Review of "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time"
By C. Randall Nicholson
There's virtually nothing I could even attempt to say about this game that hasn't been said hundreds of times over, but it left such an impact on me that I'm going to attempt it anyway.
The first time you hear a common phrase, its meaning resonates with you in a way that subsequent uses don't. Now, "The Legend of Zelda" may as well be one word. It shares a collective, all-encompassing definition immediately brings to mind all my collective knowledge of a massive franchise. The first time I read it though, in an ad for a couple of choose-your-own-adventure knockoffs based on Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, I had no idea what it referred to and took all the words literally. The legend... of Zelda. Who the heck was Zelda? This seemed like a strange name for a game franchise. What was this about "Link's latest quest"? What did that mean? It barely occurred to me that "Link" would be a person's name, let alone the name of the protagonist of a franchise named after someone else.
My first real exposure to the Legend of Zelda happened a few months later when, en route to my grandparents in Idaho, we stopped to visit one of my mother's old high school friends. My mother's friend's little boy was playing "Majora's Mask" on the Nintendo 64, and he never offered to let me play, but I had such a great time just watching him that I didn't mind. I was immediately sucked in by the weirdness of this fantasy world. The Skull Kid, the Deku Scrubs, the Happy Mask Salesman, the inexplicably angry moon falling to crush the world; all of them deviated without apology from anything I knew either in the real world or mainstream mythology, just because they could. This was a world I wanted immerse myself in because it was new, unpredictable and creative.
We moved onto my grandparents' house a day or two later and there, as fate would have it, my aunts who also lived there asked me if I wanted to play anything on the Nintendo 64. I asked if they had any Zelda games. They did have one, and it just so happened to be "Ocarina of Time" - direct prequel to "Majora's Mask", fifth installment in the Zelda franchise and, up to that point, the first in the timeline. But you probably already guessed that much. You may not have guessed that they had the rare original 1.0 release with red Ganondorf blood, Islamic chanting and symbols, and various glitches that were soon corrected. Maybe you didn't care but I think that's cool.
I played with copious advice from my aunts and made them jump in to do every boss battle for me. Again, the world - technically a different one this time, Hyrule as opposed to Termina - sucked me in. After I'd collected the spiritual stones and expected the game to be over, I was astonished to find that it was just beginning, that there was a whole new quest to take on in my character's adult body and a darker, grittier version of the world. I made it partway through the Fire Temple before I had to go home. It would be another two years before I could return and resume. By that time I had forgotten much of the story that came before, but I found my aunts' Prima Official Strategy guide and read it through, which spoiled all the plot twists and made the rest of the game familiar but at least made things easier. The credits, particularly the bells at the end, took my breath away.
So, it's no secret that many regard this as the greatest game of all time, but does it deserve all the hype and how does it hold up twenty-plus years later? Is it even fair to compare such an old game with newer, radically different games that face fewer and smaller technological constraints?
The size and scope of the game world - many towns, environments and dungeons connected by the central hub of Hyrule Field - was so unprecedented that the developers didn't know if they'd be able to pull it off. Secrets and side quests seemed to lurk around every corner. Today, of course, it's dwarfed by the open worlds of later games, like the franchise's own "Breath of the Wild". It seems small, constricted, and not really believable as a kingdom of respectable size. I choose to believe that what we see on the screen is condensed for the player's convenience. If the speed with which the sun rises and falls is any indication, Hyrule Field is massive, and we should just be grateful that Nintendo didn't make us cross it in real time. And even if the NPCs we encounter are really the entirety of the population, keep in mind that this is ten years after a brutal civil war. I think this makes the sparcity of towns and their inhabitants chillingly appropriate.
In relation to that, some feel that this game doesn't measure up to modern standards with its linear story that railroads the player along a predetermined path from one event to the next. I am grateful that after thirty years, with their formula growing stale, Nintendo chose to take the Zelda franchise in a new direction and opt for more freedom of exploration. But I don't see a linear game as inherently inferior to an open world. It's just a different kind of experience. For me, as a writer, I like the linear story with its clear beginning, end, and plot points in between. Going through it brings me a sense of satisfaction. Story has taken a backseat to gameplay for years, but to me it's one of the most compelling things about the franchise. Even the relatively simple plot resonates with me. It's like a really long movie with you in the lead role.
Even with its stellar reputation, the game has gotten a lot of flack for Link's fairy companion, Navi, with her catchphrase "Hey! Listen!" burned into pop culture forever. All I can say is I've never found her that annoying. My first go-round, the "Hey!" just became a part of the game's ambience and I almost forgot who it was from or what it was for. True, it is annoying when you actually listen to her advice and it turns out to be completely obvious and useless, but if you had never played the game before and didn't have a strategy guide or the internet or aunts it could be useful to have someone orienting you around. Granted, I've never found Willie Scott, Jar Jar Binks or L3-37 that annoying either, so I'm not sure what my opinion is worth. Can we at least agree that it was touching when she stood by Link in the final battle, and heartbreaking when she left at the end?
Koji Kondo is one of the greatest composers ever to walk the Earth, and "Ocarina of Time" was his crowning achievement. Even with the Nintendo 64's limited sound capabilities the soundtrack is stunning and has inspired more covers and homages than probably any other game score ever. From the cheerful danceability of Saria's Song, to the exotic desert flavor of Gerudo Valley, to the unsettling yet beautiful tones of the Forest Temple, to the soothing euphoria of the Great Fairy's Fountain, to the going around and around and around in the Song of Storms, and so many more, these tracks deliver big time and never grow old. Surprisingly and perhaps disappointingly, the main theme of the Zelda franchise is absent, though the bold and adventurous Hyrule Field theme bears a strong resemblance.
In my view, the one thing that really hasn't aged well is the graphics. They looked perfectly serviceable when I played within a few years of release, but they get worse every year. Nintendo sort of rectified this in the 2011 3DS remake. I say "sort of" because I'm not enthralled with every stylistic adjustment they made, leaning in a more cartoony fairy tale direction than I might prefer, and confining them to that console's microscopic screens was a bit of a wasted opportunity for such an overhaul to such a game. But the graphics undoubtedly look much better and the increased level of detail, especially in areas like shops and Lon Lon Ranch, really helps the world to feel more real and lived-in. Larger, even. The remakers couldn't do much to expand the size of the world to 2011 standards, but they did accomplish something by building inward, by filling in what had once been drab, empty spaces with interesting objects that told us just a little more about characters' lives and livelihoods.
"Ocarina of Time" is not perfect, and it shows its age, but the ambition and imagination that went into it still shine and make for a gripping adventure. I hope that twenty, forty or a hundred years from now, future generations will still be giving it the love and attention it deserves.
The first time you hear a common phrase, its meaning resonates with you in a way that subsequent uses don't. Now, "The Legend of Zelda" may as well be one word. It shares a collective, all-encompassing definition immediately brings to mind all my collective knowledge of a massive franchise. The first time I read it though, in an ad for a couple of choose-your-own-adventure knockoffs based on Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, I had no idea what it referred to and took all the words literally. The legend... of Zelda. Who the heck was Zelda? This seemed like a strange name for a game franchise. What was this about "Link's latest quest"? What did that mean? It barely occurred to me that "Link" would be a person's name, let alone the name of the protagonist of a franchise named after someone else.
My first real exposure to the Legend of Zelda happened a few months later when, en route to my grandparents in Idaho, we stopped to visit one of my mother's old high school friends. My mother's friend's little boy was playing "Majora's Mask" on the Nintendo 64, and he never offered to let me play, but I had such a great time just watching him that I didn't mind. I was immediately sucked in by the weirdness of this fantasy world. The Skull Kid, the Deku Scrubs, the Happy Mask Salesman, the inexplicably angry moon falling to crush the world; all of them deviated without apology from anything I knew either in the real world or mainstream mythology, just because they could. This was a world I wanted immerse myself in because it was new, unpredictable and creative.
We moved onto my grandparents' house a day or two later and there, as fate would have it, my aunts who also lived there asked me if I wanted to play anything on the Nintendo 64. I asked if they had any Zelda games. They did have one, and it just so happened to be "Ocarina of Time" - direct prequel to "Majora's Mask", fifth installment in the Zelda franchise and, up to that point, the first in the timeline. But you probably already guessed that much. You may not have guessed that they had the rare original 1.0 release with red Ganondorf blood, Islamic chanting and symbols, and various glitches that were soon corrected. Maybe you didn't care but I think that's cool.
I played with copious advice from my aunts and made them jump in to do every boss battle for me. Again, the world - technically a different one this time, Hyrule as opposed to Termina - sucked me in. After I'd collected the spiritual stones and expected the game to be over, I was astonished to find that it was just beginning, that there was a whole new quest to take on in my character's adult body and a darker, grittier version of the world. I made it partway through the Fire Temple before I had to go home. It would be another two years before I could return and resume. By that time I had forgotten much of the story that came before, but I found my aunts' Prima Official Strategy guide and read it through, which spoiled all the plot twists and made the rest of the game familiar but at least made things easier. The credits, particularly the bells at the end, took my breath away.
So, it's no secret that many regard this as the greatest game of all time, but does it deserve all the hype and how does it hold up twenty-plus years later? Is it even fair to compare such an old game with newer, radically different games that face fewer and smaller technological constraints?
The size and scope of the game world - many towns, environments and dungeons connected by the central hub of Hyrule Field - was so unprecedented that the developers didn't know if they'd be able to pull it off. Secrets and side quests seemed to lurk around every corner. Today, of course, it's dwarfed by the open worlds of later games, like the franchise's own "Breath of the Wild". It seems small, constricted, and not really believable as a kingdom of respectable size. I choose to believe that what we see on the screen is condensed for the player's convenience. If the speed with which the sun rises and falls is any indication, Hyrule Field is massive, and we should just be grateful that Nintendo didn't make us cross it in real time. And even if the NPCs we encounter are really the entirety of the population, keep in mind that this is ten years after a brutal civil war. I think this makes the sparcity of towns and their inhabitants chillingly appropriate.
In relation to that, some feel that this game doesn't measure up to modern standards with its linear story that railroads the player along a predetermined path from one event to the next. I am grateful that after thirty years, with their formula growing stale, Nintendo chose to take the Zelda franchise in a new direction and opt for more freedom of exploration. But I don't see a linear game as inherently inferior to an open world. It's just a different kind of experience. For me, as a writer, I like the linear story with its clear beginning, end, and plot points in between. Going through it brings me a sense of satisfaction. Story has taken a backseat to gameplay for years, but to me it's one of the most compelling things about the franchise. Even the relatively simple plot resonates with me. It's like a really long movie with you in the lead role.
Even with its stellar reputation, the game has gotten a lot of flack for Link's fairy companion, Navi, with her catchphrase "Hey! Listen!" burned into pop culture forever. All I can say is I've never found her that annoying. My first go-round, the "Hey!" just became a part of the game's ambience and I almost forgot who it was from or what it was for. True, it is annoying when you actually listen to her advice and it turns out to be completely obvious and useless, but if you had never played the game before and didn't have a strategy guide or the internet or aunts it could be useful to have someone orienting you around. Granted, I've never found Willie Scott, Jar Jar Binks or L3-37 that annoying either, so I'm not sure what my opinion is worth. Can we at least agree that it was touching when she stood by Link in the final battle, and heartbreaking when she left at the end?
Koji Kondo is one of the greatest composers ever to walk the Earth, and "Ocarina of Time" was his crowning achievement. Even with the Nintendo 64's limited sound capabilities the soundtrack is stunning and has inspired more covers and homages than probably any other game score ever. From the cheerful danceability of Saria's Song, to the exotic desert flavor of Gerudo Valley, to the unsettling yet beautiful tones of the Forest Temple, to the soothing euphoria of the Great Fairy's Fountain, to the going around and around and around in the Song of Storms, and so many more, these tracks deliver big time and never grow old. Surprisingly and perhaps disappointingly, the main theme of the Zelda franchise is absent, though the bold and adventurous Hyrule Field theme bears a strong resemblance.
In my view, the one thing that really hasn't aged well is the graphics. They looked perfectly serviceable when I played within a few years of release, but they get worse every year. Nintendo sort of rectified this in the 2011 3DS remake. I say "sort of" because I'm not enthralled with every stylistic adjustment they made, leaning in a more cartoony fairy tale direction than I might prefer, and confining them to that console's microscopic screens was a bit of a wasted opportunity for such an overhaul to such a game. But the graphics undoubtedly look much better and the increased level of detail, especially in areas like shops and Lon Lon Ranch, really helps the world to feel more real and lived-in. Larger, even. The remakers couldn't do much to expand the size of the world to 2011 standards, but they did accomplish something by building inward, by filling in what had once been drab, empty spaces with interesting objects that told us just a little more about characters' lives and livelihoods.
"Ocarina of Time" is not perfect, and it shows its age, but the ambition and imagination that went into it still shine and make for a gripping adventure. I hope that twenty, forty or a hundred years from now, future generations will still be giving it the love and attention it deserves.
