Only a Game

Zelda Facets (6): Zelda

Over at ihobo today, the final part of the Zelda serial, looking at the narrative role of Zelda herself throughout the franchise. Here’s an extract:

Considering the franchise is named after her, Princess Zelda took a while to take an active role in the series. Shigeru Miyamoto has explained that she is named after F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, simply because he liked the sound of the name. In the 1986 original, which was called The Hyrule Fantasy: Legend of Zelda in Japan, Zelda serves as a framing device in the grand pattern of the ‘rescue the princess’ trope. This is not wholly surprising, since the game’s working title was ‘Adventure Mario’, and the Mario series has almost universally been framed as a ‘rescue the princess’ story. These stories have a long history, with some of the oldest examples being Andromeda being rescued from the dragon by Perseus in Greek mythology, and the rescue of Sita from the demon king Ravana by Lord Rama in the Hindu epic the Ramayana. Even if we have recently become suspicious of the implications of ‘rescue the princess’ stories, the Zelda franchise’s thirty year run helps reveal a gradual change of attitude towards ‘helpless’ Princesses.

You can read the entirety of Zelda Facets (6): Zelda over at ihobo.com.

Zelda Facets (5): Horses

Over on ihobo today, the serial continues with a piece about Zelda’s horses:

It was Koizuma-san who came up with the name Epona, after the goddess of horses and fertility in Celtic mythology, having apparently been briefly called ‘Ao’, a Japanese word for a blue-green colour with no equivalent word in English, associated with horses because of the exceptionally rare blue roan coloration. An inherent design tension is apparent in the implementation of Epona: on the one hand, Miyamoto-san had dictated that “a Legend of Zelda game doesn’t need any difficult actions”, hence the horse jumps automatically. On the other, the Zelda-creator felt that simply riding the horse wouldn’t be fun without some kind of action, so the horse was given a set of carrots that allowed the player to make the horse go faster, but when none were left it was not possible to jump. It is within this tension – actions that are easy to take but require finesse to use well – that all Zelda games pitch their challenges.

You can read the entirety of Zelda Facets (5): Horses over at ihobo.com.

Zelda Facets (4): Weapons

The Zelda serial continues today on ihobo, this week examining the unexpectedly fragile weapons of Breath of the Wild. Here’s an extract:

One thing and only one thing remains consistent across the various armouries of the Zelda series: Link is armed with a sword, a shield, and a bow. There may be other weapons – a boomerang, for instance, or a slingshot – but the certainty that Link’s standard compliment of weapons is a sword and a bow remains unchanged until Breath of the Wild. Similarly, it is not until the latest Zelda that the game features a dynamic inventory capable of holding a variety of items: up until this point, every Zelda game has a static set of items and the only question is whether the player has acquired a specific item or not. This is an element of the Zelda practices that few other games have copied, and the change in the latest game is one of the few cases of Zelda apparently moving towards a more conventional videogame practice and giving up its own unique ways of doing things.

You can read the entirety of Zelda Facets (4): Weapons over at ihobo.com.

Zelda Facets (3): Hyrule

Over on ihobo today, the next part of the new Zelda serial, looking at the relationship between an avatar and its world in the context of The Legend of Zelda. Here’s an extract:

The elegance of the Zelda franchise’s solution to the problems entailed in facilitating avatars is such that it has many imitators, although it is worth noting that the 1986 Metroid – released by Nintendo in the same year as the original Legend of Zelda – has essentially the same relationship between character and world. It can be described as follows: the character starts with only the capacity to explore and to defend themselves (or, equivalently, to enact violence but without a huge degree of efficacy). Through exploration and survival, the player overcomes challenges that grant them an increase in their power, which can involve making the character tougher, increasing their capacity for violence, or granting them a way to access parts of the world that were previously inaccessible. Once the player has acquired sufficient powers in this way, they have a final showdown that tests their ability to deploy all the powers of their character, after which the game concludes. If this reads like a description of any videogame, this is a mirage caused by the extent to which this structure has permeated the player practices of digital entertainment.

You can read the entirety of Zelda Facets (3): Hyrule over at ihobo.com.

Cybervirtue Outreach Request

Working on who to send out review copies of The Virtuous Cyborg, and I could use your help! Do you know any journalists, firebrands, iconoclasts or other strange and wonderful people who are out there making their voices heard? I’m particularly looking for those who are raising concerns about contemporary technology, but anyone who might be interested in cybervirtue and who is out there making some noise would be great to hear about.

Looking for journalists, firebrands, and iconoclasts who are raising technology concerns. Suggestions? https://t.co/gNWLJXxHzS

— Chris Bateman (@SpiralChris) March 6, 2018

Please reply to this post or to the Tweet that goes with this. Many thanks for your assistance!

The Virtuous Cyborg - Coming 2nd April 2018

How would you know if you were a good cyborg? My latest philosophy book explores this and other problems of contemporary cyberethics. The Virtuous Cyborg will be available from Eyewear Publishing on Monday 2nd April 2018.

Go to cyborg.ihobo.com or click the book in the sidebar to learn more!