 |
| Happy Mask Salesman |
Yesterday I was thinking of what sort
of question I could be asked if Ubisoft ever wanted to hire me for
their Tester position (come on Ubisoft, don't leave me hanging) and
as usual my mind started to wander to questions they probably
wouldn't ask but I still wanted to have answers for. One of the
question I came up with was “what is your favorite quote?” which
is a pretty easy one since its the Doctors little speech from the
episode 'Blink' about how time works. That question lead me to
another one which was “what is your favorite quote from a video
game?”. I admit I was stumped for a few seconds but then this quote
jumped into my head like it was the obvious answer. “You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?” said by the Happy Mask Salesman
in The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. After that I started to wonder
why this line was my answer and I couldn't do that without
deconstructing Majora's Mask.
 |
| Deku Link |
Now the line is the first thing the
Happy Mask Salesman says to you after you've been turned into deku.
It entirely summarizes your situation as a whole. You didn't ask for
this, and for once in a Zelda game you are not the destined hero of
prophecy (you were before but this is a different place so I'm
ignoring that. You did the whole destiny thing in the last game). You
were just on a journey to find a missing friend and fell into this
mess. But of course you're Link so you're going to solve this problem
cause thats what Links do! Back to the Happy Mask Salesman he's kinda
a psycho but as he describes his situation he's caught in a bad place
as well, having his mask stolen from him by the Skull Kid (I should
mention is helps understand what I'm talking about if you've already
played the game).
Now withing the first few minutes of
the game you most of the characters you've met have met with a
terrible fate of some sort. Link turned into a deku, Talt being
separated from their sibling, and the Happy Mask Salesman being
robbed of his extremely rare and dangerous mask. After thinking about
it , and it seems very obvious now, most characters that you
interactive with have met with some sort of terrible fate or another.
We've got the couple who can't get married because the groom has
turned into a child, the ranch that is being attacked by aliens, the
deku kings daughter being trapped inside the temple, the bomb store
lady gets robbed, all the great faeries have been split apart, the
goron child's dad died, and the list goes on and on. Just about every
character that you help in the game has “terrible fate” not of
their own choosing.
 |
| The couple who can't get married |
 |
| Skull Kid with the Majora's Mask |
Now of course these could mostly be
tied back to the Skull Kid using the powers of the Majora's mask but
I chose to believe he's a victim as well. Where Ganondorf from
Ocarina of Time caused most of the problems in the game world, he was
an evil character who knew exactly what he was doing. The Skull Kid
is just a kid, whose friends left him all alone and fell prey to the
powers and influences of the Majora's mask. You can consider that he
also met with a terrible fate being left alone, then controlled.
Everywhere you look in this game there
are characters that have been put into terrible situations that
require your help. Even the antagonist.”You've met with a terrible
fate, haven't you?” completely describes the one of the major
themes in the game, as well as the games tone. Its not anyones fault
of what happened but it happened anyway. This is something we can
completely understand in our lives where there are many things
completely out of our control, and I'm sure we've all felt that we've
befallen a terrible fate before. Just like in the game we have to
pick ourselves off and do the best we can, and maybe take a page from
Link and help someone else too.
