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 in the action-adventure genre. The game surprised players at the time by reinventing the Zelda formula established in A Link to the Past, adapting it to accommodate the arrival of the third dimension in gaming. Despite a couple of flaws, Ocarina of Time is a game that delights us 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 remote forest village. But he is different from everyone else, being the only one there to lack a friendly fairy as a guide. The other Kokiri see Link as odd and bully him, so his only friend is Saria, a girl who believes Link will eventually get his fairy and everything will be okay. One morning, however, the Great Deku Tree sends the fairy Na’vi to wake up the boy and summon him to an audience. The tree tells Link that everything is definitely not okay, for they were poisoned by an evil force and it is up to the boy to leave on a journey through the kingdom of Hyrule and save the world. His only companion is to be Na’vi: Link gets his fairy, in a way, but it comes with a price.

Ocarina of Time doesn’t try to hide the fact its story has roots in the biggest clichés of the fantasy genre, with an orphan “chosen one”, a diabolical villain, and even a princess to be saved. But the trio of writers (Miyamoto, Ousawa, and Koizumi)  make the most of these tropes while being economical in their writing: they build character relationships with brief but very meaningful dialogues and scenes. We are led to care about the bond between Link and Saria, for example, because 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 the forest to fulfill his mission, and realizes that she is the only person waiting for him at the exit, becomes very moving even though it lasts just a few moments: on the one hand, the scene demonstrates the affection and concern Saria feels for Link, being the only one there for him, but on the other, it is also packed with sadness, suggesting that the protagonist’s journey will prevent them from being together – that is, that his adventure will not be without sacrifice. The strength of the game’s writing lies in scenes like this: it does a lot with very little.

The English localization also deserves applause. Early on, for example, we can already notice the incredible care put into the lexical choice. When the Great Deku Tree speaks to Link, their words convey their age and wisdom with the style used (“Doust thou sense it?”) and with their particular choice of words (“The climate of evil descending upon this realm… Malevolent forces even now are mustering to attack our land of Hyrule.”). When the Great Deku Tree refers to evil as a “climate”, the word reveals to us that they’re so ancient that they see the threat of evil as something periodic and fleeting, something that has happened many times and will happen again, but also will be gone for a while: evil is a cycle.

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-like creatures that like to eat rocks – and the Zoras – amphibian humanoids who live secluded in their kingdom. Link 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 he removes a sacred sword from its pedestal. He moves seven years into the future, to a time where Ganondorf prevailed and rules over a devasted Hyrule.

It’s just a shame that after going to the future, the pacing of the story falters and becomes a slog: if Ocarina of Time has one main issue, this is it. 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 changed there with time, but this objective doesn’t prevent the game’s second act from marking a sudden decrease in momentum: little happens after the time jump.

But the game works exceptionally well with the transformations that have taken place in Hyrule during this period. There are shocking moments – notably the decadence of Hyrule’s market, with dancing couples and cheerful people being replaced by scary mummified creatures  –, but there are 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 that 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” being a stand-in for Excalibur; 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 nature emerging with great power and influencing the events of the story.  This Shintoist influence can be especially noted in the active stance we are pushed 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 clear: while some strive to keep the player busy, leaving them bewildered with so many objectives to complete (most of which are irrelevant), Ocarina of Time hides its missions, inviting us to connect with its world. The result is simply dazzling: no matter where we are in the story, wherever we go there will be 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 significant that the game doesn’t point too much at its optional puzzles, because this pushes us to observe the surroundings and connect the dots for ourselves. 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? By making these reflections, we are 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: we are offered a lot of space to try out the various actions at our disposal, such as climbing over crates, crawling in holes, and doing pirouettes. The forest is there for us 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: they are all about us figuring out how to interact with the obstacles to proceed.

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 use to deduce which tool at our disposal can assist us, often locking Link in rooms that require the specific use of a newly acquired item: we cannot leave until we learn how to use it. 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: we quickly learn that to destroy webs on the ground it’s necessary to make Link jump on them, 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 nowadays, 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 very similar 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 this element.

Despite all its virtues, the design of Ocarina of Time is not devoid of some small problems. Dungeons, for example, contain their share of time-consuming issues: in Dodongo Cave, 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 we will need to take a detour to go back to the platform where we previously were, causing us to waste unnecessary time. The Temple of Shadows commits a similar mistake by offering a shortcut that, when discovered, can have the opposite effect: if we push a rock that blocks a certain path out of the way, but not all the way across the hall, the rock will teleport to its initial position as soon as we leave to see where the path leads, barring the way back. And the Temple of Water can become a bit tiresome due to the need to open and close the main menu several times to equip and remove some special 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 applications for some equipment. The Deku Nut, for example, is basically never necessary to progress and can be promptly ignored by us as soon as we get it, since we will have much more effective weapons at our 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 frustration: trying to put out a fire stick can cause the player to roll on the floor with it instead. Similarly, both pushing a block and climbing it are done with this same button, which may annoy some players, 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 aggravating and even unintentionally funny, as her hints often ignore context: “Don’t you think we should go to Kakariko Village?” she may say in Kakariko Village. “What would Saria say about the next sacred stone?” she may ask right after Link questioned Saria about the next sacred stone.

Another problem lies in the game’s monetary system. The currency here 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 us with hundreds of rupees. But there’s little to buy with them. There are usually only arrows, bombs, and potions for sale – items that we normally get by killing enemies or cutting grass/ breaking pots.  So, since we are left without too much to do with money, we may end up questioning whether it really is rewarding to complete some secondary quests, such as the spiders’ one.

Nevertheless, Ocarina of Time still delivers a seminal adventure, leaving a true mark in the genre. 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.