Fear. If there’s one thing that The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess does better than every other Zelda game out there, it’s the ability to scare. Many may argue that Majora’s Mask is a scarier game in general, however, I feel that that game is better at being “creepy” as opposed to scary (there is a difference!). To me, in terms of pure scares, Twilight Princess has Majora’s Mask beat.
If you ask anyone what cutscenes stuck out most for them from Twilight Princess, among the most likely responses you’ll get are the cutscene from Link’s meeting with Lanaryu and the cutscene that plays right before you battle against Blizzeta. Don’t get me wrong, those cutscenes are scary and extremely memorable for being so. But to me, the scariest, most memorable cutscene from Twilight Princess is the one that happens when Link arrives at Kakariko Village for the first time.
He finds the Ordonian children taking refuge with some of the villagers within Kakariko’s sanctuary, and starts to overhear their conversation. Barnes, the Bomb Shop owner, is worriedly complaining about how he can’t seem to find the Twilight beasts anywhere, and that they could be hiding and waiting to ambush them. This doesn’t exactly help calm the nerves of the children (or mine in 2006, for that matter), especially in Talo’s case. Renado tries to calm Talo, saying that they will remain safe so long as they remain in the sanctuary. Barnes is skeptical, saying that even his bombs seemingly couldn’t damage the beasts and that once they choose to invade, they’re done for.
And then here is when it starts to get scary.
This track starts to play as Barnes brings up something that happened recently. An older lady from their general store was attacked by one of the Twilight creatures and several people from the town went to go and save her. But when they got there, she was gone, and there were two of those beasts waiting there. Before Barnes can finish drawing his conclusion on what will happen if they get attacked, Renado yells at him to stop, and Beth starts breaking down in tears.
This moment lasts for just about a minute, but it’s stuck with me ever since I first saw it when I was a child. Everything about it is just perfect to me in terms of what I look for in a truly scary scene: the music is extremely nerve tensing, the appearance of all the characters within the Twilight physically shows you that nothing is as it should be, and there’s even a bone-chilling story of the worst-case scenario. All of these elements just do an absolutely perfect job of setting the mood.
Blizzeta’s transformation gave me a good jump, and the meeting with Lanaryu was freaky, but this scene right here is truly terrifying to me, and consequently, the most memorable. It really just drove in how serious and dangerous the situation is and gave me a taste of what will happen to the entire land of Hyrule if I failed.
I think what really sells this cutscene to me is the music: I honestly can’t play the music that starts in this cutscene late at night because of how scary it is to me. I’m not a music major so I’m unfamiliar with most of the terms used when describing certain attributes of a track, but every single little thing about this music made me on edge and uncomfortable.
But what made this cutscene even better for me was that, despite all of the terror and doubts everyone shares, there was still a glimmer of hope. Colin tries to comfort Beth and says that Link will definitely come to save them. Beth and Barnes aren’t having any of it, and Talo visibly seems to have given up hope on Link, and yet despite that and the horrible situation they’re all in, Colin still has faith.
And Link is right there, bearing witness to all of this. I was internally screaming, I just wanted to have Link run up to them and hug them, tell them that it was all going to be OK and that I was going to help them — but they can’t even see Link in the Twilight Realm, let alone hear him. And from all of this, little me was determined now more than ever to save them and protect Hyrule.
