The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [14]
The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker serves as an instructive example of the tension between spaces of places and spaces of flows. Like Super Mario Bros., Wind Waker is a game that can be completed; among the set of concrete gameplay goals, players must conquer a series of dungeons. As a game, Wind Waker clearly emphasizes movement through the game world. But as an expansive, three-dimensional world brought to life by a diversity of possible audiovisual interactions, Wind Waker seems to champion environmental presence.
Wind Waker is by no means the only videogame to feature expressive, open-ended virtual places. However, its vast oceanic world does stand out from the crowd in its audacious starkness. Because the virtual ocean dwarfs the world’s tiny islands, players spend significant amounts of time sailing on open waters. Sailing between distant islands—a largely uneventful voyage—can take more than ten minutes. During these trips, it’s precisely the virtual world that steals the spotlight: when gameplay mechanics are deemphasized, we can’t help but pay attention to the motion of the waves, the artfully rendered cloud patterns, the stylized wisps of wind, and the slowly changing positions of sun, moon, and stars. At night, even the background music fades away, leaving only a quiet soundscape of wind and waves.
Link rides across the sea at sunrise (The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, Nintendo).
The designers themselves seem to acknowledge that the game operates at a slower pace. One character, clearly poking fun at an outdated, action-centered view of videogames, exclaims, “You’re the adventure guy, sailing from island to island. Action! Excitement! Right?” Another character, speaking to the core Wind Waker experience, advises us, “Why, just walking around and having a look at things is quite fun! That’s the mark of a great town!”
Wind Waker is a space in which idle experimentation and unstructured play—whether flying around in seagull mode, discovering picturesque little islands, hang-gliding from rooftop to rooftop, or sailing about just for the simple thrill of it—become experiences enjoyable on their own terms. Furthermore, the prespecified gameplay goals are curiously easy, perhaps intentionally so. Wind Waker wants players to wrestle with its enemies, environments, and puzzles, but it also tries to make those challenges somewhat painless. Wind Waker sometimes feels less like a game and more like a virtual world in which quests and gameplay challenges exist as an afterthought—that is, until Link learns the Ballad of Gales.
Warping as Annihilation of Space and Time
After completing the first third of Wind Waker, players learn the Ballad of Gales, a magic song that allows Link to teleport across the ocean. For players who find the sailing repetitive, the Ballad of Gales comes as a welcome new ability. Still, the Ballad signifies a shift to a virtual existence dominated by gameplay objectives. The experience of instantaneous travel warrants closer examination.
The specific practice of warping may be unique to digital media, but its effects are hardly unfamiliar. The experience of mass transportation—subway, train, and airplane—recalls a similar devaluation of place. In particular, the advent of railway travel in the early nineteenth century provides apt precedent for thinking about warping.
Historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch argues that, for travelers of the time, the railroad heralded an annihilation of space and time. Because the railroad “knows only points of departure and destination,” 14 railway passengers—like Wind Waker players who use the Ballad of Gales—can’t accurately be called travelers,