There are quite a few games that can be considered art, from the peaceful Flower to the daunting Shadow of the Colossus to the entire metal gear solid franchise. These are praised for their visual style, and in the case of the latter two, story. I, however, want to talk about a game near and dear to my heart: The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
Where do I even start with this? At the beginning of the game, you are attacked and robbed by a Skullkid (a wooden imp creature) and turned into a Deku Scrub. What a splendid way to start off. You go through a small tutorial level and pass by a mutilated tree, somewhat resembling you in your current state. Later you find out that the Skullkid likely stole the life force from this poor Deku Scrub to transform you. Now here is where the game truly shines: the implied story. Everyone who has played this game knows the main goal. You have to keep the moon from crashing into the earth because Majora's Mask is being fueled by the Skullkid's anger at the giants for abandoning him as a friend. However, this game did something that all its predecessors did not. This game gave you a boatload of sidequests to do.
Every sidequest you do adds to your understanding of the people involved, building relationships with the residents of Termina. One of the saddest points is following the adventures of Romani, a girl who lives on the ranch, and her older sister. Throughout the three days, you are told about Chateau Romani, a drink that refers to alcohol. Romani is told she is not old enough to drink it yet, but on the third day, something seems off. Romani's older sister is obviously uneasy about what is going to happen in the next 24 hours, but Romani is all cheery and looks forward to seeing you tomorrow. Here it is implied that Romani's sister allowed her to get drunk on this day so that she would not care about her impending doom. To this day, no game has made me feel a connection with the characters more than this one. I did not only need to save these people from their doom, I felt like I wanted to save them all, and if I failed I would feel like it was my fault they all died. This was the first game to succeed in making me actually feel something other than just the joy of playing the game. Much like in Heavy Rain, you feel that connection to every character you save or kill. What is unique about Majora's Mask, however, is that once you feel yourself fail, you go back to the dawn of the first day, and now, with newfound hope and zeal, you can now succeed where you once failed. This game has somehow figured out a way, through the sidequests with many characters in the game, to give you the same feeling that you get in a game with pera-death without having anyone permanently die.
Now lets talk bad guys. Throughout the game, you are led to believe that the Skullkid is evil. However, slowly throughout the game, it becomes clear that the Skullkid is just sad. He lost his friends, and he is just angry at the world. Majora's Mask likes this anger; it feeds off this anger. Majora's mask is a perfect villan. With other villans in the Zelda series, you know that they are bad guys, but they all want something for their own gain, usually domination over Hyrule. Majora's Mask is not human at all. Majora's mask is more like the Joker from Batman; all this thing wants is to cause chaos and dismay. It is this thing's lack of humanity that makes it so scary. You have no way of relating with this thing, you have no way of reasoning with this thing, all you can do is destroy this thing.
Now I could go on and on about how much I love this game, and I could talk for hours about the implied story, like the couple who are willing to die just to be together, or the implications surrounding who you are working for, but what fun would that be? I would much rather leave you with this: Find a way to play this game. I feel that this game holds an experience that no one should miss out on.
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