The 3DS Shall Gladly Wear the Legendary Zelda like Majora’s Mask

I find myself occasionally enamored by a video game so much that my traditionally rational way of understanding social reality becomes skewed by nonsensical giddiness. Instead of understanding the video game industry as being comprised of many different moving parts—such as various console markets, consumer demographics, developers and publishers—I begin to imagine what this complexity would be like if everyone who considered themselves part of this social construction was simply me and millions of my clones. In this idea, the traditional processes which govern the economy surrounding video game production and consumption would become simple: everyone currently producing games would re-allocate their efforts toward one single game, and everyone waiting for games would simply wait for that one product to arrive.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D has recently been announced for a Spring 2015 release, and I couldn’t be more feverish in my aforementioned haze of illogical thinking than I am right now. I’ve long wanted to play the original Majora’s Mask; doubly when The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time 3D was released back in 2011. Sadly, I never got around to playing it back on the N64, which has since become a blessing because I can look forward to appreciating the game for the first time next year.

My interest in The Legend of Zelda series has never approached the levels of hype that I felt it should. Conceptually, I enjoy the idea of exploring a relatively open world environment and collecting items which increase the complexity of the world’s challenges, as well as to provide incentive to revisit older environments using said items to unlock secrets.

Despite being the pioneering force behind this design, the Zelda series has never wowed me. I attribute my general apathy to the careful attention taken by Nintendo’s conservative approach to game design. Personally, each game in the series simply looks far too mechanically similar to its predecessors for me to become excited by the prospect of playing them.

In contrast, Majora’s Mask strikes me as experimental and forward thinking, despite reusing assets and characters from Ocarina of Time, and only having four traditional dungeons. For instance, the game abandons long-time antagonist Ganon and relegates Princess Zelda to a single flashback, each of which serve as narrative anchors in my opinion, locking the plot into an archetypical battle between good and evil. Majora’s Mask embodies a successfulness in establishing personality and place through what I assume was a constrained, or at least a shorter than normal, development cycle. In this, I’m reminded of poor Dragon Age II, which despite similar complaints for being scaled down and compromised in its vision, felt powerful in its ability to similarly establish a sense of place and purpose in a relatively small environment. 

Forever, I will remember, remember, the fifth of November, 2014. It was on this day that my rational way of thinking was abandoned for a giddy anticipation of what I assume will be the oddest Zelda game in the series. If you’re like me, well then none of you even exist anymore. At this point, I might as well be writing to myself.