As a grotesque, anthropomorphized moon threatens to collide with your world and bring about total annihilation, you, as the gamer, wrestle with the very real notion that you don’t know how to stop this, and moreover, that you’re not going to have the time to do anything about it anyway, even if you could figure out what that was supposed to be.
In short, you’re doomed.
And you know it.
Bummer.
Quite obviously, it is not a stretch to say that “The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask” is one of Nintendo’s darker creations, nor is it unfair to say that the game isn’t shy about throwing the player into the deep end quickly. The primary objective of the game, that of preventing this global apocalypse, is shoved in your face right away.
And it is added upon with still more to burden yourself with, as though preventing widespread death and devastation is … somehow not enough.
Whereas its immediate predecessor (and certified gem) “Ocarina of Time” started you out in the comfy confines of your personal home and community, introducing you gradually to external threats (with mostly obvious methods – and fairly introduced abilities – to overcome them), Majora’s Mask at the outset puts you in a vulnerable position alone on the road, makes you an immediate victim of a robbery and a curse(!), then leaves you with this hellish scenario of the moon colliding with your immediate location raining certain destruction … with just three days to try to stop it from happening.
Feelings of dread and doom overwhelm, to the extent few games have emulated before or since. We’re 45 minutes into this game, and we cannot in our wildest imaginations begin to understand how we’re going to get our heroic alter-ego, Link, through this one.
“Well, it’s been a good run buddy, but I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this one alive.”
“Me neither. See you on the other side, champ.”
Compare this to previous Zelda games. An enemy, even a grossly overpowered one like Ganon, is still just one entity. The challenge is easier to wrap your arms around.
- Take down this bad guy.
- Save the princess.
- Win the day!
The threat in Majora’s Mask is more elusive, ultimately, and more conceptually difficult to process. Its scope is immense, akin to asking a person to solve a problem like world hunger or devise a method for ridding the world of cockroaches.
“Where do I even begin?”
Where indeed. The trick, which is revealed in those early moments (but only after a sort of dread-panic has taken firm hold), is that time travel once again comes into play, as it did in the previous game.
Here, it’s implemented differently, as a kind of looping dynamic. You can go back to the beginning of this hellish scenario as many times as you like, as it turns out, as a way of “buying” yourself more time.
But this is a true deal with the devil, Faustian in its intent.
Yes, you get a chance to restart. But it’s a return to the same initial feelings of despair that so overwhelmed you to begin with. It’s the same place, with the same people, with the same scenario. Played out, over and over again. And as if that doesn’t sound problematic enough – retraumatizing yourself over and over again – certain things you’ve done to rectify the problems in the world around you … well those reset as well. Progress is lost. You must begin all over again. And perhaps worst of all, once you reach a certain point in the time loop, you reach yet another level of horrifying understanding, and it’s that your first impression was actually correct:
The breadth of the task in front of you is simply impossible.
You cannot do it. There’s just no way to save everyone and fix everything. Some wrongs will not be corrected, and there’s nothing you can do about that.
In a sense, you truly ARE doomed.
THIS is the essence of Majora’s Mask. And it’s effing brilliant.
Continue reading The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 34)The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask at a glance:
Genre: Adventure
Released: 2000
Platform: Nintendo 64
Runner-up for GameSpot’s “Best Nintendo 64 Game”
