6 Video Game Fan Theories The Studios Actually Confirmed
Two of your favourite shooters share more than the same developer...
Fan theories aren't limited to movies and TV, and as video games have grown more sophisticated, many of them have challenged players to draw their own conclusions about their narratives, character arcs and deepest mysteries.
Some of these theories are plausible enough for developers to address. The idea of Fallout taking place in the distant future of the Elder Scrolls series was thought provoking - until Bethesda came out and debunked it.
In truth, most fan theories have all the merit of tin-hatted conspiracy ramblings, and while these can be entertaining, the chances of them being accurate are about as high as a mere mortal playing through Dark Souls 3 without dying once.
Every once in a while, though, players devise ideas about their favourite games that are right on the money, so shrewd and inspiring that the developers confirm them.
This is far more common in the mediums of film and television, but it isn't unheard of in gaming, and here are the times the studios were forced to concede that their fanbase was really onto something...
6. Zelda: Twilight Princess Is A Sequel To Majora's Mask
For several years, Zelda: Majora's Mask was viewed as the black sheep in the family, a dark departure for the series which stands alone, outside of the mainline continuity as a glorified side quest of sorts.
This all changed when Twilight Princess arrived on Wii in 2006 as eagle-eyed players spotted subtle references to the N64 title. The layout of two games' maps are uncannily similar, but the biggest piece of connective tissue concerns the Twili.
There's a reference to the villainous race being banished to a "shadow realm" in Twilight Princess, and the fans were convinced this meant they were exiled to Majora's Mask's doomed world, Termina, which would make the Wii release it sequel of sorts.
Nintendo endorsed the connection between the games when it published the book Hyrule Historia, which came complete with an official Zelda timeline. The diagram placed Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess beside one another in the same reality, which essentially makes Termina the equivalent of Dark World in A Link to the Past.
Confirmation that Majora's Mask is connected to Twilight Princess confirms what many fans suspected all along: the N64 game is much more than a non-canon spinoff.