“You’ve Met with a Terrible Fate”: The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask

5 Hours Remain. Final Day.

I’m standing in Anju’s room, waiting for her to be reunited with her estranged lover. She sits on the bed - “I have decided to wait for him. I’ve made my promise… I’m fine with this. I believe him”. Her wedding dress hangs on a dummy opposite her.

4 Hours Remain.

For the past three days, I’ve helped Anju and her future mother-in-law track down the missing Kafei. Late night rendezvous, love letters, momentos and an assault on a thieves hideout have all culminated here.

3 Hours Remain.

The ground shakes beneath my feet. The personified moon, with its leering eyes and pained expression, will crash down upon us once the final day is over. Each hour of the game's time represents a minute of real time. The in-game timer is a doomsday clock, slowly ticking towards destruction.

2 Hours Remain.

I start to get anxious. Where is Kafei? He told me he’d be here. Did I complete all of the prerequisite steps? Was there more I could have done?

1 Hour and 30 Minutes Remain.

I hear footsteps. The door opens and the cursed Kafei appears, a grown man in the body of the child. Kafei reiterates his promise to Anju - that on the day of the carnival they will exchange the masks of sun and moon, a ceremony to symbolise their love. They embrace. “They’re lovers, but they look just like a mother and child” my fairy companion says - in Majora’s Mask, very few things are fully resolved. Everything’s askew, and by taking its cues from folklore rather than fairy tales, you’re always left mildly troubled by the conclusions.

For bearing witness to their oath I am rewarded with the Couples Mask, “... filled with their love”. With impending doom above our heads, they tell me to seek refuge. “We shall greet the morning… together” they tell me. I play the Song of Time on my ocarina and temporally slip backwards…

Dawn of the First Day. 72 Hours Remain.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask was released in the year 2000 as a rare direct sequel, in the series, to what many still consider the Citizen Kane of gaming - Ocarina of Time. As a child with a Playstation most of my memories of Ocarina were primarily second-hand, watching friends traverse the land of Hyrule and conquer dungeons on their Nintendo 64s. Prior to Majora’s release playground whispers spoke of the new Zelda game requiring you to purchase time, making the ephemeral empirical. I was instantly sold, but didn’t truly understand what awaited me.

The rumours proved not to be quite as interesting, but certainly novel in the context of such a highly anticipated release. As in every Zelda game you control Link, thus named to be the “link” between the player and the world of the game. Your primary goal is to return the titular mask to a mysterious mask seller. However the mask’s thief, Skull Kid, is using its dark power to cause the moon to slowly fall upon Clocktown, the central hub of the land of Termina - you are given 72 in-game hours to prevent this.

The dualities of light and dark are, as with much of popular culture, a consistent theme that runs throughout the Zelda series; with Majora’s Mask, co-creators Eiji Aonuma and Yoshiaki Koizumi plunged the series further into the black. From the opening cutscene onwards, and throughout most of the game, the atmosphere is one of oppression and impending destruction. The moon is visible as long as you’re outside and the in-game clock, a feature in Ocarina but one not nearly as crucial, is positioned bottom centre of the screen - you’re constantly reminded that time is your biggest enemy.

One of the ways this is alleviated is that by playing your magical ocarina, you are able to return to the start of the 72 minutes allotted to you. There are also songs which slow the speed of time and another which lets you advance forward to the next evening or morning. Returning to dawn of the first day comes with a penalty though; any consumables, money arrows, bombs will be lost along the way. Certain actions also become undone, and may require you to have to complete them again in order to regain your previous position. Certain important items, however, do remain such as your bow, containers, songs and - perhaps most importantly - masks. These allow you to circumvent certain obstacles and make up for lost time.

Aside from time, the biggest game mechanic which Majora’s Mask built upon from its predecessor is masks. In Ocarina, all the masks except for one were purely cosmetic - in Majora’s they’re essential. Some enhance the playing experience, such as allowing you to run faster, others are essential to complete certain side-quests. But the most crucial transform Link into 3 of the world’s other races, each with their own unique abilities, musical instruments and movesets. The animations for these transformations are also as horrifying as much of the game itself.

Masks can represent different things. In the context of Majora’s Mask, it is a tradition for the people of Termina to wear masks to honour their Gods during the Carnival of Time, the period of which the game takes place. Masks can be functional, as most are in the game: a fact the vast majority have become acutely aware over the past several months. Symbolically masks represent the repression of emotion, putting on a “brave face”. Song of Healing, one of 10 songs you learn in the game, allows you to heal troubled souls, often leaving their spirit encased in the form of a mask. Before the advent of photography, death masks were often made to capture a dead person's likeness, as a memento or for use later for portraits. And death is a pervasive theme throughout Majora’s Mask.

Aside from evocative imagery, the soundtrack is key to giving Majora’s its sense of dread, urgency and finality. Some of the tracks are reused from Ocarina, a symptom of the game's rapid development time (the player’s weren’t the only ones against the clock). The fresh compositions by Koji Kondo, the sole composer on Ocarina, and Toru Minegishi are truly what shapes the twisted world of Termina. Some themes change with each passing day, such as in Clocktown: the tempo increases and by the 3rd day there’s dull droning strings threatening to drown out the melody. 

Each of the lands four main locations has its own unique take on the same strange refrain, evoking the differing landscapes of swamp, mountain, ocean and canyon. 

Meanwhile the most emotionally effective tracks, such as the fleshed out version of the aforementioned Song of Healing and Last End which plays when you only have 6 real minutes remaining, evoke the melodrama of Angelo Badalamenti’s synth driven scores.

Although Majora’s Mask follows the general Zelda formula of dungeon crawling and mcguffin hunting, an emphasis is put on the various sidequests you acquire. Some of these are required in order to complete the game, some are optional but reward you with items which will aid you going forward. Most of these are recorded in a notebook you carry and help keep track of special events or scheduled meetings. The best way to complete these quests is to spend time with the people you’re helping by following them, talking to them or in some cases learning about them from other people. This helps create the sense that Termina is alive - the relatively ensemble cast all have their own routines and interactions with others which gives the game a lot of charm. You often get a similar feeling to Bill Murry’s character in Groundhog Day - I know many characters intimately from the uncountable amount of times I’ve had to reset the clock.

Which brings us back to the lovers, Kafei & Anju. It is possible to prevent the sky from falling after they’ve been reunited, but what of the others in timelines you’ve abandoned? Is saving their lives enough or, given you had the power to do so, should you have done more? Who takes precedence? Were all these people you helped merely a means to an end in order to save the world? Even though the ending assures us it's the Dawn of a New Day, part of me still feels trapped in those previous 72 hours...