Why Majora’s Mask is Zelda’s Darkest Game
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is a standout game, and slightly divisive in the community. People either love it or hate it, and they either love it or hate it for the same reason: it's different. Before Breath of the Wild came out, the Zelda franchise had been wracked by the problem of the same. Zelda games fell into the rut of similar structure, which is quite appealing. You always knew what you were going to get with a Zelda game, and it meant that familiarity bred joy and comfort. But sometimes, difference can be a breath of fresh air. This was felt almost universally by the reset taken by Breath of the Wild. But Majora's Mask, has rarely been considered the same.
There are two primary reasons for this: the first is that Majora's Mask came out before the storytelling system was firmly established. The cycle of Zelda stories and their familiar structure was set by Ocarina of Time, which came out just a year before Majora's Mask release. Releases following MM followed the pattern of story set by Ocarina, rather than Majora. So even though Majora's Mask was very different than Ocarina, its difference wasn't as felt as Breath of the Wild because Breath of the Wild broke a cycle, rather than coming out before a cycle was set in stone. The second reason Majora's Mask is rarely considered on the same level of Breath of the Wild is because it has a much darker tone than the other Zelda games.
I wanted to take some time today to explore Majora's Mask, and really understand its darker tone. Some following Zelda games attempted to echo the tone or make it even darker. Twilight Princess, for example, tried really hard to fill the role of the "edgy Zelda game", but I just don't think it was as successful with this as Majora. While Twilight tried to emulate some of the darkness in their story, they relied too heavily on aesthetics to carry the tone. Majora's aesthetics, on the other hand, are not that different from Ocarina. In fact, the familiarity of the aesthetics is partly what leads to the darker tone, but we'll get more into that soon. But Majora succeeds were Twilight fails due to the darkness of the game being carried forward in two important aspects: story and player experience of story.
Majora's Mask came out just a year after Ocarina of Time. The tight timeframe led to some shortcuts in development. Almost all the character models are coped from Ocarina, for example. In fact, some of the even carry the same exact names, but others carry different monikers and fill different roles in the town of Termina than then did in Ocarina's Hyrule. While the borrowing of mechanics and character models were only due to issues in the actual process of game development, the impact they had on story, and more importantly the player experience of story, cannot be understated. The copying of the overly familiar in a sudden unfamiliar landscape is what helped to increase feelings of uncanniness.
Majora's Mask takes place immediately following the events of Ocarina of Time. While many Zelda games take the position of the various Links and Zeldas in the various games as being reincarnations of each other, Majora is different in its positioning as direct sequel to Ocarina. We start the game watching the child Link we constantly shifted to and out of in Ocarina of Time (a time travelling game for those who haven't played) slowly riding his horse through some woods. He gets attacked by the Skull Kid, another once-familiar face from Ocarina, whose wearing a strange mask. He steals Link's magical Ocarina, and scares his horse. After a chase through the woods, Link falls down a long dark hole, where, at the bottom, the Skull Kid transforms him into a much weaker figure: a Deku Scrub.
Continuing the chase regardless, Link ends up in the land of Termina, inside a clock tower, where the Happy Mask Salesman asks him the eerily famous line: "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"
We are then tasked to defeat the Skull Kid, and save the Land of Termina from having the moon fall down on them (brought on by the Skull Kid) within just three days. Transformed by the evil Majora's Mask, the Skull Kid has wrecked havoc on Clock Town and the surrounding land of Termina, which Link works hard to reset and solve.
The story is more or less familiar at this point. A hero tasked with saving the land in a near impossible situation - sounds like a video game, and more importantly sounds like a Zelda game. But the three-day deadline does something really important to the story. At the end of a playthrough, the player (Link) must play a song to reset time, and we start, once again, at the base of the Clock Tower on our first day in Termina.
We'll get to that bit in a second. But we should first tackle the story as it appears on paper. Zelda games always have some great evil that must be stopped - most of the time taking the form of the evil king Ganondorf. And sections of this can be really dark, especially when we see some of the evil wrought to the world by Ganondorf. One of the things that really stands out to me personally is the first time we leave the Temple of Time as Link in Ocarina of Time. We have just transformed into an adult, jumping ahead in time by seven years. And the once bustling Market Square of Castle Town is now desolate, in ruins, and filled with shambling zombies.
Ocarina also had the strange world of the Shadow Temple, and the existence of the world under the well. This place was pretty freaky, and filled with torture machines and pools of blood. But the well and the Shadow Temple - and even the desolate ruins of Castle Town - are very horror-movie type of dark. There's blood and despair and death. Everything is freaky, but death-kinda-freaky.
Majora's Mask is... different.
Majora doesn’t rely on scary typical imagery of death. It’s not dark because of the presence of torture devices or pools of blood or zombies. It’s dark because of the confusing nature of the story – the familiar feel of a game that is twisted to something slightly different than we’re used to. And more importantly, the way we play through the game forces us to see the terrible works wrought upon the world of Termina, and then we must reset it.
Majora’s Mask is one of those games that’s full of different fan theories. I really enjoy sitting and looking through them all. One of my favourite was that each of the areas of Termina, which is comprised of four areas surrounding Clock Town, and the fifth of Clock Town representing the five stages of grief. The first area we encounter is Clock Town. Despite seeing the moon encroaching closer and closer each day, the townsfolk seem determined that nothing is wrong (denial). Even on the final day, when doom is very clearly present, the mayor still refuses to leave because he finds it all quite silly.
The second area we encounter is the swamp. The swamp, filled with Deku Scrubs, are furious because they believe the monkeys have stolen their princess. In retaliation, they are going to put a monkey to death. The monkeys enlist Link’s help to show them that the Princess ran away of her volition. Each Deku Scrub looks furious – the king literally shakes with rage. The swamp (Anger) shows the worst of what happens when wracked with anger and rage.
After Anger comes bargaining. In Snowhead, we run into the Gorons, who are suffering under a sudden wave of cold that has frozen much of the landscape, and even many of the people. At the heart of the community is a small child whose crying. The crying punctures the landscape and leaves a mark on the community and the area around the player as they explore the mountainscape. The community will do anything to stop the crying, and keep looking toward the recently deceased Darmani, a Goron hero. It's through Darmani's spirit that Link first inhabits the body and spirit of a dead character. Darmani's spirit is healed through Link and is therefore turned into a mask. Upon donning the mask, Link is transformed into Darmani.
On a side note, the mask transformations are really creepy and help to add to the strange, other-worldly dark atmosphere of the game. But we'll get to the mask transformations later on.
After bargaining, the next stage of grief is depression. And perhaps the most depressed area of Termina is the Great Bay, where Link interacts with and helps the Zora people. He first runs into Mikau, a Zora who is slowly dying on the beach. Link "heals" him, and through that healing ultimately ends his life and turns his spirit into a mask.
Through Mikau, Link helps Lulu, a Zora who has become so depressed she loses her voice. After giving birth to seven small Zora, all her children have been stolen. The loss of her children, as well as Mikau, her partner, she becomes swallowed up in her depression. Through Link's service, the children are recovered, and she is once again able to move on.
But ultimately, the game has to end with acceptance. Ikana Canyon seems to be a strange fit for acceptance, but after really looking at it, it makes sense. The Canyon is filled with strange beings who encapsulate death. One of the first figures Link encounters is a strange hooded one-eyed man. Link explores figures of death, helps skeletons and spirits of the long dead, and explores a temple for those long past. Ikana Canyon is a land of the dead, and here many have accepted their fate and are happy to live in their state of death. Of the four areas outside Clock Town, this is also the only location where Link is not given a spirit to transform into. Rather, Link is tasked with moving through the land of the dead rather than attempting to be like the living.
The presence of death permeates the entirety of the game. Link’s primary power in Majora’s Mask, as compared to other games, is his ability to transform into other creatures through a mask. However, he gets the mask by “healing troubled souls” – often those who are either recently passed, or in the process of dying. Link can then use these masks to transform into the characters, primarily Darmani the Goron and Mikau the Zora. His Deku Shrub version is theorised to also be the Deku butler's son, who we see has passed and therefore become a tree at the end of the game.
The mask transformation sequences are perhaps one of the creepier parts of the game, and one I used to skip past quickly when I played the game as a child. Link looks in deep pain, and even cries out in anguish during the creepily long transformation scene.
I'm personally unsure how deep the reading of the multiple stages of grief actually is. While some of the areas are far more clear, such as the anger in the Deku shrubs, some of the areas are a bit more washy in their appearance. The Gorons, for example, could be read as both Bargaining and Depression. The stages of grief theory is useful in considering some of the complicated natures of the different areas and the super complicated and quite frankly depressing state that many of the areas are in.
And this is where I think the darkness of the game comes from. The story itself is depressing, and the many characters are dealing with some very serious problems, including death and loss. But what makes the game dark is that at the end of solving everyone's problem, when Link is finally able to bring some amount of peace or happiness to those who are suffering - you have to reset back to the beginning of the three days. You have to reset time, reset their suffering, and once again have them return to a life of pain.
And that's what, to me, is at the core of Majora's Mask depression and darkness: the art of the repetition. The format of the game, and the way the player experiences the game, is, quite frankly, depressing. While the story itself is full of pain and anguish and suffering, which helps to bring darkness to the player, it's the player's experience of the story - the way the story is actively played out - that really solidifies Majora's Mask as one of the darkest games in the Zelda franchise.
Let's take, for an example, one of the more depressing side quests for the game: the story of Anju and Kafei. Kafei is betrothed to Anju and has also gone missing. The two are kept separate from one another because Kafei has been turned into a child by Skull Kid, and his wedding mask has been stolen. He ran to hide, too ashamed to reveal himself to Anju or his family. Through detailed work, Link finds Kafei, and works to pair him and Anju back together as well as to regain the wedding mask that was stolen from him. Through this questline, Anju insists on waiting for Kafei in Clock Town, where the moon will fall. After regaining the mask, the two finally get married, and wait to die together in the town.
Obviously, this ending is both sweet and terrible simultaneously. If Link spends the three days repairing Anju and Kafei's relationship, he is unable to save the town and the two die when the moon falls. However, beating the game - or essentially keeping the moon from falling on the town - also takes most of the three days. In the most successful timeframe of the game, the two are not brought back together.
What's more, after finally pairing the two together, the player plays the Song of Time, and resets everything - including all the joy brought to them, or the pain that has been erased - and returns to the beginning of the three days.
And I think this is where the true dark atmosphere of the game really is. Link is essentially powerless to the forces of suffering and pain that surrounds him. He is unable to truly help everyone at once - is never able to solve everyone's problem at the end of the game. To help most people, he has to forsake almost all others, including the saving of the entire town. To save the town, he must leave everyone to their suffering. There is no perfect run, and no way to save everyone.
Even the larger problems - such as Gorons suffering their losses, or Lulu whose loss of her child has rendered her speechless - never remains solved. In order to beat the game, Link quickly jumps to end goals of dungeons and beats bosses, which means that Lulu is left without her children or any knowledge of what happened to Mikau. And even in the runs where all this is solved - at the end of it all, the player is forced to erase all the good they have done.
In essence, the need to repeat the three days over and over again leaves the player unable to truly experience a happy ending to the story. All other Zelda games give you a happy ending, but even at the end of Majora's Mask - when Link has finally defeated the evil Majora's Mask - there is still pain and suffering and fear in the world he traversed through.