When Nintendo showed the first footage from The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake last week, its new, detailed look reminded some fans of “Focus M,” a meme reimagining the Mario games as gritty AAA. So the meme’s creator, voice actor Ryan Stewart, went ahead and made “Focus L” a reality.
“AAA Zelda? Focus, L? Marvel's Zelda? Take your pick. This one was a lot of fun to put together,” Stewart wrote on Twitter. Like “Focus, M,” the video is a weird, hilarious combination of grim dialogue (“The Great Deku Tree was like a father to you,” says voice actor Ariel Hack as Navi) and the grunts and combat noises of realistic games, cast over footage of the Ocarina of Time remake trailer that doesn’t rise to the same serious level. There’s even the old video game trailer standard of a song cover, in this case a 2018 version of Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle.”
The original “Focus M” went from being a funny video to attempts to define a genre of games, and while I’d hate for this joke to go the friendslop route of being something we actually discourse over, I do think Stewart has highlighted certain vibes of modern AAA games. These games squeeze emotional moments into downtime in a way that’s pretty awkward when you think about it, and they include nudges and instructions to the player in ways that we all accept the necessity of, even when the dialogue is far from how people really talk. It can feel like a contrast to the emotional tone a game is going for, and I like how Stewart’s videos send that up by using games from before these tropes became common.
Also, in both “Focus L” and “Focus M,” Stewart’s voice reminds me of Will Arnett in Bojack Horseman. This makes me unconsciously invent whole tragic backstories for Mario and Link, something I would actually like to see in a gritty reboot. Get on it, Nintendo.
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