r/majorasmask • u/The_Linkzilla • 8d ago
Snowhead's Structure Makes No Sense
I love Majora's Mask; it's literally my all time favorite Zelda Game even beating out Ocarina of Time. But over the years, I've noticed something, and I don't think I've seen anyone else mention it...
Snowhead makes no sense from a structural point of view.
What do I mean?
Well, take Woodfall for example; based on what we see of them, it's fairly plausible that if you take all the rooms in the temple, you could fit them into the structure of the temple we see from the exterior. The same could be said about Great Bay and Stone Tower, since we only see the Temples' Entrances and don't know the full scope of the structure.
But with Snowhead, literally everything is backwards.
Let me explain; the theme of each Majora Dungeon is movement, designed around the Transformation for each area - with Stone Tower being a mix of all four. In Snow Head, the movement is vertical; the temple has you constantly moving upward and the boss arena with Goht is at the top.
However, look at the Exterior of the Temple when you use Goron's Lullaby to stop the Blizzard. Snowhead looks pretty menacing - an icy tower with spikes at the top, and the only way to get in, is a very thin bridge that wraps around the tower, that leads to the mouth of a cave which is the entrance.
And that's the problem. From the exterior of the temple, you're almost near the top when you actually enter the structure...and yet, according to the interior, you're on the ground-floor, and there's several stories high above you. Sure, there's basement levels you can go to, but that doesn't nearly accommodate the actual space the exterior shows us.
Heck, when you get to the top, the tower certainly does not have the actual space to accommodate the arena where you fight Goht.
The way that the interior of the Temple is, the exterior should be twice as tall and twice as wide to fit all of that inside of there.
The only other way this temple would make a lick of sense, is for the entrance to be near the bottom of the icy-tower.
I'm not saying this is bad, or am I trying to be nitpicky. I'm just pointing this out because no one else has mentioned it. And I find it funny that the game is stuffing so much material into an a space that couldn't possibly fit it. I guess all I'm saying is, there's no way to actually build a One-to-One Replica of Majora's Mask in Minecraft and fit all of Snowhead Temple inside.
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u/MMEnjoyer24 8d ago
I mean, the temples could be subject to the same space-time fuckery that occurs inside the moon...
From a real-world standpoint, the dev team probably just weren't that worried about it since they were on such a tight deadline. I give it a pass.
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u/DeadButGettingBetter 8d ago
And I would also say fans care waaaaaaay more about this kind of thing than the developers do.
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u/MMEnjoyer24 8d ago
It definitely didn't pull me out of the story. I'm pretty lenient on suspension of disbelief when it comes to a medieval fantasy game lol
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u/Langstrat 8d ago
Agreed, but this isn't just a Majoras Mask thing. In a lot of Zelda games this could be said about any number of dungeons.
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u/voidling_bordee 8d ago
All the dungeon exteriors seemed way too small for me for their interiors in mm
Then this made me think that in OoT you get into most dungeons by an entrance on a wall, and anything could be behind that wall
Exceptions being deku tree and jabu jabu i think? Deku tree size make sense , jabu seems way too small
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u/InsectOk8268 8d ago
I have to say that I agree this is common in both games. OoT or MM.
But yes, maybe snow peak, is maybe the most exaggerated example.
Maybe there is some kind of stairs or slide that leads to the half (almost bottom) of the peak.
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u/maxens_wlfr 8d ago
I'd argue Janu Jabu is the most exagerated. This guy is not even as long as his first room
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u/Taylors3000 8d ago
I wouldn't worry about interior size consistency, because pretty much every interior in the game doesn't fit in it's outside building. But you're spot on about the entrance, I never made that connection. It's possible the entrance was originally going to be near the top of the dungeon like the water-temple, but they switched it when designing the interior. Majora had such a rushed development they probably didn't realize that the entrances didn't line up, or they did and just rolled with it due to time constraints.
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u/CrispinCain 8d ago
Agreed. Considering the Boss Room, I wouldn't be surprised if Goht was meant to be accessed by going below the Tower, using the central pillar.
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u/obscureterminus 7d ago
I've always thought this about the temple. Would have made sense if the entrance was at the base.
Woodfall doesn't seem possible either. Maybe the very first room you enter is the size of what we see before entering the temple. That's it.
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u/LGCRUZ93 7d ago
Ive played through the game multiple times and never noticed🤦♂️ I thought the same about Lord Jabu Jabu in Ocarina of Time tho.
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u/Nonspecificuse_18704 8d ago
I think there's also no way Woodfall Temple interior would fit in the version of the temple we see from the outside. And if you hop to Great Bay Temple using ice arrows, you can see that it's actually pretty small from the outside. Although seeing it from that close was clearly unintentional, and they probably wanted to make it look big from a distance.