The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [43]
And then, at least some of the games are supposed to be sequels to or at least occur on the same timeline as the other games. It would be strange to construct an account that would make Link’s identity fixed in one game, but not identical to Links from other games. It would be odd if, in the sequel to a previous game, Link is an entirely different person.
But there is a third answer which I think is better. This solution relies on the concept of destiny which is omnipresent in all of the Zelda games. When the three goddesses, Din (the goddess of power), Nayru (the goddess of wisdom), and Farore (the goddess of courage) created the world, they left behind a Triforce which was capable of granting wishes to the user. If the person who found the Triforce had a balance of wisdom, courage, and power, that person would be able to wield the power of the united Triforce. If they did not, they would only be able to obtain the portion of the Triforce that embodied the trait they possessed.
Most of the games begin with the discussion of a great evil. The evil is Ganondorf, who is often portrayed as possessing or being destined to attempt to possess the Triforce of power. A boy is destined to thwart the evil because he is the embodiment of the virtue of courage. The Princess Zelda, on most accounts, is the embodiment of wisdom. These predictions, in every game, hold true—unless the player gives up on the game without completing it.
For the main characters the destiny they have is what picks them out as the same person within any given game and from one game to the next. The destiny that awaits them is a necessary and sufficient condition for the essential element that allows their identity to persist. This kind of account may also apply to non-main characters. Because the gods imbued the world with a balance of wisdom, courage, and power, all citizens have a role to play in the course of destined events. The role holds fixed, no matter what other characteristics change.
Admittedly, this is a strange view of identity. However, it seems to yield the correct conclusion. It allows us to identify all the characters as the same people from game to game and from one moment to the next within any given game. The essential characteristic we have identified is certainly not arbitrary. This may be an odd conclusion in our own world but, given the particulars of the metaphysical structure of the Zelda universe, it seems to be a very plausible answer.
Moreover, there is good reason for thinking that videogames would be governed by strange metaphysics and hence yield odd identity conditions: videogame universes are created by designers and therefore their metaphysical commitments are necessarily stipulative in a way that the metaphysics in our world are not. Given this, it seems perfectly okay for something such as destiny to serve as a defining characteristic of identity in a videogame.
Level 4
The CDi Games Don’t Count! Timelines and Miyamoto
8
The Hero of Timelines
SEAN C. DUNCAN and JAMES PAUL GEE
And critique me that is the only way any one wil ever get this riht is to be critiqued!
—LINK-FAN-242
In contemporary popular culture, it’s increasingly common for everyday people to “compete” with experts. As journalist Thomas Friedman put the matter:
When everyone has a blog, a MySpace page, or Facebook entry, everyone is a publisher. When everyone has a cell phone with a camera in it, everyone is a paparazzo. When everyone can upload video on YouTube, everyone is a filmmaker.
With the rise of the Internet, people carry these forms of everyday expertise quite far and often organize themselves into “communities of practice” in order to do so. Fan fiction writers organize into groups and