Ocarina of Time & Majora's Mask: Trauma & Recovery

May 8, 2024 • 2600 words (11 min)

Ocarina of Time's title screen is striking. Unlike what you might expect from a fantasy adventure game, the title screen's cinematic is melancholy: somber piano with a soaring ocarina theme over it, sweeping shots of a lonely moonlit field that fades into morning. Although most of the game is lighthearted, there's a distinct sense of melancholy beneath it all, which is brought to the forefront with the existential dread of its sequel, Majora's Mask. The story of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask is surprisingly mature and well-developed for a pair of games from the N64 era with a silent protagonist. The two games are able to imply an emotional character arc for Link, with themes of loss of innocence, trauma, and recovery.

Ocarina of Time

Ocarina of Time is a game about growing up too fast, and the way the world becomes darker around you as you age. It starts in the idyllic Kokiri forest, inhabited by childish forest spirits who will never grow. Each of the first three dungeons, completed while Link is a child, have a lighthearted classic fantasy vibe. They're each about delving into the belly of some fantastical being and solving simple problems for the people around it. Despite this more lighthearted tone, melancholy has already crept into the game. Link's first quest is to save the Great Deku Tree, a kind of father figure for him and the Kokiri, from spiders that have infected it. Even though Link succeeds in his quest by killing a monstrous spider, it's too late for the Great Deku Tree. Before he dies, the tree reveals the truth to Link: he's not a Kokiri, but a human (or Hylian). He doesn't truly belong in Kokiri forest. He will grow up, and grow apart from his idyllic childhood. These classic fantasy tropes—the death of a mentor figure, the protagonist of unusual birth—are the call to a great adventure. For Link, they're the start of his quest, but they also set up the themes and tone of the rest of the game. The death of the Great Deku Tree captures the sense of lonely sadness that comes with leaving your childhood home, which will never again feel like it did when you were growing up. Link's connection to the carefree innocence of the Kokiri has been irrevocably shattered, and even though the following two dungeons maintain a childish adventure vibe, there is an underlying melancholy you can't escape.

After the child dungeons is the moment where Link is literally forced to grow up. He picks up the Master Sword, and the game jumps to seven years later; Link has been locked away in the Chamber of Sages until he's an adult and old enough to wield the sword. The first steps into post-time skip castle town are my favorite part of the game. What was once a vibrant city center full of people talking and dancing is now desolate: the buildings are in ruin, and the only remaining inhabitants are undead creatures that shriek at Link as he runs past. The hints at darker themes scattered through the beginning of the game leap to the forefront as Link is thrust into the terrifying world of an adult. Although the game never explicitly shows Link's internal mental state, from the jarring way the time skip plays out, it's implied that he still has the mind of a child. He's been thrown into an adult body and the staggering responsibility that entails.

Ocarina of Time uses a unique storytelling device, one that works especially well with video games and their silent protagonists: it implies Link's emotional arc through external events. (Majora's Mask is particularly good at this, but we'll get to that later.) The tone of the first part of the game is a reflection of Link's childish innocence, and the disturbing destroyed castle city mirrors the fear that comes with growing up too fast. This implied character arc sets Ocarina of Time apart from many of the other Zelda games. They're largely dedicated to keeping Link a flat character; while he moments of expressiveness in Skyward Sword or interactions with characters who grow close to him in Twilight Princess, he's not really given his own character arc. (The 3D games are often more dedicated to developing Ocarina of Time's Link rather than their own protagonists. Twilight Princess especially gives him closure that wasn't really necessary, considering how Majora's Mask ends.) I'm not a fan of the silent protagonist archetype. It's easier for me to feel connected to a character who has some sort of arc or personality of their own, since the concept of putting myself in the shoes of a blank slate never really works for me. This is why I ended up caring a lot more about Link in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask than other versions of the character. These two games, as one cohesive story, manage to give him a satisfying character arc implied through events and locations around him.

Ocarina of Time's adult dungeons convey this implied character arc well. For example, the Forest Temple, the first dungeon after the time skip, has Link returning home to Kokiri forest. However, things have changed—the forest is overrun by monsters, no longer a peaceful place, and Link is older now, so the Kokiri don't recognize him. The Kokiri themselves haven't changed at all, though, and it's striking how different Link is to them as an adult. The dungeon design is another contrast to the child timeline. The adult dungeons are larger, labyrinthine, with a more manmade aesthetic compared to the earthy, organic structures of the child dungeons. Their challenges become more complex, from the poe hunting in the Forest Temple to the much-maligned water management in the Water Temple to the linear descent of the Shadow Temple.

The Shadow Temple is a turning point in Link's character arc. After finished several dungeons as an adult, growing more comfortable in Link's new body and expanded skill sets, including his more powerful weapons, you have to return to the child timeline to descend into the well in Kakariko village. The Bottom of the Well is one of the creepiest areas of the game (and ironically lessens the impact of the following Shadow Temple, which just feels like a less effective repeat of the same theme). It's lined with corpses, a catacomb beneath the seemingly innocent Kakariko village, a reminder of Hyrule's bloody history. It feels all the more threatening in the body of a child. The boss in the well, Dead Hand, is terrifying. It looms over Link's tiny form, and the only way to defeat it is to make yourself even more vulnerable, letting it catch Link until it gets close enough to strike. The darkness of the adult timeline has crept into the past, and even as a child, Link can no longer access his former innocence.

Ocarina of Time isn't all doom and gloom, obviously. The final (or what should be final, in my opinion) dungeon, the Spirit Temple, has Link reconcile the past and the present, his child and adult forms working together to finish the temple. He's matured into the role of a hero he was thrust into, grown to carry the responsibility he was burdened with. His character arc ends with him defeating Ganon as a fully-fledged adult… or does it?

The melancholy of Ocarina of Time creeps into its ending, too: Link can't stay in a world where he's the hero. Zelda sends him back in time to live out the childhood he lost. However, this is a childhood he can never return to. He's matured during his adventure, and now, at the point where Majora's Mask begins, he's an adult forced back into a child's body, an inverse of his experience in Ocarina of Time. His only friend, Navi, the fairy who accompanied him on his adventure, leaves him; further proof that he's no longer a child (since only the Kokiri have fairies). He leaves Hyrule, or is possibly expelled from it. He's alone, with no way to cope with what he's been through.

Majora's Mask

It's no wonder that Majora's Mask takes on a darker, more nightmarish tone than Ocarina of Time. I personally don't care about "Link was dead the whole time!!!" theories, but I do like a more metaphorical reading of Majora's Mask: Termina is a surreal reflection of the Hyrule that Link left behind, an eerily familar world under another overwhelming threat. Many character models are reused from Ocarina of Time, giving the inhabitants of Termina a dream-like sense of deja vu. The moon hovering overhead, growing closer and closer with each day, is a constant reminder of doom. The three day cycle until the moon's crash feels like Link is living through the worst days of his life—the stress of his newfound responsibilities in Ocarina of Time, the panic of rushing to defeat Ganondorf before the world becomes even worse—over and over and over again. His trauma has left him trapped in his own pain. However, despite what creepypastas and Internet theories might say about Majora's Mask, the game is ultimately hopeful.

The side quests in Majora's Mask are the best example of how both games use external events to create Link's implied character arc. Many of the side quests revolve around grief and loss, with a particular emphasis on the idea of children not growing up. There's a chicken keeper who fears that he won't be able to see his chicks grow up. The Zora named Lulu is struck by grief when her eggs are stolen. On the final day, the rancher Cremia mourns her younger sister's impending death. These particular side quests are the inverse of Ocarina of Time's plot, where Link is thrust into adulthood too soon. They could be read as reflective of Link's own fears surrounding the adult body that was taken from him just when he had finally matured into it, the fear that he won't be able to grow up into what is now his true self.

The longest and most memorable of the side quests is that of Anju and Kafei. They're a couple who were supposed to be married, but Kafei went missing at some point before the game begins. Anju stays in Clock Town, despite the looming threat of the moon about to crash, in the desperate hope that Kafei will return. When Link investigates his disappearance, he finds that Kafei has been cursed to become a child (another parallel to Link's own situation) and is too ashamed to face Anju. After completing a few tasks, Link is able to convince Kafei to return to her. In the final hours before the moon crashes, Link and Anju wait for him. It seems like Kafei won't come after all, but in the very last minute, he bursts into the room. He and Anju embrace, and say that they'll wait for the morning together, a morning that will never come. This side quest is one of the best examples of the tone of Majora's Mask: despite your struggles to reunite characters with their loved ones, it all feels hopeless in the face of utter doom. Trauma makes you feel like nothing you do will ever matter, but the end of the game proves there is still hope. In the end credits, after Link defeats Majora and stops the moon from crashing, Anju and Kafei are married. The world goes on. There is hope in recovering from pain and loss.

The eponymous masks are another great example of Link's character arc and the game's themes. At the beginning of Majora's Mask, the implied disconnect between Link's mind and body, the adult within and the child he appears to be, is made literal. He's forced into the form of a Deku scrub, a body that doesn't belong to him—we learn later that the Deku scrub was actually the body of a child who died some time before the game begins. All of the transformation masks are remnants of characters who died and are left to agonize over unresolved threads in their lives. For each of them, Link soothes their pain with the Song of Healing and receives a mask in return. Link acts as an agent of healing for other people in a way that he can't for himself. He's bound in his own trauma from the events of Ocarina of Time, but he can help others heal, up until the end of the game, where he helps save Skull Kid and all of Termina from the final boss, Majora.

Before getting into the final boss fight, I want to look at an event close to the end of the game. In one of the final areas, Link gets the Elegy of Emptiness, a song that creates copies of each of the dead characters whose masks he wears. When he places it as a human, though, it creates an eerie grinning copy of himself. This copy has been the source of plenty of Internet horror stories, but I think it serves an important thematic purpose in Majora's Mask. The other empty shells created by the Elegy of Emptiness show characters in the moments of their deaths, and I think the copy of Link is the same. It's not a literal death, but the death of Link's childhood innocence, lost in the previous game. This child is long dead by the time Majora's Mask; now, it's just the mask that Link wears, a mask he was forced into by Zelda sending him to the past. Later on, one of the children in the moon asks Link what his “real” face looks like—referencing how, despite his appearance, he isn't truly a child anymore. But what does his real face look like?

In Majora's Mask. Link takes the form of an adult only once. Before the final fight with Majora, if you've collected all of the masks in the game, you're given the option to wear the Fierce Deity's Mask. This transforms Link back into an adult, much taller than his adult self in Ocarina of Time. and much more powerful. It also embues him with a dark power, which lets Link wipe the floor with Majora. There's a parallel between wearing the Fierce Deity's Mask and Skull Kid wearing Majora's Mask throughout the game. Like Link, Skull Kid lost his friends (it's also implied that he's a human who wandered into the Lost Woods and was transformed, another instance of a character's body being transformed). In his grief, he found Majora's Mask. which exterted its influence over him, reflecting how trauma can turn a person into a worse version of themself. The Fierce Deity's Mask can be seen in a similar light: Link's trauma finally comes to the surface with overwhelming force, and he teeters on the edge of becoming something as destructive as Skull Kid. The Fierce Deity is the face of his hidden adult self, the person he matured into during Ocarina of Time. warped by grief and loss. It's finally revealed to the player in the finale, when Link has to reckon with it.

Throughout the game, Link has helped others face their trauma and heal from it. Now, he does the same for himself. Once Majora is defeated and Skull Kid is saved from his own grief, Link leaves again. He waves good-bye to all the people he met in Termina before he sets off into the same gloomy woods he started the game in. This time, though, he's not lost, not searching for some missing piece of himself. He has healed, and there is hope for the future.