Much has been said about the possible timeline placement for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. The game’s producer, Eiji Aonuma, has finally given a hint on it.
Aonuma teased the timeline placement during an interview with Jeux Video (via Zelda Informer), It’s not a full confirmation, but it does give you some sort of clue on when the game takes place.
He said: “I can not yet answer this question because I want players to discover some elements of the game on their own, but you have some clues when you see that in the game there is the voice of a young person Woman who tells you that the world you are in has suffered many battles against Ganon. You can imagine roughly what period it is.”
This could be a hint that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild takes place during the fallen hero/downfall timeline. The Zelda timeline is complicated, but for newbies all you need to know is that there are three different timelines in the franchise.
Basically, it all begins to divide at the conclusion of Ocarina of Time. There’s both an Adult and Child Link timeline and those two a separate from the fallen hero timeline where Link is unsuccessful. Breath of the Wild could take place in the latter timeline.
It’s hard to explain in words if you are not a fan of the Zelda series. Let’s just say Link, Zelda and Ganon get reincarnated many times in different timelines. Breath of the Wild could take place in the timeline of the original NES and SNES games.