The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask

This has always been one of my favorite games on a conceptual level. I remember back in my freshman year of college I went on this long rant to my friend about how the concept behind this game was so beautiful. After about 20 minutes of really getting into the nitty-gritty I noticed that he was a little quiet. Turns out he had fallen asleep. Anyways, that doesn't matter, because you, my faithful reader, cannot fall asleep. You are merely a rhetorical construct. But that doesn't matter and I am getting away from the point, which the concept behind this game.

And what a beautiful concept it is, though.

The three day time limit at first brush feels like a gimmick or at best an annoyance. In reality, it's something quite the opposite, something that pushes the game further, into a darker but also more meaningful realm, perhaps past even it's more acclaimed brother.

I wish that all games were written with this sort of temporal locality. How often has it bothered you - in a lesser game - that the inn-keep that you talked to has pretty much been standing in the same place for the entire duration of what must have been a multi-month journey? Or that village citizens tell you the same thing over and over? Majora's Mask has solved this problem. Every person in the game has things they're doing during the three day period - meaningful things, that add to the plot. No one stands in one place. They're all off living their own life. And through gratuitous use of the Ocarina, you can track them all down and help them out.

All of this is only possible with the 3 day time limit.

Along with that comes the central theme of this game: death. Whoah, kind of heavy, right? Hard to imagine a kid's game dealing with death directly. Honestly, it still kind of surprises me even now. But most of the plot of the game is about how people deal with the fact that the world is going to end in 3 days. Some deny it. Some run away. One of the small sideplots that always stuck in my mind from this game was the couple who (after Link performs many tasks) finally got together in the final hours of the third day, even as the world is ending. There is something very honest and pure about their story that I rarely see captured elsewhere.

And maybe I'm thinking about it on too much of a meta-level, but part of the emotional pull of the game is that you can't save everyone. There's no way you can complete all 20 tasks in the Bomber's Notebook in a single 72 hour run. So you have to reset time, and your work is undone.

All the traditional Zelda stuff? I mean, it's fantastic too. Zelda has always been one of my favorite series because of the puzzles, which really demand some thought. But if you want to push the whole "games as art" agenda, you can't really point to a game which is built on nothing more than solving cute puzzles and killing evil monsters. Majora's Mask is one of those rare games that goes beyond just mindless fun.

I think this is a great example of how the users of this website are willing to sacrifice playability in favor of atmosphere. This game is good, but it has many stressful and outright unfair moments that should be acknowledged when discussing it. I think that if the focus was more on the side-missions and less on the dungeons this would be a great game, because that is the part that this really excels at, and that is what everyone talks about when referencing Majora's Mask.

ocarina of time with a cooler aesthetic

Ostensibly a copy 'n paste job of OoT, Majora's Mask instead embodied another detour for the Zelda canon - not genre-wise a la Zelda II, but a personal, emotional one instead, in possibly the series' finest narrative & atmospheric effort albeit gameplay-wise their least engaging. The dungeons were disappointing to say the least, and the mandatory minigame tedium tackled in-between is even worse. Its best moments are actually found in the sections leading up to dungeons, accompanied by poignant substories revolving around death and decay both individual and communal. To mirror this tonal shift, this work buries itself in all sorts of unsettling themes and imagery capitalising on OoT's creepiest moments, with shades of Earthbound's innocent horror and a subtext of existential apathy.

The namesake-ish Masks mechanic go a step further than tools by changing character control/movesets around, and well represents the game's surrounding themes, although their minor role in dungeon progression leaves a bit to be desired. In the meantime, its overarching countdown mechanic often interrupts gameplay - conceptually intriguing, but de facto just a pretext to clear the player's inventory before and after dungeons. It is - however, an evolution of LttP's time travel, full of side stories/quests that progress over time, and the apocalyptic delirium which unfolds when six 'hours' remain craft a hauntingly mesmerizing atmosphere.

It's use of emotional resonance and thematic depth are perhaps unparalleled in another video game. On a personal note, this is my second favorite of all time.

No momento em que a Romani conta sobre o casamento de uma amiga dela que vai acontecer na Clock Town três dias depois da sua chegada, eu soube que esse era um jogo especial.

Comparando com o OoT, a narrativa central não é tão forte e o jogo não tem o mesmo impacto pra indústria. Em contrapartida, tem um gameplay bem mais variado, um hub world MUITO melhor e side quests que te fazem querer completá-lo pra saber as histórias dos NPCs e se integrar àquele universo.