of Hyrule in the official canon, regardless of how successful the indie tie-in with Crypt of the Necrodancer turned out for both companies involved. For those same reasons, most players have accepted that the time-twisting story of Hyrule Warriors just doesn't fit very well in the overall timeline, that is until Breath of the Wild may have tied the series together.
Hyrule Warriors as a Breath of the Wild Prequel
A fairly popular theory among fans for where Breath of the Wild sits within the timeline has tried to pull in the converging timelines from Hyrule Warriors in order to explain the game's uncertain placement at the end of the series canon. Made well known by the popular YouTube channel The Game Theorists, this idea concludes that the different eras pulled into Hyrule Warrior's present explains how the timeline of Berath of the Wild is possible. Most notably, events and features from throughout the series and across the three main timelines are referenced in both games, which lends credence to a connection between the two games.
Specific examples of these features include the inclusion of both the Zora and the Rito in Breath of the Wild, two races from the Zelda series that had previously been established to be different points in the evolution of the same race in Windwaker. According to the above mentioned theory, both Zora and Rito are transported into Hyrule Warriors from different points in the timeline, making their duel existence possible thanks to the convergence. The list of inconsistencies goes on and on, such as rock salt needing to come from the Great Sea in the Adult Timeline, but enemies like Lynels only previously appearing in the Fallen Hero Timeline.
Age of Calamity's place in the canon
With Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity expected to launch into canon thanks to the close connection it has to the origins and lore of Breath of the Wild, there is room to assume that the entire Hyrule Warriors series will be retroactively added to canon. With the theory mentioned above, this would lead to a much more fluid transition for Breath of the Wild's new timeline to build the connection back into the previously established series. In the end, no matter how complicated Hyrule Warriors makes the series, its inclusion into the canon solves more problems than it raises, and establishes more than a couple characters that some would like to see made official.
To a degree, Age of Calamity can answer questions about more than just Breath of the Wild, but can actually address some of the series' biggest mysteries with its inclusion into the canon. So, bringing the original Hyrule Warriors along with it would go a long way to do the same, especially when trying to establish an origin for the most recent focal point of the timeline. In addition, making Linkle canon could open up for a whole new Zelda title that players have been waiting for ever since the character was first announced.
The Timeline is an Organic Process Anyway
Naturally, focusing on the Zelda timeline to any degree brings up one of the biggest issues that this timeline has, and that would be the fact that this timeline was never intended in the first place. The general consensus among fans is that there was no official timeline before Skyword Sword established the never-ending cycle of reincarnation and rivalry between Zelda, Link, and Demise. Whether or not this is the case for Nintendo is still fairly up in the air, as it's never been officially announced when the timeline was first established, but the way the Hyrule Historia periodically changes implies that many games weren't intended to fit together.
This means that the building of the timeline is a much more organic process among the developers rather than an intricately planned system with the history of Zelda set in stone. There is now a chance for Age of Calamity to set a precedent, but even if it does, the nature of connecting previously disconnected moments in a shaky history means that it may not stick if Nintendo doesn't like how it plays out. On that note, the organic nature of the timeline does mean that games can be retroactively added into the timeline without much issue, making it entirely possible for Hyrule Warriors to finally be embraced where it belongs in series.
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity is set to release November 20 for Switch.