Gods of the Machine: Performance and Play in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
Riley Kelfer
Riley Kelfer is an undergraduate finishing his second year at Colby College. Studying English, Art History, and Cinema Studies, Riley also works on campus as a tutor in the Farnham Writers' Center. His personal research explores broadly the relationship between media and its audiences, as well as the ways in which texts converge and converse across time, genre, and discipline.
The star is asleep onstage. His body, an indistinct form in the darkness, stirs and shivers on the platform. A nearby curtain is only halfway drawn and for its signal we wait. Are we guests in this place? Or are we intruders? We are waiting so long, perhaps, that we begin to wonder: might we be the actors? Fans of The Legend of Zelda franchise may register this scene with a little more clarity: described above is not the moment of stillness preceding a drama, but the opening to Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998). The acclaimed Nintendo 64 title adds a dramatic flair to video game storytelling from its very first image, an aerial shot of the sleeping Link in his treehouse. In the darkness, the words of a supporting character and mentor, the Deku Tree, surmount the image, addressing us rather than the protagonist Link. Like the chorus of Greek theatre, the Deku Tree introduces us to the actors and the setting—preparing the play, in a sense, as we prepare for play.
During the opening to Ocarina of Time we are neither audience nor actor. Any input on the game controller only serves to advance the Deku Tree’s narrative via dialogue box. After our briefing, however, the fairy Navi flies through the curtain and, like a spotlight, she illuminates the waking protagonist. The camera, by now, has shifted to eye-level, a motion that signals the player’s incipient equilibrium with Link, our performer and soon-to-be prosthetic. Navi’s cheerful exclamation that “you finally woke up!” becomes doubly significant, being at once an overt acknowledgment of Link’s physical awakening onscreen and a tacit gesture to the player who, in this very moment, gains control over Link’s body as avatar. A favorite conceit of the Zelda franchise games, the interplay between dramatic narrative elements and personal/ludological “awakening” is a fertile basis for discourse across the disciplines.
Particularly in Ocarina of Time and its immediate sequel, Majora’s Mask (2000), the player’s interaction with the game world, Hyrule, is textured by motifs of growth, metamorphosis, performance, and actualization. For the avatar Link, donning a mask or a new piece of equipment has a tangible effect, and often serves as an aid to the acquisition of in-game materials or ‘life force’ in the form of fragmented “pieces of heart.” This kind of costuming inscribes an analogy of that postmodern self which, in different situations, must be ‘liquid’ (physically adaptable) or perform (adapt behaviorally) to successfully move through life. At the same time, the Zelda games’ thematic orientation around drama and play recalls modern-day conversations about gender and identity performativity—conversations that, for their socio-cultural basis, have much to gain from the study of game texts. Finally, at the core of any discussion of video games remains the question of play. Who are we when we play? If not ourselves, who do we become? And in the Zelda games, what does it mean to not only operate a digital body, but to watch him grow before our eyes as we pilot his change with our own fingers and mind?
Taken alone, questions like these are philosophical wormholes. For the purposes of this essay, then, understanding who a person “is” at play may best be approached by exploring how a person becomes. In doing so, we allow a permutation of the original goal that does not discard the appropriate language and texture of existential thought but rather transcribes that language into terms more applicable to the discussion of play. The abstractions associated with a term like being, for instance, may be exchanged for the more systematic vocabulary of action, behavior, and consequence that indicates becoming.
A three-minute video featuring philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler offers some simple yet crucial terminology to this end, as well as a model response to the question of becoming. In the video, Butler advances some of the ideas at the heart of her research, including, among other works, her 1988 essay “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.” Says Butler:
It’s one thing to say that gender is performed and that is a little different from saying gender is performative. When we say gender is performed we usually mean that we've taken on a role or we're acting in some way and that our acting or our role playing is crucial to the gender that we are and the gender that we present to the world. To say that gender is performative is a little different because for something to be performative means that it produces a series of effects. We act and walk and speak and talk in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or being a woman. (Butler 00:01-00:41)
Butler’s phrasing is precise: it is not “we” who consolidate these impressions, exactly, but the actions we take, physical and verbal, that define us to others. Emphasizing the “effects” of our gender performances in this brief gloss of performativity theory, Butler reveals her product-oriented model of gender construction—the “impression” of gender being the solitary telos or end to which discrete actions engage. Her use of verbs like “produce” and “consolidate” suggest the almost mathematical lean of her argument while hinting at Butler's theoretical influences, a network tracing back to such philosopher/linguists as Jacques Derrida and John L. Austin. Ironically, though postmodernism has earned a reputation for rejecting the ideological generosity of Enlightenment thought, understanding gender as a function of action, or, more dramatically, as performance, seems a natural offshoot from the individualism of Descartes. Inherent in Butler's idea of performativity, after all, is the acceptance of sovereign will: “I think, therefore I am” becomes, in a way, “I act, therefore I am seen.” Working from the assumption that we have control (or sovereignty) over our own actions, a broad connection between Butler's theory of gender performativity and role-playing video games is apparent. As players, we control the actions of our onscreen avatar: in response to our play/control, the game simulates digital effects and consequences, while we through our play consolidate an identity for the avatar—or at least the “impression” of an identity—through gestures that augment his strength and skillset, alter his health and appearance, or accumulate empathy and resentment from non-player characters.
With this vocabulary, a deliberate pairing of postmodern and Enlightenment-era terminology, it is possible to frame the player/avatar relationship in the Zelda games with greater precision. We may begin by evaluating a popular conception of the Zelda-player/Link dynamic. Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the Legend of Zelda franchise, understands the player’s identification of the real with the digital as a factor of the series’ popularity:
We named the protagonist Link because he connects people together . . . Link came from his role as a connector, but Link is you, the player. The series has been so successful because the player must solve puzzles and defeat tough enemies in order to ultimately save the world. (Miyamoto 3)
Miyamoto’s rhetoric makes the relationship between Link and the player appear one-to-one. This is true to the extent that the player pressing the ‘B’ button on the controller initiates a sword-swipe from Link in the game: a motion performed by the player corresponds to a motion (albeit of a more physical nature) from the avatar. But the analogy goes no further. Beyond the operator/avatar relationship shared by Link and the player, there is no equality of identity. In the end the player does not, in fact, save the world: he only helms a performance in which Link, voiceless and motionless without the player’s operation, fulfills a prescribed ‘role.’ Moreover, by Miyamoto’s reasoning, virtually any RPG character can be a “link,” solving puzzles and saving the world by the careful hand of the player. Linguistically, Miyamoto identifies a particular quality of the player/avatar interface—its synchronization of a “real” body with a digital one—but only registers this connection at a surface level. Miyamoto invites players to identify with the fictional identity’s actions, even take responsibility for them, because heroism—bounded as it may be by the game space, or world of play—is rewarding, self-elevating.
Using the language of performativity and sovereignty as a heuristic, we can make a number of claims about the player/avatar relationship in response to Miyamoto. The first is to say that, in these Zelda games, the player is not so much a role-player in the conventional sense, imitative of Link’s actions and potentially sympathetic to their consequences, but his operator, even his writer. Without an operator, Link does not move or act. Indeed, he has virtually no voice save for the one we imagine him using, and exhibits little emotion on his own, aside from an occasional stretching of the mouth or eyes that the player may interpret as surprise or pain. As we will see, too, these Zelda games register Link's impotence and lack of identity through narrative tropes and metaphors, devices that exaggerate Link’s unpreparedness for his role and his consequent reliance on the player/operator. Link’s many limitations become evident in not only these decisions of the game developers—such programmed, narratological constraints as Link’s lack of dialogue and emotion—but also in the embodied, ludological action of the player, who may be variably skilled or unskilled, effective or ineffective, in their operation of Link. Thus, in relational terms, Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask grant near-total sovereignty to the player, whereas Link's sovereignty inversely approaches zero: Link’s direct/scripted failure or success in his narrative amounts to little more than the indirect/variable performance of the player.
The second claim is deceptively simple, as it is merely to say that both Link and the player perform. Whereas Miyamoto enthusiastically equates the artificial “world” of the game cartridge with the place occupied by the player—ascribing, in turn, the success of Link to the ability of his operator—thinkers like Butler and Johan Huizinga are quick to explore the relationship between actions and their resulting effects, as well as between real or real-seeming worlds and contrived—even magical—spaces. It is likewise one goal of this essay to distinguish between broad senses of the term "performance" in a way that reveals the complexity of a relationship that appears, as Miyamoto exhibits, relatively simple.
In Ocarina of Time (Ocarina) and Majora’s Mask (Majora), players pilot a young boy through consecutive narratives of maturation. Ocarina begins as Navi, Link’s/the player’s assigned guide, registers doubt at Link’s ability to perform as hero: “Can Hyrule’s destiny really depend on such a lazy boy?” (Ocarina). The answer is soon revealed: no, Link cannot save Hyrule—at least not as a boy. Later, when the pre-sexual Link claims his rightful sword, he is transformed into the adult hero of prophecy through a time-skip. As phallus, the “Master Sword” confers upon Link a purely formal maturity, a costume, with which he might better perform his role: “And now that you are old enough,” the sage of light tells the transformed Link, “the time has come for you to awaken as the Hero of Time!” (Ocarina). Contained in this statement, however, is the implication that Link has not yet realized his potential. Thus, as readers of Ocarina, we understand this second movement of the game to still represent growth, but a kind of growth that transcends bodily maturity.
Link’s changed body is ready to confront Ganon, in other words, but he must still learn how to perform in it: he offers a physical impression of the Hero, in Butler’s terms, but his actions have yet to consolidate that identity. At the conclusion of Ocarina, a victorious and self-actualized Link returns his sword to the temple of time, and in doing so Link is himself returned to his child-state. His role fulfilled, the adult costume falls away, and his mentor/guide Navi flies off into the light. Link emerges from the journey largely unchanged: he is a child without fairy, once again, and due to the time-skip he is not even a hero ‘yet.’ He retains only the memory of things that have not yet happened—events and actions that, for the time being, happened to and were performed by someone else. The adult Link spends the latter half of the game making decisions and performing in a way that has no bearing or impact on his younger iteration or “self.” He acquires weapons and equipment that do not carry over (or back) to his younger form and rehearses skills that cannot be utilized by his presexual self.
In the context of performativity theory, Ocarina offers a gamic take on the postmodern self. Postmodern theorists have forwarded the notion of a “liquid, imaged ‘self’ of electronic media and consumerism,” a highly mutable self which, in accordance with the variegated and often breakneck nature of post-industrial life, may adapt in the interest of situational fitness (Gubrium 685). In Ocarina, similarly, Link is constantly represented as being underprepared for his situation and, without the proper training and tools, wholly susceptible to the dangers and influences of the game world. In retaliation, players must gather tools, munitions, and in-game currencies to progress through the game’s many dungeons and slay increasingly powerful monsters. Probably the first place the player will visit following Link’s departure from the forest, for example, is the bustling Hyrule Castle Town. In the town’s central area, the player encounters a marketplace, where on the shelves of various stores rest potions and materials to aid the young Link on his journey. On the same shelves, however, are reminders of Link’s impotence: bundles of arrows that he can neither purchase nor utilize, lacking the strength to operate a bow, as well as items that he cannot afford until he obtains the “Adult’s Wallet.” In the drive to better his avatar, the player necessarily guides Link along a narrative of uncompromising acquisition. In such a way, Ocarina speaks to a consumerism that equates formal maturity to capitalistic enterprise, in which Link’s age and size become the marks of his usefulness, even his affordance.
As the immediate sequel to Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask appears in many ways an evolution of the themes and mechanics of the 1998 title. At the start of Majora, the young Link is searching for guidance in the form of the departed Navi. The resulting narrative is ordered by the acquisition and assumption of various masks, which in turn aid the player/Link in a highly abstract, magical, and dramatic journey—one centered, again, on emotional and social maturation. When worn, many of Link’s masks initiate a variety of changes in the boy’s physical appearance and capabilities. Other masks allow Link to manipulate his environment and the minds of characters around him, while still others function in the conventional manner of disguise, eliciting a myriad of unique reactions from non-player characters. While Ocarina introduced eight of these masks as part of that game’s trading sequence, Majora greatly expanded upon the catalogue and capabilities of masks as both a gameplay element and dramatic motif.
In offering new mechanical and aesthetic problems and designs such as those involved in Link’s transformations, Majora’s mask system lends itself to a discussion of mutability and performance in digital bodies. For one, Majora challenges the Ocarina player’s identification with Link from the very start of the game: returning players will find the familiar avatar physically transformed within minutes of assuming control. The experience of Link’s sudden metamorphosis into a Deku Scrub (a plantlike creature with an elongated snout) complicates Link’s relationship to the player, who must learn how to operate the changed body of their avatar. At the same time, however, Link’s various metamorphoses in Majora also serve to facilitate the player’s control of the avatar: through repeated transformation Link becomes a more physically capable, if slightly less solid, extension of the player. Paradoxically, then, Link’s acquisition of the in-game masks both increases the player’s mastery over his body and challenges the player’s identification with Link.
Sterling Osborne suggests, furthermore, that Link’s interaction with his masks in Majora is ultimately one of spiritual convergence or coalescence, rather than a fragmentation of his “self” into disparate identities (like “adult” and “child” in Ocarina):
Link first puts on the mask which bears a face that is neutral in the culture associated with the species it represents. Once the mask is put on, however, Link gasps and appears to choke before letting out a cry and revealing his face to the in-game camera. When Link shows his face to the camera the mask no longer bears the neutral expression it had before it was put on but instead reflects the cry of pain and anguish heard from Link. From the cut-scene and the subsequent transformation, it can easily be assumed that the mask has become Link’s face just as the body associated with the spirit possessing the mask becomes Link’s new body. (Osborne 14)
From Osborne’s account of the transformative process in Majora we can extract a claim about the ontological quality of these metamorphoses: at least in Majora, bodily transformation involves not so much a fragmentation of the “normal” body, but the accommodation of other (and “Other”) bodies and minds. In this way, Link’s use of a mask resembles the construction of an identity in Butler’s terms: it is performed—Link assumes the form and manner of the deceased spirit contained within the mask—and it is performative—it consolidates the player’s control of a new body with a different set of features and capabilities. The fact that a “spirit” is supposed to reside in Link’s mask, however, presents a complication to the Butler analogy. Once Link has transformed, after all, whose body does the player control? Does Link’s consciousness merge with that of the spirit, or is his change purely formal? The cinematics of his transfiguration appear evidence enough that Link “feels” his body change, and as Osborne notes, one part of Link’s original costume—his trademark green cap—always remains: “Just as the audience of a Noh play is given enough information to understand that the shite is the actor whose character has undergone transformation, there is sufficient evidence for the player to discern that the character onscreen is still Link” (13).
At this a general point bears repeating: the player is not or is not merely the audience in these games; he is also a performer. Osborne’s analogy of Noh theater and Majora’s Mask breaks down quickly when it comes to ludology, as it is the player who sustains and motivates the game drama through the operation of its leading actor. It is true, furthermore, as Tison Pugh contends, that “games may attempt to guide their player/protagonists through their narrative structures . . . but interactivity allows players at least a modicum of discretion in whether to proceed along this predetermined path” (230). Pugh speaks to the potential, in interactive circumstances, for a kind of counter-play, or counter-gaming, which allows the player to override limiting narratives. This kind of play requires a high level of engagement from the counter-player, who aims to rejects the constraints imposed by game directors, writers, and programmers. As a result, counterplay, like identity, is actively performed by the player, and it is also performative because it results in changes to Link’s narrative. The subversive potential of counterplay finds a parallel in Link’s lack of dialogue, which similarly allows players to function as his ‘writer’ if they choose: “Because Link never speaks, players are solicited to speak for him while playing and engage subversively with the unfolding onscreen drama according to their unique visions of the character . . . RPGs with silent protagonists create a space of resistant play for gamers to rewrite heteronormative storylines” (242). Pugh’s use of the words “solicited” and “engage” again signals the underlying intentionality of counterplay— so what do we make of players who are just looking to enjoy the game, to play it “straight”?
For a number of reasons, I think, the Zelda games make it difficult not to counterplay. First, it is easy to undermine normativity in Zelda simply because, across the series, the “normal” is vague and elastic. We have already examined one instance of this: the preponderance of costumes. Though the player is always operating Link, Link himself is always changing in his appearance and capabilities. Because the Link that wears the Goron mask is still the avatar we control, but qualitatively different from Link sans mask, we have no concept of what a “normal” Link is or even looks like. The same may be said of a Link with three heart containers versus a Link with five. Moreover, in the Zelda universe, there exist several timelines. Each timeline has its own distinct Link-iterations: all are models of an archetypal “boy in green,” but no one Link is that archetype. Of course, Link is no floating signifier—his role as the courageous ‘hero’ defines him across the series despite, as we have seen, his perceived or initial ability to perform in that capacity.
Second, even in the non-character components of the games, there is an extreme elasticity or mutability of meaning. Take the series’ fascination with symbols. Virtually every temple in every game has its own marking or set of markings, which traced across the timelines serve to build cohesive and investigable codes of representation. For a more specific example, have a look at Figure 1. The Royal Crest, which remains relatively constant across the series, is nevertheless a conglomerate of various cultural symbols. The bird’s cruciform body, with feathers like rays from the sun, is surmounted by the holy trinity of the series, the Triforce. The avenues for interpretation, for counter-reading, of this composite symbol bridge Eastern, Christian, Egyptian, and European iconographies. It is the same mutability of meaning and self-referentiality that we have come to expect from postmodern texts, and reflects the liquid Link with his many costumes and masks.
Finally, play by definition undermines the real and the practical. As explained by Johan Huizinga, the magic circle involved in play necessitates both a stage and a performance:
All play moves and has its being within a playground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the "consecrated spot" cannot be formally distinguished from the play-ground . . . All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart. (Huizinga 10)
To think about space and play like Huizinga is to confront a question of the human experience: why do we play? Or, to use the example of Zelda, why is exploring Hyrule—a temporary world of polygonal monsters and pixelated shrubbery—somehow better, or more fun, than exploring the “ordinary” world? There is an obvious dissonance between the game actions and narrative, exploration and maturation, and their real-world counterparts—getting sweaty and dirty outside and finding acne on your chin and hair on your body. This dissonance, I have argued, has much to do with the kind of performance and costuming engaged not only by the avatar-protagonist Link but by his operator, the player. The player achieves mastery over Link’s body by mastering the movements of their own, but by engaging with the game—by stepping into Hyrule’s magic circle—something miraculous happens. The victory of Link in his “temporary” world is more than a feat of the thumbs, after all—the joy of the win and, moreover, of play, is registered by our mind. It does feel like we are saving the world—even if that world, like our actions within it, is somehow “apart.” When we engage with Link’s world by manipulating his body, we make peace with the dissonance, enter the drama as gods of the machine. And when the screen powers down, we are last on the stage: at once actor and director, performer and player. We stare our god in the face.
Fig. 1. The Royal Crest. From GamePedia, zelda.gamepedia.com/Royal_Crestzelda.gamepedia.com/Royal_Crest.
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