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Interesting thoughts about Majoras mask.

Skelterz

Member
I think the concept of time and stress are directly linked to the feelings that Aonuma felt while making the game it was his first shot at a mainline Zelda and he had a little over a year, maybe not purposefully but most certainly subconsciously his anxiety’s, pressures and stress from undertaking such a big task with huge time constraints to be near or better than ocarina of time seeped into the games overall vibe.

It even got me thinking deeply about side quests, And how when you go back in time things you’d achieved people you’d helped and situations you’d been in were all forgotten.

Again maybe it’s a bit of a stretch but it could be that during development of this game certain aspects Aonuma wanted to Include just weren't possible due to time Constraints. And maybe the hopelessness we feel in game knowing we’d completed certain side quests but forced to play the song of time directly mirrored the same frustrations of the Dev team not being able to feesibly channel there whole creative outlet due to the enormous task and time constraints.

The game is marvellous but I’ve never really seen anybody tie the real world constraints of time together with the obvious mechanics in play.

Thanks for reading would love to know people thoughts.
 
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jaysius

Banned
The time mechanic is fucking awful period, it's a bad way to pad out content in a game. There's no excuse for it. If you played it without the time, I'm sure it'd be a pretty bland bad game.
 

Skelterz

Member
The time mechanic is fucking awful period, it's a bad way to pad out content in a game. There's no excuse for it. If you played it without the time, I'm sure it'd be a pretty bland bad game.

When I first played it when I was younger I didn’t like the time mechanic but as I grew older I came to appreciate it, I find it’s actually quite a creative way to handle the limits of the time they were given.
 
When I first played it when I was younger I didn’t like the time mechanic but as I grew older I came to appreciate it, I find it’s actually quite a creative way to handle the limits of the time they were given.
It was actually lifted from the game that Koizumi was prototyping at the time, which was a 7 day long detective story.
I think the concept of time and stress are directly linked to the feelings that Aonuma felt while making the game it was his first shot at a mainline Zelda and he had a little over a year, maybe not purposefully but most certainly subconsciously his anxiety’s, pressures and stress from undertaking such a big task with huge time constraints to be near or better than ocarina of time seeped into the games overall vibe.
Majora Mask story on a different plane to Aonuma as he wouldn't understand the layers, irony and parallels inside of it if they hit him while attached to a bullet train.

Instead it's the brainchild of Yoshiaki Koizumi, both the concept and basically the development of the idea, was his. And it's probably part of why Aonuma didn't rest until he bared him out of the Zelda franchise. Jealousy is fucked.

The MM team were certainly privy to it and certainly contributed to it, but Aonuma? not really, apart from perhaps being a driving force in condensing the events into 3 days, he was certainly in the room when that decision was taken.


It's easy to understand it from the Majora Mask 3DS interviews (and all the changes he did), Aonuma understands jack shit about his supposed "masterpiece". Part of it is amnesia by trauma, part of it is because what made it great wasn't his involvement. He was a director, but just a cog in the machine. Wind Waker has a different balance (but without the other cogs being at work, would be shit as well).
 
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Again maybe it’s a bit of a stretch but it could be that during development of this game certain aspects Aonuma wanted to Include just weren't possible due to time Constraints. And maybe the hopelessness we feel in game knowing we’d completed certain side quests but forced to play the song of time directly mirrored the same frustrations of the Dev team not being able to feesibly channel there whole creative outlet due to the enormous task and time constraints.
Riiiiiiight...... that solved that mystery. /s
 

Skelterz

Member
It was actually lifted from the game that Koizumi was prototyping at the time, which was a 7 day long detective story.

Majora Mask story on a different plane to Aonuma as he wouldn't understand the layers, irony and parallels inside of it if they hit him while attached to a bullet train.

Instead it's the brainchild of Yoshiaki Koizumi, both the concept and basically the development of the idea, was his. And it's probably part of why Aonuma didn't rest until he bared him out of the Zelda franchise. Jealousy is fucked.

The MM team were certainly privy to it and certainly contributed to it, but Aonuma? not really, apart from perhaps being a driving force in condensing the events into 3 days, he was certainly in the room when that decision was taken.


It's easy to understand it from the Majora Mask 3DS interviews (and all the changes he did), Aonuma understands jack shit about his supposed "masterpiece". Part of it is amnesia by trauma, part of it is because what made it great wasn't his involvement. He was a director, but just a cog in the machine. Wind Waker has a different balance (but without the other cogs being at work, would be shit as well).

It’s funny you mentioned that I sort of generalised the whole thing by using Aonuma because he was the principal director but I’ve read a lot of what makes the game special is down to Koizumi.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
Majora’s Mask has one of the most user-friendly implementations of time travel in a game, ever. You can’t miss anything because of the time constraints. At worst you’ll have to redo a quest from scratch, but 100% of the game’s content can be achieved without any actual limitations. Compare this to any game featuring an actual time limit that means you’ll inevitably miss stuff in any given playthrough, forcing you to replay everything literally from scratch to see what you missed. MM saves every major item when you reset the clock, and you can even put in safekeeping more rupees than you’ll ever need in the game. I’ll never understand the people who are so put off by the game’s mechanics that they gave it up.
 

MAtgS

Member
Any Zelda game that won't let me save anytime I want is automatically disqualified from being the best one. It became so habit forming to save every time I back out of the inventory menu in OoT that it was incredibly off-putting to lose that in MM.
 
It was actually lifted from the game that Koizumi was prototyping at the time, which was a 7 day long detective story.

Majora Mask story on a different plane to Aonuma as he wouldn't understand the layers, irony and parallels inside of it if they hit him while attached to a bullet train.

Instead it's the brainchild of Yoshiaki Koizumi, both the concept and basically the development of the idea, was his. And it's probably part of why Aonuma didn't rest until he bared him out of the Zelda franchise. Jealousy is fucked.

The MM team were certainly privy to it and certainly contributed to it, but Aonuma? not really, apart from perhaps being a driving force in condensing the events into 3 days, he was certainly in the room when that decision was taken.


It's easy to understand it from the Majora Mask 3DS interviews (and all the changes he did), Aonuma understands jack shit about his supposed "masterpiece". Part of it is amnesia by trauma, part of it is because what made it great wasn't his involvement. He was a director, but just a cog in the machine. Wind Waker has a different balance (but without the other cogs being at work, would be shit as well).
Truth truth.

Anybody who really appreciates Majora's mask knows that hack wasn't responsible.

I am still pissed off that Koizumi wasn't appointed as the director of all future Zelda. Just think of the classics that could have been.

Btw, I also give Koizumi credit for Twilight princess.
 
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What do you mean by that? a director is one of the most important jobs, why do you think he was sidelined as a director?
Ocarina of Time had 5 directors but in reality they felt Miyamoto was the director and they were under him because he was in their face a lot more, most decisions had to be approved by him or had a final say by him so the final game is a lot more Miyamoto than Majora Mask is. Now, Majora Mask had 6 directors with more directorial scope than they had in OoT.

Miyamoto: Majora Mask had six directors. If you think about other projects, there are a lot more directors, but there are six of them who were involved in the core of the game.
The director of the system is Aonuma, the sub-events and players are Koizumi, the script is Takano, the dungeon is Usui and the system administration is Yamada.

Then Kawagoe was the director of the demo.

Aonuma: we call this the multi-structure director system (laughs).

Source: https://www.1101.com/nintendo/nin11/nin11_1.htm

Basically, Aonuma was chosen by Miyamoto to helm the Zelda franchise, Aonuma was the Dungeon Director in Ocarina of Time. Koizumi was by now the miracle worker in the Zelda franchise, having started with the Link to the Past game manual (and title screen short story of the triforce and goddesses) and quickly gained ground writing the full plot for Link's Awakening and making it his bitch. With Ocarina of Time he both kept injecting sub-story into the game under Miyamoto's nose (who didn't appreciate it, but consider that the Link to the Past lore that served as the base for OoT was already his) and came up with the z-targeting system, Navi and how the enemies behaved in the battle system (like staying still while one enemy attacks in order for the player not get pummelled).

Aonuma who was older in the franchise having contributed actively in Link to the Past, was set-in in acting as a Miyamoto right hand that was trained in anticipating what would please him and not so secretly longing for his compliments was given the task, perhaps because he started before Koizumi or because Miyamoto disagreed with what he felt were story-heavy inclinations of Koizumi.

Given the task of developing a new Zelda game in 1 year, Aonuma chickened out (understandably) because he had no idea what to do, so he had to ask for his rival help and make concessions.

Aonuma needed what he called “some clever idea” to bridge the distance between fan expectations and the team’s limited resources.

Overwhelmed, Aonuma reached out to one of his fellow Ocarina directors. Yoshiaki Koizumi was already in the early stages of developing an exciting new board game for Nintendo about cops trying to catch robbers in a limited amount of time, “one where,” as Aonuma put it, “you would play in a compact game world over and over again.” Aonuma pitched the new Zelda game to him anyway.

According to Aonuma, Koizumi replied that he’d work on the new Zelda game “only if you let me do whatever I want to do.” Aonuma agreed.

Immediately, Koizumi had ideas for how his cops-and-robbers game might solve Aonuma’s problem of how to make a satisfying game in just one year. “I wanted to make it so that you technically had to catch the criminal within a week, but, in reality, you could finish the game in an hour,” Koizumi explained in an interview “I figured I’d just throw what I already had into Majora’s Mask.”

Aonuma liked Koizumi’s idea. “If you played in the same places and enjoyed the same events over and over,” Aonuma said, “we thought you might be able to create an entertaining game by giving it depth rather than breadth.”

Source: https://www.1101.com/nintendo/nin11/nin11_1.htm

Aonuma had no choice. Koizumi also came up with the moon:

Unlike Shigeru Miyamoto who draws inspiration from real life, Koizumi told us that dreams have provided him with ideas for games.

Koizumi: "Occasionally I also take images from dreams. Perhaps I am a little bit different from Mr Miyamoto in that sense.

Koizumi: "So if I could just give an example of one of those idle daydreams that turns into an idea for a game, I would look up at the moon and think about what would happen if the moon started to fall towards Earth. From that idea we moved onto the world in Majora's Mask which is threatened by being destroyed by the moon."

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/2014101...a-majoras-mask-came-to-me-in-a-dream-koizumi/

He is listed as the main Director (albeit in reality alongside Koizumi as the final game has two main directors listed), but Koizumi had more influence in every part of the game than he did. He had already designed the game system for OoT that was serving as the base for the game, then he did story, events, world building, most of the game programming was made to accommodate Koizumi's ideas and events, not Aonuma's. Aonuma was in fact basically working for him and needed him all steps of the way. Which is why Majora Mask development is a haze for him and he doesn't understand the final product and just what makes it special.

He's also a jealous motherfucker, who disregards stuff that aren't his. Take the Spaceworld 2000 Zelda showing as an example:

link_sw2000.png


Aonuma: I saw that movie and I thought, ‘No, this isn’t Zelda. This isn’t Zelda at all.’ I felt like this wasn’t what I imagined Zelda to be. It wasn’t the Zelda I wanted to make. That video clip didn’t actually contain any big surprises. There wasn’t any kind of revelation going on. It was more like a continuation of the previous version. … I wasn’t interested in it at all.”

Sure, he then did Wind Waker, which was awesome and we should be glad he didn't enjoy to see Ocarina of Time updated with 128-bit graphics... But afterwards he still did Twilight Princess didn't he?

Who did the Spaceworld demo, you ask?

Fourteen seconds of the video depicts Link in a sword fight with Ganondorf. Both of the characters' models were based off their designs in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but rendered with the graphics capabilities of the GameCube. It was directed by Yoshiaki Koizumi, who also designed the character models for Link and Ganondorf that are used in the demo.

Jealousy is fucked. Aonuma didn't rest until he kicked Koizumi out of all things Zelda (last Zelda Koizumi contributed to was Wind Waker), because if he relied on him as he did when he needed him, Koizumi would soon take his place.

Then there's this:
Koizumi: Aonuma-san, want to switch with me on Super Mario Bros. sometime?
Aonuma: Hey, that sounds good... Or maybe not!
Koizumi: I’ll make the next Legend of Zelda game. Then you can enjoy playing it.
Aonuma: No way. (firmly)
Everyone: (laughs)
Source: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-As...ears-Later/8-Thirteen-Years-Later-232010.html

I'm 100% sure neither were joking.

Btw, I also give Koizumi credit for Twilight princess.
Koizumi wasn't involved in Twilight Princess which is why the world building and lore is absolute shit. Aonuma didn't do anything about castle town npc's until a year before the game launched, complete afterthought.

It's a good thing that there are new guys serving as directors, because Aonuma was never a good game designer. Good Dungeon Designer? For some themes sure, but even there, not the best.
 
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Saber

Gold Member
I remember that most of times inspirations for games comes from daily routines or random events that happens through life. I think I remember something about Myazaki concept of coop entering and dissapearing out of sudden being based on his own experience, when nice people help him with his car only to dissapear a few momments later. Same with the director of Silent Hill 2 scarpping everything and using real life objects and places to give a real sensation of suspense and abandon.

I think this is one things that makes Majoras Mask so good and probably better than OoT. It takes time seriously, it's not about giving you freedom to do what you want. They want you to manage your time and think on your feet. I remember when playing as a kid I love to plan quests in sequence, dungeons to explore and then planning again the next time I use the Song of Time. It's the type of experience OoT very much lacks, not to mention the sense of direction.
 
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L lostinblue you are correct, my memory is failing me. I forgot he was working on Galaxy at the time.

Although I like twilight princess for its level design, it is sorely lacking in character and world richness compared to Majora.
He was bared from interfering with the Zelda projects at that point.

After "giving" Zelda to Aonuma in 1999, Miyamoto delegated Super Mario to Koizumi after Spaceworld 2000 (who usually took place in september) as Koizumi did the demo for Mario 128 (as well as the Zelda Spaceworld 2000 demo)

Mario sunshine similarly to Majora Mask took 1 year and a half to make (so 18 months) but needed technology to be built from the ground up, this technology benefitted Wind Waker which is why you can import mario sunshine data into Wind Waker and Twilight Princess easily, or Mario Galaxy data into Wind Waker. They share the Super Mario Sunshine engine as that engine was developed with the next Zelda in mind as well.

Anyway, Koizumi still contributed to Wind Waker and that's obvious as he had some degree of influence, but then he was moved to Tokyo with the Mario Team after Mario Sunshine was done to set up Tokyo EAD (who did Jungle Beat then Mario Galaxy), so he couldn't contribute to Zelda Team efforts unless they recruited him. They didn't not even as a consultor, his influence waned.

Koizumi would have contributed to every Zelda title in some capacity, if that bridge was set up, even if he was developing games like Mario Galaxy alongside.

I'm sure the original plan for Twilight Princess was still vastly the one Koizumi had in 2000 for the end of his "hero of time trilogy", because people he worked with were still there and Aonuma was out of ideas as usual. But the game turned out differently once Aonuma made the game his own and decided he didn't want it to be a direct sequel "because then players had to understand the story" and to accomodate Midna, Link starting from nothing and the Wolf mechanics. That would be all fair if he did the world building to justify it properly, but he didn't. Good set pieces, but style over substance, bad execution.
 
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Cutty Flam

Banned
When I first played it when I was younger I didn’t like the time mechanic but as I grew older I came to appreciate it, I find it’s actually quite a creative way to handle the limits of the time they were given.
That dude’s the village idiot, wouldn’t pay him any mind tbh

It’s the 72 hrs Cycle that makes this game. How else could they have made a complete game with 4 Temples? The timing of everything allowed for entire lives to be lived out in the span of three days with all the game’s NPCs. Best NPCs in gaming history if you ask me. I think there about as many NPCs in MM as OoT but they all played a huge part in making Clock Town and Termina interesting in a much shorter game; it’s because the devs put many characters on a schedule throughout three days

They could be present in Clock Town one day, just out and about and the next maybe Romani Ranch, then back to Clock Town on the final day. One NPC ran around the entire overworld pretty much, mostly in secret. So many great NPCs in MM. Anybody who dislikes the time mechanic is just a hater or sucks at games tbh. The pressure of having time constraints in-game is too much for them to handle ig
 
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Bragr

Banned
Ocarina of Time had 5 directors but in reality they felt Miyamoto was the director and they were under him because he was in their face a lot more, most decisions had to be approved by him or had a final say by him so the final game is a lot more Miyamoto than Majora Mask is. Now, Majora Mask had 6 directors with more directorial scope than they had in OoT.



Source: https://www.1101.com/nintendo/nin11/nin11_1.htm

Basically, Aonuma was chosen by Miyamoto to helm the Zelda franchise, Aonuma was the Dungeon Director in Ocarina of Time. Koizumi was by now the miracle worker in the Zelda franchise, having started with the Link to the Past game manual (and title screen short story of the triforce and goddesses) and quickly gained ground writing the full plot for Link's Awakening and making it his bitch. With Ocarina of Time he both kept injecting sub-story into the game under Miyamoto's nose (who didn't appreciate it, but consider that the Link to the Past lore that served as the base for OoT was already his) and came up with the z-targeting system, Navi and how the enemies behaved in the battle system (like staying still while one enemy attacks in order for the player not get pummelled).

Aonuma who was older in the franchise having contributed actively in Link to the Past, was set-in in acting as a Miyamoto right hand that was trained in anticipating what would please him and not so secretly longing for his compliments was given the task, perhaps because he started before Koizumi or because Miyamoto disagreed with what he felt were story-heavy inclinations of Koizumi.

Given the task of developing a new Zelda game in 1 year, Aonuma chickened out (understandably) because he had no idea what to do, so he had to ask for his rival help and make concessions.



Source: https://www.1101.com/nintendo/nin11/nin11_1.htm

Aonuma had no choice. Koizumi also came up with the moon:



Source: https://web.archive.org/web/2014101...a-majoras-mask-came-to-me-in-a-dream-koizumi/

He is listed as the main Director (albeit in reality alongside Koizumi as the final game has two main directors listed), but Koizumi had more influence in every part of the game than he did. He had already designed the game system for OoT that was serving as the base for the game, then he did story, events, world building, most of the game programming was made to accommodate Koizumi's ideas and events, not Aonuma's. Aonuma was in fact basically working for him and needed him all steps of the way. Which is why Majora Mask development is a haze for him and he doesn't understand the final product and just what makes it special.

He's also a jealous motherfucker, who disregards stuff that aren't his. Take the Spaceworld 2000 Zelda showing as an example:

link_sw2000.png




Sure, he then did Wind Waker, which was awesome and we should be glad he didn't enjoy to see Ocarina of Time updated with 128-bit graphics... But afterwards he still did Twilight Princess didn't he?

Who did the Spaceworld demo, you ask?



Jealousy is fucked. Aonuma didn't rest until he kicked Koizumi out of all things Zelda (last Zelda Koizumi contributed to was Wind Waker), because if he relied on him as he did when he needed him, Koizumi would soon take his place.

Then there's this:

Source: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Iwata-As...ears-Later/8-Thirteen-Years-Later-232010.html

I'm 100% sure neither were joking.


Koizumi wasn't involved in Twilight Princess which is why the world building and lore is absolute shit. Aonuma didn't do anything about castle town npc's until a year before the game launched, complete afterthought.

It's a good thing that there are new guys serving as directors, because Aonuma was never a good game designer. Good Dungeon Designer? For some themes sure, but even there, not the best.
Well, I am aware that Koizumi always had a lot of ideas in those games, but game directing is a different beast, leading the team and structuring the game was Aonuma's job. I don't really see any evidence of jealously here, just that Koizumi had some ideas that were used. It's hard to read into the director side of Nintendo, as they use directors as leads, Miyamoto was usually the head director, so it's natural that when he stepped away from Majora that there was more power shared. Considering the time limit, it's no wonder that the game feels like a blur, but in the end, there is no accident that Aonuma got Zelda, he was the right man for the job and I think you are underselling him a bit.
 

Filben

Member
One of the greatest games of all time and while the gameplay is somewhat dated by today's standard, especially combat, the world and its mystery and art and music rivals modern games to this day.
 

EverydayBeast

thinks Halo Infinite is a new graphical benchmark
First off, don’t say that Majora’s Mask is a bad game, it’s remaster sold out, but it is just for a certain type of gamer, Majoras Mask might not be even ok for casual Zelda gamers (side quests that you must be patient for, the fact you’re under a time limit etc.) a lot of hard work was put into this game.
maxresdefault.jpg


Yoshiaki Koizumi and Eiji Aonuma are the architects and were heavily involved in game design and overall decisions (they spent a lot of time on it) it’s remarkable what they did. They offer a little sense of humor, show-boat, moments, stuff that makes it a great game.
 

Meesh

Member
I prefer playing OoT to MM, the time mechanic in MM just felt pushy and a little stressful when all you wanna do is explore without the moon crashing into the planet and wiping out all life lol.

But I prefer MM characters and story over OoT. I was always a huge fan of Skull Kid, I thought he was really a misguided or misunderstood character and seemed to have a personal depth to him brought about in these sort of expository revelations brought about in every encounter with Link. Really, there's so much about this guy that almost anyone can relate to... and I love that it's not all spelled out for you.
 

D-ray

Member
I never saw it like that to be honest. The only story about Majora's Mask development that I knew is the one where it was inspired by a wedding some of the devs were attending while Korea (I think) might have nuked Japan. Like, they recreated the fear of possible annihilation in the game with the moon or something.

The game struck me more on how lively it was in only three days. The fact that almost every NPC had a path and behavior in all three days was cool as hell, and I still haven't seen anything similar in games after that.

The time mechanic is fucking awful period, it's a bad way to pad out content in a game. There's no excuse for it. If you played it without the time, I'm sure it'd be a pretty bland bad game.

I personally liked it, it made the game fun and unique. Way better than Ocarina of Time to be honest.
 
I prefer playing OoT to MM, the time mechanic in MM just felt pushy and a little stressful when all you wanna do is explore without the moon crashing into the planet and wiping out all life lol.
I agree it can turn the game something you might not feel like playing, but it's a by design decision that I respect.

Ocarina of Time is way simpler to pick up and go exploring with nothing on your head. It was the sandbox experience of it's time, Majora Mask actually allows you to do the same, as you can always rewind to the first day (or turn off the console without saving), but it just doesn't feel the same.

It's funny because it has way more content for something "sandbox" but the moon makes it tangential.
The time mechanic is fucking awful period, it's a bad way to pad out content in a game. There's no excuse for it. If you played it without the time, I'm sure it'd be a pretty bland bad game.
So you don't like the mechanic but think the game would be bland/worse without it?

:messenger_dizzy:
 
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