Nate Wunderli ‘22
Sports Editor
My relationship with video games has hardly been harmonious. My mother, a.k.a “Mama Deb,” was a victim of the 1984 hit game Tetris. She said she played for hours on end for weeks, sometimes sacrificing sleep and definitely sacrificing productivity and a balanced existence. How much of this is true I do not know for sure, but as a result I was rarely given video games as a kid. It wasn’t that I was given time restrictions or got punished when I played too much, it was literally the absence of video games in my house made it impossible to play. When we did get a game it was borderline exercise, something like Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, or Wii Sports. These games are fun at first, but rarely do you hear of someone putting in forty-hour weeks on DDR.
As a result, I was never very good at video games. Sometimes I would go to a friend’s house to play a first-person shooter like Call of Duty, only to find myself running in circles and being shot from behind so frequently I gave up trying, resorting to sabotaging my own teammates or hiding in some room somewhere on the map where no one could find me. I was further reminded of my lack of video game prowess my first year at UVA Law, when my roommate Dave Goldstein ’21 would pick his worst character, use only one of that character’s moves, and still beat me handily in Super Smash Bros Brawl. He once let me play online, where I proceeded to drop his character’s rank down to the fifth percentile as eight-year-old kids in their mom’s basement clowned on me mercilessly.
Over winter break, however, my Tetris moment had finally arrived. The game is the classic story mode Legend of Zelda. My brother-in-law brought it over with his Nintendo Switch and started me my very own account. I was intrigued. The game starts off with a half-naked, pointy-eared, blonde skinny guy named Link waking up from a 100-year long slumber. Turns out, this is me, the princess’s appointed knight. Well, at least I was, 100 years earlier before Calamity Ganon took over the kingdom and captured the princess. I found out this information later on. At this point, I was content to simply find a worn shirt inside a treasure chest as I make my way through a maze of clues and hints to find myself, at last, in the open world.
At this point, I am still learning the controls and have no weapons. There are no instructions of what to do or where to go, and the map—at this point only a small portion of which is unlocked—is impossibly huge. Turns out, it is possible to skip all the main quests and side missions, make your way directly to the castle, defeat all the big, bad evil dudes, and save the princess right then and there. The record holder defeated the game in thirty-five minutes, which is documented on YouTube from start to finish. Of course, it would be ill-advised for me to do this. After picking up a couple tree branches as weapons, I proceeded to fight my first monster, a small, pig-like creature, and got my butt kicked. Slowly, I learned the controls and started to defeat some minor foes, taking their weapons in the process. I began to talk to people, did side missions, hunted-and-gathered food, and explored.
Fast forward to today. I spent countless hours over winter break on this game. It’s like a good book that you can’t put down, only it never ends. There are nearly an unlimited number of missions and side quests, places to explore, and things to collect. The map is varied and diverse, with dozens of towns scattered amongst vast swaths of uninhabited land. The land ranges from desert to thick forests, from grassy plains to volcanoes and high mountains. In order to unlock the map I climbed towers, which are often surrounded by monsters, faced evil guardians and their laser beams, and overcame other obstacles. I built my defenses by finding shrines scattered across the map and solved (and sometimes agonized over) the puzzles within. I got better weapons, bows, and shields through either defeating enemies or finding treasure chests. I acquired various equipment I needed to withstand the harsh climates. I defeated the four “divine beasts,” gaining special abilities to make my way into the castle and defeat my final foe. I tamed wild horses so I could explore more quickly, as well as ride into the castle and save the fair, pointy-eared princess in style.
For a while, I delayed ending the game, instead choosing to do more missions and quests. In fact, if it weren’t for this article, I probably would still be out there in the fantasy world, finding more shrines and obtaining more ancient powers and weapons. But at some point I have classes to attend and homework to do, and this article would be woefully incomplete if I do not detail my final storming of the castle. Plus, the princess needed to be saved, and what would she think if she knew I was dilly-dallying in the wilderness hunting wild boar instead of saving her?
I rode my finest horse to the main gate, hoping to run fast enough to dodge the incoming barrage of fire from the castle guardians. My plan played out better in my head, as I was soon shot down, taking serious damage in the process. Nope, better to go in stealthily. Putting on my stealth clothes and downing a stealth elixir, I decided to sneak around back and enter from there. I climbed walls and used Revali’s Gale (a power I received earlier in the game) to make an updraft of wind and propel myself higher and higher up the castle. Despite my attempts to avoid all enemies, at one point I had three guardians locked into me at once, and it was only the blast of one knocking me downward that saved me, as it propelled me out of range. Better take a different path. After a couple slight miscues and close calls, my stealth plan worked and I made a final sprint towards Calamity Ganon’s quarters.
Calamity Ganon: the scourge of Hyrule Castle, the epitome of hatred and malice. There isn’t any sort of character development for him; he just represents evil in the broad sense. Good enough for me. This guy has the princess and I am going to take him down. He takes the form of a mega, fiery, spider-beast. To be honest, defeating him was not that difficult. I kept my distance, and at this point I was an excellent shot with a bow and had plenty of ancient arrows and bomb arrows, the two most powerful in the game. The second phase required me to get on my horse, and fire arrows at glowing targets until Zelda, the princess, appeared and finished him off for good.
The ending cinematic sequence of the game is minimal (some may say anticlimactic). While I expected some romantic, or at least emotional meeting between the knight and the princess, what actually occurred was far less. After thanking Link and declaring him the Hero of Hyrule, Zelda turns towards Link and asks: “Do you really remember me?” before rolling to credits. Apparently, there is a slightly expanded ending if you find all of Link’s missing memories that he lost, of which I only found a few. While I also yearned for a more emotional ending, I thought that it, while truncated, was quite fitting. Much like the game itself, it gives only a small portion, leaving the rest to your own creativity and imagination. The ability to control what you do and where you go is part of what makes the game so unique, and the world that it takes place in is so exciting.
After beating the game, I am now in the process of overcoming my addiction. Thinking back, I realized there was so much more I could have done, so much unexplored terrain. Maybe I beat it too early. Was I ready to end my video game career so soon? Now that I have all this extra time, should I finally take one of the hybrid course survey reviews? Fortunately, I won’t have to wait too long. The sequel is projected to come out by November 2021 and has already won the Most Anticipated Game of the Year award. Until then, I will put the story of Link on hold and continue writing my own story.
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nw7cz@virginia.edu