And this game dares to go further on that premise. It's personal on so many levels, the Link character was originally called Link because he's supposed to be a bridge between the player and the game.
Zelda Dungeon formula aside, something that relies on short stories, short stories that are really well told but above that, either can relate to Link's own situation - after OoT.
Understand, this is an introspection game, and it's structure is. Termina is no different than Hyrule for him, except here he is without the only friend that accompanied him through that (Navi), the only being that understood. In fact even the whole situation of finding people he knows but suddenly know nothing about him is nothing new to Link, that's basically what the end of OoT has in store for him back in Hyrule, seeing he goes all the way back to the beginning - retaining nothing but his memories. There's a marked parallel between Skull kid and Link (or a thin line, if you prefer), despite him being a villain Link can relate to what he's gone through, he can sympathise and pity him - instead of feeling hatred, the whole bound between Tatl and Link illustrate just that (Tatl is Link's companion fairy for this game), Tatl being a Skull Kid comrade.īut it doesn't stop there, some of the characters relations between themselves are for Link the absolute same as going to a theatre and seeing his own personal relations unfold while he's having an out of body experience, some dialogs almost break the wall and fell like they would be more at place coming out of Link's mouth rather than the characters playing the part. Only 24 masks to go.Īnd the way this gets done through and through is masterful. It's not by chance that this game overlying system relies on masks, Link is the man of the 25 faces here, for starters he's an adult in a childs body, it's as if he's wearing a mask from the get go. That's Majora Mask, it feels like a parallel universe where you don't exist, but that's okay, because despite the "just visiting" demeanour the story revolves around you and these characters are all irrelevant to the point of being mere facets of yourself, facets of what you left behind, and ironically that's why you care. It's like when you meet someone that reminds you of someone else, behaves exactly like that somebody and completely matches your stereotyped expectations, but. This game was built on top of OoT and thus recycled a lot of characters and assets, most games doing this feel like lazy efforts, but that's certainly not the consensus here - instead this game owns it and makes it appear like the bravest thing ever done (you feel like even if they had tons of extra time they wouldn't change it, and they won't for this port, because it was never accidental or due to constraints) - because it's flips it the other way, it's not about these recurring NPC's being familiar, it's about you, for all you know they might not even exist, they certainly don't know you, but you know them. ultimately a voyeur who occasionally intervenes in the way this intricate world does work while not belonging, but in return, this world acts as a reflection of his own self, if Ocarina of Time was about saving the world (Hyrule) then make no mistake, this game is about Link, it's about coming to terms with himself.
See, Link is an outsider, nothing but an unexpected visitor.