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jarrod on 22 June 2010
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theprof00 said:
Final-Fan said:

OK prof but just one thing:  what would your sentence have looked like if it was grammatically correct?  I want to know what you were trying to communicate. 

Except for the mask use, ocarina use, switching through time, time based interactions, all the masks were just substitutes for items from ocarina, like zora mask for steel boots etc. they are very similar, but tone and story I think, are better.

oh, yeah i screwed that up.

Similarities:

The use of masks, though to varying degrees and effect
Ocarina use, very similar degree and slightly different effects
Ocarina: move through time periods using ocarina MM: time changes according to an actual clock, ocarina used to reset time period. Also, both have a day/night cycle which can be altered with ocarina song, although slightly different way in MM.
Interactions with characters and other things change depending on when you talk to them in the time periods.
Effects of items were similar although they were different items.

 

I know Jarrod said that the tone was different because of an impending doom, but really, ocarina was like that too, MM was just better at conveying it. It feels like the designers were like, "Ok, ocarina was well liked, so how can we make it better?"

I'm sorry but no.  Your list of "similarities" is superficial at best, and should you actually delve into the implementations, mechanics and structure of the comparable "masks" or "time" or even NPC interaction, you'll find that they're worlds apart and completely different in function.  OOT and ALTTP actually have more in common than OOT and MM do, MM is about the largest departure the series has ever taken (second only to Zelda II imo).  That may obfuscated by the recycled engine, but the actual game isn't "OOT-2", it's really "anti-OOT".

I would actually say Majora's Mask has a lot in common with say Yoshi's Island or Metroid Fusion.  They're all "dark horses" for their franchises, and pretty dramatic and daring departures that I'd personally say worked out spectacularly.  And to some degree, series purists tend to not like them.