Travelling through time

[torkell]

The Master Sword is a ship with which you can sail upstream and downstream through time's river... The port for that ship is in the Temple of Time...

While playing Ocarina of Time I started wondering about the time travel involved in it. For those of you who don't know, you start out as ten-year-old Link but after the first quarter of the game you travel seven years into the future. Later on, you get the ability to travel between both points in time.

The thing is, when you arrive in the future you've also physically aged seven years. So you've not so much travelled through time as slept through it. This makes some sense: when you pulled out the Master Sword, your spirit is sealed away for seven years until you're old enough to be able to weild it (young Link can barely reach to pull it out from the plinth in the first place!).

Anyway, you trundle along to Kakariko village, pick up the Hookshot, and then learn the Song of Storms. This one has always intrigued me. You learn the song from the windmill guy, who picked it up seven years ago when an Ocarina kid turned up and played a song which messed up the windmill. Ocarina kid? Well, it can't have been you, as you've never played this song before... or can it?

Potential paradoxes aside, at some point you'll head back to the Temple of Time. Here Sheik will appear and tell you that you can put the sword back in the pedastal, and by doing so you will travel back in time. This is where it gets weird. You never actually travelled forwards in time in the first place, but were just sealed away. And yet, returning the sword will not only take you back seven years, but when the blue light fades you're back in your ten-year-old body! This makes no sense by classical time travel theory, and no sense by the "sealed away" theory either.

The other puzzle, and what originally caused me to start writing this post, is *when* do you arrive? You don't return to the same point in time every time you use the sword, as things that you do as young Link don't get reverted. So the possibilities are that you return immediately (so that if someone was standing there in Past Hyrule, watching you, they'd see you grab the sword, a flash of blue light, and then you letting go of the sword), or that you travel back exactly seven years (so the watcher would see you disappear and reappear several days later)? I've never checked the in-game clock to work this one out.

You can also travel forwards in time again, though this is much more explainable: you get sealed away for seven years again. It's implied that you have no sense of what happens during these seven years - you blink, and you're a few feet taller.

Anyway, back to your younger self. After some more dungeon-crawling you end up back at the windmill again. Still no sign of that pesky Ocarina kid... but the only person in all of Past Hyrule that knows the Song of Storms is you, and so you play that song, teaching it to the windmill guy. The same windmill guy who seven years later teaches it back to you. It's a wonderful paradox, and just where did that song come from?

Just when you thought there was enough messing around with the time stream, you get the ending to the game (which I assume you all know, but stop reading now if you've somehow not finished it yet). The sages banish Ganon to the Sacred Realm, and seal him away for a long time. Future Hyrule is still a right mess: Hyrule Castle is a lava-filled crater, the town is a ruined shell, and monsters are roaming the land. So Zelda uses the Ocarina of Time to return you for the last time to Past Hyrule, though again I'm not sure when you arrive. You return to the Temple of Time, and the door is still open so Ganondorf can still waltz in and try to control the Triforce... except he's sealed away in the Sacred Realm. Even though that happened in the future. How does that work?

For added speculation, what happens to Future Hyrule? Remember, we've got a seven year period where for a large chunk of it Ganondorf ruled over all. This can't just disappear... can it? I remember an old TV cartoon where they sent someone to the past to defeat some evil. When their hero returned to the future and asked if he managed to stop the enemy, no-one knew who he was talking about. Does the same happen here: the Future Hyrule that we know morph into the new Future-without-Ganon Hyrule without anyone realising?

Did it really happen?

Comments

Re: It all happens. [2/2]

[omgimsuchadork.livejournal.com]

**Maybe when Zelda sends him back through time -- since it wasn't Link placing the sword to rest -- her magic isn't all that accurate and she sent him back a little later than he set out. Enough to have given her younger self a chance to return to the castle, which she fled before Link opened the Door of Time. I don't know, that's all I got.

Re: It all happens. [2/2]

[torkell]

Time travel theories make my brain hurt...

I *think* I've understood that post, but I'm struggling to fit it with how the game goes. In the first iteration of this, in say Hyrulian year 2000 Link gets the Spiritual Stones, goes to the Temple of Time, and travels to the future. This is now Hyrulian year 2007. Link now beats the first few Temples. He then returns to year 2000 to do the Well and the first half of the Spirit Temple. Having done that, he heads back to the future of 2007 to splat Ganon. So far, so good?

Then Zelda sends him back to the past, and we now have Hyrulian year 2007 in which Link has vanished but everyone else still exists. Ok?

Back in year 2000, Link presumably has no memory of his actions in the year 2007. He's done it all, if he'd been wearing a watch that wasn't affected by time travel then it would be a few weeks fast, but he doesn't remember any of it and doesn't have a gap in his memory either. So he heads off to level up, and Majora's Mask happens.

Seven years later, he returns to Hyrule in the year 2007 and... now what? If I've got it right so far, at this point there's two Links: the Link who grew up the slow way (and has a watch saying 2007), and the Link who travelled through time (and has a watch saying 2000). This doesn't make sense to me, though I may have misunderstood your post.


The other single timeline "it all happens" theory I can think of is one without any time travel. It works, after a fashion: past!Link never travels to the future. The Master Sword does not do any time travel, but is merely a nice sword with a +3 bonus against evil. When you play the game, you're actually changing viewpoints between past!Link and future!Link (similar to controlling characters in Wind Waker). The trouble with this one is the game contradicts it. You get Navi exclaiming that you've grown up, but the biggest hole in that is that both past!Link and future!Link have the exact same items (both static ones like the Gauntlets, and variable ones like how many bombs you're carrying).


I think the timeline that makes the most sense to me is a single timeline one where the future never happened. Oh, you did it all, but future!Hyrule ceased to exist when Ganon was sealed away (or possibly forked into an alternate continuity, but if it does that it becomes separated from the prime timeline). The prime timeline is now one in which Ganon never existed outside of the Sacred Realm, and you return to Zelda to announce your victory:

"We did it!"
"...did what?"

Then Majora's Mask happens, and some other games in the series happen, but the Hyrule of 2007 is much the same as the Hyrule of 2000. The only people who know what happened are you, and possibly that dratted owl (he seems to have done some time travelling of his own). It's a good timeline - Ganon razing Castle Town to the ground never happened - but also sad, in some ways.

Re: It all happens. [2/2]

[omgimsuchadork.livejournal.com]

If you're trying to fit my theory into the game, it won't work. The best you can do is fit the game into the theory, which is how I came up with it in the first place. Because OoT's a game, you can do things in it that you can't do in the real world (like travel through time). But if you take the basic idea and structure of the story, you can create around it a plausible enough tale.

Seven years later, he returns to Hyrule in the year 2007 and... now what? If I've got it right so far, at this point there's two Links: the Link who grew up the slow way (and has a watch saying 2007), and the Link who travelled through time (and has a watch saying 2000). This doesn't make sense to me, though I may have misunderstood your post.

I see what you're saying, and this idea presents an excellent point, but it also depends on 2000!Link successfully travelling through time. For the sake of my theory, he can't do that, just as you can't do that in the real world (sorry, I should have been more clear the first time around). Say, when he gets to the Sword for the first time and attempts to pull it, that somehow opens the pathway to the Sacred Realm -- allowing Ganondorf to get in -- but the Sword does not accept him. From a third-person view, the blue light comes and goes, and Link heads back to Hyrule Castle. He meets Zelda again, blah, blah, blah. 2000!Link will eventually return to Hyrule to claim the Master Sword, and his watch will say 2007.

As for Zelda sending him back, it's magic-based, so anyone can say how the magic works, since it doesn't actually exist. Perhaps when Link is sent back, Zelda can send him back to the EXACT point he touched the Master Sword so that the two Links, existing in the same place at the same time, are actually one and the same. Perhaps she doesn't do it correctly and Link's shunted to another dimension, or he just fizzles away (since, remember, you can't actually travel through time!). I don't know. The point is, at any given point in time, there is only one Link.

I don't understand how the other single timeline works. How can you change viewpoints a la Wind Waker if past! and future!Link don't exist at the same time?

I think the timeline that makes the most sense to me is a single timeline one where the future never happened.

I thought that was the basis for the split timeline? That when Link is sent back through time, it creates a split where a) Ganon(dorf) was defeated -- the adult timeline; and b) nothing happens to Hyrule because Ganondorf never got started -- the child timeline. Personally, I don't see how that works, because changing the future does not affect what happened in the past. Something I do today will not change what happened ten years ago, but what happened ten years ago probably very much affected the person I am now.

... the Hyrule of 2007 is much the same as the Hyrule of 2000. The only people who know what happened are you, and possibly that dratted owl

How can he possibly remember things that never happened, especially if he never travelled through time?

I'm sorry if I misunderstood any bit of your post; this really is very confusing.