You’ve Met With a Terrible Narrative

I lost more than four hours of progress in Majora’s Mask because I committed the cardinal sin of watching the Moon fall. This forced me to replay one of the worst dungeons in the Zelda series: the dreary and mazelike Great Bay Temple. This situation wouldn’t be so bad if the knee-jerk response from fans weren’t giddy excitement. Losing my progress, as they might claim, is what the Happy Mask Salesman was warning me about with all his talk of meeting a “terrible fate.”

It is a terrible fate. And Majora’s Mask is a terrible game, especially by Zelda standards.

The most peculiar thing about that statement is Majora’s Mask is a game that deliberately defies standards established by other Zelda games. The three-day cycle, change of tone, and change of location all successfully differentiate Majora’s Mask from other games in the Zelda franchise. But different does not equal good, and Majora’s Mask is proof of this.

Termina is a Terrible Place

I’ve long appreciated video games set in somber, dying worlds. I thoroughly enjoyed Dark Souls, Metro 2033, and The Last of Us because despite their desolate landscapes and savage horrors, they invited me with mystery, challenge, and story. But Termina is a foreboding place that forced rather than invited me to explore it.

Instead of a world full of problems for players to solve, Termina is presented as a sickly old cancer patient, three days away from its inevitable death and pleading to be put out of its misery. Termina’s coasts are haunted by pirates; the Goron population faces extinction; the swamps are lorded over by a brutal and incompetent king; and Ikana Canyon makes Ganon’s Castle look like a basket of sunshine and kittens. This place is cartoonishly bleak!

Almost nothing in Termina is worth saving or getting attached to. The whole place is collapsing upon itself after generations of feuding; Termina’s inhabitants are either at each other’s throats or wallowing in tragedy by the time Link arrives. The few good souls left alive are hours away from death or life-changing trauma.

In many ways, I feel Skull Kid’s decision to destroy Termina is the best way to end all its suffering. Unfortunately, the goal of players in Majora’s Mask is to prolong that suffering by preventing the Moon from falling and destroying this wretched land.

A Terribly Unrewarding Experience

Whenever we play the Song of Time, all the progress we’ve made solving the problems of others is erased. Following this logic, the problems of Termina’s inhabitants will persist after the Moon is hurdled back into orbit at the end of the game. Romani Ranch will remain under attack by extraterrestrials and the Gorman Brothers, Pamela will be forever locked up with her corrupted father, the Deku Princess will stay trapped beneath a poisoned swamp while her father expresses his rage by torturing his subjects… the list goes on.

The game’s ending credits show all these problems and more have been resolved, but the core gameplay establishes again and again that this cannot be true. The Song of Time resets everything in the three-day cycle, and Link must play the tune multiple times over the course of the game. Barring a monumental feat of gaming skill and knowledge, solving all of Termina’s problems in a single three-day cycle is as impossible as saving Hyrule in 18 minutes.

It all leads to an unrewarding gameplay experience. We get an occasional taste of what it feels like to solve the problems in Termina, but are denied the full satisfaction of completing our goals because the Song of Time constantly undoes all our good deeds. This not only raises the question of what players have ultimately accomplished by the game’s end, but why Link even bothers to save Termina at all.

Terrible Motivation

Majora’s Mask starts with a delightfully fresh and formula-breaking introduction, where the courageous Hero of Time is mugged, robbed, and disfigured by a trickster with godlike powers. This is great motivation for Link and the player to get back the Ocarina of Time and Epona, but it is not in any way motivation for Link to save Termina: a cheerless world he has no connection to or investment in. Link may as well be setting out to save Martians from religious persecution in Narnia!

Other Zelda games firmly establish Link’s connection or disconnection to the world each game takes place in, and his natural motivation to save it or escape it. But in Majora’s Mask, Link risks life and limb to save a world to which he is a stranger.

The narrative also tiptoes around the massive plot hole where Link could just use his time-manipulation powers to get the jump on the punk who mugged him at the start of the game. I’m sure some wonderfully wild fan theories or flimsy canonical reasoning (like how Cortana can physically alter Master Chief’s armor with a “firmware update” in Halo 4) exists for why Link doesn’t do this, but the fact that Majora’s Mask itself never addresses this issue always suspended my belief in the story.

Terrible… Gameplay?

As I made clear at the start of this article, Majora’s Mask also has some major problems with its core gameplay. The save system and dungeon design in particular are some of the worst offenders, but I needed to dedicate one article to the narrative. After all, the overarching atmosphere and tone of Majora’s Mask contribute subtly but consistently to why I feel this is such a terrible game.

Until that article is ready for publication, what are your thoughts on Majora’s Mask? Do you have problems with its narrative? Do you feel it is undeserving of the praise it receives? Do you feel it is the single greatest video game, Zelda or otherwise, ever created? Let us know in the comments below!