Talk:The Legend of Zelda: Encyclopedia

Release

With the book officially out in English today, am I right to assume it's safe to add information from it to articles? ReignTG (talk) 21:42, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Yep, it's officially part of the English canon now. TriforceTony (talk) 21:47, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Canon

How much of this book can we actually take to be canon? Eiji Aonuma and the others don’t appear to have been as involved in the development of this book as they were in the others. Some of it even appears to contradict what they have said in the past. The change to the timeline was confirmed as canon on the official website, but the rest is questionable. Toolen22 (talk) 15:56, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Except for extraneous bits, such as the Skyward Sword manga and obvious errors, everything in The Goddess Collection (Hyrule Historia, Art & Artifacts, Encyclopedia) are canonical even if they were not necessarily written by Aonuma. They were created as a series of books to elucidate the canon and were directly supervised by Nintendo (also one of the writers credited for Encyclopedia has been with Nintendo for at least 30 years).

As a general principle, official statements from Nintendo employees are considered canon unless they contradict in-game evidence. The Goddess Collection, due to their relationship to the timeline, are considered on-par with game canon and so supersede any previous evidence provided in the games. TriforceTony (talk) 17:16, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Wait a minute, though. Doesn't the Encyclopedia's revelation about Termina directly contradict Anju's grandmother's stories from Majora's Mask? As well as Tatl's flashbacks demonstrating that she and Tael were with Skull Kid when he stole the titular mask and that Termina clearly existed before the theft? And other claims the book makes, like Dragon Roost Island being Zora's Domain, when all the in-game evidence points to it being Death Mountain. Whisperstar13 (talk) 03:55, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Verification

As someone who hasn't read the book, I came across a few claims that it was written by the staff of a fan magazine who admitted to taking liberties with the source material and just making a bunch of stuff up. Is this true, and if so, why are we accepting it as canon anyway? Whisperstar13 (talk) 02:05, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

I haven't heard of those claims and we can't consider them reliable on hearsay alone. Even if the canon established in Encyclopedia were disloyal fabrications they're still canon by virtue of being published on the will of the developers. TriforceTony (talk) 02:11, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

It's brought up here. Something about a staff page where it's revealed Nintendo took more of a "counseling" role to the magazine staff who actually did the writing. (There's also a snapshot of the page, but it's in Japanese.) If it's true, the article should be updated to show who authored the book, at the very least. Whisperstar13 (talk) 02:16, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello? Did anyone ever look into this? I still don't think you guys should be blindly accepting the book when it wasn't written by Nintendo and blatantly defies things that were established in the games themselves. Whisperstar13 (talk) 00:52, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

Encyclopedia is an officially licensed book that is promoted by Nintendo itself. Even the changes to the timeline in the book are present in the official website for the series. These kind of media is normally used by Nintendo to update and/or retcon information present in the games themselves, just as remakes, remasters, and re-releases also do. - Chuck * ^(Talk) 04:06, 19 April 2019 (UTC)