The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy_ I Link Therefore I Am - Luke Cuddy [87]
Who’s thinking all this? Is it Link who lives in Hyrule, trying to do what the Deku tree told him right before passing away, who has undertaken a moral path that sometimes seems pre-determined?
Most of us have duties, often leading towards something unclear. We act and make preferences, the consequences of which seem out of our control, following a prescriptive inner voice. Does Link feel inside him a consciousness, deciding among the possible paths along his adventure? From our point of view Link’s inner voice is not his deeper will and self (the ‘true him’): his true self is … another’s.
Is a player, then, thinking the thoughts at the beginning of this chapter? A player who lives on Earth, trying to do what that weird Deku tree said? Who has just a ludic aim that sometimes looks like destiny (we can’t survive for long without games), but who probably also has a job waiting to be done, a family to care about, a favorite show on TV? This player surely feels inside him a consciousness, making choices among the possible decisions that face him throughout the game, an inner voice constantly telling him what to do next. And from our point of view this inner voice is his deeper will and self (the ‘true him’).
Any chance we have something in common with Link? That our will is not so clearly within our control, comfortably inside our consciousness? Whenever the word ‘I’ is used in real life, its use seems so straightforward. And yet, when someone describes a game of Zelda using the word ‘I’, it becomes ambiguous. It can point to Link in the gameworld, the character who actually slays monsters and explores dungeons, or to his player out of the gameworld, the person who does not physically move from his chair, but who must be held responsible for slaying monsters, exploring dungeons and finally saving Hyrule. ‘I’ inevitably points simultaneously to two beings: to Link as a consciously perceived body (however virtual), and to the player as a ruling will. Does the word ‘I’ really avoid an analogous ambiguity in real life? Pointing at the same time to a consciously experienced body and to a will we cannot see, but that has us under its control?
The Adventure of Will
I can hear you saying: “You can’t talk like that! Link has nothing inside, he is nothing inside. He has no consciousness but that of the concrete gamer controlling him; he has no will but the one his players share with him. It is this emptiness that permits gamers to become his will. Instead we have both a unique consciousness and will. There is no invisible gamer playing us.”
Let’s think about Navi, Link’s lovely talking cricket in The Ocarina of Time. She has no voice talking inside her and no gamer guiding her from outside Hyrule. She always performs the same acts, always utters the same sentences—actually it’s not even she who expresses those sentences. It may seem so, but actually it’s The Ocarina of Time speaking—I mean, the game as a whole. Alternatively we can say that it’s the Nintendo staff that wrote Navi’s words. There’s a similar situation with narrative books where there are textual characters inside the text and a fully featured man (or staff) outside the text. Nothing else. Characters in books depend on the book’s paper, people reading books, people writing books. They have an individual life inside the book and in culture, but this life depends on real people.
We humans don’t require as much. First, I am my character, living in the real world. Second, I perceive by myself this world in which I live; in a certain sense I am my own reader. I am a pretty autonomous being: at least much more autonomous than a character in a book. Third, and most important, I am the author of my own choices. I do not feel someone else programming or playing me, and this is my freedom.
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