Stone Temple Pilots: Majora's Mask part 21

    Link goes to the stone temple and solves the puzzle of the floating cubes.  This puzzle relies heavily on using the song Elegy of Emptiness.  By performing this song, Ben (yeah we're just gonna keep calling it that and hope no one gets possessed), appears over a pressure plate.  This pressure plate moves a floating block around.  As different plates are pressed with different weight, the blocks rearrange in different positions.  In order to accomplish this, Link has to perform the Elegy of Emptiness using the goron, zora, and deku masks he has acquired thus far as well as when using Ben.  When playing the song in each of these forms, the statue that forms is not of Link but of the three souls that inhabit each mask, Darmani, Mikau, and the deku steward's son.  It suggests with all the souls Link has helped thus far, he has not been alone on this quest.  That said, I feel like the meaning behind the song Elegy of Emptiness is, well, empty.  There's all sorts of creepy things in the canyon including Ben, but something about the actual application of this song is a little disappointing.  This disappointment will continue through the rest of this section.  I am sorry for this but prepare for probably the dullest post of this series.

It's like that Roald Dahl story about the serial killer who was a taxidermist.  

   Link enters the temple, does some puzzles that involve standing on the ceiling and stuff, fights some worms, does so with a mask that makes him big enough to fight the worms, frees the giant and calls it a day.

   Yeah, there's really nothing to say here.  The whole surrounding area is death themed, but once you go in the temple, that all ends.  Link runs into the master of the Garo ninjas somewhere in there, fights him a bit, and then the guy blasts himself to pieces with a bomb so as to probably not fall under the curse of the land.  Link gets some holy arrows or something.

   Personally, I feel like this is the weakest part of the game's overall themes and story.  Sure, that whole bit with the puzzles was cool using the Elegy of Emptiness and the flipping of the temple upside down, but beyond that it is sort out of place when considering how interesting the surroundings are.  There is an entire canyon full of the undead and tormented souls, and this temple revolves around earth, wind, and fire (the elements, not the band).  Sure worms are the boss and there's that whole bit in Hamlet about dietary worms and Polonius and stuff (sorry if I left someone in the dust there with the Shakespeare, but spoilers:  Hamlet kills Polonius and then jokes about him being at dinner with worms).  This temple feels like it should've been in Ocarina of Time, and they didn't have enough done so they put it in Majora's Mask.

  The great thing is despite this temple's shortcomings, the game is less built around dungeons than more traditional Zelda titles.  Since the player is timed in completing each dungeon, these dungeons have to be short and there is a lot more additional content outside of the dungeons.  I feel like there is enough that go on outside of each of these temples that it gives me something more to talk about than the actual dungeons do.  With that said, Link saved the giant. He's got all four giants woot woot, wakka wakka.  With the giants back, the curses across the four lands have been lifted.  The sorrows of the people of Termina can now be lifted.  So now Link can prepare for the final showdown, but before that, I want to talk about a few other things before the ending.  I promise those things will be more interesting than this post.


Here, for your trouble, a picture of RDJ and Conan being awesome.