on mazes and majora's mask
i'm in a weird space where i'm having a hard time sticking with anything games-related. there's no science to it, but i'm sure it has to do with the restlessness that comes with unemployment and living in a city that refuses to believe the very real threat of a pandemic. because of that, i'm doing what i did to try and get the blood flowing with my reading, which suffered similarly towards the beginning of this hullabaloo—i'm returning to old favorites that will remind me, “yes, indeed, you did enjoy this thing.”
so i'm playing majora's mask and kero blaster, two games i've enjoyed in years past and have meant to return to with the debut of their newer iterations (majora's mask's remaster on the 3ds and kero blaster's port to the switch, which.. is really just a big improvement for me since i'm not wild about action games on the pc). kero blaster for another post, today i'm going to talk about majora's mask for a bit.
i'm thoroughly enjoying the game, it's gorgeous on the 3ds—i've never seen better pinks and purples in a video game, grezzo does the lord's work here in remastering such a choppy grungy game. this morning i breezed through the forest temple, cleansing it of the dark forces within, restoring the ph balance of the poison ponds, and stopped the monkey-roast. it was great. the princess informed me of the butler's wish to see me, so he could bestow upon me this incredible, puckered gift. but before that, i had to chase him through a maze, which got me thinking: would a 3d platformer based around navigating mazes be any fun?
the butler's maze is similar to dampé's graveyard maze in ocarina for those who remember. it's time, and you try to follow as quickly as you can as the butler/dampé floats away from you, just far enough that if they were to turn a corner you would lose sight of them and have to guesstimate based on the sound their floating makes which direction they headed in. doors close behind you as you travel, to keep you on your toes. there weren't whole alternate paths (plenty of dead-ends), but there were different ways to traverse within larger spaces inside the maze (taking a bigger jump across the chasm to a smaller log for a bigger rupee, etc.). it isn't a typical singular-row-looking labyrinth; there are rooms and chasms, a river, some other features like that. i enjoyed the chase, the visuals, the mix of demands it made upon me—i am intimately familiar with the zelda formula at this point, so perhaps the ease with which i moved and the enjoyment i had was due in a large-part to my understanding of the systems in place. this made me think: are mazes/labyrinths fun enough to be the major feature of a game? would a 3d platformer based around mazes be interesting?
top-down labyrinth games make the maze itself clear to the player, but it utterly removes immersion. the 3d perspective, be it third-person or first, would limit visibility (especially in circumstances where you are in a rush or giving chase), but it would give that unique thrill of being lost. it also makes discovery more interesting. perhaps old dungeon crawlers (daggerfall, ultima, shin megami tensei series, etc.) have known this all along, and perhaps they have already distilled what is valuable from this concept.
but what could make it more interesting? mapping is an obvious choice (i think of the etrian odyssey series here, which has a lovely map creation system), and i feel like survival mechanics bears mentioning even if it is a dead horse at this point.. i'm reminded of the modded frostfall file i had in skyrim where i spent hourssss in shalidor's maze, on the verge of both starvation and hypothermia. in such dire straits, i could not fast-travel and had to carefully chart my way through the maze with the handful of in-game hours of daylight that would allow me safe-passage. there was something about the frenetic energy that came with that maze chase.
i also think of the metroid series, both the 2d entries and the 3d prime games. the environmental storytelling that's available to spaces like this is rife for exploration (have you SEEN how many metroidvania games there are.. yeesh!). i truly think a labyrinth game could be spectacular if there was a way to stud those walls with morsels of lore, or figure out different species of wall for the player to interact with differently (whether it be so blatant as blasting it, being a portal of sorts, or even more interesting: being a being of some sort itself, to interact with.. hm..). in that case, mapping would have to have some sort of indelible texture to compliment it.
i'll keep thinking about it. i'm not close to even knowing what it'd look like to make a video game, but i'll always entertain that thought.
i'll always have paris, etc.
