The games that I previously mentioned in my previous time manipulation post are not the only games that tend to focus on time manipulation. There are two games from the same game series as Breath of the Wild - The Legend of Zelda series - that focuses on time manipulation as a game mechanic, one of those games focuses on that mechanic a lot more than the other game (Breath of the Wild) and one of those games is called Majora's Mask.
Majora's Mask is a game that has time manipulation play a part as a huge role to play throughout the entirety of the game as this the main game mechanic that gets introduced to the very beginning of the game, at the start of the game, Link is searching for his fairy friend Navi (which warning: spoilers, at the end of Ocarina of Time, she flys away when Link reaches the Temple of Time for the final time of the game, no one really knows where she is after that game) whilst traveling through a mysterious forest whilst riding on his horse Epona, as he's traversing throughout the forest, two fairies - a white and a purple one - are watching him then turn and face each other as if they've come up with idea or scheme together, then as he stops and starts to turn his head around at awe of this forest, he becomes distracted and the fairies suddenly push Link off of his horse and he flips backwards and falls straight onto his face, causing his horse to become startled in the process.
Then suddenly, a mysterious figure appears from the forest who wears a creepy and ominous looking mask starts twitching its arms and its head and in addition to cackling amongst itself with the fairies floating next to the figure, then it slowly pulls its mask slowly revealing a glimpse of its face and speaks to the fairies and praises them for the trick that they did to cause Link to fall and is intending to steal stuff from the boy as the masked figure mentions "I wonder if he has anything good on him". The figure scurrys towards the unconscious boy and is inspecting his pockets and suddenly finds something of interest, a blue ceramic instrument with holes dotted around on specific parts on the instrument as well as the main piece for someone to blow into and play the instrument, the purple fairy is in awe at the instrument, becomes excited by the beauty of it and really wants to play it, it even knows the name of the instrument which is a ocarina, as well as the name of the masked figure as it's blowing into the instrument and some noise starts to come out of the instrument which is Skull Kid.
Then the name of the purple fairy is revealed by the white fairy, which is called Tael, the white fairy is shocked and quite stern with Tael and explains why it shouldn't touch the ocarina as they could possibly drop and break the instrument, then Tael gets upset with what the white fairy has told them and also mentions the word sis which reveals that these two fairies are related to each other (siblings). The boy suddenly starts to wake up and stands up which alerts the attention of the fairies then shocks the Skull Kid as its surprised that the boy has suddenly woken up and mischievously hides the ocarina behind its back acting like it hasn't just stolen the boy's instrument, before the boy can claim his instrument back, the masked figure suddenly jumps onto the Epona and starts to gallop away from the boy, the boy jumps and clings onto the Epona's saddle to whilst struggling to hold onto it.
Then as the Skull Kid turns around the corner of a tree stump, the boy struggles to hold onto the saddle for much longer and falls back onto the ground whilst the masked figure rides and giggles creepily to himself into a tree with an open entrance, when the boy gets up, he rushes straight into the hollow entrance and jumps onto a few tree stumps to reach to reach the other end of this mysterious entryway. What he doesn't stumble across though is that when he does reach the otherside, he is greeted to a mysterious pit which is very hard to tell how far it is before reaching the very bottom and suddenly trips and falls straight into this pit, this then starts to introduce the idea that the pit that he's just fallen into and the forest itself isn't as ordinary as he first seemed it. Some mysterious symbols start to form as the boy keeps falling and this is where the game really starts to kick off and the boy starts to realise that the masked figure has more power to play in this than just being a mischievous creature, to me this scene reminds me of the beginning scene of Alice in Wonderland as she stumbles across the mysterious rabbit hole and starts to fall into an entirely different world which is the exact opposite to the one she was in before entering the hole.
Another cutscene which helps to introduce the main driving point of the game is when before Link and the white fairy can exit to venture into the town of Termina (the main hub world of the game), they meet with a mysterious person who is the owner of the Happy Mask shop and he wants Link to reclaim a mask that has been stolen from him which as the way he depicts it is most likely the same mask that the Skull Kid is wearing which adds to the creatures deceitful behaviour, though he only can be in the town for only three days which plays a more vital role throughout the game (which is why the text is in red meaning that it's of high importance) so Link has to return the mask to him quick and the salesman will assist in helping the boy turn back into his human form (which of course the Skull Kid was behind it as it transform the boy into the well-known creatures of the forest known as a Deku Scrub that inhabit the world) - though if the boy gets his ocarina back then the salesman will also assist him as long as he can get the mask back.
Link manages to find the location of the Skull Kid which is inside the giant clock tower which is the center of Termina, during this encounter, both the vital game mechanic and the other main strive of motivation are introduced during this, the purple fairy announces to the adventurers that they must seek out the 4 separate areas of the entirety of Termina in search of four giants before quickly being shut down by the Skull Kid, it then kickstarts the biggest risk of this game and uses its mystic power to cause the moon to start crashing down into the world, but before it can crash down, Link uses a bubble shooting mechanic to hit the Skull Kid to get his ocarina, once he successfully manages to get his ocarina, memories suddenly start flashing back to him of him and a young girl that he met (during Ocarina of Time) and she handed him her ocarina to be able to remember her whilst he's venturing out into the world, she also teaches him a song to learn how to play on his ocarina - which is entirely the most important mechanic in the game - the name of the song is the Song of Time which manipulates the current state of time - now he remembers that he knows this song and plays it which then causes him to travel backwards in time and the town is back to normal.
The reason as to why the song has sent Link back to the very first day, he arrived in the town, is that this can allow him to have enough time to retrieve the mask back and give it back to the Happy Mask salesperson but also to be able to start exploring the four areas that Tael exclaimed for the boy to explore to set up the motivation and main story of the game. However, this isn't the only reason why this song is the most influential mechanics in the game - this also can affect the civilians living in the world of Termina as when you interact with a character and assist them they will reward you with a mask, for example at about midnight of the first night there is an old woman who walks around carrying a sack on her back but then as she is walking past a young man, he quickly snatches the sack off of her and she is unable to chase after him to get it back, if you managed to get the sack from the robber, then she is able to sell bombs in the bomb shop and she awards you with the Bomb mask which allows you to blow up breakable objects around you.
There are a variety of masks to collect which have a range of different abilities depending on which mask you put on, this motivates the player to try and collect as many masks as possible to try and discover what the masks can do and what they are needed for, this also gets the player used to the ocarina song of time mechanic as well as you need to make sure that you beat any boss or collect some specific mask during the entirety of the three days, otherwise the moon that was crashing down at Link earlier will crash down into the world which will risk the player of having a game over. This mechanic has been widely successful for this game and is a mechanic that I feel inspired to incorporate into my own game as this has a variety of uses with time manipulation such as restarting time, slowing down time and speeding out time and the fact that the NPCs are also influenced by time manipulation. as their behaviour is affected as each of the three days goes by which can serve well in terms of the narrative of my game.
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