The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [70]
If a tektike manages to bite Link, a life heart will be lost on the life-meter. If Link dies, he certainly won’t move: that’s the strongest limitation to his movements. Consequently, we (as gamers) try to avoid the enemies. So, objects are directly limiting Link’s movements by blocking the way, but enemies do it indirectly by threatening his life. An area with an enemy in it makes that area dangerous, and so we avoid it. This dangerous area is alive with the enemy. Therefore, if dangerous areas are moving, secure areas in the screen can’t remain always the same: when an oktorok goes up, the lower area in the screen becomes safe; when the oktorok goes down, Link will be secure in the upper area.
And if this weren’t enough, there are usually a lot of enemies in a screen. The distribution of safe and dangerous areas inside a screen (the restrictions to Link’s movements) is never static but always changing. In this way, what could have been a mere atrezzo turns into an alive, dynamic, interesting space.
Some characters are friendly. The old man, the merchant, and the medicine woman all allow us to obtain items (as a present or by paying some money). They aren’t harmful, so the caves where they live are secure places. Differences? The old man gives us items for defending ourselves, the merchant sells us items for unblocking our way (bombs), and the medicine woman sells us… medicine. Their functions aren’t the same. The place where they live is defined, in fact, by these functions: the old man’s cave is the place where we can obtain the sword or the bow; the medicine woman’s, where we can get potions. In other words Link goes to the old man’s cave because he wants the sword, not because he wants to visit the old man. The old man is only the symbol of the cave function: a place for getting arms.
So a place is defined by the objects in it (rocks, trees, water) as well as by the characters that live there. Oktoroks and ghinis appear only in Hyrule overworld, whereas keeses and likelikes live only in dungeons. In this easy way, two big areas are defined: the overworld and the underworld. At the same time, in the overworld ghinis stroll near graveyards and oktoroks watch the mountain areas: they don’t mix. In the underworld, keeses and likelikes inhabit different dungeons. The differences between overworld and underworld concerning the characters are also related with the differences between objects. In some way, each character requests a scenery type, and each scenery type suits concrete characters: a zola only makes sense in the water, a leever only on and in the ground, and a ghini near graves. But in what way?
Think about a book. In English we can say that the book can be read or flicked through, bought or lent, criticized or praised. Some actions suit a book well, but others don’t suit it at all: we can’t drive a book on a road, nor use it to make a whole in the ground. It is the car that can be driven. It’s the shovel that can be used for making a hole. Not a book.
Each word is related with some others; they have some sort of familiarity. A set of words with this familiarity is called a semantic field. This is important, because we usually can’t link words from different semantic fields. The words ‘spoon’, ‘fork’, ‘knife’, and ‘pan’ belong to the semantic field of kitchen tools (and so too do the verbs about cooking) and don’t belong to the semantic field of swimming. The words ‘fir’, ‘sock’, and ‘reindeer’, as different as they are, belong to Christmas. Realize that in the semantic field of Christmas, verbs related with a fir (we can decorate it, or illuminate it, or put gifts around it) are far different from verbs belonging to carpentry (we can cut it, polish it, varnish it, build a chair with it).
The way characters and objects are related in The Legend of Zelda is similar to the way words are related in semantic fields. Characters make movements and perform actions