No other game has had the impact on my life that Ocarina of Time has. This game captured me so much that, at eight years old, the Official Nintendo Player's Guide became my constant companion, the covers now tattered on the edges over years of reading and carrying it around.
I pored over the pages and fell in love with the concept art, then fell in love with the idea of being the person who draws those images (not understanding until later that those people are called concept artists). So from the time I was in elementary school all the way into my freshman year of college, I dreamed of being a video game concept artist because of Ocarina of Time. This game inspired a dream, which shaped the course of my life and what I wanted to do with it until I decided to pursue a different career path.
The concept of time is one that I grapple deeply with and one that seems to come up a lot in games and other media that I particularly enjoy. I never seem to have enough of it in a given day to do everything I want to do. And, like many people, I feel that as I'm getting older, the days are getting shorter because time seems to be moving faster. The people I love are getting old or are gone now. Like Sheik tells Link outside of the Forest Temple, "The flow of time is always cruel." It's a quote that's always stuck with me and one I've thought back to a lot in recent years.
Generally speaking, Ocarina of Time left a mark on me. The feeling of loneliness and solitude that permeates the game is one I've never really forgotten, and one that resonates strongly with me. I've played plenty of games where the protagonist has to go it alone, but nothing captures the feeling of the quiet stillness of riding Epona across the expanse of Hyrule Field through the night, as it fades into dawn. There's an underlying sadness in these moments — perhaps unsurprising in a game about seven years of lost time and the death and destruction that happened in those years that the hero was powerless to stop — a sadness that feels very human and relatable.
I don't need to go into how great the gameplay and puzzles are in Ocarina of Time. There's a reason this game has been named the Greatest Game of All Time and earned countless accolades and top spots on lists of the greatest games ever made. It left such a massive mark on the industry that it continues to inspire and influence games today — but that also means that I likely wouldn't be saying anything new or unique if I were to jump into an analysis of the game from a purely gameplay perspective.
Instead, I think it's more meaningful to reflect on how important this game is to me, and how much it's shaped who I am and the games I like to play. It's perhaps unfair to hold games up to Ocarina of Time in comparison, as there is nothing, in my opinion, that could possibly come close to being its equal other than Majora's Mask. So it's better to just enjoy every game for its own strengths rather than putting it up against the impossibly high bar that Ocarina set.
The character designs of Link, Young Link, Ganondorf, and Zelda in Ocarina of Time are so iconic at this point and their influence so strong that Breath of the Wild had to go with a total departure of color palette and costume for Link and Zelda to get away from them. (Which is a shame because they don't look anywhere near as cool as the Ocarina designs.) It speaks to the enduring legacy of Ocarina of Time on the franchise, one that Nintendo should be embracing rather than constantly trying to downplay or get people to cool on.
I haven't replayed Ocarina of Time in years because I don't want to get tired of it, but I've been getting the itch lately to finally go back to it. If you don't have a tube TV and an N64, I'd recommend playing it on the Wii U Virtual Console, especially if you've never played it before.
And if you've never played it before, do yourself a favor and play it.
I pored over the pages and fell in love with the concept art, then fell in love with the idea of being the person who draws those images (not understanding until later that those people are called concept artists). So from the time I was in elementary school all the way into my freshman year of college, I dreamed of being a video game concept artist because of Ocarina of Time. This game inspired a dream, which shaped the course of my life and what I wanted to do with it until I decided to pursue a different career path.
The concept of time is one that I grapple deeply with and one that seems to come up a lot in games and other media that I particularly enjoy. I never seem to have enough of it in a given day to do everything I want to do. And, like many people, I feel that as I'm getting older, the days are getting shorter because time seems to be moving faster. The people I love are getting old or are gone now. Like Sheik tells Link outside of the Forest Temple, "The flow of time is always cruel." It's a quote that's always stuck with me and one I've thought back to a lot in recent years.
Generally speaking, Ocarina of Time left a mark on me. The feeling of loneliness and solitude that permeates the game is one I've never really forgotten, and one that resonates strongly with me. I've played plenty of games where the protagonist has to go it alone, but nothing captures the feeling of the quiet stillness of riding Epona across the expanse of Hyrule Field through the night, as it fades into dawn. There's an underlying sadness in these moments — perhaps unsurprising in a game about seven years of lost time and the death and destruction that happened in those years that the hero was powerless to stop — a sadness that feels very human and relatable.
I don't need to go into how great the gameplay and puzzles are in Ocarina of Time. There's a reason this game has been named the Greatest Game of All Time and earned countless accolades and top spots on lists of the greatest games ever made. It left such a massive mark on the industry that it continues to inspire and influence games today — but that also means that I likely wouldn't be saying anything new or unique if I were to jump into an analysis of the game from a purely gameplay perspective.
Instead, I think it's more meaningful to reflect on how important this game is to me, and how much it's shaped who I am and the games I like to play. It's perhaps unfair to hold games up to Ocarina of Time in comparison, as there is nothing, in my opinion, that could possibly come close to being its equal other than Majora's Mask. So it's better to just enjoy every game for its own strengths rather than putting it up against the impossibly high bar that Ocarina set.
The character designs of Link, Young Link, Ganondorf, and Zelda in Ocarina of Time are so iconic at this point and their influence so strong that Breath of the Wild had to go with a total departure of color palette and costume for Link and Zelda to get away from them. (Which is a shame because they don't look anywhere near as cool as the Ocarina designs.) It speaks to the enduring legacy of Ocarina of Time on the franchise, one that Nintendo should be embracing rather than constantly trying to downplay or get people to cool on.
I haven't replayed Ocarina of Time in years because I don't want to get tired of it, but I've been getting the itch lately to finally go back to it. If you don't have a tube TV and an N64, I'd recommend playing it on the Wii U Virtual Console, especially if you've never played it before.
And if you've never played it before, do yourself a favor and play it.