A Thoroughly Overwrought Literary Analysis of OoT
Coercion and imperatives, subconscious processing and existentialism
For better or worse, the Millennial “Conscience” is one in no small part informed by the storylines of various video games released in the 90s. It is an inseparable element of the cultural media that has created that often reviled, hugely unlucky generation. Maybe that’s why they’re so fucked up. I’m sure if a boomer ever gets a hold of this, that’s just what they’ll say from the house they bought 40 years ago with belly button lint and an Indian head penny, which is today valued at 2.3 million dollars, as they anticipate selling it in order to spend all that money on cruises and world tours while they’re children struggle to-
But I digress… I also don’t even really believe any of that, I just know some people do.
That claim though, that video games have informed a cultural structure for said generation, it shouldn't even be so hard to swallow should it? No one would question the cultural impact of films like Jurassic Park or Titanic… or…
*snort* Starship Troopers… The latter to this very day subjected to the energetic critical scrutiny of a whole colony planet's worth of people that have never read Heinlein’s book…
No one would question the impact of Harry Potter on Millennials either, or R.L. Stein for that matter.
It seems to be though that video games as an engine of cultural education (which of necessity is also always ethical education) is not so readily considered. I at least, have not seen it spoken on much.
So now, iconoclast unto the grave, I will deliver an unbelievably pedantic and over the top analysis (not critique. So sick of that word) of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time [0].
And just to bury all nay sayers nays before they bray, I should like to point out that to date, the game has sold just over 14 million copies [1], including re-releases. Over five hundred thousand pre-orders were placed before its first launch, [2] when it broke all the video game records evnar at that time, selling seven mili copies [3]. All this should speak truth to power on its definite and resonate status within the cultural landscape of anyone born young enough to play it, back when you were (generally) supposed to be younger when you played video games, rather than the lifelong diversion everyone today now observes them to be.
I learned you could bounce Ganondorf’s weird wormy homing missiles back at him with a spin attack on the schoolyard (to example how the game transcended its playing and became a subject of discussion within the cultural environment of the children who played it). But forget that, Biggie was one of the faces of cool in that era, and he treats it to own a “super Nintendo, sega genesis” like a startling achievement of well-off-ness on his first album. I knew grown men that were stuck in the dread Water Temple.
Five hundred thousand copies pre-ordered in nineteen-ninety-fucking-eight!
That is insane.
Ok but how can a video game influence a generational consciousness in the way I suggest? That’d be like saying tidily-winks are the reason I can make that exaggerated comment on Boomer greed today, right?
Well no, not really. No at all.
Ocarina of Time was by no account the video game industry’s first foray into literary fiction as an element of gameplay. Mankind turned out to be a “miserable little pile of secrets”[4] almost a year before OoT, and there’s no need to get started in on the Heideggerian existentialism of Earthboud… not yet at least…
(Earthbound spoilers)
Thinking about… whether or not Ness and company still had their Dasein when their minds were transplanted into those robots… or if… what was truly the four heroes necessarily stayed behind in the sleeping flesh bodies…
(Spoilers over)
Lots of spoilers on Earthbound and not necessarily what I’m trying to talk about right now. OoT is easier.
Here come way more spoilers… but statistically speaking, even if you haven’t played OoT, you still know everything that happens, just like statistically speaking, even though I’ve never watched Independence Day, I know everything that happens (and I do. That guy that plays Homer’s gay secretary from the Dimoxinil episode is in it I think. And so’s fly monster chaos man Jeff Goldblum)
When you first play OoT as a child (there’s some bizarre grammatical structure), when Navi wakes Link up from his nightmare, when you step out from your tree penthouse and Saria greets you… just as Mr. Egoraptor Arin Hansonさん observes [5], you are set onto a track. A coercive linguistic track… and I really wish you could hear Professor Szelenyi growl ‘coercion’[6] the way I always will for the rest of my life now any time I hear or say the word ‘coercion’ the way I do now but you’re probably not so lucky.
So the nature of what it is that sets you on this track is ‘linguistic coercion’, what is its form? That’s easy, and anyone that’s played the game already knows and has known for twenty-seven years, even if they’ve never considered it to be so dramatically described as, ‘linguistic coercion’.
Probably more than anything else in the game (although there is more, soon to be mentioned) Navi serves as a constant reminder for Link (and you the player by proxy) of what he ought to be doing, periodically lighting the ↑c icon, so she can remind you of what was already told to you by the last chieftain of the village you most recently left.
And that is how it is framed for you, likely still a child when you first played, and therefore, likely still a conscious person aware of a certain duty to obey, however that duty might have been related to you and enforced.
Navi is a periodic reminder of your duty, your ethical obligations as first as the trustee of the Great Deku Tree’s will, then Zelda’s, then… Darunia… I guess…
You get the picture.
Now, for a moment step outside your ostentatious awareness of Ocarina of Time being ‘just a game’, and consider what it would mean for Link’s experience thus far to leave the forest at his acting father’s instruction (I can’t remember exactly which one, but I know one of the Kokiri refers to the Great Deku Tree as their father). To be permitted to defy that rule, and do this thing forbidden not just by the state authority's law, (I know the Never Never Land Kokiri call any sort of state code they are deigned to obey ‘rules’, but structurally, they are laws. It wouldn’t even surprise me if what were translated to ‘rules’ in English were ‘laws’ in the Japanese) but that was also described to the Kokiri as a suicidal act, all told that to leave the forest meant to become a stalchild. More than a human law then, but a Natural Law.
And Link breaks it and survives, and steps out into what would have to be for him, (and what also likely was for you as a player too, especially in 1998) the unbelievable dizzying sprawling freedom that is Hyrule Field.
Really think about that, the way that I do, when I replay the game intoxicated as an adult. The now recently late figure that has, on paper at least, been your benefactor and guardian (though he denied you a fairy until that very morning, making you a lonesome pariah), should happen to have been lying to you (you insofar as you are Being Link when you play that game… here comes Heidegger again) your whole life, and in so doing, denying you this awesome freedom just beyond that bridge over the ravine in the Lost Woods.
And then what happens next? What happens to you the very moment you get your first eye-full of Freedom?
Kaepora Gaebora levies some more of that linguistic coercion on you in the form of a tired and desiccated dissertation on the use of the map.
And then when you look at the map… what happens there?
The sign to further example your call to duty (not of… god damn it) is shown in the image of a flashing yellow dot on that map speech owl wants you to look at so bad.
Everywhere around you in the language of the game, everywhere you can go when you first leave the forest; signs and compulsions to do your duty. To carry out the Great Deku Tree’s will (lol he’s been lying to you about everything else. Or at least everything that should matter to a young and venturesome boy) find the other two spiritual stones, and stop the “dread man from the desert”, or whatever the fuck he says…
Alright you can chew on that with your back teeth for a moment and bite into this now, some existential ethics for you…
I don’t think anyone that played OoT and actually owned it, played it only once. I sure af know I probably played and replayed it like 50 times as a kid. It was spell bindingly immersive. It was everything you could want in terms of escapism back in ’98-99. The proof of that is in the pudding, recall all those sales statistics.
*spoilers* incoming… Even though everyone already knows…
When you were a child(kind of a double meaning here), and you reached the Temple of Time with the three Spiritual Stones for the first time, Ganondorf jumping you from behind to snatch up the Triforce and let you know he knew what you were doing all along and he let your dumb ass run around collecting all that shi for him… That was one of the coldest muh fuggin’ lyrics of your life. I’m pretty sure my jaw dropped and made the cartoon anvil sound when it hit the floor from my egg crate stool I played upon back then.
And now remember, this was also 1998. The internet existed but not in the way it does today. Not only would you not have seen that coming (unless some asshole spoiled it for you, although statistically speaking, you were all probably playing it in tandem with each other and no one really knew what was coming next while they were also still having to go to school every day, especially not upon arrival at the Water Temple, where everyone got stuck for at least two months) there wouldn’t have been any of this back of your mind knowledge of being able to spoil it for yourself quickly and easily, if you so choose. We weren’t living in that world everyone lives in today. The game hit us completely unawares, and rapidly afterward showed us the consequences of our lack of vigilance.
Some old Monk with Lemmy-esque facial hair wakes you up after a 7 year nap, and tells you everything is completely fucked up and now you really gotta do something about Ganondorf. So, you step out of the Temple of Time where you’ve been mimis on the marble floor for just under a decade and walk out into Hyrule Castle town and, even with all the water Japan must always be pouring into their translations for us, you are immediately made aware of the depravity of Ganondorf’s conquest in the grotesque images of the destroyed town. I think we all understood that the Redead walking around there had been town’s people.
And that was just the beginning of his devastation.
Alright so that was a lot of preamble, now finally time for those existential ethics I was talking about before.
Of course on your first play through (if it was 1998) you never would have known what was coming. You wouldn’t have known that doing all that duty mouth owl and blue glo-ball had been nagging you to do for the last three or four or six or seven or god damn that fishing game was fun… twenty hours, would result in a bunch of people being not just killed, but reduced to life sucking zombies. You wouldn’t have known that your home village would now be crawling with monsters that kept your old neighbors confined to their tree built berthings in fear. You could never have guessed that a dragon would be set loose on the Gorons to devour them, that the Zora would have been frozen, or that Ingo would have ruined Talon and…
Well he probably wasn’t being very nice to Malon, at the very least.
On a first play through, you wouldn’t have realized that your dutiful adherence to the advisement of all the authority figures around you, within the game, would result in the install of a ruthless dictator.
…
But you did the second time you played.
It’s just a game of course, but the purpose of a video game, especially a video game like OoT, just like any art, is to immerse the observer in the experience of the art. So what does that mean for us once we become fully immersed?
You can play through that first time and be absolved of all culpability, but once you have that knowledge on a second play through, you will always know, sparking and sizzling in the wet pink meat of your brains, so informing of your mind, that once you complete the child’s quest, once you play the Song of Time at the altar and open the door to the Master Sword, you have cosigned all of Hyrule to the Abomination of Desolation that is Ganondorf…
All in the name of getting the longshot and fighting the iron knuckles again.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, forces the player into a subconscious dilemma, where the most ethical thing for them to do, is to never complete their willed quest. To never concede to the authorities directing them and finish the job with which they’ve been tasked.
If Link (you), operating with the knowledge he should then have living that second life, fall in line with what would be the categorical imperative informed by the gestalt structure of the game, you will destroy King Dodongo and cure Lord Jabu Jabu, effectively freeing those two beleaguered society’s of the curse Ganondorf cast… and then stop playing.
I can remember feeling bad about going through that whole cut scene sequence with Ganondorf coming out of the gate on his horse and Zelda pitching the Ocarina of Time over her shoulder, ignoring the present imperatives put on me to act by the drama displayed in that progression, and finding the bunny hood dude before going through the castle gate. The game works extremely hard to make you feel like that’s wrong to do. Somehow amoral…
… and yet, if you do make that decision, the decision the game coerces so strongly to make you believe is the correct one (and by now, who is avatar and who is player ought be very murky indeed) and you walk through that gate, enter the temple, you will be wholly responsible for the death and destruction Ganondorf wreaks, because you will know he is going to do it, and will have opened the door to the Triforce anyways, because you enjoy riding Epona and fire arrows.
If you forego your own pleasure and remain a child however…
Consider this! What is the climax of the game? The true climax, the ultimate scene, not penultimate? What is it but to show Link granted such a second life, analogically represented by the player beginning another save file. Link allowed to reclaim the childhood he was coerced into foregoing in the name of the agenda of the authority figures goading him. The final reward of the protagonist of the story is to be restored to the state he would have been in if he had simply ignored the wiles of the coercive authorities directing him.
The authority figures of the game (and very early on we have it shown to us that the authorities of OoT are deceptive, incompetent, or inadequate. Not just the Great Deku Tree, but the clueless Impa, the obstinate Lord Darunia, the boorish King Zora… mean old Carpenter’s master what be yelling about his son… that dipshit Mido, even Zelda! Zelda herself, unawares she’s being played like a xylophone by Ganondorf. So much for the Triforce of Wisdom) have been demanding of Link that he should ignore what he can see right in front of his eyes from those very first steps onto Hyrule Field, forfeit his freedom and the freedom of his childhood, all in the name of… failing. Of being crushed all the same by the entity you’ve been tasked with thwarting, only to finally thwart them, and be sent back where you came from, before you went ahead with obeying all those coercive authorities…
And all we Millennials… we’ve been spelling on that for 27 years in the back of our minds, while everyday what freedom we might have had slips further and further away… in no small part due to our kowtowing to all those authority figures “stay in school”, “get your degree” “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”
… telling us to hurry and grow up, lording over an increasingly crowded wasteland, for the opportunity they’ve mortgaged off.
Anyways, video games are a huge part of the “class consciousness of Millennials” if I have to… throw some dumb ass Marx in here. Much rather say Volonté Générale des Milléniaux tho.
Tune in next time where I consider this same dilemma of the actions of your avatar leading to devastation in a video game that you as the player know is coming, but it’s even more twisted, because I’ll be talking about Starcraft, and in Starcraft, you also play the villains!
Isn’t that great? I can probably work some id, ego, super ego stuff…
Zerg are Id, obviously…
0 Toru Osawa et al. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. November 21st 1998. Nintendo
1 Clement, Jessica. “Zelda All Time Game Sales 2024 | Statista.” statista, May 15, 2024. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1389789/zelda-video-game-unit-sales/.
2 Editors, Business. "Nintendo Promises More 'Zelda' on the Way; Retail Shortages of Video Game should be Rectified Soon". Business Wire: 1. November 27, 1998. ProQuest. Web. July 23, 2013.
3 “Computer and Video Games - Issue 207 (1999-02)(EMAP Images)(Gb) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, February 1, 1999. https://archive.org/details/Computer_and_Video_Games_Issue_207_1999-02_EMAP_Images_GB/page/n7/mode/2up.
4 Toru Hagihara et al. “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. March 20th 1997. Konami Computer entertainment Tokyo
5 Hanson, Arin. “Sequelitis - ZELDA: A Link to the Past vs. Ocarina of Time.” YouTube, July 1, 2014.
6 Szelenyi, Ivan. “Weber on Protestantism and Capitalism.” YouTube, March 4, 2011.