Egann said:
Personal opinion: Majora's Mask was rated E because it was the sequel to Ocarina. When actually looking at the content of Twilight Princess in comparison, you see the same clean content and LESS dark and disturbing material receive a higher ESRB rating. The ESRB was inconsistent because they expected Majora's Mask to be an E game and Twilight Princess to be a T game based on it's art style. It's called confirmation bias. Also, comparing the T Zeldas to the E ones is a bit unfair. All of the major installments except Twilight Princess are E, and like I said, Twilight Princess doesn't really differ from an E Zelda in any meaningful way. Either the ESRB made a mistake with Majora's Mask or they've become more strict over the years. The thing that I'm trying to say, though, is that Majora's Mask is, by design, an emotionally punishing game. The game tries to get under your skin by forcing you to play the tutorial section as Deku Link and the like. In my mind a remake which is faithful to the spirit of the game will look for other ways to play head-games with the player, like showing character death or by showing Link's failures to the players. There were good reasons they didn't do this with the original; their target audience were children, and shocking deaths wouldn't have been too appropriate. The N64 didn't have enough memory to show players their failures in flashback. Neither of those are true anymore. |
Personal opinion doesn't matter. ESRB, Cero, and PEGI don't work that way. You don't get to be whatever rating the previous game was, just because you're a sequel. They judge a game's content by a game by game basis. You know how much money they could lose by giving a game a to forgiving rating? They are thorough with every game they rate, because that's the way they keep their jobs. Do you even know the procedure? You know they actually have to play the game to give it a rating!? Confirmation bias? Confirmation bias my ass. Twilight is a much more grusome game than Majora's Mask. You maime enemies in wolf form and it introduced finishing moves where you're jamming a sword through an enemies chest to finish them off. ESRB didn't make a mistake.
My bad on the E vs T thing. I thought they rated Skyward sword Teen for some reason.
Majora's Mask is emotionally punishing. That has nothing to do with it's tangable content, though. It's emotionally punishing because of the way it sets mood, tells story, uses color, uses music, and most of all, uses subtlety. That's something betrayed once you add things like blood and gore. There's no reason in any Zelda game for gore to exist. You don't need blood and gore to tell you that everyone in termina is infinitely dying in a never ending loop. There is no reason to have "shocking deaths" in a Zelda game. Zelda already handles death perfectly. That's not a hardware limitation, that's artistic integrity. Their target audience is and will always be children. That hasn't changed, and that won't change. Just because a game is appropriate for children, doesn't mean it's not a mature game, and just because a game is rated t or m, doesn't mean that it's not immature. Zelda is at its best when it's being modest. The game you're describing is not modest and it isn't Zelda. Thankfully, A Link Between Worlds proves that Zelda agrees with me.
