My friend Yannik gifts me a used Nintendo Switch for my birthday. He got it from his coworker who decided to leave the country and rid himself of his worldly possessions. It is by far the most irrationally generous gift I’ve ever received. Not just the Switch, but the game it comes with: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
I am not worthy.
As a kid, I played versions of Zelda on Nintendo 64 and Gameboy, never getting very far because it was too hard and the graphics were underwhelming. I assume playing this version will be equally lackluster.
Wrong. I was wrong.
Zelda, if you’ve never picked up a gaming device in your life, follows this cute, androgynous lil elf(?) dude as he roams the country trying to save a princess. Zelda is the princess. The cute, androgynous elf dude is Link. Link is the kind of hot I want to be: Mae Martin, minus the elf ears.
I’m not sure how many hours I’ve cached in this game, but let me tell you, I have been to places. I have climbed volcanoes and snowy peaks. I have disguised myself as a woman to get into a village where you can ride seals. I have tamed wild horses and baked apple pies using apples I’ve picked out of trees with my own two hands.
My real life could never.
Zelda doesn’t have any hard rules. You can defeat all of the beasts, lift the curse, and save the princess. But you can also do whatever the fuck you want.
I’ve grown tired of side quests, which usually involve making someone soup or doing something pointless like exchanging thirty bundles of wood and three thousand rupees for a house. In Zelda, I’m a nomad. What the hell do I need to settle down and buy a house for? I bought the house, okay? It’s sitting empty in some village. I’ve never had friends over. I have zero furniture.
I have a horse. Let me tell you about my horse. I can ride my horse (who I’ve named Artex, after the horse in The Neverending Story) as far as I want. Except over cliffs.
I’ve grown very attached to Artex. I put flowers in his hair. Sometimes I have to abandon him at the base of a mountain, and even though I know he’ll somehow be at the next stable I encounter, it breaks my heart to leave him all alone. I love him. He’s so loyal. One time, a Lizalfos electrocuted him, causing him to whinny in pain. If I could’ve ripped that Lizalfos’s throat out with my teeth, I would’ve. Instead, I stabbed him with a club and later used his guts to make a potion.
I have never witnessed a horse die in the game, but I assumed that like Link, the horse would be revived after a ‘game over’. I have recently learned that this is not the case. If Artex dies in the game, he is dead forever–unless you pay one thousand rupees to the horse god to revive him. I don’t think I’m emotionally prepared to deal with this. I’d rather forfeit the entire game and start over from scratch than watch Artex die.
I will admit, I’ve killed a ton of animals in Zelda. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t condone killing animals in Zelda or in real life. I use the raw meat to replenish my heart containers. The wolves give me the most grief. When you kill a wolf in Zelda, it lets out a cry like a dog in pain. I would surely rather let a wolf kill me in Zelda than hear that noise again. Also, it feels kind of awful to kill wolves in Zelda while my dog is calmly lying at my feet, having no idea I’m killing her ancestors.
I don’t kill the foxes either. They’re cute. They squeak when I approach, but they don’t have to worry. I consider the foxes off limits. There’s barely any meat on them anyways.
There are domesticated dogs in the game. I sadly cannot interact with these dogs. I would like to be able to pet these dogs, but there is no option for me to pet them. Why? Why, Nintendo Entertainment Planning & Development? I would like to pet the dogs. Just let me pet the dogs. I don’t think this is too much to ask for. [Edit: since I began writing this, I have discovered that I can interact with the dogs. I made friends with my first dog in Zelda. I fed him an apple. He went down into puppy pose. I cried].
I love foraging in the woods for mushrooms and nuts and bird eggs. It’s very soothing. I’m never going to eat all of these mushrooms. I just like to collect them.
I have lunch with a friend (in real life, not in the game), and I inform her that my meal is identical to a meal I had cooked in Zelda. It consists of greens and eggs.
“Oh, wow,” she says. (She is impressed. She spent lockdown playing Zelda, while I was playing The Sims because it was the closest thing to having a dog before I finally got my real-life dog).
I visit my parents over the weekend. They live in the suburbs, and they have a backyard. I wander around barefoot with my real-life dog, noting tiny mushrooms growing at the base of a tree.
My god, this is just like in the game, I thought. It’s so crazy that they got my parents’ backyard to look so realistic.
Later, my parents and I sit down to dinner. I gaze at my salmon and veggies, and realize that food just doesn’t feel nearly as exciting when I haven’t hunted and gathered it myself. My parents are of the boomer generation and have no idea what I’m talking about. They barely know what Pac-Man is.
It occurs to me that I could spend the rest of my life exploring every corner of this virtual world and still never experience all there is to see. And yet, it’s beginning to feel repetitive. Have I visited these woods before? Have I already climbed this snowy peak?
Link has been asleep for one hundred years prior to my playing the game, and he’s still experienced more life than I have, both in the game and in real life. I rarely leave New York. I don’t even know how to drive. I went to horse camp as a kid, but my horse got spooked by literally nothing and I fell off. I haven’t gotten back on a horse since. I’m a scaredy cat. I’ll never be as brave as Link. I’m brave, but I’m Baby Brave. I’m Inside Brave. I never go too far out of my comfort zone. I don’t think I could ever sell all of my possessions and say goodbye to my friends and leave the country. The only princess I’ve ever saved is my dog from a life of being a one-bitch puppy factory.
I’m not sure what the point of sharing this is. I don’t know if this is particularly interesting or funny. I find video games therapeutic and inspiring. Nintendo, Gameboy, The Sims, and the perverse RPG game Habbo Hotel soothed me as a lonely kid who desperately wanted to eject myself from reality.
I no longer want to exit reality. At least not all the time. I like my life too much.
But every so often, it’s fun to pet the virtual dogs.