Not even Skyward? I'm surprised, that game seems right up your alley suppa.
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Majora's Mask 3DS announced!
- Thread starter amnesiac
- Start date
Not even Skyward? I'm surprised, that game seems right up your alley suppa.
lostinblue
Banned
Yes.
This is a timeless masterpiece, in a lot of senses the epitome of Zelda minimalist way of storytelling.
In fact, scratch that, as far as silent protagonists go, this is it, this is the game that goes further in it's presentation and sole handedly justifies the medium with it's delivery. This is Nintendo's version of a mindfuck and a lot of the parallelisms you can draw are certainly not there by accident.
(do I know you? have we met before?)
See, Link is an outsider, nothing but an unexpected visitor... 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.
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.
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... They don't know you. 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.
(sounding familiar?)
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. Only 24 masks to go.
And the way this gets done through and through is masterful. 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.
But 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.
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. 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.
Understand, this is an introspection game, and it's structure is... Zelda Dungeon formula aside, something that relies on short stories, [virtually every character in the game has a back story] short stories that are really well told but above that, either can relate to Link's own situation - after OoT... Or *gasp* yourself.
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... And this game dares to go further on that premise. A spoken game could never even dream of achieving this without coming out as off for some individuals and here lies the strength of the silent protagonist. In a lot of ways, it's really a heartfelt game about loss, loss creates emptiness and this is a game who starts off with a hero feels empty, drained and lost. But it's only as much about loss as it is about coming to terms with it, so in the end it doesn't feel negative or depressing, quite the opposite.
(an eulogy to emptiness)
It's a masterpiece, not a lot of games since have been successful in achieving half of the touching atmosphere that Majora Mask did 15 years ago and I don't think any topped it at it's own game. It's really a piece of art that only gets to exist once in a blue moon (pun intended).
You should play it.
I guess that depends on what you liked about other 3D Zeldas. I'll spare you the lit-crit hogwash because it misses the point of your question. I take it you liked Wind Waker because of the charming characters and immersive world, right? Correct me if I'm wrong -- different people like different things, so I'm just guessing here.
But if those are the reasons you liked TWW, then I think you'll like Majora's Mask. The focus in MM is less on dungeons, and more on character and world-building. It's a very immersive world. The NPCs have lots to do and lots to say, and Clock Town is robust enough that people could conceivably live there.
Remember the café in TWW, above the merchant's stall on Windfall Island? A lot of places in MM have that warm cozy feeling, like the Stock Pot Inn, or the alleyways of West Clock Town at night. MM is one of those games that can make you feel warm and that can make you feel cold, depending on the place and the weather and the time of day. Whether it's the pitter-patter of rain, the howling winds, a brightly burning torch or stars twinkling in the night sky, Termina is very atmospheric, and you buy into its world all the more because of the NPC schedules and dynamic events. It's a living, breathing world. It never feels static or sparse or empty like OoT and TP sometimes did.
There is a timer, of course, but it merely dictates the NPC schedules and how long you have before you need to reset the clock. You can relive the 72-hour cycle as many times as you wish, taking with you any items you found and keeping any warp points you activated. Bit by bit, you make deeper inroads into the world, reaching new people and places. You're always making progress, and the three-day structure allows you to get to know the world and its inhabitants to a much greater degree than you could otherwise.
So yes, I think you'll like it. It's very different from TWW in many respects, but at the same time it offers a deeply immersive world and endearing characters like the sort you'd find in TWW.
So how would you imagine a new game would recreate that OoT/MM feel without using the same world?
LegendofLex
Member
The same way MM piggybacked off popular elements from OoT without actually being set in Hyrule?
There's a lot going on in MM that feels really familiar to anyone who's played OoT. But they're mostly just setpieces and gameplay elements in an otherwise radically new game.
Koizumi would figure it out.
A shame's he'll never direct again.
Why did you get junior'd?
They all ran in 480i for me. No progressive mode for us dirty Europeans ;P.
Is the fact that Majora asked for more than the Gamecube could actually handle the reason it crashed as well? I can imagine putting that kind of pressure on the memory could lead to some corruption, if it say, failed to find the proper location to load?
lostinblue
Banned
No, no! Donkey Kong 64.
All N64 games without expansion pack ran natively in 240p.
And some with expansion pack as well, Majora Mask was 240p.
Probably something like that, not corruption per see as that would denote lack of coherency in the memory but failing the acceptable time for something to happen could and should cause crashes. I do believe that was what was behind it.
32-64-bit generation games were written very close to the "narrow" of the systems, one such anecdote is that something simple as using a faster CD drive on the PSone causes FF7 battles to load faster, but that means battles will start without sound (and tons of other problems in other games). See, sound was manually offset "x seconds" so changing something as simple as the transfer speed of data messes with it directly.
With the N64 to GC we had fast cartridges versus slow CD's, huge latency RAM versus low latency RAM and ultimately, a 64 bit cpu (luckily, seldom used in it's 64-bit form) versus a faster 32 bit cpu. N64 followed by GC in all examples respectively.
They had nothing in common basically, and one's advantages would prove to be the other bottlenecks, this is the recipe for, if not countered by cpu strenght and caching cause random crashing in the trade.
GC had a RAM deficit going on and Majora Mask and OoT were bigger ROM's than they probably should (emulating Super Mario 64 or Mario Kart, smaller ROM's being probably way easier), the additional RAM and the extra back and forth Majora Mask did were surely the tipping point.
A better roundabout way to emulate them on the GC would have been fragmenting the game into several smaller ROM's, one for clock town, one for the Swamp, one for Snow Peak, Ikana Canyon and so on. But that would be messing with the whole game's internal structure and I'm not sure NST (the one's who did the emulator) had access to the source code, anyway if it came to that kind of solution porting would probably be better.
But that would probably solve the problems.
I reckon most of the crashes happened in clock town which is where the game was taxing the N64 architecture the most, because it was very CPU intensive and CPU reading from cartridge at that, but CPU didn't have direct access to memory on the N64, I don't know how the emulator does it (certainly not like that), but getting latency right was probably a nightmare.
I was talking about the PAL release of the Collector's Edition disc
, it was a forced 60hz for the PAL release, but progressive scan wasn't included. Totally misunderstood lol, wasn't aware DK64 ran at a higher resolution .Thanks for the information dump, I could sort of understand the key principle behind it
. I had about two crashes, only one of which was in Clock Town, the other was when I was entering the Great Fairy Fountain near Woodfall Temple, Majora on the CE truly is a random ticking bomb, you never know when it's gonna strike.zeldarocks
Neo Member
It just hit me:
Pamela and her father do not go to the Carnival of Time at the end of the game...
I'm starting to think that they would have been shunned as being outsiders, residents of the cursed, desolate, forgotten land of Ikana...
Shit...
The tragic story of Pamela and her father just took on a more sinister appearance.
Pamela and her father do not go to the Carnival of Time at the end of the game...
I'm starting to think that they would have been shunned as being outsiders, residents of the cursed, desolate, forgotten land of Ikana...
Shit...
The tragic story of Pamela and her father just took on a more sinister appearance.
SirNinja
Member
For those planning to get it digitally and want to wishlist it, the page for the game is already up on the eShop. For some reason it's not in the Upcoming Releases section (maybe it's too far away still?), but searching for "majora" will take you right there.
Game is dark as all hell.
That, plus their house is on top of a huge canyon cliff with no way down to Ikana Valley (and thus the rest of Termina). Pamela is essentially trapped up there in a very small house, without power, surrounded by the undead and with a half-zombified man precariously locked in a cupboard downstairs, which he can burst out of at any moment. Link's intervention only changes some of that - she's still trapped up there after all is said and done. Even if there was some way down, the way back to town is filled with Bombchus, fences that only a horse can jump - the whole area is basically cordoned off, and Pamela's right in the middle of it.
Game is dark as all hell.
Awesome. I'll do that as soon as I get my PAL New Nintendo 3DS in a week or so.
I have the special edition preordered, but I'm gonna want to play this at midnight. My plan is to do that and then sell the sealed copy inside the special edition to pay for it. That way I have all the special edition tat for about £10.
Cygnus X-1
Member
Yes.
This is a timeless masterpiece, in a lot of senses the epitome of Zelda minimalist way of storytelling.
In fact, scratch that, as far as silent protagonists go, this is it, this is the game that goes further in it's presentation. This is Nintendo's version of a mindfuck, except the mindfuck is only there if you want it to be, if you delve into it - still, a lot of the parallelisms you can draw are certainly not there by accident.
(do I know you? have we met before?)
See, Link is an outsider, a visitor... ultimately an voyeur who occasionally intervenes to 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) and make no mistake, this game is about Link, about coming to terms with himself. This game was built on top of OoT and thus recycled a lot of characters and assets, in most games this would feel lazy, but not so here - this game makes it feel like the bravest thing ever done - because it's not about them, it's about you, for all you know they might not even exist, they certainly don't know you, but you know them.
It's like when you meet someone that reminds of someone else, behaves exactly like that somebody and completely matches your stereotyped expectations, but... They don't know you. That's Majora Mask, it feels like a parallel universe where you don't exist, but that's okay, because the game is actually all about you, and these characters are irrelevant to the point of being mere facets of yourself, facets of what you left behind, and ironically that's why you care.
(sounding familiar?)
It's not by chance that this game overlying system relies on masks, Link is the man of the 25 facets here, for starters he's an adult in a childs body, it's as if he's wearing a mask from the get go.
And the way this gets done through and through is masterful. 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. Link is an avatar for yourself so you feel sympathy and pity - not hatred. But it doesn't stop there, a lot of characters inter-relations 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.
In fact the whole situation of finding people he knows but suddenly know nothing about him is nothing new to Link, it'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. Termina is no different for him, except here he is without the only friend that accompanied him through that (Navi), the only being that understood.
Understand, this is an introspection game, and it's structure is... Zelda Dungeon formula aside, something that relies on short stories, [virtually every character in the game has a back story] short stories that are really well told but above that, either can relate to Link's own situation - after OoT... Or yourself.
It's personal on so many levels, Link is called Link because it's supposed to be a bridge between the player and the game... And this game achieves just that, in a heartfelt way a spoken game could never even dream off. In a lot of senses, it's a game about loss, loss creates emptiness and this is a game whose hero feels empty and drained but it's only as much about loss as it is about coming to terms with it.
(an eulogy to emptiness)
It's a masterpiece, a benchmark, not a lot of games since have been successful in achieving half of the atmosphere that Majora Mask did 15 years ago, I don't think any topped it at it's own game.
What a nice post. Well done!
zeldarocks
Neo Member
Fucking hell, ZeldaInformer took my reddit post, submitted it as a news item on their website, and neglected to give me credit for the information...
There's a reason I stay away from that website... >.>
There's a reason I stay away from that website... >.>
Zeldainformer really are a terrible site. They post anything that pertains to a rumour.
zeldarocks
Neo Member
Here's what I told them verbatim:
"Next time you scour reddit looking for your next scoop, do consider giving the original author credit >.>
If journalistic integrity was a primary concern, I might actually consider coming to Zelda Informer."
"Next time you scour reddit looking for your next scoop, do consider giving the original author credit >.>
If journalistic integrity was a primary concern, I might actually consider coming to Zelda Informer."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cml57TSaisw
Man, this game...
I know I talked about the soundtrack before, but damn Koji Kondo, how! How can you make something so perfect?
The way that the bells pick up in the last minute is... I cant describe it, just thinking give me chills. Thinking about the despair of that person, you actually believe he is about to die, its not a game anymore, you need to save this world.
Man, this game...
I know I talked about the soundtrack before, but damn Koji Kondo, how! How can you make something so perfect?
The way that the bells pick up in the last minute is... I cant describe it, just thinking give me chills. Thinking about the despair of that person, you actually believe he is about to die, its not a game anymore, you need to save this world.
zeldarocks
Neo Member
Well, I wouldn't go THAT far.
They obviously have power, as the river powers the Music Box that eliminates the Gibdos.
As for the perilous journey to Clock Town, we can assume that the Bombchus and the various enemies are eliminated after Skull Kid is defeated.
SirNinja
Member
I'm going to do something similar. Going to play the Song of Double Time and check out how different each day/night sky is from the original.
In particular, the final night in MM3D seems to be a really hellish-looking red this time around, as opposed to the dark-purple original:
The sky during the moon crash is now a fiery red, as opposed to the relatively serene lavender sky in the original:
The new skies are really intense, and should add quite a bit to the already-legendary atmosphere of the last few hours. Can't wait to see what they did with the other days.
The Xtortionist
Member
I can't wait to crank the 3D all the way up and let the time run out. Gonna have nightmares for days.
The sky during the moon crash is now a fiery red, as opposed to the relatively serene lavender sky in the original:
The new skies are really intense, and should add quite a bit to the already-legendary atmosphere of the last few hours. Can't wait to see what they did with the other days.
I really like that for some reason >_<
But the crazy, new red sky looks badass too so I ain't complaining.
I disagree. The original was always as in your face as it could possibly be, but was limited by the hardware.
I mean hell, just look at that goddamn moon in both versions. It wasn't originally going to have a face but they added it because it added to the overall in your face doomsday feel. Majoras Mask 3D is just adding to the original's feel and concept.
Yep.
Everything in the game is designed to make you feel as uneasy and helpless as possible, which is why it is so amazing when you succeed. The moon wouldn't have a face if that wasnt the case! The game is supposed to be insanely deranged.
Everything about the 3DS version we've seen so far is building upon that in a perfect way.
Christopher
Member
People just want a reason to complaign
I hope that they utilize the 3D effect for that in this version.
The Xtortionist
Member
Make that shit as crazy and intimidating as possible. I mean, it's basically the fucking apocalypse, the end of the world, the climax to a defeated Link's story. There are times where subtlety is necessary but this ain't one of 'em.
Zeyphersan
Banned
I'm also curious about this, max
Yes.
This is a timeless masterpiece, in a lot of senses the epitome of Zelda minimalist way of storytelling.
In fact, scratch that, as far as silent protagonists go, this is it, this is the game that goes further in it's presentation and sole handedly justifies the medium with it's delivery. This is Nintendo's version of a mindfuck and a lot of the parallelisms you can draw are certainly not there by accident.
(do I know you? have we met before?)
If you believe a particular fan theory as I do -- and I don't normally like to, but this theory makes a very strong and elegant case -- then this line is the most ultra mega meta mind blowing line in all of video games. It tops "Would you kindly..." IMO.
Explain
Professor Beef
Banned
The Xtortionist
Member
Go on.
Is this the whole "Link is dead" theory
Dice//
Banned
I actually kinda wish they went for the somewhat cel-shade shadowing (like in the earliest promo image and, well, your Ghost Trick avatar), and I wish it had more harsh blacks. But all in all the improved details and overall stronger colours is a great thing to have.
I hope not, never cared for that theory. I get that the game has allegories to grief, but Link is alive.
The theory that I love is this (heavy spoiler warning, of course_:
http://www.zeldauniverse.net/2011/09/13/the-message-of-majoras-mask/
There are definitely parts of the plot that are only hinted at. Dan paints a believable picture given the limited content to work with. I love his view of the history of Termina and the mask, and most of it has become my "head canon" (apologies to those that cringe at that phrase). The Stone Tower stuff in particular is mind blowing.
Kind of like MvC3?I actually kinda wish they went for the somewhat cel-shade shadowing (like in the earliest promo image and, well, your Ghost Trick avatar), and I wish it had more harsh blacks. But all in all the improved details and overall stronger colours is a great thing to have.
I actually kinda wish they went for the somewhat cel-shade shadowing (like in the earliest promo image and, well, your Ghost Trick avatar), and I wish it had more harsh blacks. But all in all the improved details and overall stronger colours is a great thing to have.
Yeah, a cellshaded Zelda with dark overtones would be godly as well. It would be great if we could see that one day as a kind of polar opposite of WW.
Dice//
Banned
Kind of like MvC3?
Yeah but just the blacks and not that 'comic highlighting' as well.
It's a nuance, but for a game as visually charged as this one I guess I wanted a bit more than the same route as Ocarina of time.
I like this.
Yes, but I think it more as the Link is dying theory. Explaining the theory and why that line is mind blowing in more than one or even 2 ways (thus meta) in detail requires spoilers though.