ben is on the inter.net

It is without question my favorite Zelda game, and probably my favorite Nintendo game. I was thinking about it because the guys at selectbutton were talking about it (again), and I was particularly moved by this post:

There’s something impulsive and wilfully, blithely destructive about Link’s actions in LA. He is just going around destroying the world brick by brick, he knows he is doing this because every dungeon boss says so, but he ignores them completely. While the townspeople treat him as a nice fellow and are completely oblivious of what he is doing to them, and Link doesn’t bother to explain.

This being in part Link’s dream as well, it is natural for him to keep going through the motions of his day-to-day waking life. Beating up monsters, solving block puzzles, finding the entrance to the next dungeon. But the usual positive consequences don’t follow.

Like Shadow of the Colossus, LA exploits the player’s compulsion/obligation to keep completing the gamey tasks to achieve something bittersweet and morally ambiguous.

All this perhaps has something to do with why although LA is thick with calculated gamey bullshit, it doesn’t bother me nearly as much as in modern Zeldas. Likely in part inadvertently, the game integrates the gaminess into its theme. Remember the scene where you are sitting alongside Marin on the beach, gazing into the distance? Instead of a bright blue sky and sea, there is the dull gray of the GB. Marin talks from her heart but you can only answer with either yes or no. When you finish the conversation and she offers to accompany you, you lift Marin above your head like a sword or hookshot and a text box says “you got a Marin!”. Somehow none of this really undermines the poignancy of the scene though, rather it contributes to its unreal, dreamlike aspect.

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