I couldn’t begin to tell you why The Legend of Zelda just wasn’t a bigger thing for me as a kid. I don’t know if it was basic indifference to the marketing (none of those gold boxes really spoke to me), a counter-culture “Why is everyone telling me to like this game?” backlash response, or just a general lack of exposure to the games themselves (I played the original at a friend’s house for about 10 minutes and “The Adventure of Link” at a different friend’s house for another 10 minutes … and that was it for me until the 2000s). But for whatever reason, I just sort of missed Zelda’s beginnings and really didn’t feel I was worse for that.
That all changed for me when I was able to play my brother’s copy of Ocarina of Time for the first time.
Within an hour or two, I was hooked, and it was because of the emotional connection to the material. It kind of sounds nuts to type it out, but yeah, so at the beginning of this game, a tree dies, and it’s a pretty big deal. From there, it’s a near constant stream of gutting reveals and little emotional experiences that add up to provide one of the most affecting games in existence.
This game makes you feel.
A fairly linear progression in the early going quickly gave way to an expansive, immersive experience. And yeah, I think as these games go, a lot of people would put Ocarina more in the “on rails” sort of play, as it does have a pretty point-A to point-B methodology to its story-telling. But the sheer scope of this story, and one’s ability to get lost in this world map (playing mini-games, riding your horse around, and even just exploring every nook and cranny one can find) exceeded basically every game that had come before (and certainly within the Zelda franchise itself).
I think this is a main reason the emotional beats hit as hard as they do — you really get pulled into the whole experience. And once you’re in, you’re susceptible to getting led down that emotional path.
Hook, line and sinker.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Genre: Adventure
Released: 1998
Platform: N64
Metacritic’s Greatest Game of All Time