Thoughts about Zelda: Twilight Princess (games)
I haven't beaten TP yet (I'm on the sky city right now) so I don't know how Ganon is resolved in this one. Clearly this takes place between Ocarina (in the Majora's Mask timeline) and ALttP though, but then there's the plot-hole of how come there was the Hero of Time (granted, he's never referred to that in this story) if this is the timeline where Link was sent back to his childhood. Maybe this will be resolved in a future game set between Ocarina and TP.
Also there's the bit of weirdness that in Ocarina, Link's people (and language) are still referred to as Hylian even though the script looks more like Hyrulian. (Well specifically, Link's people are referred to as "human" and are "the closest descendents of the Hylians," but the Oocco refer to Link's language as Hylian. Or perhaps Link is also fluent in Hylian; it's never really explained.)
Twilight Princess feels pretty short, along the same length as Wind Waker. There's more dungeon stuff than WW but the dungeons are still pretty short. It feels like Ocarina was the last full-length Zelda game. (In terms of actual dungeon count — 9 — and also dungeon depth and story richness.)
The endgame to Ocarina made me (and everyone else) think that Ocarina was telling the story in the intro to A Link to the Past (with the story mutating over the eons), but the story told by the mirror sages in Twilight Princess actually matches the ALttP intro a lot better, although the ALttP plot is definitely based on Ganon's curse at the end of Ocarina. Considering how far in the future ALttP obviously is, I think the multiple legends must have eventually fused together.
Maybe TP's time is at the end of the Hylian era? It certainly seems like it's around the death of the royal family (with Zelda's ultimate sacrifice), the destruction of the old castle, the demise of what's left of a proud people. Castle Town is full of indifferent aristocracy and a complete lack of concern for the world at large, with only a ragtag band of vigilantes who are left to keep it from falling into evil's hands.
I think the original Legend of Zelda occurs sometime between TP and ALttP, between the final fall of Hylia and the rebuilding of Hyrule. I think Zelda II occurs sometime between LoZ and ALttP, when Hyrule Castle and some of the outlying villages have been rebuilt. The ending of TP could very easily change this though. Hell, LoZ could be in the Wind Waker timeline, at the establishment of New Hyrule (presumably after Phantom Hourglass). Or maybe LoZ and AoL aren't even in the main canon, since it's not like Miyamoto et al were even looking to building a canon until ALttP.
All of the above may be invalidated when I finish TP.
Also it's a bit strange how there's essentially two Ganon stories in a row (Wind Waker and Twilight Princess); this is the first time in the main Zelda canon that's happened (usually it's a Ganon story then a side-story which may involve Ganon incidentally but is otherwise separate).
Comments
Do you have Rayman by the way? I have a feeling you'd really like it. I haven't played Wario or MP8 yet but Raving Rabbits is great fun in crazy french fashion.
Development quirk I just read about--wondered why they did this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_Princess#Twilight_Princess_on_Wii
I'm almost at the end of TP and it's taken me 35 hours so far, and I hardly breezed through it. I think WW took about 30. I don't know how long Ocarina took because Ocarina didn't have a gameplay timer but I know I spent several months on it back when I had a lot more free time as well.
Link's Awakening took me about a year (I only played it an hour at a time) and that and ALttP have been the most satisfying, long-feeling Zeldas ever (though ALttP didn't take me that long I don't think).
Basically TP and WW both feel very short to me, and a lot of WW's length felt tacked on and padded which makes it seem even shorter even though length-wise I think TP and WW are about the same.
Even just going by dungeon counts paints a pretty grim picture for the MM and later games though. MM did have other dungeons than the four "boss" ones at least but most of them were just one-puzzle item-collection things and I think it had a total of like 6 or 7 even counting those (but its time was filled out a lot by side quests, which actually annoyed me a lot).
Also, I like how it's never really revealed what happens to Ganon after he gets impaled. It's IMPLIED that he dies, but he never even falls over dead, nor does he get destroyed like his creations normally do, so it's possible that he's just been frozen in stasis by the power of the master sword and is just sucked back into the sacred realm along with his twilight barrier.
The whole thing with Zant is pretty good (especially with how batshit insane Zant is all because he's having a little temper tantrum about not getting what he didn't deserve), and it shows one of the ways that Ganon has been able to escape from the sacred realm (through the power of suggestion to strong magic users), which also sets up the whole Aghanim thing in ALttP.
As far as timeline goes: Twilight Princess is definitely in the child-link timeline, which I believe is the "real" timeline (insofar as everything other than Wind Waker goes in it). Sometime after the death of the original sages, the royal family has by then appointed six wizards to be the new sages (not understanding how the sage thing works), and those "sages" are clueless about how to get rid of Ganondorf (who has probably been causing a lot of trouble while sitting in jail for treason, what with being a strong magic user and also having a life expectancy of 100 years). So these faux-sages seal him into the twilight realm, which immediately sets the chain of events into motion (Ganondorf presents his false "god" image to Zant and possesses him, etc.), and this occurs maybe a month before the beginning of the game (or maybe even just days; it seems that Zant doesn't waste any time in using Ganondorf's powers to usurp Midna's throne).
One new wrinkle presented by TP is the fact that now there's TWO Kakariko Villages - the hidden Sheikah village (with Impaz) has a sign on it which, when translated from Hylian, apparently says "Welcome to Old Kakariko." And of course the whole "Impaz" thing is definitely a reference to her being a descendent of the original Impa (probably the last of the Sheikah, which makes the fact she's a crazy cat lady even funnier). But the layout of Kakariko much more closely matches the layout of Kakariko in Ocarina of Time, while Old Kakariko bears no resemblance. Of course it's possible that Impa founded both villages, or that she founded New Kakariko as a ruse to keep the Sheikah hidden and perhaps the understanding of what Impa did got misinterpreted along the way. (According to Wikipedia, she was actually born and raised in Kakariko, and I seem to recall her being at the forefront of rebuilding Kakariko for some reason. I should replay Ocarina soon.)
It was a bit strange of Midna to say "See you later" and then start the destruction of the Twilight Mirror as she left the light realm. Perhaps she knew of another way to bridge the gap. It's also interesting that Zelda was all for light and darkness living in harmony while Midna was so insistent on keeping them separate.
I like how on Wikipedia, Impa is listed in both "fictional nannies" and "fictional ninjas." Impa is one bad-ass nanny. (And of course, both of those categories refer specifically to the Ocarina incarnation.)