Majora's Mask+Skyward Sword=Path to Success

[A Link In Time]

I am wholeheartedly convinced that if Nintendo dabbled a slither of new ideas with the strong foundations of Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword, a bold, fresh adventure could be created which would appeal to franchise foundations while progressing the series forward nonetheless.

Majora's Mask was a title which wasn't afraid to be itself. The game is often decried as the "black sheep" of the Zelda franchise but has recently made a spectacular comeback. Fans far and wide are clamoring for a 3DS or Wii U remake of the game arguing on the basis of naturalness after Ocarina of Time 3D and a gorgeous HD trailer released around E3 2012, respectively. But technology solely serves as a bell and whistle. It should never be the guiding beacon. While Majora's Mask certainly was an impressive feat utilizing the power of the N64 expansion pack, its narrative bucked the norm, Nintendo's greatest curb ball since Zelda II: The Adventure of Link with no follow-up to this day.

Everyone recognizes Majora's Mask is something else. It's special-in a good way. The save system with the tree day mechanic altered conventional plot and pacing as the people of Termina were doomed from the start with the hero in green reliving the same 72 hours in hopes of igniting a spark of hope. Side quests encompassed an additional layer requiring completion on certain days of the cycles. Dungeon became more painstaking as nerve wracked players sought to find the finish, locate the loot, and move the clock back.

No game since Majora's Mask has been quite as daring. The Oracles used nearly the same engine as Link's Awakening; The Wind Waker presented a bold new visual style but retained the traditional generally lighthearted whit and adventure of pre Majora's Mask installments; The Minish Cap relived the glory days of A Link to the Past; Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks were double and triple dips, respectively, into the cel-shaded realm; Twilight Princess did little to differentiate itself from its clear spiritual predecessor, Ocarina of Time.

Then Skyward Sword came and spun the bottle. It wasn't a radical reinvention but it was good enough, creative enough, revolutionary enough to rekindle enthusiasm among the Zelda community. It truly is the little things which matter most. Skyward Sword smoothed out item edges. Link's arsenal was varied, diverse, and used throughout the course of the entire adventure. It was also more realistic and vulnerable-Link could only hold a certain limited capacity in his Adventure Pouch and with the exception of the Hylian Shield, shields could break. The ambitious were rewarded with item upgrades.

Items weren't the only aspect which took a turn towards the real world. Link presented himself as a believable hero. The stamina meter exhausted his capacities whereas his intimate childhood relationship with Zelda portrayed him in a more human light. The cherry on top-or rather the main course-were the motion controls. Skyward Sword fulfilled the Wii's mandagte of greater player interaction and immersion with what was occurring on screen.

What do Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword have in common? These games weren't content with being just another amid a crowd. Nintendo has always produced stellar Zelda installments but it's the outliers which garner the most attention. While a similar story can't be said of The Adventure of Link, Nintendo's efforts proved fruitful in 2000 and again last year. Do you agree with my stance regarding Nintendo's necessary prerogative to model future products off Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword? Do you only partially agree? If so, where do our ideas overlap and diverge? Or do you completely disagree? What other horizons should The Legend of Zelda blaze in the future?

 

[JuicieJ]

I actually think that there's more to it than just Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword to make the foundation for the ideal Zelda game. What we really need is the amount of exploration seen in A Link to the Past -- open-world with logical restraints -- the balance in appeal seen in Ocarina of Time, the depth of sidequests seen in Majora's Mask, the ingenuity of an overworld seen in The Minish Cap, and the combat & puzzle-solving seen in Skyward Sword. (I have to give a shout-out to MM's puzzle-solving, as well.) New ideas and more detail in the stories should be involved as well, no doubt, but these are the basic things needed to set Zelda up for reaching its maximum potential. At least in my opinion.

 

[DarkestLink]

Define success. I would define it by sales because this makes the most customers happy and it makes the most money. Going by this, it would seem more prudent to go the Twilight Princess route since the Ocarina of Time route is inaccessible and OoT itself has a similar formula to TP (it's a prototype actually). Majora's Mask focused on the new, the original. Wind Waker did this too. Both of these games weren't great sellers. Twilight Princess focused on refining and perfecting what existed. It ended up selling over twice as much as Majora's Mask.

Don't get me wrong, I like Majora's Mask. It's among my top five. But it wasn't successful by Zelda standards. It sold less than half of its predecessor. Heck, even Link's Crossbow training sold more than it.

Skyward Sword also has pretty low sales at the moment, and they haven't been growing much. It's a year old and while it's my favorite game, it's sold half of what its predecessor did. Again, I love this game, it's tied for my favorite, but it just didn't succeed that well for a Zelda title.

 

[JuicieJ]

Skyward Sword also has pretty low sales at the moment

It has well over 3 million copies sold, something even Twilight Princess didn't achieve in its first year. I doubt Skyward Sword will reach the sales that Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess have, but saying it hasn't sold well is just not true.

 

[Ventus]

I somewhat disagree with you, ALIT my good man. SS has some positives, but really to me Skyward was an absolute trainwreck. To keep a long story short, the game's combat was monotonous [as is all Zelda, really], the story was all over the place, from being really good to not *being* at all. Barring my own experience with the game, SS also managed to split the fanbase even more than any previous installment in the series. The general fanbase usually had one consensus on every game. LoZ was great, AoL was meh, ALttP was great[...] PH and ST were meh.Then we come upon SS, and the fanbase is almost literally half and half. This side loves SS for whatever reason, and the opposite hates SS for whatever reason. It's clear to me that, for SS to divided a previously united fanbase, something was executed almost completed wrong. I can't pinpoint what but I'd venture a quick guess: Skyward tried to stay close to home while also reaching out too far to outside sources. Doesn't make sense in text, but you have to imagine the situation.

I'd rather Nintendo not divulge in the SS route ever again. Instead, take the mysteriousness of Majora's Mask, blend it with some cliches of Ocarina of Time, and give the daring ambition of changing things drastically featured in Adventure of Link. I think that's the path to success for Zelda, if there IS one.

Lots of stuff about routes

I think you have a little bit of confusion here in your talk of routes, DL. Ocarina sold well not due to its formula, but because it was released closer to the launch of the console, when the buzz was still around. There are other factors to include here as well, but I wouldn't say the ingame content had to do with much of anything at all.

TP is a similar story, and its sales are actually boosted because there were two versions released almost simultaneously; one was released at the launch of the system (Wii) and the other was released at the death of the system (GC). The impetus for even buying TP came primarily from its E3 2004 reveal trailer, which I'll post a link to below. The graphics were stunning, the setup was grand, and above all TP was renewing hope. It's only natural, due partly to hype, that TP would sell amazingly.

TWW, despite being available closer to the GC's launch, disappointed fans with its art style. I wasn't disappointed; I was merely like eight years old or so when I first played the game. However, I know tons of people were, booing the game just because of that goofy look.

Despite SS being released at the death of the console, it sold decently in its initial phase because it's a Legend of Zelda title. I can't say much for ongoing sales as I didn't and do not care to look them up, but I surmise sales are stunted because...the system that is its host is going out of style. We all noted SS was the Wii's swan song, and that's appropriate as the U is coming out in T minus a couple hours.

 

[DarkestLink]

I think you have a little bit of confusion here in your talk of routes, DL. Ocarina sold well not due to its formula, but because it was released closer to the launch of the console, when the buzz was still around. There are other factors to include here as well, but I wouldn't say the ingame content had to do with much of anything at all.

I don't see how this is an advantage....less people own the console early on. Many wait for more games to come out and for the price to drop. The Wii U is going to have much more owners in a year or two than it does now.

TP is a similar story, and its sales are actually boosted because there were two versions released almost simultaneously; one was released at the launch of the system (Wii) and the other was released at the death of the system (GC).

The Wii version alone still had more sales than SS and MM.

The impetus for even buying TP came primarily from its E3 2004 reveal trailer, which I'll post a link to below.

That only really applied to Zelda fans who were bound to buy any Zelda they see. In the end, Skyward Sword actually had an advantage over the non-fans which make a majority. It had commercials when TP had none and it came at the end of the Wii's life when far more people owned it than they did when TP came out.

The graphics were stunning, the setup was grand, and above all TP was renewing hope. It's only natural, due partly to hype, that TP would sell amazingly.

I'll admit, graphics did play a big role in game sales.

TWW, despite being available closer to the GC's launch, disappointed fans with its art style. I wasn't disappointed; I was merely like eight years old or so when I first played the game. However, I know tons of people were, booing the game just because of that goofy look.

Yeah, graphics lose it a couple million...but being around at the start of the GC's life was also a disadvantage, because fewer people owned it.

Despite SS being released at the death of the console, it sold decently in its initial phase because it's a Legend of Zelda title. I can't say much for ongoing sales as I didn't and do not care to look them up, but I surmise sales are stunted because...the system that is its host is going out of style. We all noted SS was the Wii's swan song, and that's appropriate as the U is coming out in T minus a couple hours.

Again, I found this to be a great advantage on Skyward Sword's part. More people with Wiis=More Sales. The main problem was graphics and casuals finding it too hard (I'm not kidding). But, again, OoT and TP are the only 3D Zeldas with their formulas and they both sold the best. I highly doubt it's a coincidence.

 

[New Link]

A game would be great with

SS controls

MM sidequests

WW graphics

TP story

and

OOT dungeons would be the BEST zelda game!

 

[The Wanderer]

I guess I mostly agree with you, A Link in Time. Where I draw the line is probably at the almost devil may care approach both games took. Both were huge departures from the series norm, and both were, to one degree or another, controversial. I don't mean "throwing the video game market into an uproar," but fans were often divided on issues within each game. Of course, it then stands to reason that most console Zelda games after Ocarina of Time were met with initial controversy before warming up to the audience, but the controversy itself can't be ignored.

To continue my point, Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword both took huge risks with Zelda, and not all of them paid off. Some game franchises are going stale because of a lack of experimentation and stepping outside the box (Pokemon and, for awhile, Call of Duty being some notable examples). Zelda is the opposite: most of its games are fundamentally different from one another, bearing mostly items, dungeons, and basic controls as the same. The more it continues to reach out and experiment without honing the new game mechanics it introduces or remembering the original goals of the series, the more polarity it will cause.

I guess my point is that Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword took numerous liberties with the Zelda formula and created something new and somewhat controversial. Combining the two would likely just mean deeper controversy. The real way to iron out the ideal Zelda game is to remember what's supposed to make the series tick (exploration) and then build off of it, rather than introducing new concepts in addition to exploration instead of in support of it.

You know what? I doubt I'm even making a whole lot of sense. I think I'm more writing to myself than anything. So in parting, the "path to success" combines a lot of new and old, with the old serving as the base and the new serving to supplement the old. "Daring" is not always enough to pull a job off successfully; Metroid: Other M was daring, but it sparked a lot of controversy. It's more like we need the ideals of older games like A Link to the Past and the first Zelda mixed with the bold concepts of Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword....

Alright. That's it. I'm out. I'm starting to confuse myself. This would require a series of articles on each aspect to fully flesh out, and meaty as my posts normally are, I can't post it all here. Interesting topic.

 

[caleb11roy]

Define success. I would define it by sales because this makes the most customers happy and it makes the most money. Going by this, it would seem more prudent to go the Twilight Princess route since the Ocarina of Time route is inaccessible and OoT itself has a similar formula to TP (it's a prototype actually). Majora's Mask focused on the new, the original. Wind Waker did this too. Both of these games weren't great sellers. Twilight Princess focused on refining and perfecting what existed. It ended up selling over twice as much as Majora's Mask.

Don't get me wrong, I like Majora's Mask. It's among my top five. But it wasn't successful by Zelda standards. It sold less than half of its predecessor. Heck, even Link's Crossbow training sold more than it.

Skyward Sword also has pretty low sales at the moment, and they haven't been growing much. It's a year old and while it's my favorite game, it's sold half of what its predecessor did. Again, I love this game, it's tied for my favorite, but it just didn't succeed that well for a Zelda title.

The only reason MM didn't excel in sales is due to it's new save system and 3-day game play. It was too much for people to grasp. Ahead of it's time perhaps! But take this into consideration: Nintendo took the same engine used to make OoT and recycled everything to create a new and incredibly engaging story. With a new world, temples, and puzzles; MM had the most fun side quests and main quests of any Zelda game. I would consider it the best in the series merely for the fact that it broke the norm! Twilight Princess only sold more copies cause it was the first Zelda Game on a new nintendo System... not to mention it was pushed back nearly 2 years before being released finally giving people like me more than enough time to save the money!

 

[JuicieJ]

the game's combat was monotonous

Diverse, thought-provoking combat is monotonous? I'll have to keep that in mind the next time I'm playing a Metal Gear Solid game. (I know MGS has way more options than Zelda. I'm just making a point.)

SS also managed to split the fanbase even more than any previous installment in the series. The general fanbase usually had one consensus on every game. LoZ was great, AoL was meh, ALttP was great[...] PH and ST were meh.Then we come upon SS, and the fanbase is almost literally half and half. This side loves SS for whatever reason, and the opposite hates SS for whatever reason. It's clear to me that, for SS to divided a previously united fanbase, something was executed almost completed wrong.

Twilight Princess split the fanbase 50/50. Skyward Sword was more like a 70/30 deal, the winning side easily fans liking the game.

 

[Sheikrazy]

I guess this is just a preference of your tastes to mine, but....

To me, Skyward Sword was weak and it's battle style not well contrived. The story didn't grab me and the only reason I got through it was because I wanted to see how "the story began" which it really didn't explain. (I mean did some people not think that Demise being like, ' "Oh and by the way, if you kill me, there will be a never-ending chain of bad guys just like me." Link : "......?" Demise (scratching head) - "Ya, you're right. That is pretty much a cop-out explanation for the storyline so many people's childhoods were waiting for....Oh well, FIGHT MEEE!!!!" ' a letdown? Just me? Ok lol, moving on...

I can't really speak to Majora's Mask because I never even make it to the first temple in that game. The overworld is the worst in a Zelda game to me (small and cramped is just annoying imo). And I don't mean to hate on anyone else's opinion but in mine it's like people act like Majora's Mask didn't straight take all the models from OoT and just twist everything around storyline-wise just to make a sidequest oriented videogame. That just annoys me. And yes, I understand it's supposed to be some parallel universe or something or other, but I found the game to be just trying to push more money out of OoT's success. But to each his own. Like I said, everyone is entitled.

I still plan on playing Majora's Mask, but not until I have a lot of down-time.

I actually find Zelda's ever-evolving look and feel to be the most intriguing part of upcoming titles and wouldn't want to try to model any previous games after the other (unless the story-line deems it necessary.) Be fresh Zelda. It's what makes you great.

 

[JuicieJ]

"Oh and by the way, if you kill me, there will be a never-ending chain of bad guys just like me." Link : "......?" Demise (scratching head) - "Ya, you're right. That is pretty much a cop-out explanation for the storyline so many people's childhoods were waiting for....Oh well, FIGHT MEEE!!!!" ' a letdown? Just me? Ok lol, moving on...

Um... how is it a cop-out if there was never a need for an explanation in the first place? That's kind of a complete and absolute contradiction.

 

[Spirit]

I'll admit in a series that refuses to change what isn't broken, that Majora's Mask was definitely something special and different and still is, in that its an exercise in time management. Skyward Sword however felt to me like a study in how to bore the hell out of me the same way three times and a lecture in what the term reference truly means.... I didn't feel the differences in the real time item switching either since the enemies were lax and didn't go out of their way to bother you, nor did you need to quickly access a weapon during most fights in order to win the fight, not even in boss battles did we have to constantly switch items enough for the real time switching to feel any different from normal menu item switching. The Dash meter was something that should have been in Zelda years ago but even then it was used too much in SS, too many of Link's movements were dictated by the meter and in the end i barely used it and played SS as if it wasn't there. Motion control never bugged me but i still prefer button and analogue control. The plot and level design of SS was its biggest flaw, the provinces were nicely put together but not everything was open and not everything was connected resulting in irritating segments of having to return to the sky constantly. The re-use of 4 bosses (some of which you fight 3 times each) was unnecessary and felt like filler, the narrative itself also felt as if the game was trying hard to make the adventure last... i can't really find many elements in SS narrative or gameplay-wise that i would like to see in future Zelda adventures used as a mode of success.

 

[JuicieJ]

Not to be a necromancer, but I've been thinking about Zelda's combat lately, and I got to thinking about how Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword have one major thing in common in this category: diversity. Their combat is diverse for different reasons, though. Majora's Mask has a lot of enemy variety, while Skyward Sword's has a lot of enemy depth. This kind of hearkens back to Axle's editorial on variety vs. depth and how he said neither one is really objectively better, and I have to agree with that. Majora's Mask's combat never gets stale due to lots of different enemies throughout the game. Skyward Sword's combat never gets stale due to a substantially larger amount of various ways to defeat most enemies, their improved AI, and multiple (as well as stronger) variations of some enemies. Going along with this thread, I think it would be ideal to combine these two styles to have even more diverse combat. Since neither one is really objectively better, combining the two would be a virtually effortless task on Nintendo's part, as they nailed the two different styles in their respective games. I really hope to see this in Zelda 3DS and Wii U. Especially Wii U. Being the HD debut of Zelda, it needs to step the series' game up in every way possible.

Spoiler

 

[Beauts]

I agree mostly, but I also think other games such as OoT and ALttP should have a shout-out here for the fact that they had the most well-rounded narratives. If you combined this with the individuality in MM and the overworld and gameplay style of SS (and even, dare I say it, TP's graphics, which no matter what you think of the game itself, were amazing) you could really go somewhere.