Did Ocarina of Time outdo Skyward Sword?

Since the release of Skyward Sword, the Legend of Zelda fan base has been obsessed with critiquing this latest installment and deciding whether or not it "breaks free" from the "shadow of Ocarina of Time" that has so dominated everyone's outlook on the series. People are quick to defend or criticize nearly every aspect of the game, be it the same as previous titles or at all different from them. The problem is, too much of this is being done with the perfection of OoT in mind, a stifling qualifier that has stood over every game's success for the last few console generations.

So, while everyone (including myself) has something to say about Skyward Sword's achievements and failures, I have decided to subvert the question for now and instead look at the oh-so-defining Zelda. Is it really worthy of its own fame?


Item 1: Gameplay
Ocarina of Time has pretty solid gameplay; it's simple, if a bit unrefined. But what can you expect from the first attempt? This is the game that brought Zelda into the third dimension, so naturally it's a bit rough around the edges. Actions can be a tad chunky at times, the enemies don't sport a lot of variety, and Link's moveset is at its most basic. In a nutshell, it sports a less developed, less polished engine than what we have today (motion controls aside).

"But wait," you say, "that's not fair!" It can't be criticized just because games have become more sophisticated with time! Well, you're absolutely right. And one must respect it for having established the system as well, correct? Ah, here's the sticky part! Yes, it defined the mechanics of 3D Zelda that have been employed to this day, and it deserves great credit for that. However, that does not necessarily make the gameplay as good as its own derivatives: dismissal of later games' mechanics because of the prestige held by their earliest employment goes beyond respect and assents to bias. The harsher levels of this bias entail an indifference to extra features, such as rolling through bushes and small pots; and hatred of any deviation, such as Skyward Sword's infamous stamina meter. Do you know what a drag climbing ledges is without parkour Link?

Let's face it: Ocarina of Time has the most primitive gameplay of the 3D Zelda era. Is less really more? Not when it provides fewer avenues for entertainment. Many of the game's actions become quite dull, in and of themselves; if the adventuring were as linear as in Skyward Sword, you'd probably lose interest.


Item 2: Structure
Whatever you may argue about SS being linear, there's no doubt OoT avoids this issue. The problem is, it's somewhat shoddily done. The benefits of freedom are tainted by the intended progression: if you want to do things in your order, be prepared to put up with ignorant and impassive NPCs, incessantly misdirected information, and juggled event triggers.

Once you've pulled the Master Sword, you receive instructions to head to the Forest Temple. There you find the bow, an item necessary for hitting the eye switches found in most (if not all) dungeons. Once you have this, you can do anything you want, as long as it doesn't require returning to childhood. Shiek blocks the Master Sword's pedestal in the Temple of Time until you have actually beaten the Forest Temple, and she will not acknowledge any other actions on your part. You could consider her ignorant except she will show up to teach you the Bolero of Fire and Serenade of Water should you sequence-break, then continues to devote her intercourse exclusively to whether or not you've awakened Saria as the first sage.

Moreover, though the dungeons after the Forest Temple require little order, there is still a "recommended" one, to which end Navi offers her apparently happenstance thoughts. Whichever is next up by this nature is what you will forever be reminded of, no matter if you're making progress elsewhere.

Aside from the above, the game's openness is welcome. OoT's best asset may be its dungeons, which require you to wander about in an unguided and thoroughly nonlinear fashion to locate keys and new pathways. They provide a reasonable explorational challenge, though at times are exasperating due to overlong segments that you must redo upon screwing up or discovering you don't have enough keys. Majora's Mask probably surpasses OoT in level design here, although it's lairs could stand to be a bit larger, being so few.

Still, with such a large, open world, Ocarina of Time ultimately trumps Skyward Sword, right? Well, until you realize how much is wasted. The latter gets criticized for how little you need or are able to utilize collected bugs and treasures, how little play certain abilities get, and how pointless some rewards are. Okay, so the upgrade system is arguably underused, swimming is isolated, and that Tycoon Wallet isn't really needed. In this case, linearity might be a blessing in disguise; you don't have to go far out of your way to achieve 100%, and the gameplay keeps it fun the whole time. In OoT, on the other hand, there are plenty of unobtrusive side quests and things to collect, but with the exception of larger ammunition packs (something SS nailed very uniquely) and heart pieces, you don't put much use to any of the extras besides the bottles (only one of which takes effort to get). Ice arrows? There's really no point. Rupees? The most you ever spend is usually on magic beans, which cap at 100 (and you can sacrifice buying one for Lake Hylia thanks to the Scarecrow's Song). Only if you're unlucky enough to lose a tunic will you require bigger wallets, which otherwise merely let you store a greater quantity at once of the infinite cash that will never leave your pocket.

The wallets come from collecting Gold Skulltulas, which is a travesty of its own. Granted, you get a piece of heart and one of the best features in the game (the Stone of Agony, which makes the rumble pack detect secrets) from this, but for a small price. You need 20 for the rumble rock and 50 for the heart quarter, out of a total of 100 scattered throughout the land and dungeons. You'll bump into 20 easily, and 50 aren't hard to find just by keeping your eyes open. So, what do you get for tracking down every last one in the most gargantuan collection mission in Zelda history (not counting figurines)? 200 rupees! Yes, you basically get to see what the father of the cursed family looks like, plus bragging rights. I understand Nintendo likes to make sure the less talented can still get their hands on the main goodies, but really, we elite spider hunters deserved something like sword beams for this! Such a failure to evenly reward the player ruins the harder half of an otherwise ideal safari.


Item 3: Story
Ocarina of Time, the quintessential Zelda story... What could possibly be faulty here? We all know this epic tale, so I'll cut to the answers.

First, Ganondorf. The man is ambitious enough to summon Meteor or maybe make a peanut butter sandwich. Sure, he's vile, he decimates the land in the course of seven years, and he wields the Triforce of Power. But he doesn't seem to understand his own words. Here we have an inconsistent villain who tosses you aside as a nobody outside the gates of Hyrule Castle, then turns around and claims he knew all along that you would open the Sacred Realm. A ploy, acting like he didn't know anything of you? He did see you through the window with Zelda when you spied on him earlier; it's possible he wanted to maintain the appearance of chasing the princess in order to let you get into the Temple of Time.

More likely though, he's just a braggart. Once you awaken the sages, Zelda reveals herself and Ganondorf captures her. After claiming that it went according to plan, save for your accomplishing a bit more than he expected, he steals her away and declares that he will soon possess two Triforce pieces. With them, he laughs, he will "become the true ruler of the world", presumably able to smite you easily with a two-to-one Triforce ratio. In reality, he idles away the time playing the organ until you arrive, then tries to smite you without such an advantage. Why?

At first, it seems obvious. He notes that the Triforce pieces resonate at close proximity, wanting to become one. As this is how he assembles the golden power in The Wind Waker, it seems that contrary to his earlier boast he cannot obtain the lost pieces individually through force. Yet we know this is not true: the very first game proved otherwise! Link, having collected the Triforce of Wisdom, slew Ganon and obtained his piece, the Triforce of Power. One could argue that only a hero of unbreakable spirit could do this, one who could claim the whole Triforce without it splitting from an imbalance in that individual's virtues. But such a contingency only makes sense if an imbalanced person could never, ever have the whole Triforce. Why? Because if it splits in the first place, and you can't wrest the parts from their bearers (by killing or otherwise), then the only way to obtain the two not in your possession would be to make them reassemble as in WW. And the whole being unclaimed at that point, it would most likely split all over again when you touched it, because you are imbalanced!

There are three possible explanations for Ganondorf's behavior in The Wind Waker. One, it did not occur to him that it would split again; two, he was counting on it not splitting as he was a more balanced person (evil though he was). And three, he merely wanted to make a wish, and the full Triforce will grant your heart's desire, at least partially, despite splitting from imbalance. What Ocarina of Time (and its predecessor, A Link to the Past) has to offer on this last theory is a discussion for another time. For now we can conclude that OoT Ganondorf was the Great King of Procrastination, or he would have taken Zelda's Triforce before practicing for his recital. I wouldn't be surprised if he only trashed Hyrule six years in, given how strongly he seems to have inherited Demise's ability to "spare a few moments."

Unfortunately, this lack of action plagues the entire game's progression. Unlike Skyward Sword, Link is the only one actually running around doing anything most of the time. This is in part thanks to his seven-year absence, during which Ganondorf appears to have done most of his pillaging. It's not a bad concept, leaving you to witness the aftermath and try to put things as they were before. However, some of the rectifications you set out for never take place; and coupled with the aforementioned structural issues, the world remains quite static in each of its respective time states. Case in point: "the Zoras are still all dead."

And why should Link put up with any of this? As we know, drawing the Master Sword unseals the Sacred Realm and allows Ganondorf access to the Triforce. At the same time, replacing the blade puts Link back where he was before being sealed for seven years to reach adulthood. Couldn't he just leave it there and never let the evil future happen? Does time pass in the child timeline while Link is active in the adult timeline? It makes sense that, if Link's aging only counts for the sake of wielding the Blade of Evil's Bane, then putting it back would reverse that aging entirely, placing him at the age he was when he first drew it, at which point he had not drawn it; at which point, therefore, the Sacred Realm was still sealed! In effect, which timeline branch ensues depends not only on Link's success, but also on his choice: if he's defeated, Ganondorf obtains the whole Triforce and the Sealing War occurs; if he draws the Master Sword and defeats Ganon, the adult timeline proceeds; and if he realizes how much tragedy he can avert, then he returns the Sword, stays a kid, protects the Sacred Realm, and brings about the child timeline (even preventing Twilight Princess, depending on how Ganondorf came to possess the Triforce then).

How do you like that? You can win the game by not finishing it. On one hand, this cleans up the timeline a bit by proving each branch exclusive to the others; on the other, Zelda's act of returning Link to his childhood makes less sense than ever. Supposedly it's the reason why what I've just stated is false: by completing the quest and being sent back at the end, the events prior to obtaining the Master Sword are also undone, and Link has the necessary knowledge of the future to prevent things happening in the same way. Yet what knowledge would this be? He'd have no more opportunity to convince the king of Ganondorf's evil intentions, and the most he could tell Zelda (who is already spying on the Gerudo King in the ending) is that drawing the Master Sword isn't a viable option, as he would be sealed for seven years. Zelda could change her plans, but to what is inconceivable; for her father already dismissed her warnings, and the only fallback, protecting the Sacred Realm, would still boil down to whether Link left it alone. So what does she think she can achieve by granting Link his lost teen teen-hood? There won't be any peace while Ganondorf's still around, the adult timeline is potentially eradicated, and Link has a thoroughly redundant chance to choose between it and the child timeline. Thanks for hitting the reset button.

To top it all off, OoT's writing isn't the best. Perhaps this is the fault of the translation (and possibly some censoring), but the dialogue can be absolutely bemusing at times, leaving you scratching your brain as to what a character was trying to say or why they were saying such a thing in the first place (Ganondorf is only one such offender). When you add this to all the other issues, the whole game's proceedings become rather unclear, from people and places to the histories and legends that intertwine with them. Too often one looks back and asks, "What exactly happened?" It's ironic that the most fundamental plot in the whole Zelda universe is more riddled with fridge logic than any other. It may be a great story, but its integrity hardly withstands the execution.


Item 4: Navi
Ah, Navi, come hither. Link's fairy companion has amassed a lot of hatred over the years, as we well know. The question is, is she a worse familiar than Fi?

The latter finds herself criticized on two major counts: problems with her loquaciousness, and her degree of character development. Let's compare.

Navi certainly talks less; however, when she's not being the mother of Captain Obvious, she's blurting out statements that sound either completely random or like she's winking in your face. "I wonder what Saria would say," indeed. Are you a self-dialed tip hotline with bad tact, or do you have your head in the clouds? This personified hint system is less explicit than in subsequent titles (though certainly devoid of subtlety), and it seems to be intended largely to aid those who have been wandering about because they haven't been able to find their next goal by themselves; but whatever it was meant to be, it failed, because Navi interrupts you far too frequently with the same old comment, if not the information you just heard ten seconds ago.

She has two saving graces: you can ignore her and not push the button to hear what she has to say, and if you do (either because you want to end the annoyance or enter first-person view) you can skip through her text quickly (an unfortunate deficiency of Fi's, though she has enough personality to be more interesting than Navi; more on that below). As if anticipating our relief, the designers made one recurring exception. Whenever you enter a room with a wallmaster, she stops you without consent to warn you, and her text proceeds at the painfully slow pace (far worse than in SS) that is alternative to skipping straight to the end, which is not an option in this case. When you don't expect it, it's more disruptive; when you know it's coming, the waste of time is extra irritating; and either way, you have to wait for her to finish a line you've read countless times about an enemy that you can see and hear coming a mile away. At least when she hollers because you've walked up to a locked door without a key, simply walking away shuts her up.

As for character, Navi has this irksome smidgen of existence that jars with her overall unimportance. She has little personality and a simple role: follow you and provide one-liner hints. She is shallow, static, and uninvolved, but her dialogue at certain points suggests otherwise. The first you hear of the Master Sword is her reaction to seeing it: "It's that legendary blade... The Master Sword!!" This leaves you wondering what she knows and how, which she never discloses. Toward the end of the game she acts somewhat personally toward you, first apologizing for not being able to assist in fighting Ganondorf and then enthusiastically sticking with you for the last battle. At least Fi, who specifically reflects upon her relationship with Link, actually comes off as a person of sorts. Her feelings at the end of SS may seem strange given her serenely robotic, duty-oriented attitude during the adventure; but the impression exists of an unspoken friendship that grew through their trials together, now realized at parting. Navi, on the other hand, exhibits no such depth, but still tries to matter. Then she flies away. Talk about a lack of character development.

But hey, at least she's not long-winded. That distinction goes to Kaepora Gaebora, the owl I would swear comes from Winnie the Pooh except he doesn't drone exclusively about himself. The lesson is we can't win.


Conclusion
Ocarina of Time is, truth be told, one of the more overrated Zelda games out there. With so many flaws it fails to top its successor, Skyward Sword, though the latter isn't perfect itself. Indeed, both games fall short in various areas. But OoT is like so many "classic" movies from 50 years ago in that its decency is treated as mastery despite being a nitpicker's extravaganza. It's a good game, just not the greatest; so if the question surrounding the most recent title must be whether it bests this classic, here is the most impartial answer possible:

Other installments, such as The Wind Waker, already did.