• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“All right … See you tomorrow … Wait! Who are you?”

“Smith, Level 9 Official, Tax Inspector.”

“What are you saying? But … Something’s wrong … This can’t be happening…”

“Why can’t this be happening?”

“You can’t be a Tax Inspector … You must be a deadly monster with blooded-eyes!”

“I do my best …”

“But you can’t be here!”

“Here? Where?”

“In Hyrule!”

“Really? And where is Hyrule? You know, this is a videogame and I can be wherever I want …”

“But you can’t … you can’t … be here” says Link scratching his head under the green hat.

That’s the question. Why can’t he be there? What can Link say to show him that a Tax Inspector is out of place in Hyrule?

Hyrule … Where?

What are we looking for in The Legend of Zelda? We only want to reach the place where Princess Zelda is waiting for us (quite patiently). But if an adventure is something more than a walking through, it’s because it costs some effort to get there. If there weren’t any obstacles, Zelda would be rescued at the very beginning of the adventure, and this would be a very short, very poor videogame. So what’s an obstacle? What does “effort” mean in The Legend of Zelda? Keep in mind that Link is only a sprite (that is, a two-dimensional animation or graphic) moving on the screen—only a sprite: truth is sometimes hard. In order to become an adventure, the movements of sprites like Link and others should make things happen. And we, by virtue of our control over Link, should help those things to happen (after all, Zelda is not a film, but a game). So, again: what does it mean “to make something happen” in a videogame? How do those things that happen force us to make an effort? And where are we, when we are with Link?

With these questions in mind this chapter will explore the difference between physical space and logical space in the original Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), eliciting further questions. How are things in Zelda related? What is the nature of the logical space in Zelda? How is the logical space in Zelda and the logic of language related? Can Ludwig Wittgenstein’s famous notion of “language game” help us out at all? Can playing Zelda be a language game?

Physical Space and Logical Space

Let’s imagine that Hyrule is an apartment building. Zelda is our next-door neighbor and her door is open, so it isn’t very difficult to enter her apartment. The distance between Zelda and us is zero. But what if the door is locked and Zelda has lost the key? Physical distance between her door and ours is the same, but now we have to go to the locksmith and ask him very gently (it is 2:00 A.M.) to come with us.

The obstacle (a locked door) has forced us to look for a solution in another place. The distance between our door and the locksmith’s has been added to the distance between our door and Zelda’s. Now let’s imagine that the locksmith is stubborn and wants us to pay him a hundred rupees. Now the locksmith has himself become an obstacle, so we must go to the street and chase some confused oktoroks for rupees (they aren’t used to the city). Then we go back to the locksmith’s store, we pay him for the key and, finally, we return to Zelda’s door. The physical distance between our door and Zelda’s is always the same; however, a different sort of distance between her and us is growing and growing… . Each obstacle moves Zelda further from us, but each obstacle is actually a requirement to be satisfied. A locked door is a condition met by the key. But the key is another requirement: we need the locksmith. But, surprise, the locksmith adds a further condition to be satisfied: he needs money. As the requirement links increase, the distance between Zelda and Link increases too.

What kind of distance is that? We can’t measure it in meters or inches, but, more accurately, in the number of requirements that must be met. Instead of a physical distance, we are dealing with a logical distance.

A locked door requires a key. A key requires rupees. Rupees are obtained by hunting oktoroks. Hunting