Majora’s Mask is one of the most popular and influential games in the Zelda franchise, and with good reason. It’s one of the most brilliant and well-made games to date. The story has a darker, more emotional tone than the rest of the series, and it deals with themes that are relatable to both kids and adults. But why is Majora’s Mask so different from the rest? What’s made the game so iconic?
According to Eiji Aonuma in a recent Iwata asks interview, it was the development process that was so influential. After the success of Ocarina of Time, Shigeru Miyamoto had plans to release Ocarina of Time Master Quest for the 64DD.
We were told to repurpose the dungeons from Ocarina of Time and make a game out of it, and I was handed the baton to make that happen. However, when we made Ocarina of Time, we made those dungeons thinking they were the best we could make. That’s when Miyamoto-san asked me to remake them, so I hesitantly obliged…but I couldn’t really get into it. So I secretly started making new dungeons that weren’t in Ocarina of Time, and that was much more fun to me. So, I grew up the courage to ask Miyamoto-san whether I could make a new game, he replied by saying it’s ok if I can make it in a year.
To create the game in one year was an enormous undertaking Aonuma took on, that ultimately led to the complex, innovative game we now know as Majora’s Mask. Iwata said,
You needed a completely new idea to make something in such a short turnaround like one year, and that was the “Three-Day System”.
The “Three-Day System” that was so famously introduced in the game, was originally one week. So when they shortened the system down to three days, they compressed about weeks worth of content to be finished by “playing the same moments in time over and over again.” So much of Majora’s Masks innovation came from the time restraint put on the development team.
In an interview with IGN Aonuma explained why we aren’t seeing games like Majora’s Mask. Take a look:
It’s interesting, because there’s definitely this way that we talk about that sort of thing in development circles here in Japan. It’s often presented as a challenge to the developers themselves to accomplish something like that, because it can be very difficult to do. Since I’ve been in the role of producer, though, it’s not something that’s been presented to me as a challenge to take on very often. Sometimes I think about issuing it as a challenge to developers that I’m working with.
When I think about the kinds of games that you’re describing, where you took the engine and you took some of the original assets and made a new game from that, you know, the kind of creation flow that we had for Majora’s Mask wasn’t limited just to those ideas. We also had to think about how we wanted to change the world, to take something kind of familiar and then warp it.
Aonuma also talked about the possibility of returning to that developmental style. Creating the “Threeday Cycle” allowed his team to give better game experiences.
I definitely like that sort of a challenge. I think it’s really fun to think about how you would take that sort of a game in a different direction. For me, in order to properly consider doing that again in the future, I think you really need a compelling topic or a theme with which to start.
So what do you think? Would going back to a one-year development cycle give way for new innovation? Could we see the next iconic title in the Zelda series, be released in the next few years?
