I 100% agree with you Zemen. There's no way that, from what we've seen, we can possibly come to the conclusion that ST will be darker than MM.
First and foremost, the graphic style. This game is once again featuring Toon Link, along with the bright and happy style that accompanied both Toon Link games before it. There is NO way that this style could hope to overcome the OoT/MM style in terms of darkness. While the MM graphics don't exactly look beautiful these days, I'd like for someone to find something more intimidating and scary than the Termina moon in one of the Toon Link games. It's not going to happen, sorry.
Next, MM's plot was completely centered on one thing: Massive amounts of DEATH. If you failed, everything would die. End of story. On top of that, you have that moon galring down on you the whole time reminding you, and the clock is always ticking to remind you even more. What does ST have so far? Zelda just turns into a ghost, without any seemingly real "death scene". Once again, nowhere close to MM.
This is a cel-shaded game people. The whole point of it is to make sure that all audiences like it. It's not like TP where it tries to appeal to the older more mature crowd. A cel-shaded game will never be darker than the others because that's not thier purpose.
I don't know. There is something to be said for the concept of dissonance.
You know what I mean, dissonance - it's how in a movie or series, you have dark, nasty things going on, but it's set to a really happy, upbeat song, or everything is brightly colored and seemingly innocent. It's like watching a Stephen King miniseries where this beloved children's nursery rhyme keeps popping up, or like watching an episode of "Elfen Lied" (bloody, dark anime) until you get to the happy J-pop love song that's the ending credits theme.
Cute can make something that much darker, that much more wrong.
While I love Twilight Princess to death, one of the reasons why I consider Majora's Mask to be a darker game is the fact that, unlike TP, it wasn't "shaded in grit," but but had a lot of bright colors and comedic characters. With the end of the world looming, the "bright" made everything that much more creepy.
So, we'll see. I doubt Spirit Tracks will be darker than MM. I think, for a Zelda game to retain a wide audience, it's going to be *hard* if not impossible to make one that's darker than MM, but, who knows? I wouldn't discount it based purely on visual style - for a "cute" visual style might serve to underline something darker or be a thin veneer of "bright" that just makes everything that much more unsettling.