The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Released in 1998, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has become one of the most influential titles of the action-adventure genre. The game surprised players by reinventing the Zelda formula established in A Link to the Past, adapting it to accommodate the arrival of the third dimension. Despite some flaws, Ocarina of Time is a game that delights the player in the way it stimulates the exploration of its magical world, offering a wide range of memorable settings and situations.

The protagonist, Link, is a young Kokiri who lives in a secluded forest village. He is different from every one of his colleagues and neighbors because he is the only one in his village to lack a friendly fairy to guide him – this makes Link be marginalized and bullied by the other Kokiri. His only friend is Saria, a girl who believes that one day Link will get his fairy and everything will be okay. One morning, however, the Great Deku Tree sends the fairy Na’vi to wake the boy up and summon him to an audience. The tree tells Link that it was poisoned by an evil force and that it is up to him to leave on a journey through the kingdom of Hyrule to save the world.

Ocarina of Time doesn’t try to hide the fact its story has roots in the biggest clichés of the fantasy genre, with a “chosen one”, a diabolical villain, and even a princess to be saved. The trio of writers (Miyamoto, Ousawa, and Koizumi), however, are very economical in their writing, building the relationship between characters with very brief but meaningful dialogues and scenes. The player is led to care about the bond between Link and Saria, for example, due to the fact that the boy is an outcast in the forest and she is his only friend: without Saria, he has nothing left. Consequently, the scene in which the protagonist decides to leave to fulfill his mission, and notes that she is the only person waiting for him at the exit, becomes very moving: on the one hand, the scene demonstrates the affection and the concern Saria feels for Link, but, on the other, it is also packed with sadness, suggesting that the protagonist’s journey will prevent them from being together – that his adventure will not be without sacrifice.

The English localization also deserves applause. Early on, for example, one can already notice incredible care in the lexical choice: the vocabulary used by the Great Deku Tree conveys its age and wisdom by using terms in an older English (“Doust thou sense it?”) and, mainly, because it refers to the evil in the world as a “climate” (“The climate of evil descending upon this realm”), which reveals that the tree is so ancient that it sees the forces of evil as something periodic and fleeting, something that’s happening and will happen again, but that will also temporarily go away.

The narrative moves on at a quick pace in the first hours of gameplay thanks to the enormous number of events happening. In a few hours, Link leaves his home behind, runs through the kingdom of Hyrule, and meets eccentric people, such as the Gorons – amiable stone monsters who like to eat stone – and the Zoras – amphibian humanoids who live in their secluded kingdom. He meets Princess Zelda and comes face to face with his nemesis, Ganondorf. After a series of twists, Link witnesses the castle of Hyrule being attacked, Zelda fleeing, and then he finally travels forward in time when removing a sacred sword from its pedestal.

It’s just a shame that after going to the future, the pace of the story becomes a slog. There are no new regions or peoples to be discovered until near the end of the game. The main plot itself doesn’t advance, as Link is stuck with his mission to get five magical medallions. The goal becomes to revisit previous areas and observe what has deteriorated over time, but this objective doesn’t prevent the game’s second act from marking a sudden decrease in momentum.

The developers, however, work very well with the transformations that have taken place in Hyrule over time. There are shocking moments – notably the decadence of the main city –, but also some subtler changes: in the room of the Lon Lon Ranch owner, for example, his daughter’s paintings are replaced by portraits of Ganondorf, and the bright wallpaper is replaced by a purple one – a color usually associated with death and which is here directly attributed to the villain.

Ocarina of Time has a unique fantasy universe that mixes several influences: it contains Arthurian myths, such as the “Master Sword”; typical characterizations of races of the genre, such as the Zoras, who, cold and reclusive, act as if they were the elves of Tolkien’s stories; and it also has a very strong Shintoist atmosphere, with spirits of the nature emerging with great power and influencing the events of the story.  This Shintoist influence can be especially noted in the active stance that developers wish the player to adopt towards Hyrule: the game is focused on interactions with the environment to reflect the mystery and importance of nature.

If most games nowadays – especially open-world ones – are concerned with filling their spaces with activities, Ocarina of Time fills its world with secrets. The consequence of this difference is manifest: while some strive to keep the player busy, leaving them bewildered with so many objectives (most of which are irrelevant), Ocarina of Time hides its missions, inviting the player to connect with its world. The result is simply dazzling: no matter where the player is in the story, wherever they go there is something not to do, but to unravel.

Ocarina of Time’s greatest strength, therefore, lies in how it handles exploration. Each space in the game can hide numerous secrets, such as the location of treasures, special powers, and heart pieces. Interaction with the environment often occurs with the help of Link’s ocarina, whose melodies can generate specific reactions in the characters or physically modify the landscape. It’s also fundamental that the game doesn’t point too much at its optional puzzles, encouraging the player to observe the surroundings and connect the points for themselves. Are there flowers in front of only one tomb in Kakariko Village’s cemetery, and the symbol of the royal family in front of another? What do these signs mean? Reflecting on these issues, the player ends up maintaining an active relationship with Ocarina of Time‘s world, connecting more with it, which makes it more memorable in the process.

In this sense, the game’s first area, the Kokiri Forest, basically serves as a playground: the developers offer a lot of space for players to try out the various actions at their disposal, like being able to climb over crates, crawl in holes, and do pirouettes. The forest is there for players to become familiar with the controls. And, since the game’s focus is on the player’s interaction with the environment, it is also fitting that its narrative is structured around dungeons, as they hold the most challenging puzzles in the game.

The first dungeon, the interior of the Great Deku Tree, is ambitious in its plan to expand the tutorial function of the Kokiri Forest, explaining the logic of the puzzles and the structure of the dungeons that will follow. It encourages meticulous observation of the environment, asking players to deduce which tool at their disposal can assist them, often locking Link in rooms that require the specific use of a newly acquired item. The dungeon teaches how to trigger devices at a distance, swim and go underwater, the principles of the combat system, and it works with verticality by requiring the impact of jumps to open certain passages. The dungeon even subverts some of its ideas after presenting them a few times: the player quickly learns that to destroy webs on the ground it’s necessary to make Link jump, while cobwebs on the walls need to be burned, but at the end of the dungeon the challenge is to learn how to burn a spiderweb that is on the ground.

Ocarina of Time is also famous for featuring a mechanic called “Z-Targeting,” which locks the camera on an enemy, allowing sword fighting to become more like a duel. The ability to lock on enemies is still essential in 3D action games, and it’s probably the game’s main legacy in terms of mechanics.

On the other hand, it is undeniable that the game borrows its entire structure from A Link to the Past, separating the narrative in the exact same way – gather three pendants, travel to another world and then collect five medallions – and copying the logic behind some of the puzzles and dungeon gimmicks– such as regulating the water level in the dungeon based on the same element.

Despite all its virtues, Ocarina of Time is not devoid of problems and some of them are serious. Dungeons, for example, contain their share of setbacks in their design: in Dodongo Cave, for example, after getting the bomb, there is a breakable wall just below to the right of the platform where Link is. Besides the fact that this passage doesn’t offer anything useful, getting down there actually means that the player will need to take a detour to go back to the platform where they were previously, causing them to waste unnecessary time. The Temple of Shadows commits a similar error by offering a shortcut that, when discovered, can have the opposite effect: if the player pushes the rock that blocks a path out of the way, but not all the way across the hall, the rock will teleport to its initial position as soon as they go see where the path leads, barring the way back. And The Temple of Water can become a bit boring by the need of opening and closing the main menu several times to equip and remove the metal boots – a problem solved in the 3DS version, in which the boots are a common item that can be equipped with the standard buttons.

Another problem is the lack of application of some equipment. The Deku Nut, for example, is basically never necessary to progress and can be promptly ignored by the player, who have much more effective weapons at their disposal. The Bombchu – which is limited to a minigame and two mere puzzles – and the Mirror Shield – which, though brilliant in its execution, appears only in the last temple and very late inside it – are equally underutilized.

The action button also has its share of problems. As the name implies, it gathers many actions in one place, which simplifies things, but inevitably generates some problems: trying to put out a fire stick can cause the player to roll on the floor with it instead. Similarly, moving and climbing a block sometimes may annoy the player, due to the time that one command takes to turn into the other. Meanwhile, the fairy Na’vi – famous for the inconvenience of her “Hey, listen!” –  also proves to be annoying and even unintentionally funny, as she often ignores context: “Don’t you think we should go to Kakariko Village?” she says in Kakariko Village. “What would Saria say about the next sacred stone?” she asks right after Link questioned Saria about the next sacred stone.

Another serious problem lies in the game’s monetary system. In the game, the currency is a jewel called “rupee”, which Link earns as a reward for various activities: the largest secondary mission of the game – hunting for golden spiders –, for example, rewards the player with hundreds of rupees. The developers, however, forgot to give some purpose for the money acquired and offer something important for the player to buy. Since there are only arrows, bombs, and potions for sale – items which are normally stocked by killing enemies or cutting grass/ breaking pots – players are left without what to do with so much money, which inevitably leads them to question whether it is really rewarding to complete some quests, such as the spiders’ one.

Ocarina of Time may contain some design mistakes, but it nevertheless delivers an excellent adventure. The world of Ocarina of Time is not a place full of activities to be done, but one packed with mysteries and secrets ready to be unraveled. And it is all the better for it.

December 07, 2018

Originally published in Portuguese on May 09, 2016.