Or alternatively, Zelda's Guide to Picnicking, The Legend of the Hanging Galaxy, etc.
I've been starting to appreciate uses of theme and symbolism a lot more in stories. Recently, I finished reading 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' and 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.
Picnic at Hanging Rock is, I gather, a respected classic in Australian literature. It really didn't resonate with me though. While the prose was beautiful, and the characters were nice, the plot was some kind of pessimistic rubbish, and the themes, at least those I picked up on, didn't impact me at all. (I've heard that there's some obsession in the story with the idea of time, but it mustn't have been very pervasive, as I didn't notice it at all, except for her mentioning stopped clocks a number of times) I don't really feel like talking about this one any more though; I've already written a goodreads review, so it's off my chest. I'm just logging here that it's one more off my to-read list.
Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy was a lot of fun. I'll reflect my friend Taha's sentiment; it's one of the few times I've laughed out loud reading a book. It's a lot of fun to see someone fill a book with nonsense and treat it in a serious manner, exemplified perhaps best by the passage detailing the invention of the infinite improbability drive. Thematically speaking, it wasn't the complete nonsense I thought it would be. In fact, it very coherently weaves the central theme throughout the story. The idea is this: that eventually, the pursuit of truth is replaced by petty desires. For instance, when a computer is on the path to finding the answer to life, the universe, and everything, a pair of philosophers show up intending to stop it, because if the truth is found, then they will be out of a job. A couple of similar incidents occur in the story, but perhaps the clearest example is in the difference between the Encyclopaedia Galactica and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Encyclopaedia Galactica tells you anything a respectable spacefarer could need to know. The Hitchhiker's Guide tells you where to get the best drinks, how to catch a ride on a Vogon spacecraft, and why the marketing department of the Sirius robotics corporation sucks. The Hitchhiker's Guide sells a lot better. It's through this lens that I can understand why a book ostensibly about the destruction of Earth, a stolen prototype spaceship, and a journey to a long-lost planet would be named after an in-world travel guide. Also, I bought this book in 2017, and finally got around to reading it. I'm glad to finally make even an inch of progress on backlog.
As for what I'm reading now:
- The Shadow Rising, Book Four of The Wheel of Time
- The French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert
- Something else which is suuuuper seeeeecret
The last couple of days I've been playing through The Legend of Zelda. I'll start by explaining why.
A few days ago, while listening to some of the music from Ocarina of Time, I became suddenly aware that I felt there were some mysterious underlying depths to the stories of these games. This is the sort of feeling I often get when I read a book or watch a movie and am growing an awareness of a theme. I feel like something is moving beneath the water, and it hints that there really is more to the iceberg. Some examples of things that made me feel this way:
- The 'Trinity' of Link, Zelda, and Ganon, of Courage, Wisdom, and Power, of Farore, Nayru, and Din
- The cycle of the world, wherein the same characters show up again and again in different ages. (and some thematic links to the wheel of time which I may explicate at some point)
- The constant reusing and remixing of music and ideas from previous games, hinting at underlying meanings. (Why is "Ballad of the Goddess" "Zelda's Lullaby" backwards?)
Somehow, the games repeatedly uses ideas that seem trite (The legendary hero must rise up to beat the dark lord and save the princess) and make them seem epic.
Part of the connection I see with The Wheel of Time is the way that many things seem to be preordained. A snippet I wrote in my notebook which seemed salient: "In the worlds of Brandon Sanderson and Andy Weir, the truth is something to be figured out, discovered, and sometimes, constructed. In the worlds of The Wheel of Time and The Legend of Zelda, the truth was determined a long time ago, and the hero's job is to rise to it."
In summary, the games do something in their storytelling which I don't completely understand, but I'm very intrigued by, so I'm going to do some research into the games.
That all being said, there isn't much storytelling to report on in the first game. The "Triforce with wisdom" was split into eight pieces. Get them all, go beat "Gannon", who weilds the "Triforce with power".
What I do have to report is on the game design philosophy, which is fascinating. You're really dropped in the deep end with this game, but the game is small enough that you will eventually stumble your way into understanding things a bit. There's almost no text, there are no tutorials, and you have to figure out a lot of the game by guesswork and trial and error. These things would be unacceptable in a modern game, but I actually think they work really well here. You die a lot at the start, but you eventually find your way into the first dungeon, and with enough trial and error, get your first heart container and triforce piece. And bit by bit, you gain confidence in the world, finding more and more secrets, and learning how to find things. Soon you're burning every suspicious looking bush and blowing up every suspicious stretch of wall. In a modern game, every single one of these things would have to be signposted, but in this game, keeping it unclear works perfectly.
After playing the original game, I can see why people say that Breath of the Wild has so much in common with it. But I daresay that this game has something to it that Breath of the Wild doesn't. Perhaps something that Breath of the Wild shouldn't. Maybe there's a Bennett Foddy principle hiding in here somewhere. That BotW wants you to beat it, while LoZ doesn't. As you gain mastery over LoZ, it feels like you have tamed the game. When I played through BotW, there was this mild anxiety that I was doing things the wrong way by, say, climbing around enemies rather than facing them head-on, or something like that. I never feel this way in LoZ. If I find an easier way to do something, then I take it, and it makes me feel clever for getting around it, rather than like a cheater.
I'm sure there's some discussion to be had around challenge vs. accessibility with this game, but from what I've played, I actually feel that the challenges I described above do not implicitly alienate anyone. Perhaps they make the game harder to get into. Back in the day, if you got a game, you milked it for all it was worth (even if it sucked), which perhaps gave the Nintendo something of a captive audience, but regardless, these challenges require very little in the way of physical or mental faculties to overcome, and reward patience and curiosity.
That being said, some of the combat is a little bit frustrating. (although some of that may be due to me playing on an emulator on a psp), and I struggle to tell whether I'm being impatient or if perhaps some of the enemy design leaves something to be desired. It's difficult for me to say whether adjusting the difficulty of the dungeons, or at least some of the enemies, would be a significant breach in the design philosophy of the game. Perhaps we'll see if I ever manage to finish the game.
Overall, the game is very good, and I'd be interested to try comparing it to similar games that came before and after to see what the gamedev climate was like and how this release affected it. I'm also excited to try some more Zelda games and see how these ideas evolve, and perhaps also start getting some answers to the questions that prompted this investigation.
As for my life in general, we've moved back into our house, and life is fairly good, lockdown notwithstanding. I do find myself lonely, and I often don't want to do things on my own. Playing games on my own, or reading on my own, or especially watching movies on my own, feel like failures of some sort, like my brain is saying, "You're not hanging out with people? That's not good, you should be hanging out with people, therefore, you must be failing in some way." Often, the only thing I feel like doing when this happens is watching Youtube, as though I can go, "See, I'm just watching a 20 minute video, just filling in the gap between some other important things I'm doing." But the youtube sessions go on for hours, sometimes eclipsing all other activities in the day. I said life is fairly good, but perhaps I was wrong. I'm making myself a little sad just looking back on what my days have been like. Or maybe it's just
that sad song I've had in my head all afternoon.
Anyway, I can tell that wallowing in my misery isn't going to help right now. I'd like to come up with some plan of action to snap out of it and get myself doing something useful, but everything feels a little pointless at the moment. I think what I'll do is pray about it and go to bed, and try to get a decent sleep. These three things are known to work miracles in improving my mood.
