A big spiel; read if you have the time
And then there's genuine love for games like Link's Awakening. There's little-to-no bandwagoning for that game because it's small and insignificant looking in the grand scheme of Zelda. But, those who did play it when they were younger absolutely adore it (well most do). It's that lost little piece of treasure in the series that not a lot got to enjoy. I've never seen any LA bandwagoning because it doesn't have the supportive lore that gets the internet raving like MM does. Really, half of Zelda fandom is over the interpretive lore that people (Westerners) observe and create. MM offers a ton of lore about a land other than Hyrule, so of course that sparks a lot of interest, but it shouldn't convince everyone that MM is suddenly the best game ever ever ever ever because it simply isn't. It's great, but aggregate reviews (especially a decade-seasoned) should say how people felt at the time about the game, not how the internet culture has warped the game into something that it never was before. With the introduction of other games and forms of media since MM's release that test the mind's ability to deconstruct and compile the user's interpretive truth (i.e. Inception), this generation has been trained to do so with works of old.
MM has fallen victim to this phenomenon. As such, the internet has fabricated a 'newfound' love for the game and its world that hardly existed ca. 2000. Back then, it was "the game that tried to be OoT". Now it's "the game that actually is better than OoT". We can also attribute the fact that Nintendo has hard-pressed OoT through almost every game since through the repetition of Hyrule and Ganon rather than further exploring Termina. We've become far more familiar with Hyrule since MM, so now the internet Zelda subculture strives to go back to it to learn more. Circa 2000, we didn't care. It was difficult, alien, and not-the-norm in terms of Zelda. We wanted more of Hyrule, more of Ganon. Well we got it. In fact, we saw Ganon die in both timelines. I think Nintendo is going to put him to rest for a while. They'll awaken him once the fans are tired of their deviation from the norm; from their exploring of other worlds like Termina, the Cobble Kingdom, and Skyloft.
MM would be nothing without the internet. It would be wholly and entirely forgotten in the eyes of the masses. It's a beautiful thing that people are able to recognize the beauty behind the game now and discuss it every day across countless forums, but it's sites like Zelda Informer that are driving nails into its coffin by posting relentless articles about it as if its their hallowed and profane messiac contender for best game ever. Basically, if Zelda had always been based in Termina and Majora had always been the villain, then come 2000, OoT is released as a sequel to the Termina Zelda 64 adventure and for the first time ever introduces Hyrule, the Triforce, and Ganon. People would **** bricks. So remember, Ganon came first and will continue to come back time and again.
See here's the thing. Ganon has humanistic ulterior motives. We can relate to him, which is why we can hate him. Majora is essentially an alien. We cannot relate to it for its agenda is entirely unto its own psyche, which we have not and probably never will understand. Basically the difference between Ganon and Majora is this: with Ganon, it's a Man v. Man conflict. With Majora, it's a Man v. Self conflict.
I know this write-up is very much a tangent, but I'll say this while it's on my mind: TP attempted to insert the man v. self conflict with the Lanayru story of the Dark Interlopers and Link's hallucinogenic vision of the and three Dark Links acting in blaspheme towards the Triforce into a story that was first man v. nature and secondly man v. man. I think they screwed the pooch not with Zant, but truly with Ganon. Ganon was the bane to TP. Zant should have been defeated at the Arbiter's Grounds (when they introduced Ganon to the story), so the second half of the game would revolve around Link undoing Ganon's motives. At that point, I really wanted to defeat Zant, but instead I was thrown into a really cool boss fight with Stallord, and then sent by the ancient sages to three more freaking dungeons just so I could defeat Zant. It overbuilt him because by that point, the Twilight had been scathed from Hyrule and no longer did Zant truly feel like a threat. Ganon should have been the threat at that point and the Temple of Time, Snowpeak Mansion, City in the Sky, and Palace of Twilight revolved around discovering how to undo him, not Zant. See, Zant is victimized for the wrong reasons. Most say they resent him for his childish nature, but I think it's moreso the case of the duel with him taking place far too long into the story. After undoing the twilight blankets from Hyrule and traveling to the Arbiter's Grounds, that should have been the alert that Zant was coming to and end. His power was to spread Twilight and overtake Hyrule, but after undoing that (sans that dumb twilight diamond that he placed over Hyrule Castle alone — that Ganon was in the whole time which was a terrible excuse to keep Zant in the game til the nigh end) it's obvious we should have eliminated him entirely. From that point on, Ganon would have been perfect.
Imagine this: a recut version of the scene in which the ancient sages are telling you about Ganon. As they are telling you the story, rather than the camera jumping from different views of each Sage, show Ganon leading his troops into Ordon Village and killing everyone off. Yeah, that far. The Twilight is gone, and while that was a sorrowful darkness, Ganon's reign would have been done out of anger for his minion failing to maintain that twilit darkness. The hero had arisen again to shed light on the land, so it was time to spread true despair by burning houses down and killing people. Don't force them into a state of temporary silence with the Twilight. Deliberately kill them. Now that's a motive for Link to truly want to fight Ganon. Hell, that would have been his most savage and darkest appearance yet in the series. All in pursuit of the Triforce and ultimate dominion. Essentially, we would have been experiencing what it was like to live in Hyrule during the seven-year conquest that Ganondorf set off on during OoT, though we'd be active in it. From that point on in the story, it would not have been about assembling a Twilight Mirror and finding an ancient piece of technology to communicate with the Oocca, it would have been about stopping a menace from destroying all that you worked to restore from the initial darkness of the Twilight—the beautiful, lush, colorful world of Hyrule. You had just finished curing it, and now Ganon has taken it into his own hands to make sure he permanently scars the land. What an impetus to fight him!
tl;dr: you're a lazy ****
and he result be a crazy guy, that part disapoint me a lot
