The Passage of Time in Hyrule  HanyouAugust 24th, 2012 by Hanyou
A significant number of games offer day/night cycles, and people
who play Nintendo games are probably very familiar with the
concept. Usually, certain things will only be available at
certain times of day, or a number of days have to pass between
events in order to complete sidequests.  Ocarina of Time
certainly made it interesting; shops and houses in towns would
be closed at night, the field would harbor new dangers, the
overworld at large would offer new opportunities for skulltula
harvesting, and most NPCs would acknowledge the passage of time.
Ocarina of Time made us aware of how day and night could pass in
a game world, but contrary to the real world, time was still
static. It didn’t feel like it was moving forward so much as
stagnating in a consistent cycle with too few changes over time.
This wasn’t a shortcoming, it’s just that having a day/night
cycle at all was sort of breaking new ground; infusing those
days and nights with gravity