10 MORE Scariest Levels In Non-Horror Video Games

4. Empty Marketplace - Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time

Eminent authorities from Sigmund Freud to Stephen King have asserted that horror is a rehearsal for death.

I assert that horror is most fearsomely realized, for reasons passing understanding, in games from the “Legend of Zelda” series.

I don't know either! Hook-shotting and hiyah-ing my happy way across Hyrule, taking quests from charming characters, savoring genre-defining music, generally delighting in the fineness of things.

Then? Evil Moon.

Happy Mask Salesman.

ReDeads.

Why? Is the franchise haunted? Did Nintendo make some kind of devil’s deal to create history’s happiest RPGs, but only if every installment had at least one blast of existential nightmare fuel?

Commenter RexRabbiteer rightly notes the nastiest scare is in the happiest game, Ocarina of Time, when Link travels forward in time to the empty marketplace.

Here, no nightmare grins from the sky. Even the ReDeads are a distraction.

The horror is the future.

Look at the marketplace, joyful in childhood, now a corpse, and understand there is no victory. No quest keeps Link or anyone from this end. The empty marketplace is plain mortality: the world will forget our touch and everything we love must die.

Can’t imagine why people keep writing creepypasta about this series.