You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you? Let's Play Majora's Mask!

So what’s the Keaton Mask for? Well, if you put it on and visit one of those areas with the moving bushes, like the one in North Clock Town, you can summon the famous Keaton!




I’ll be honest: Back in the day I thought this guy was totally supposed to be Pikachu. The resemblance is uncanny, you must admit, and there was all that talk in Ocarina about how he was “very popular recently” (despite the fact that everyone you talked to with the mask on insisted that they “hate foxes!”). I figured it was Seems To Be Appearing In Many Games for a new age.

In reality, though, it appears that Keaton is a three-tailed fox with a penchant for pop quizzes.




Keaton challenges you to answer five questions, randomly chosen from a selection of about thirty or so. All of them have to do with trivia regarding Clock Town or its inhabitants... mostly stuff you’d be unlikely to notice unless you’d explored around thoroughly and talked to, or at least observed, just about everyone.



To wit!




Heart Piece count: 19/52

For putting up with his “answer me these questions three” bullshit, Keaton grants us a Heart Piece. (If you fail, summon him at another patch of grass, or start a new cycle.)

That’s, uh, it actually. That’s the dirty little secret about most of the Masks: They kind of suck, being used to get a single Heart Piece or another Mask and then sitting in your inventory taking up space for the rest of the game.



I’m not entirely sure why I went for the Postman route instead of the Madame Aroma route. Madame Aroma gives you a Bottle, which we’ll need for a subquest halfway through the third arc, so it would have been a good idea to do it first. I’ll just claim temporary insanity and move on with life.




The Postman is panicking because he wants to leave the city, but feels obligated to stick to the Official Post Office Schedule or whatever.



Blondie, however, is able to instantly clear up his crisis of conscience by presenting him with Priority Mail, which, by definition, must be delivered immediately. The Postman dons his uniform and rushes over to the Milk Bar with Blondie in hot pursuit.





Madame Aroma — who just so happens to be Postmistress — is thrilled to receive news of her son, but is shocked that the Postman hasn’t yet evacuated. Having employed the Postman for so long, though, I’d have to think that she couldn’t be that shocked. Congratulating him for a job well done, she gives him leave to flee.

Elated at his newfound freedom to be his own overbearing master for once, the Postman takes his leave of Clock Town, leaving its postal service in the capable hands of Blondie...



Mask count: 10/24

...In the form of a Postman’s Hat.




Heart Piece count: 20/52

The Postman’s Hat is another of those “one and done” Masks. If you open any mailbox in Clock Town while wearing it, you’ll find a Heart Piece. Only the first time, though — any subsequent tries will yield only green rupees. So, not that great in the long run. But remember! When you control the mail, you control... information.



That’s everything on the docket for today. See you in the (to be determined) future...



Next time: Snow goons

Wait wait wait. Anju suspected that Kafei was shacking up with someone from Clock Town? Who?

ARGH NOT KNOWING THIS IS DRIVING ME CRAZY. AND ALSO THE FACT THAT THIS LP IS FANTASTIC. BT MOSTLY THE FIRST THING.

Yay Tanto!

In an Easter egg conversation, Anju's mother says that she's all but convinced that Kafei ran off with Cremia, the elder of the Romani Ranch sisters. Anju and Cremia are close friends according to several NPCs, so Anju doesn't want to believe it, but it's not a great stretch to believe that the seed of doubt was planted.

I'll be discussing this (as well as certain fun things you can do at the Stock Pot Inn) more in depth the next time I run this quest, which will probably be three or four updates from now.

I've always wondered, and this seems like the adequate place to ask, is it actually possible to see anyone in the curiosity store at any time? Before I knew what was happening I'd kinda just check at different moments but no one was ever there. It was a genuine surprise when the owned appeared in Kafei's hideout the next day.

... NEWMAN!

That's terrible and amazing and I had no idea!

I have to confess, I think that this quest is one of the first times I ever used an FAQ from the Internet. I just could not figure out what I was supposed to be doing.

This makes what was already and awesome and crazy dark game (for Nintendo) even better somehow.

Yay updates

There are several masks which are only good for one thing but most of them will change what people say when you talk to them.

Also, saving bottle ending of the quest for the last boss of stone tower may be a good idea. Having infinite magic power makes that fight super easy. It may not be worth the hassle of exiting the dungeon and then coming back in to do the side-quest chain though.

I just buy it. What else am I going to spend 5000 rupees on?

I've never done the Kafei and Anju sidequest myself. I didn't realize how in-depth it was, what with all of those seemingly unrelated things coalescing into elements of the quest like they do.

<KeanuReeves>Whoa.</KeanuReeves>

I love that, by concentrating on a relatively small area/population and providing a finite timeline, Nintendo created a world that's much more lifelike than any of the open-ended, sandbox games we get today. Ezio's Rome/Liberty City/what-have-you are big and full of walking scenery; Termina is full of people.

Okay, enough gushing about this game. The thing I'm wondering now is what Kafei has to say, if anything, if you finish the quest but forget to give the pendand to Anju.

You monster!

You gave Anju the pendant with no intention of completing the quest, making for the most heart-wrenching scene in existence (because I didn't know about Kefei bursting in with her gone) in which she is sitting in her room wearing her wedding dress waiting for death or a husband, which ever comes first... and you don't even show it!

Seriously, when I saw that I didn't even play the song of time, I just sat there hoping something not horribly depressing would happen. But it never came.

I have always wished Link had the option of grabbing Sakon and forcing him to give back the Sun Mask.

I did something similar at the ranch one time. And then I realized that waiting until the moon crashes and getting a true "game over" kicks you back to your last save, and lost at ton of progress for the cycle! I know it seems obvious, but since dying just put you back to a checkpoint, I didn't think that it would screw me so badly to watch that happen.

Oh god

OH GOD

Alternately.

I didn't know Kafei could come back to an empty room either.

I can't decide if that ruined it for me or made it way better.

Had no idea Anju thought there was a possibility Kafei ran off with Cremia. Man. What a game.

In the video there, Kafei's comments, "But my promise... I couldn't keep it," followed by him staring at her wedding dress until his death, is the most heart-wrenching thing I've seen this game produce (right alongside Anju's similar fate if Kafei never shows up). Man. What a game.

I'd love to see some indie developer take the structure of MM's world and apply it to a new game that was exclusively about interesting side-quests and vignettes. By containing all of the action within a 72 hour loop, you can explore every branching path to its conclusion and create an extremely diverse narrative. Majora's Mask shouldn't be the only "Groundhog Day" game!

Way of the Samurai is somewhat like that, except instead of resetting time you just die. A lot.

The problem with Way of the Samurai was that you really only had two paths, and the rest was just branches from those paths determined by success or failure.

The Last Express is kind of like this - it's an adventure game that takes place entirely on a train (the Orient Express on the eve of World War I) and it does include a time-rewind mechanic, but it's more explicitly a gameplay convention in that case (you, the player, possess a magic faberge egg that rewinds time but you, the character, don't).

Actually, I was really moved by the fact that the allegedly happy ending to this game long quest is that they get to die together.

So, so dark.

Has anyone linked to the TV ads for this game yet? Because damn, those were freaky.

I...I forgot how deep and depressing the Kafei quest was ;_;. Especially since most of the endings go the same way: a moment of ____, and then everyone dies. How did this come from NINTENDO of all companies?...Usually they just go the Bizarre Route...

Don't forget the fact that Link's alternate forms are the spirits of dead people, one of which you actually kill (sort of).

This gives me an idea: maybe someone should do a count of how many people die during the course of the game, either because they stayed in Clock Town until the end of the third day, or because of some other reason.

If you don't stop the Moon, it's fairly well implied that everyone does. Blondie, at least, is seen to die no matter where he is when time runs down. Running four hundred feet from Ground Zero isn't exactly going to save you, you know.

Stop the moon + full Bombers' Notebook, though... the Deku Child, Darmani (dead before the game starts, though), Mikau, and just about everyone in Ikana (mostly undead being exorcised). It's honestly not as many as you'd think.

I'll be on vacation for the latter half of next week, so if I can get the next segment played and uploaded before then, I'll try to crank out an update during that period. If not, who knows.