It would seem odd to continue this series since the world didn't end and now Christmas is right around the corner followed by a new year. However, I'm going to keep writing this for a number of reasons. It's the most productive thing I could be doing, and Quetzlcoatl might pull a fast one and end the world on the 12th of January or something. (Disclaimer: Quetzlcoatl is Aztec, not Mayan, my deepest apologies to anyone who didn't understand that joke.)
For the sake of this series, I got out my copy of Majora's Mask. Now, as some people know, my first console was a Gamecube. As such, my copy of Majora's Mask was part of the LoZ collector's edition that was released for the Gamecube a while ago for some reason or another. It had four games, the original two for the NES and the two for the N64. I said all that to say I played OoT and Majora's Mask at the same time. Since I already described the gist of OoT in the previous post, I'll start with Majora's Mask here.
The story opens saying that it takes place a few months after the end of the previous game. Link, the protagonist, has set out through the woods on his horse searching for an unnamed friend. The hints dropped point to this friend being Navi, the companion fairy from the previous game. So everything so far is set up like old times, in the woods, on a horse, looking for the famous crier of such infamously annoying phrases as "HEY!" "LISTEN!" and "WATCH OUT!" Then every convention of everything goes out the window. Two fairies jump out and assault Link. Yep, two little balls of light with wings drop our hero who in the previous game had defeated an all powerful evil emperor wizard pig ginger man. Goodbye traditional story telling. Text me when you get to purgatory.
Walking up to the unconscious Link and horse is a fellow dressed like a scarecrow wearing a mask. Actually, the mask looks quite similar to the one on the cover, and in the title screen, but for the sake of pacing we're going to play dumb and assume it's just a guy dressed like a scarecrow wearing a mask. The masked man looks out from under the mask around to ensure there's no witnesses and then also reveals he's in cahoots with the fairies. To veterans of the series, this character is recognized as a skull kid. To those who have not played these games before, a skull kid is kinda self explanatory. Basically, it's a child who dies in the forest and comes back as a macabre scarecrow looking thing. Morbid? a little. How far are we into the game? Roughly a minute. Best part is, all of these things could still happen in the previous game, we haven't gotten to the really dark weird stuff yet.
Link regains consciousness to find the skull kid has looted him of the Ocarina of Time, the magic flute of the previous game. Link tries to catch the skull kid, but it runs off with his horse deeper into the woods. Link chases him to a cave where he falls deep into an abyss. Greeted by several weird symbols, Link lands in a strange cavern. The skull kid's crafty behavior fits with all other encounters in the previous game up until this point. He summons two spotlights down on him out of nowhere, taunts Link a bit, and then what happens next is as if Guillermo del Toro and David Lynch had a baby (Lynch being the mother in this relationship). The mask's eyes glow as it shakes around on the skull kid's face. A vision is shown of Link being swarmed by a mob of tree people to finally be chased by a giant tree creature, and Link snaps out of it to find he has been turned into one such tree person with no sword or shield. So now everything old is new again and everything new is beak-on-a-giraffe bizarre. Have fun!
To be continued in part 2...
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