Topic: Ocarina of Time is way scarier than Majora's Mask

I defy anyone to prove to me that Majora's Mask is the scarier of the two games. Ocarina of Time is terrifying on so many levels, whereas Majora's Mask gets all the credit of being considered scarier, just because it has what some think to be a darker story. I say OOT has both a scarier atmosphere and a way scarier and darker story, in many parts. Play OOT with hi-resolution textures, go to the Bottom of the Well, the Graveyard, in the crypts, in Dampe's old shack after he died with the diary laying there, the Shadow Temple, Hyrule town after Ganon destroyed it, talk to the guard who died as a result of his injuries in that alley. You'll get a very "jeffrey dahmer" type feeling from playing these specific parts of the game, where there's skulls, death, uncensored blood, and eerie chanting everywhere. It's very scary, and I can't play these parts with the door closed and the lights off at night. There's nothing in Majora's Mask that even comes close to being as scary.

The Beneath the Well area in Majora's Mask is not scary. A bunch of Gibdos (aka mummies) and the area where you can shine a light to get the Mirror Shield are not scary. Ikana Canyon is creepy, and has creepy chanting and the area where you meet Sharp and he plays that song to kill you is also creepy, but the Graveyard in Majora's Mask isn't scary at all. It's full of cute little Stallchildren that you can talk to. OOT is the scarier and darker game, and it makes sense that it would be, considering that it came out earlier, had less censorship, and less concern for being kid friendly. MM came out in 2000, when a lot of those things had to change in order to get an E rating. Plus, you play as an adult Link in OOT, so some of the themes of the game are more geared towards an older audience.

Oh look it's another post were someone tries to pass off their opinion as fact.

@Tasuki I'm interested in opening a discussion on the topic. Can you prove me wrong? Do transformation masks scare you more than a well full of dead zombies and hands trying to grab you from some weird green acid like Hades would have, and rooms in the Shadow Temple where two mechanical Deaths are rotating their scythes in a merry-go 'round circle to cut you? What about the other room in the Shadow Temple where you get the Boss Key, and these medieval age wooden spikes try to crush you from either ends? Even the Forest Temple is scarier than anything in Majora's Mask.

@Odolwa I found OoT much more engaging.
I remember having pages of notes from MM outlining where everyone was and at what times, in a way I feel sorry for people playing it for the first time now when a guide is only a click away - it took me ages to figure out how to get some of those masks!

@Mr-Fuggles777 But which did you consider to be scarier?

Most people say MM is darker than OOT rather than scarier but both of them aren't like Resident Evil where it's meant to be scary or dark like Doki Doki Literature Club anyway.

Well Ganon was certainly scarier! Puking up blood. Red blood on the original gold cart i might add! Plus that rage filled scream right before going beast mode and the glowing yellow eyes! Yeah i totally crapped myself!

@Odolwa I wouldn't say either of them were really scary - MM felt darker tonally.

@Odolwa People said Majaora was Darker, not scary'er, so I guess OC wins???

I am not sure to say which one is scarier, especially regarding the wells in both games (they both featured ReDeads/Gibdos which scared the crap out of me when I was younger).

But I feel Majora's Mask is scarier and definitely much, much, darker in a way of the potential consequences to all your actions in the game. If you fail in Ocarina of Time, Hyrule as a whole does not end, the people still live on, although in slightly dimmer and more dangerous circumstances. There is still hope for some sort of future existence for the people (although the Zora's and Goron would be dead; Goron's would be eaten by a Dragon whilst the Zora's would remain frozen).

Termina however does not get that. If the moon falls, the world ends. Certain death for everyone. And everyone quietly accepts this. Quite a lot of the towns folk in clock town, especially the store owners, acknowledge the last day, the Mayor's wife drowns her sorrows. Some characters might stay out of obligation like the guards who are forced to protect the city still, and the Post-Man unless you do something, some hide scared out of their mind, like the dojo owner. Some characters can die alone; like Kafei potentially dies alone in Sakon's hideout, trapped by the security system whilst Anju thinks she was abandoned. Cremia will give Romani some Chateau Romani as she won't live long enough to drink it otherwise (normally given only to adults); and that is assuming Romani wasn't outright kidnapped by aliens. Even ignoring the moon falling, the Zora's would of died due to lack of fish from the murky waters of the Great Sea, whilst the Indigo-go's would never know what happened to Mikau. The Gorons would freeze to death in the endless winter along with their patriarch. The Deku would die from the poisoned waters of the swamp, with the Deku Princess murdered by Odolwa. The researcher in Ikana would become a Gibdo entirely and the daughter would presumably die, possibly murdered by her own father if not another Gibdo, or starved to death by remaining trapped in the lab.

I feel like you empathise with this more as well as you get to know all the character's schedules over potentially the last 3 days of their lives.

This comment might be a bit of a mess, and I feel like some things may have been missed, but yeah. OOT in my personal opinion is definitely lighter.

@MS7000 I mean everyone had to die to get those mask so,

@Snatcher I did think about writing that too, but I thought I already had plenty. Not to mention two of them were already dead/dying before you get the mask. So the only real tragedy I suppose would be the butler's son.

@MS7000 As we don't have a "like comment" option, I leave my appreciation as a reply. Nicely put!

And to @Odolwa : yes, the well and some monsters are indeed scarier in OoT. But you can't argue against the fact that MM does have a darker tone. I believe that "scary" is way more of a personal subject. If you are afraid of spiders, a game with spider will be scary (very silly example).

I like how the suggestion to prove OoT is scarier is to mod the game first. Heh.

Aside from of course the Redeads that everyone speaks of,
from the first time I played Ocarina of Time I thought Jabu-jabu's tentacles were a VERY SIMILAR word I don't think is permitted here, and I was like "how are they permitted in an E-rated game?"
(and yes, I was an adult by that point)

@Odolwa No, I can't prove you wrong because it's your opinion which is fine, and nothing I say is not going to change your opinion, but to pass it off as fact. That would be like me saying oh Burger King burgers are the best prove me wrong or Pepsi is the best soft drink prove me wrong.

I honestly can't say if I found MM scary cause honestly I didn't play it much.

Majora's Mask is such a dark game, that's not only dark, but unsettling too. The mask transformations, the Ikana Canyon area, Skull Kid, Majora... the Gibdos? The end of the world too. I had no unsettled-ness from Link's vision cutscene in Twilight Princess. Thinking back on it, it was meant to teach him about the nature of the Fused Shadows, and it worked. I liked the music; it went from the OoT-esque Chamber of the Sages theme into something straight out of a psychological horror.

I brought this up with someone over Discord and the comment intrigued me...

• OoT: Those frikkin' zombies and their screams. I think that might be the most haunting in the whole series actually. The final Ganon fight is pretty "scary" too, the lighting is great and it's an intense fight.
• MM: Putting on those main masks sounds really painful and it's quite unsettling. The music everywhere is eerie and uncomfortable. And that dad who's turned into some zombie is almost horror movie inspired.
• TP: That nightmare with white eyed Link(s) was weird, though I don't remember it too well. Can't recall anything else that was scary or even unsettling in that game.

Majora has more of an uneasy tone towards it. More of a feel of impending dread compared to Ocarina. The moon is about to crash down within three days, and everyone gradually becomes more and more afraid by the moon getting closer and closer to the world itself. Majora also inflicted curses upon Termina, in which devastate it's world way more than the ones in which Ganondorf inflicted in Ocarina. You see the Deku Butler's son, who in which clearly died in order to turn Link into a Deku Scrub. You see Snowhead being covered in Ice, with the goron slowly freezing to death or starving to death due to the curse.

You also have the three day cycle which repeats on end, knowing full and well that in the end you can't truly save everyone. Despite destroying Majora and preventing the moon from falling, you can't ease everyone's problems in this game, due to the cycle repeating and never being influenced. Like the old lady delivering the bomb bag to her shop. If you do that first, and then go on with the game, she'll always get it stolen.

However.. this somber feeling, or the feeling of dread with this game isn't the mere reason why I enjoy it. I enjoy Majora's mask because of the bizarre content in which it introduces. Things like different masks that you can collect, which all happen to do unique things from one another. Things like the transformation masks, which turn Link into different characters with different abilities.

I wouldn't say Majora's the darkest game in the series, but it invokes the most dread, at least for me, in terms of the other games. Ocarina of Time has dark spots here and there, but to be honest.. I just don't get the same feelings Majora gives me, as there's no feeling of hopelessness or dread of the seemingly unavoidable. Knowing you truly can't save everyone.

I remember when I told my vaguely controversial opinions to the internet, as if I was important for doing so. Fun times. sigh

I guess in the long term, while I always thought Majora's Mask was scarier, it became less because of the most obviously dark imagery and the situation of it all, and more the horrific implications of everything. Of all the more explicit AND less explicit deaths and sadness and near hopelessness of a world distressingly ignorant of an obviously doomed fate. It feels like a more "real" story, for lack of a better word, compared to OOT which is another fantasy story with some dark elements, where little changes outside of a dark future (when it remembers to even showcase that in interesting ways). So the things that happen hit so much closer than in OOT, and thus the dark stuff hits harder. And to be fair, OOT might be the 2nd scariest Zelda game. The dark N64 Zelda atmosphere was really good, and infinitely better at feeling "dark" than the mildly tryhard Twilight Princess.

@kkslider5552000 You can tell that with Majora, it was unintentionally dark, while Twilight Princess was just dark for the sake of it, and because people wanted it to be. I still really like Twilight Princess, and Twilight Princess Ganondorf is probably my favorite incarnation of the guy, but other than that, I wouldn't say it's the best "dark" Zelda.