Games with great stories.

[Hawki]

That is what I was talking about. Majora's Mask has a bunch of nice little stories, and because of the 3 day schedule the world feels more real and alive than in a lot of other games. Overall it has more and better story than OoT, even if it isn't all main plot. Also Skull Kid is a more interesting villain than Gannondorf.

MM arguably feels more alive in the sense that the three day cycle allows certain characters to be fleshed out (again, the Kafei/Anju storyline is a key example), but I can't agree with the rest of that. "More" story is a bit iffy since MM has five dungeons compared to OoT's 9/10, all of which have story associated with them. As for Skull Kid being more interesting than Ganondorf, again, disagree. Ganondorf certainly isn't that deep a villain (least in OoT), but Skull Kid doesn't have that much either. Yes, he has his backstory (was a bully, became friends with Tatl and Tael, gets possessed by the mask), but the mask itself doesn't have motivation beyond "destroy everything." Ganondorf at least has the intimidation factor, plus you see a world where he won, plus his presence hangs over the entire game. Even before the time jump, you're dealing with the aftermath of his actions.

Except it's all undone by the ending where Link is somehow returned to being a child and 7 years of tragedy are undone for the sake of an unambiguously happy ending.

And it's not a tragedy in a literary sense because the definition of a tragedy is "A drama or literary work in which the main character is brought to ruin or suffers extreme sorrow, especially as a consequence of a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances." What is Link's character flaw? He doesn't have one because he doesn't have a character.

First, I don't know how you could call OoT an "unambiguously happy ending." I mean, MM does (sans the butler, maybe), but OoT? Really? Okay, let's go over what the ending involves (and to be fair, I won't factor in any other games):

-Link and Zelda are forced to part ways. The Zelda that sends Link back to his own time is a Zelda Link will never see again.

-The world she belongs to is still in ruins

-The people in that world still have to deal with the loss of their loved ones - Mido is pining for Saria, Ruto's father is still missing her, etc.

-Link returns to a world where, while spared Ganondorf's actions, will never know him as a hero, or what he did, or what he went through. Perhaps that's a mercy in some ways (e.g. Saria will never have to become a sage, which by most indications, is a very lonely life), but on the personal level, Link's gone through immense tragedy (there's a reason why every sage is a character Link met in childhood, why he has to let go of each of them, per the game's themes), and has to bear that burden alone.

-Navi leaves Link. Again, even confining this purely to the game itself, while there's some ambiguity as to why Navi flies away, the Doylist reason (by my reading), is that Link is no longer a child. The guardian fairies only come to the kokiri children. Link, despite being in a child's body, is a man in all but name, hence, the last fragment of his childhood literally flies out the window. He's alone, he has to bear the burdens.

-Link reunites with Zelda, and while we don't learn that Zelda doesn't know who he really is until the MM flashback, even confining this purely to the game itself, there's a sense of melencholia here. They've reunited, Link knows everything, Zelda doesn't. The Zelda before him now is not the same Zelda who he met in this same guardian near the game's start, nor the same Zelda who secretly aided him throughout the entire game.

Now there's unmistakably elements of jubilation in the ending - Lon Lon Ranch celebrates, there's triumphant music, but the underscore of everything is tragedy. Hence why I'd call OoT a tragedy, in the sense that Link does everything right, but loses everything on a personal level. It's a tragedy in the way that Romeo & Juliet is considered a tragedy in that the situation itself punishes the characters. OoT isn't some great tragedy to be clear, but as a tragedy? Yeah, pretty much.

See I think this is where our disagreements lie. This thread is called "Games with great stories PERIOD" not "Games with great stories relative to their franchise, or genre". It should be a listing of the best stories gaming has to offer without caveat and if that excludes a bunch of genres or franchises because they simply aren't story focused so be it.

Even there, I'd still call SA1 a "great" story, since it does well on every level. Certainly not greatest of all time, or top ten, or anything, but in of itself, it would still just fall into "great."

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Except it's all undone by the ending where Link is somehow returned to being a child and 7 years of tragedy are undone for the sake of an unambiguously happy ending.

I was planning to reply to this point, but Hawki beat me to it and wrote it in a lot more detail than I was going to (I only played Ocarina once and it's not my favorite of the series). So I'll tl;dr my original plan: This is factually incorrect.

 

[Drathnoxis]

MM arguably feels more alive in the sense that the three day cycle allows certain characters to be fleshed out (again, the Kafei/Anju storyline is a key example), but I can't agree with the rest of that. "More" story is a bit iffy since MM has five dungeons compared to OoT's 9/10, all of which have story associated with them. As for Skull Kid being more interesting than Ganondorf, again, disagree. Ganondorf certainly isn't that deep a villain (least in OoT), but Skull Kid doesn't have that much either. Yes, he has his backstory (was a bully, became friends with Tatl and Tael, gets possessed by the mask), but the mask itself doesn't have motivation beyond "destroy everything." Ganondorf at least has the intimidation factor, plus you see a world where he won, plus his presence hangs over the entire game. Even before the time jump, you're dealing with the aftermath of his actions.



First, I don't know how you could call OoT an "unambiguously happy ending." I mean, MM does (sans the butler, maybe), but OoT? Really? Okay, let's go over what the ending involves (and to be fair, I won't factor in any other games):

-Link and Zelda are forced to part ways. The Zelda that sends Link back to his own time is a Zelda Link will never see again.

-The world she belongs to is still in ruins

-The people in that world still have to deal with the loss of their loved ones - Mido is pining for Saria, Ruto's father is still missing her, etc.

-Link returns to a world where, while spared Ganondorf's actions, will never know him as a hero, or what he did, or what he went through. Perhaps that's a mercy in some ways (e.g. Saria will never have to become a sage, which by most indications, is a very lonely life), but on the personal level, Link's gone through immense tragedy (there's a reason why every sage is a character Link met in childhood, why he has to let go of each of them, per the game's themes), and has to bear that burden alone.

-Navi leaves Link. Again, even confining this purely to the game itself, while there's some ambiguity as to why Navi flies away, the Doylist reason (by my reading), is that Link is no longer a child. The guardian fairies only come to the kokiri children. Link, despite being in a child's body, is a man in all but name, hence, the last fragment of his childhood literally flies out the window. He's alone, he has to bear the burdens.

-Link reunites with Zelda, and while we don't learn that Zelda doesn't know who he really is until the MM flashback, even confining this purely to the game itself, there's a sense of melencholia here. They've reunited, Link knows everything, Zelda doesn't. The Zelda before him now is not the same Zelda who he met in this same guardian near the game's start, nor the same Zelda who secretly aided him throughout the entire game.

Now there's unmistakably elements of jubilation in the ending - Lon Lon Ranch celebrates, there's triumphant music, but the underscore of everything is tragedy. Hence why I'd call OoT a tragedy, in the sense that Link does everything right, but loses everything on a personal level. It's a tragedy in the way that Romeo & Juliet is considered a tragedy in that the situation itself punishes the characters. OoT isn't some great tragedy to be clear, but as a tragedy? Yeah, pretty much.

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy because of the impulsiveness of youth, that's their character flaw, not because the situation was punishing the characters. Romeo and Juliet knew each other less than a week before making a rash decision to elope, making a bad plan that wasn't communicated well and immediately killing themselves when the plan seemed to have gone wrong (but it hadn't). Their death were easily preventable if they had acted with more patience and forethought. That's the tragedy.

As for OoT you draw an awful lot of conclusions from a couple lines of ambiguous dialogue and some silent cutscenes. I'm being facetious, I know you are probably drawing from that split timeline nonsense of Hyrule Historia. We may as well end the discussion here, because we will never agree on these points. I feel that a work needs to stand on it's own and any points that aren't readily apparent from playing the game itself are either a failure of the development team or an attempt to retcon which should be regarded as irrelevant to judgments on the actual game. I know you don't agree, however. We can leave it at that.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

As for OoT you draw an awful lot of conclusions from a couple lines of ambiguous dialogue and some silent cutscenes.

Honestly, it's better than your reading, which only scrapes about a millimeter off the surface without even trying to go deeper when there are deeper implications to be had within the game itself. Just to give one example, it's readily apparent that though the party in the future timeline is meant to be a joyous occasion, the conspicuous absence of the man of the hour puts a damper on the proceedings.

I'm being facetious, I know you are probably drawing from that split timeline nonsense of Hyrule Historia.

Hawki went out of his way not to draw on external sources like HH or MM, and acknowledged as such multiple times. It's more facetious to accuse him of using HH as a primary source with that in mind, if you can't source anything specific from that book.

I feel that a work needs to stand on it's own and any points that aren't readily apparent from playing the game itself are either a failure of the development team or an attempt to retcon which should be regarded as irrelevant to judgments on the actual game. I know you don't agree, however. We can leave it at that.

If you don't like the game, that's fair enough, I thought it was only an 8/10 at best. But when you refuse to even try to analyze the game on a deeper level, you don't then get to say that there's no deeper level to be had, and that that's the fault of the game's writers.

It's not necessarily a bad thing for a game to be subtle in its implications rather than shoving its meaning and the details of its events in your face. "I know you don't agree, however, so we can leave it at that."

 

[BrawlMan]

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy because of the impulsiveness of youth, that's their character flaw, not because the situation was punishing the characters. Romeo and Juliet knew each other less than a week before making a rash decision to elope, making a bad plan that wasn't communicated well and immediately killing themselves when the plan seemed to have gone wrong (but it hadn't). Their death were easily preventable if they had acted with more patience and forethought. That's the tragedy.

As for OoT you draw an awful lot of conclusions from a couple lines of ambiguous dialogue and some silent cutscenes. I'm being facetious, I know you are probably drawing from that split timeline nonsense of Hyrule Historia. We may as well end the discussion here, because we will never agree on these points. I feel that a work needs to stand on it's own and any points that aren't readily apparent from playing the game itself are either a failure of the development team or an attempt to retcon which should be regarded as irrelevant to judgments on the actual game. I know you don't agree, however. We can leave it at that.

I was going to stay out of this until you just posted...that, but dude, get the hell over yourself. @Hawki, considers OoT a great story. Nothing wrong with that, and I do not know why your panties are in a bunch of about it. He is not alone in that opinion, and will not be the last. Before you respond with whatever opinionated, arbitrary reason, I don't give a shit. It's called be cool and respect others opinions. Whatever you consider great Zelda story, I won't find wrong either, and you should do the same.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Hawki went out of his way not to draw on external sources like HH or MM, and acknowledged as such multiple times. It's more facetious to accuse him of using HH as a primary source with that in mind, if you can't source anything specific from that book.

Where? Because I rewatched the ending before posting and most of what he said is either speculation (fan theory) or from an external source like HH. I think I was being charitable in attributing his comments to an actual source, but as I haven't read HH and my knowledge of it is limited to the general points of the split timeline I may be wrong.

-Link and Zelda are forced to part ways. The Zelda that sends Link back to his own time is a Zelda Link will never see again.

Where is this stated? Could be that Link will see her again in 7 years. Multiverse theory is never posited in the game.

-The world she belongs to is still in ruins

I guess so. But if Zelda can send people back in time why don't they just send more people back and stop Ganon in the past? Frankly the time travel is a mess in this game so why the heck not? I don't have time to explain fully, but the beans and the song of storms both work on different time travel logic.

-The people in that world still have to deal with the loss of their loved ones - Mido is pining for Saria, Ruto's father is still missing her, etc.

Same answer as above and also we see the sages standing there, they could just say hi.

-Link returns to a world where, while spared Ganondorf's actions, will never know him as a hero, or what he did, or what he went through. Perhaps that's a mercy in some ways (e.g. Saria will never have to become a sage, which by most indications, is a very lonely life), but on the personal level, Link's gone through immense tragedy (there's a reason why every sage is a character Link met in childhood, why he has to let go of each of them, per the game's themes), and has to bear that burden alone.

Speculation relying on multiverse theory again.

-Navi leaves Link. Again, even confining this purely to the game itself, while there's some ambiguity as to why Navi flies away, the Doylist reason (by my reading), is that Link is no longer a child. The guardian fairies only come to the kokiri children. Link, despite being in a child's body, is a man in all but name, hence, the last fragment of his childhood literally flies out the window. He's alone, he has to bear the burdens.

Here's where you probably took as Hawki making an effort to confine his post to only the game itself. This however reads to me that this point alone is fully supported by the game and previous points are based on outside reference. And it's all speculation anyway, we don't know why Navi leaves, maybe she comes back 20 minutes later after checking on something. Or the quest is over, maybe Navi wants to get on with her own life and didn't actually care about Link, it's not necessarily about growing up because Link didn't have a fairy for any of his childhood where he wasn't on a quest to save the world.

-Link reunites with Zelda, and while we don't learn that Zelda doesn't know who he really is until the MM flashback, even confining this purely to the game itself, there's a sense of melencholia here. They've reunited, Link knows everything, Zelda doesn't. The Zelda before him now is not the same Zelda who he met in this same guardian near the game's start, nor the same Zelda who secretly aided him throughout the entire game.

This is complete speculation, the look between the two could literally mean anything. This is just Hawki reading his feelings into the work.

If you don't like the game, that's fair enough, I thought it was only an 8/10 at best. But when you refuse to even try to analyze the game on a deeper level, you don't then get to say that there's no deeper level to be had, and that that's the fault of the game's writers.

It's not necessarily a bad thing for a game to be subtle in its implications rather than shoving its meaning and the details of its events in your face. "I know you don't agree, however, so we can leave it at that."

I like the game. I never said I didn't like it. I just said it wasn't a great story. It's so basic and underdeveloped, and sure that means that you can read whatever deep meaning you want into it, the game isn't actually saying any of it. You are.

The story works for what the game wants it to do. To set the tone, and provide justification for you to explore the world and conquer the dungeons. It even does it well. But let's not pretend that makes it a great story, that's just devaluing the heights of storytelling that gaming can actually reach. Counting OoT among the great stories of video games is like counting the footnotes on Romeo and Juliet as the among the great historical analyses of books. There there to serve a purpose, and they even do it well, but are utterly lacking in comparison to something that actually puts it's focus in that area.

 

[Hawki]

Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy because of the impulsiveness of youth, that's their character flaw, not because the situation was punishing the characters. Romeo and Juliet knew each other less than a week before making a rash decision to elope, making a bad plan that wasn't communicated well and immediately killing themselves when the plan seemed to have gone wrong (but it hadn't). Their death were easily preventable if they had acted with more patience and forethought. That's the tragedy.

While all of that is technically true, that it's a tragedy at all still stems from the feud between the Montaques and Capulets. There's also things that occur that happen due to bad luck (e.g. the letter reaching Romeo telling him Juliet is dead, but not that her death is faked).

A question can certainly be asked as to where the responsibility lies - with the titular couple with their actions, or the wider situation forcing such actions to be undertaken in some form. Not that this is mutually exclusive, but I tend to drift towards the latter in that:

-Looking at some of Shakespeare's other tragedies, the character flaw is far more pronounced in a number of areas. Macbeth is ambitious. Brutus is naive.* Their actions directly result in consequences. Romeo and Juliet, on the other hand, don't really fit this paradigm IMO. They have far less agency in the situations they find themselves in.

-The ending lines involve "all are punished," as in, the constable is saying "you feuding families, you brought this upon yourselves," and the very last line is "never was there a tale of more woe, than that of Juliet and Romeo." Note the use of the word "woe" rather than any ascription of a personality flaw. Again, people are free to interpret Shakespeare how they want, but in JAR, I generally see it more as a tragedy of circumstance than a tragedy of character flaws.

*There's a line that's always stuck with me - "the tragedy of Brutus is not that he failed to save the Republic. The tragedy of Brutus is that he failed to realize the Republic was beyond saving." Forget who said it, but I think that's a fair perscription. Even Mark Antony calls Brutus "the noblest Roman who ever lived," and Brutus clearly isn't motivated in the same way Cassius is.

As for OoT you draw an awful lot of conclusions from a couple lines of ambiguous dialogue and some silent cutscenes. I'm being facetious, I know you are probably drawing from that split timeline nonsense of Hyrule Historia. We may as well end the discussion here, because we will never agree on these points. I feel that a work needs to stand on it's own and any points that aren't readily apparent from playing the game itself are either a failure of the development team or an attempt to retcon which should be regarded as irrelevant to judgments on the actual game. I know you don't agree, however. We can leave it at that.

Ouch.

Okay, to be clear, the Hyrule Historia has influenced my take on the ending to some extent, but if you'd asked me to sum up the ending before HH was released, you'd have gotten a similar answer. At most, I'd be less clear on the timeline (I followed the Single Timeline Theory for quite awhile for instance), but even then, most of what I said, I'd maintain is there in the game itself. On the level of character and theme, most of this is in OoT regardless of anything else. Even before TP established that the Link of OoT didn't have the happiest life in the world (becoming the Hero's Shade), I'd argue that the elements of that are in OoT long before TP capitalized on them.

HH makes a few things explicitly clear - that the timeline splits, that Link searches for Navi post-OoT, and that he was depressed because no-one knew him for his deeds. All of those things, however, you can reasonably infer from the ending by itself. Maybe not so much the depression part, that's true, but considering what's happened throughout the game up to this point (Link's entire arc is him losing childhood innocence, losing almost every friend he made in childhood to sagedom),* there's a clear line of tragedy that runs throughout the entire game.

Also, on another point, I actually do agree that a work of fiction generally needs to be able to stand on its own. For instance, if you want me to describe the First Order in the sequel trilogy it's kinda balls, if you want me to describe the First Order in of itself (e.g. including the EU), it's actually a pretty terrifying faction. If we're discussing the wider LoZ universe, then of course I'd include the HH, if we're discussing OoT by itself, I agree that OoT should be able to stand on its own terms.** However, at least for me, OoT does stand on by itself. Whatever ambiguities HH later clarified, for the most part, it tells a singular, coherent story with a clear thematic throughline.

*It's certainly no coincidence for instance that Kaepora only appears to Link in his child form, and before meeting Nabooru, tells Link that this will be the last time they ever talk. I get the frustrations with Kaepora, but thematically, he plays a key role in the story's themes.

**It's arguably debatable as to whether you should factor in sequels when discussing originals. For instance, MM, WW, and TP all take clear direction from OoT, so even if you cast aside the Historia, they do back up a lot of things - MM implies, if not confirms that the Zelda of the childhood timeline doesn't seem to know Link. TP characterizes OoT further via the Hero's Shade.

 

[Hawki]

I was going to stay out of this until you just posted...that, but dude, get the hell over yourself. @Hawki, considers OoT a great story. Nothing wrong with that, and I do not know why your panties are in a bunch of about it. He is not alone in that opinion, and will not be the last. Before you respond with whatever opinionated, arbitrary reason, I don't give a shit. It's called be cool and respect others opinions. Whatever you consider great Zelda story, I won't find wrong either, and you should do the same.

Geez man, calm down. I'm not about to be offended if Drath doesn't think OoT's great.

 

[Hawki]

Where? Because I rewatched the ending before posting and most of what he said is either speculation (fan theory) or from an external source like HH. I think I was being charitable in attributing his comments to an actual source, but as I haven't read HH and my knowledge of it is limited to the general points of the split timeline I may be wrong.

It's pretty clear that this is a significant, if not permanent parting. Zelda tells Link (paraphrased) "go back to your lost time, reclaim your lost time." There's tenderness in the way Link finally hands over the ocarina, not to mention the sorrow in Zelda's eyes. It's fitting that Zelda plays the lullaby (introduced in both their childhoods) to send Link back to his own childhood, away from her own adulthood.

Getting obsessed with "multiverse theory" is getting into semantics - the intention of the interaction is pretty clear.

Where is this stated? Could be that Link will see her again in 7 years. Multiverse theory is never posited in the game.

Again, read above. There's nothing to suggest that they will see each other again, at least in these forms.

I guess so. But if Zelda can send people back in time why don't they just send more people back and stop Ganon in the past? Frankly the time travel is a mess in this game so why the heck not? I don't have time to explain fully, but the beans and the song of storms both work on different time travel logic.

Yes, the laws of time travel are kind of a mess, the laws of time travel usually are in fiction. Obsessing over the laws of time travel isn't something I'm usually interested in unless the setting itself makes a big deal of them, and even then, it's more relevant when it's applied to story (e.g. take the thematic disconnect between Terminator 2 & 3 as to how they approach inevitablity/the lack of it).

But in the specific context of OoT, there's two things. First, from a practical standpoint, Link stopping Ganondorf in the past (the Child Timeline) doesn't affect things from the Adult Timeline (and this is something the game really does leave vague). But more importantly, the idea of Zelda sending more people back really doesn't gel with the overall themes. Zelda takes responsibility for her own mess at the end, her passing it onto other people really doesn't fit what the story's going for.

Same answer as above and also we see the sages standing there, they could just say hi.

Potentially, but in the entire game, we've never seen a single sage after becoming a sage interact with anyone, and at least in some cases, they're implied to be dead. From both a thematic and in-universe standpoint, the implications are that being a sage means being lost to the world, or at least, lost to those close to you.

Speculation relying on multiverse theory again.

How is that speculation? I've already spelled out the sage stuff. Zelda's already told Link she's sending him back to his "lost time" to reclaim. You don't even need multiverse theory to explain it, if the events in the future never happened, by definition, they never happened.

Here's where you probably took as Hawki making an effort to confine his post to only the game itself. This however reads to me that this point alone is fully supported by the game and previous points are based on outside reference. And it's all speculation anyway, we don't know why Navi leaves, maybe she comes back 20 minutes later after checking on something. Or the quest is over, maybe Navi wants to get on with her own life and didn't actually care about Link, it's not necessarily about growing up because Link didn't have a fairy for any of his childhood where he wasn't on a quest to save the world.

Well first, that Navi doesn't ever appear again in OoT indicates that the departure is permanent. That's not even getting into MM where Navi is conspicuously absent, and Link is 90% established to be looking for her (yes, the "friend" he's searching for is never expliitly called Navi, but I never met anyone who thought it was someone else).

Second, sure, Navi could leave Link for the reasons you say, it isn't specified why. However, considering that childhood/innocence lost has been a recurring motif throughought the entire work, I'd be inclined to say it's the same here.

This is complete speculation, the look between the two could literally mean anything. This is just Hawki reading his feelings into the work.

Okay, fine, in the context of OoT by itself, anything could literally happen after those few minutes, but keep in mind that:

-Melencholia: The entire tone of the scene is melencholic.

-There's conspicuously no celebration of the two meeting - Zelda's expression is similar to that when she first meets Link (compare this to the manga adaptation, where Zelda conspicuously does recognize Link, and is overjoyed to see him).

-The Zelda who sent him back treated that interaction as a final goodbye, so conspicuously, the Zelda of the past doesn't treat Link like someone she knows.

A lot is left ambiguous, fair enough, but there's any number of cues that are provided for the player. Even in the scope of the LoZ series, compare it to something like A Link to the Past, where there's an unambiguous celebration with no ambiguity or deeper meaning/theme to be found.

Also, even if something is ambiguous, that's not inherently a bad thing. Plenty of stories end ambiguously without issue (2001: A Space Odyssey comes to mind).

I like the game. I never said I didn't like it. I just said it wasn't a great story. It's so basic and underdeveloped, and sure that means that you can read whatever deep meaning you want into it, the game isn't actually saying any of it. You are.

The story works for what the game wants it to do. To set the tone, and provide justification for you to explore the world and conquer the dungeons. It even does it well. But let's not pretend that makes it a great story, that's just devaluing the heights of storytelling that gaming can actually reach. Counting OoT among the great stories of video games is like counting the footnotes on Romeo and Juliet as the among the great historical analyses of books. There there to serve a purpose, and they even do it well, but are utterly lacking in comparison to something that actually puts it's focus in that area.

Okay, I seriously can't agree with any of that.

I'm going to take a segway and given an example where I think that analysis would hold true - A Link to the Past. Now, I've never been a fan of ALttP, in part because I find its story so shallow in comparison to what came later (by the time I'd played ALttP, I'd played OoT and MM for instance), but that aside, ALttP meets the definition. I bring it up because people have pointed out the similarities between ALttP and OoT, among them that:

-Link has to collect three pendants/spiritual stones

-Upon collecting the stones/pendants, the story takes a hard left (Zelda is kidnapped/escapes), the game enters its second, harder phase.

-Said phase includes alternate worlds/time travel. Link must now travel to temples to rescue maidens/sages.

I bring this up because while the structure of both stories is broadly similar, OoT has meat that ALttP lacks. LinkPast gives just enough context for the player to understand what they're doing and why, but nothing beyond that. There's no characters of note, there's no deeper themes to explore, worldbuilding is sparse, etc. In OoT, however, each dungeon has a clear theme with an associated character. Each character is an individual he met in his childhood, each character is inevitably lost to him (tellingly, the meeting always occurs in childhood, and the losing always occurs in adulthood). The only real exception to this is the Deku Tree, which dies despite Link's efforts. Compare that to ALttP, where Link's uncle dies, gives you his gear, and Link doesn't seem to give a crap. You can attribute this to the limitations of the SNES, you'd have a point in doing so, but that doesn't make it somehow better.

So, yeah. I really don't get how you can say the story simply exists to justify the dungeons. Key example, Forest Temple. You meet Saria outside it as a child, she foreshadows its importance later on, cue seven years later, the realtively idealic meadow is now a nightmare, and Shiek references this in his usual monologue outside each table. Every dungeon in the game has something beyond "go kill monsters."

 

[NerfedFalcon]

On a general note, I think that there being multiple possible interpretations of a work is one of the things that makes a story an enduring classic. The way that I define 'literature', personally, is a book that you can read multiple times and get something new out of it every single time, and while I'm not sure what term I would use for this for a game, as far as storytelling goes, it should at least be clear from this discussion that there's multiple levels of analysis and multiple possible interpretations to Ocarina of Time.

Pretty much every great story in every medium (for example, Romeo and Juliet) has that in common; sure, there are great films or great games that don't have that level of depth, but are still masterpieces for their cinematography or gameplay elevating the story in ways that words on a page wouldn't. Ultimately, though, that isn't what this sub-discussion's become about, and on the simple level of whether there are multiple readings of it that would justify the effort to form one's own opinion, well, this whole page speaks for itself by now.

@Hawki, you ever tried making video essays, like just as a hobby? I'd probably watch it.

 

[BrawlMan]

Geez man, calm down. I'm not about to be offended if Drath doesn't think OoT's great.

I am calm, I just don't like how Drathnoxis was reacting and being overly skeptical over something silly. If you say you're okay, than that's fine. Like I said before, I don't have a foot in this race, but don't like when people go overboard on other people's personal opinions or try pull the you're wrong card with the "up to interpretation" bullshit.

 

[Drathnoxis]

@Hawki Whole lot of text. I won't have time to read all that until after the weekend.

 

[Dreiko]

My single favorite fantasy story in anything ever has to be Tears to Tiara 2. It's a visual novel Srpg hybrid made by the Utawarerumono folks at Aquaplus and takes on the lesser utilized setting of the Carthaginian wars, but with a fantasy anime paintjob all over it. Basically, the protagonist is the best protagonist in anything because unlike the typically more bland and self-insert style protagonists you see in visual novels, he is more like a Jrpg lead, full of personality and character. Also the plot is incredibly complex and emotional, legit had me bawling at one point near the end of the game.


Also it came out during a time when atlus who published it to the US wasn't releasing games with dual audio yet, but because it had just so much dialogue, they released it undubbed in Japanese only cause they couldn't manage the task of voicing the game. So you know how much content it has. I think it took around 80 hours to beat but a good 3/4ths of that is voiced visual novel.


Sadly I don't think it's been ported in anything ever so if you wanna give it a go better dig out that ps3.


Here's the intro to get an idea of the vibe of it:

 

[sXeth]

I
Well first, that Navi doesn't ever appear again in OoT indicates that the departure is permanent. That's not even getting into MM where Navi is conspicuously absent, and Link is 90% established to be looking for her (yes, the "friend" he's searching for is never expliitly called Navi, but I never met anyone who thought it was someone else).

Always figured it was Saria (who would no longer be doomed to being the Forest sage with the crisis averted), which is also what anyone I've heard mention it think. With Link being sent back to his timeline would be absent of other relationships he formed as the hero (including Navi). Him trying to find his pre-existing childhood friend in the Lost Woods where both she and skull kid hung out in Ocarina of Time rather then Navi, who he wouldn't have any broader reason to expect to recognize him then Zelda, Darunia, Ruto, etc.

Back on the topic of hand, Ultima would probably get my nod. Even if you have to maybe put a little bit of fuzz over the first 3 (well, 2 especially). It really picks up its main steam across 6 and 7 where some of the subversions of the usual cliches come up moreso. Even thev much reviled ending in Ascension/9, if you set aside the tecnical and development hell issues with the delivery, does in its broader plot points wrap it up in an interesting way (though it lacks any forethought or speculative nod towards the future of the setting after that change)
'
I'll give Morrowind a bit of a nod too. The pacing is wack AF and the delivery often leaves a lot to be desired (like all the bits that make it somewhat interesting are buried in walls of texts or less obvious places, and without those its just another Chosen One vs Satan Reincaranted spin)

 

[Worgen]

• Beacon Pines
• Call of Duty Modern Warfare
• Cross Code
• Undertale
• Golden Treasure: the great green
• Hedon
• ZeroRanger
• Half of Bioshock
• Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Hong Kong
• Zniw Adventure
• Full Throttle
• Psychonauts
• Return of the Obra Dinn
• Oneshot
• Celeste
• Supplice
• Spiritfarer

 

[Hawki]

@Hawki, you ever tried making video essays, like just as a hobby? I'd probably watch it.

Oh God no!

I appreciate the comments, but there's a number of things going against that happening, as in:

-Barely have any experience in creating videos, nor do I have the hardware to do so.

-This is a personal peave, but I can't stand listening to my own voice

-Far as hobbies go (as in, hobbies that involve creation), I already do writing and wiki ending as hobbies, adding video essays to that would be too much

-Least in the context of Ocarina specifically, I doubt I could say anything that hasn't been said already.

So, yeah. Thanks, but probably not going to happen.

 

[bluegate]

I already do writing and wiki ending as hobbies

You write wiki articles with the intent of tanking the wiki? How dare you, you absolute mad man.

 

[Hawki]

You write wiki articles with the intent of tanking the wiki? How dare you, you absolute mad man.

?

Sorry, not sure what you mean by "tanking" in this case. I certainly don't make stuff up for wikis if that's what you mean, I'm very stringent on sourcing and categorization (I mean, I'm a wiki admin on various wikis, it comes with the territory).

 

[bluegate]

?

Sorry, not sure what you mean by "tanking" in this case. I certainly don't make stuff up for wikis if that's what you mean, I'm very stringent on sourcing and categorization (I mean, I'm a wiki admin on various wikis, it comes with the territory).

I assume you meant to say that "wiki editing" was one of your hobbies rather than "wiki ending".

Unless "wiki ending" is some form of wiki jargon that I'm unaware of.

 

[Baffle]

?

Sorry, not sure what you mean by "tanking" in this case. I certainly don't make stuff up for wikis if that's what you mean, I'm very stringent on sourcing and categorization (I mean, I'm a wiki admin on various wikis, it comes with the territory).

You wrote ending, you meant editing.