by Jay Rafferty and Stef Nunez
This week on the Sage Talks series Jay sat down with Professor Angel Matos, an assistant professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College, ME. They discuss his new book, Media Crossroads: Intersections of Space and Identity in Screen Cultures, studying video games as academia and to nerd out hard about The Legend of Zelda.
JAY RAFFERTY: Thank you for sitting down with us.
ANGEL MATOS: Well, thank you for having me!
JAY: You’re our first academic and, I believe, our first fella in the series.
ANGEL: Really? Okay. I’m honored.
JAY: Would you mind explaining briefly what your main fields of research and study are?
ANGEL: I’m kind of a little bit all over the place but broadly speaking I focus on youth cultures, screen cultures and queer studies. So, anything that deals with the intersection of those fields I’m interested in. What I ultimately focus my attention on varies. I do examine everything from Young Adult novels to films and video games as well. Basically, anything with queer teen representation in it, and even if it doesn’t have queer teen representation in it, I focus my attention on that.
JAY: I was going to say I’m surprised that the majority of this interview is going to be about Zelda and not something like Life is Strange.
ANGEL: I think it’s very apt too because this year is the 35th anniversary of the Zelda as well. I was really hoping to have this piece published during this year because it’s a big year for Zelda.
JAY: 35th year and all we’re getting is a remake of Skyward Sword.
ANGEL: Which is really sad, but I heard from good sources that Breath of the Wild 2 will be out at the beginning of next year.
JAY: Oh, that would be wonderful honestly.
ANGEL: I need it at this point.
JAY: I would take a Gameboy port of The Minish Cap at this stage. Already off topic, I’m so sorry.
ANGEL: It’s okay! But speaking of that too, I wouldn’t mind a remake of the Oracle games too.
JAY: Oh absolutely. Did you play through the Link’s Awakening remake?
ANGEL: Yeah, I did actually. It was, well I felt mixed about it because a lot of nostalgia came with it. I played the original version and I absolutely loved it. Thought it was a weak remake.
JAY: It was a very interesting style to go with. I mean, I think the only thing that got incredibly improved on was the music.
ANGEL: Yes! The music was gorgeous. I mean it’s such a music centric game too so that’s where the needed to hit it right and they did just a fantastic job with it. It was still a joy to play over again but you know sometimes, especially with AAA studios like Nintendo, there’s just this issue where they think more about how to make money quick rather than thinking about the gaming experience. I thought it was a missed opportunity to expand the game a little bit and surprise us and they didn’t quite go in that direction.
JAY: If we had got more than the dungeon builder and actually been able to upload it, maybe that would have been better, but I digress. How did you come to be involved with the formation and particularly the editorial role in Media Crossroads?
ANGEL: That’s a great question. So, when I was in Grad school working on my PhD, I was working on a PhD in English with a graduate minor in gender studies, so I was always thinking about the relationship between these two fields. I took a course called Gender in Space and it was a really interesting course because it was a hybrid graduate and undergraduate course so it was the first time I was a PhD student with graduate students in the same environment and we were actually learning from each other. That was incredibly cool. I ended up writing a paper that semester on the space of the kitchen in the tv show Queeras Folk. I developed a really good report with the professor in that class and after I graduated we were still in contact with one another. We both thought “wouldn’t it be great to have a collection that focused on queer spaces in different media?” So, we started brainstorming the project and at the same time Pamela Robertson Wojcik, one of my co-editors, was in talks with Paula Massood, my other co-editor, to edit another book on matters of gender and space. We figured that there was so much between the two projects that we could collaborate together. Rather than put out an open call for papers we were very deliberate in reaching out to certain people, asking if they would be willing to write a piece for the book. We tried to be very intentional in terms of getting people who not only focused on different intersections of identity but also focused on different spaces and different types of media. So, we have everything from social media to film to television and video games in the book and I guess, that’s what we really enjoy about it. That it pushes you to think about these ideas beyond one type of medium. Doing so allows you to focus on the broader connections that exist between these types of media and how it can be useful to approach it in this way.
JAY: Even just looking at the cover it is a beautiful hodgepodge of spaces, because I saw a TARDIS in there and didn’t know what was going on.
ANGEL: Yeah! I think part of that’s what we’re hoping for. People approach this book and first of all they think about how integral space is to staging intersectional identities but even more so how understandings of intersectionality were derived through spatial metaphors which is something that is not always emphasized in the scholarship. Part of my interest coming into this project as well was to destabilize the field, just a little bit, especially when it comes to mainstream video games. Many people just tend to approach them as these objects of mass popular culture and are unworthy of critical attention. Interestingly, even when I workshopped my chapter from this book (‘The Queerness of Space and the Body in Nintendo’s: The Legend of Zelda Series’) I had a lot of…I wouldn’t call it backlash necessarily but a lot of resistance to the project in the first place. I think it’s because scholars who are not really familiar with the field of video games have a really stereotypical and narrow understanding of what video games are, and that sometimes people tend to think exclusively of old school games rather than just how cool and innovative video games can be in terms of making us think through story-telling, the use of visuals or the relationship between a player and the game they’re engaging with. It involves a different expectations of the self that set apart the experience from other “passive ways media consumption such as viewing a film or a television show. Even then I wouldn’t say that watching TV or a film is as passive as people make it out to be. A lot of us really wanted to challenge that and that’s why we have two chapters focused on video games, I focused on Zelda and the following chapter focused on the genre of walking simulators.
JAY: That was actually going to be my next question. You essay in the collection focuses on the queerness of space and the body in the Legend of Zelda video game series. Is that why you chose Zelda because of its history? I mean it is one of the staples of the genre when we think about video games.
ANGEL: It is one of the staples of video games but I guess on a more personal note, I grew up playing Zelda. One of the first games I really recall losing myself into was A Link to the Past that came out for the SNES and I couldn’t quite define it back then but there was something that I was really drawn to in terms of not only how much I enjoyed playing it but also how it really pushed me to think about things in ways that I hadn’t before. I think that when Ocarina of Time came out in 1998, that was revolutionary for me in a certain way. To be honest with you it was with that video game that I became obsessed with time travel. I remember being a young teenager playing this game (I might have been a child even) and I remember becoming captivated with this notion of travelling back and forth between time, how actions committed at certain times have long lasting effects later on. There was something— I couldn’t exactly put it into these words as a younger player, but I remember being incredibly fascinated with the fact that you have a child as a protagonist and they’re represented in ways that children typically aren’t represented in these video games. Link was brave, Link was heroic, he was strong and wise and those are typically not attributes that we assign to children all the time. We tend to think of them as weak, innocent, passive. I remember at that young age I was like “oh it’s so cool to be playing as young person capable of doing so much.” I think I carried that along with me. I played every Zelda game that came out after that. To some extent I think it was a tribute to how formational Zelda was to my being but I think it was also a response to something I generally see critiqued out there in popular culture. I mentioned this in my piece as well, drawing from the work of Tyson Pugh to mobilize this, but people tend to approach the series in a really reductive manner, like “oh, you’re always the male hero rescuing the princess at the end of the game”. I agree that this narrative is trite and reductive, but I also think that if we focus purely on that aspect of the game it really forecloses the opportunity to see how queerly this game pushes people to think through matters of identity, and in terms of potential discrimination or oppression that players could experience on the basis of an avatar’s identities. Even more so, and this is a really central point in my article as well, there are so many Zelda games that push us to think queerly about the body: the body is not a static site of being in these games, especially since they can transform and enable new ways of navigating game space. It was when I was sitting down and charting all the Zelda games I was like, “wow, in more than half of the games out there this motif of transformation is so important.” So, how does that affect how I navigate the spaces within this game and how can I focus on that to sort of connect the game to a much larger political project. I guess that’s what I was trying to do with this chapter.
JAY: When you were talking there about how they represent the child Link in Ocarina of Time, I started thinking about how you went with what would be considered the traditionally more masculine characteristics. But they do try to generally feminize Link in a lot of games don’t they?
ANGEL: Yes and, once again, a lot of theorizing entails looking back, right? Sort of identifying moments where you interacted with these objects and tried to make sense of them. I think that’s part of what really pulled me towards the franchise. Especially in the later games, Link is quite androgynous. I remember seeing the trailer for Breath of the Wild when it first came out, and there was a lot of conversation questioning whether Link was going to be a woman in this game. I’m interested in how Link that boundary between the masculine and the feminine. While I did use a lot of masculine characteristics to describe child Link, there’s also other facets that Link embodies that really push him to move beyond these gendered expectations. There’s a sense of selflessness. Link doesn’t occupy space in the same way that other men do. Link doesn’t talk at all within the games. I find there are these various ways in which, yes, Link can be a very masculine character but there is so much more in terms of Link’s body design and even interactions with the world that pressure those masculine connotations that accompany him. The Legend of Zelda is just so interesting too given the fact that this is a product of Japanese culture. Don’t get me wrong, there are major Western influences in Nintendo games and we don’t want to deny that at all, but there’s so much going on especially when we compare western ideologies of gender and sexuality with those social and cultural circumstances in Japan which are quite different from the context that you or I live in. That’s something else that’s a little trickier to negotiate. On one hand you want to highlight what I call queer potentialities present within the series but at the same time you have to be mindful that sometimes there are some questionable elements present within the game. Not only questionable but downright problematic.
JAY: We’re talking about Tingle, aren’t we?
ANGEL: Tingle is definitely a character that brings up a lot of feelings in people! But, even think of Breath of the Wild. Once you get access to the Gerudo attire to enter the Gerudo city and there’s a whole segment of the game in which you play as a male character dressed in “women’s” clothing. But then you observe how other characters in the game respond to this, and they react in shock and awe. It absolutely can be read as transphobic, but there are other, more reparative ways of approaching these events—a lot of it depends on the player engaging with the game, and how their own lives mesh or conflict with the game world’s content and ideological frameworks. I think that makes this a really interesting text to examine in that it can be so regressive and problematic in some regards but at the same time it can really push you to think very queerly about the world we live in and the virtual worlds we engage with. I especially think that given how toxic gaming communities can sometimes be, that’s where I see the stakes of any project that focuses on the overlaps between queerness and video games. There are so many straight folks out there that glorify these objects and consider them the pinnacle of gamer culture and masculinity, but these games are so queer if you think about it. If I’m being completely honest with you, this political bent was so important in developing my chapter, “let me take this object that is consumed by so many people, that’s beloved by straight boys in particular and let me show you how queer it is when you look beneath the surface.” There’s that sense of satisfaction you get from poking fun at and challenging these terrible toxic traits that we find within some gaming communities.
JAY: Just thinking about the latest game Breath of the Wild there was so much artwork created and fanfics written particularly about Link and Sidon, the fish prince. So many people, not even on Tumblr but Twitter and Instagram too, were like, “Look at Link and his fish boyfriend.” Cause you have creators out there like Arin Hanson, of the Game Grumps, who identifies (I believe) as a bisexual man so he was making comments when playing this game akin to: “Sidon is my boyfriend but also I want Urbosa to step on me.” you know what I mean?
ANGEL: The Legend of Zelda is just connected to so many queer concerns and queer interpretations and fan productions are something I didn’t even touch upon in my essay but there’s so much to be said there. People find that connection between Link and Sidon to be very alluring, and the game reinforces these readings, such as when you’re fighting the divine beast and Link is literally mounted on Sidon travelling through the water. Sometimes I see what fans do out there and it is equal parts hilarious and amazing to watch. One time on YouTube I found a video of someone who modded the game in such a way that he was able to make Sidon travel wherever Link would. They travelled to the heart shaped lake on the south of Hyrule and the gamer performed a marriage ceremony between Link and Sidon. I think that’s exactly what I mean when I say it has queer potentiality, in that there’s something about the game that compels us to unearth and elevate these surprising moments of queerness, but this has been going on for quite some time. Another thing I didn’t touch upon in the essay is that there has been a whole bunch of discourse of transgender narratives in Ocarina of Time surrounding the big reveal of Sheik as Zelda, as well as fans celebrating Link’s androgyny. Even in the game itself there’s almost this cross-racial or cross-species approach towards kinship and connectivity, for instance between Mipha and Link. There’s really no conversation about the differences between the more human-like Hylian and the fish-like Zora, but Mipha was in love with Link and wanted to marry him, she crafted the ceremonial Zora gear just in his size, right? The game never approaches these moments as something odd or something bizarre. It’s actually these moments of cross-species connectivity that I think show the most effective and emotionally loaded moments in the game. I find that really compelling about Breath of the Wild.
JAY: The side quest Tarrey Town also, where you help a Gerudo woman marry a Hylian man.
ANGEL: There’s a whole essay that can be written about Tarrey Town, like for instance the music changes with the introduction of a new culture to the island. As much as I love that side quest, there was that weird clause during the wedding where they’d have to make sure every child had ‘-son’ in their name to continue the legacy. Once again, this isn’t something we want to shy away from but something we want to acknowledge. There’s never a clear-cut way to interpret a cultural production and there’s something about Zelda that invites multiple and even contradictory perspectives as to what’s going on in the game. All of this is compounded by the fact that, especially in games like Breath of the Wild, everyone has a pretty unique experience in terms of the sequence in which they approach events or even what events are encountered in the first place.
JAY: It’s like, I try for the life of me to avoid the Gerudo portion as much as possible. I just don’t like sand, it’s coarse, it’s rough and it gets everywhere. Do you think that video games have the same potential, albeit rarely treated with the same respect, as more traditional forms of media and literature?
ANGEL: It’s getting there, absolutely. I think that’s what makes this such an exciting time to be working in this area of research. I see in gaming a level of legitimacy that we haven’t quite seen before even though I think there’s a lot more work that has to be done. You know, video game research has been generated for quite some time, but I also think there’s something about the time that we’re living in right now that makes people more amenable to thinking about them in this way. A large part of that has to do with the fact that both people and educators are realizing that our definitions of literacy have completely changed throughout the decades. It just so happens that we no longer consume information solely through text anymore and so rather than just thinking of video games as oppositional to literature, I instead see them as friends or as having a sense of kinship. What do these mediums enable us to think through and what can they achieve in ways that the other cannot? And with video games, think about how story telling is approached within them and how it completely destabilizes understandings of narrative that only focus on static texts. For instance, a video game I’m working on for research purposes this summer is Hades by Supergiant games. Basically, it’s this rouge-like game that encourages you to think about game overs in a different way. You collect these items that you can use to level up but when you die you have to start your trajectory right from the beginning.
JAY: Ah, it’s a permadeath system.
ANGEL: Absolutely, but what’s really cool is how they designed algorithms to control the story in the game. It is directly responsive to what you are doing and what happened in a previous playthrough. The NPCs will comment to you about what happened in your previous run. They’ll be like “Oh, so I see you got your ass kicked by so-and-so. How did that feel?” I personally hadn’t quite encountered a video game that does that with a story to that extent, in that it adapts the story according to the situation that you as a player are working through. Static texts can’t quite do that in the same way. Yes, we have books like choose-your-own-adventure, where you’re presented with alternatives but very rarely do we find a static text that shapes itself according to how you’re engaging with it. As a scholar trained from a traditional literary perspective who’s now branching out into new, different directions, all of this excites me. That’s why I feel, in addition to all these wonderful studies that are coming out about video games, there’s a lot you can bring into video game studies by applying the lens of the literary and expanding your notion of what narrative is, how storytelling works and what purposes it should achieve.
JAY: That’s genuinely fascinating. I’m just trying to absorb that all at once and my brain is going “Error 404: response not found.” I suppose that works well into my next question which is, given the global events of the last two years that shall remain nameless and with more people turning towards video games as a form of escapism, do you think we will see a rise in these kind of academic texts, particularly your chapter of the book and the walking simulator chapter we mentioned previously?
ANGEL: Absolutely, yes. Even in the past couple of years we’ve had some fascinating research that’s been developed. Scholar Bo Ruberg, who I cite within my chapter, has published two books already on queerness in video game studies. I’m using the first one (which is called Video Games have Always beenQueer) to teach a course entitled Queer Video Games next semester and that book is just this fascinating history of how queerness has always been an integral part in both video game play and design. Anything written by Ruberg I would absolutely recommend reading. Even this semester for instance, in my queer theory class we’re playing Undertale and pairing it with some readings by Ruberg.
JAY: My partner Allie would love your class just for that.
ANGEL: We’re playing it next week, so I’m really excited about it. But we’re pairing it with a piece by Bo Ruberg precisely talking about how so much media attention has completely sidelined how queer Undertale is as a game. I also have colleagues such as Derritt Mason, at the University of Calgary, who is developing work on video games. He just published his book, Queer Anxieties of Young Adult Literature and Culture, and in it there’s a chapter where he pairs a YA novel with the first queer video game that came out a few years ago. It’s a fascinating chapter that discusses the politics of failure and how this game pushes you to rethink failure as something that’s useful or productive from a queer perspective. And of course, other critics such as Mia Consalvo have been front and center in terms of pushing us to acknowledge the affordances of approaching video games from a queer or gender studies perspective. We’re gonna see so much more of this, and even at the end of this year, there is a virtual queer video game conference that’s being organized . We are going to see the scholarship surface, and I do think this is especially because of the pandemic we’re going through. As you said, so many people turned to video games as a source of escapism and comfort during the pandemic. I was one of those people. I still tried to get my bearings and focus on my work as best as I could, to try and get things done but I always had video games to try and escape back into. I mean just take a look at Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It was this virtual, almost utopic setting that people literally lost themselves into to avoid the harsh realities that we were experiencing in the real world (with some caveats, of course). There are some huge issues in the field of video games, especially when it comes to resources and access to them. That raises the issue of who gets to engage with these forms of escapism and who doesn’t have the privilege to engage with them in the first place. That’s an issue the pandemic has exposed and has pushed me to think about my engagement with video games in different ways. So, I do find myself gravitating a lot more towards independent games now. Even in my teaching I’ve been trying to find games that don’t cost a lot of money, that are cross platform and people can access really easily because there’s also something to be said about games that aren’t produced by major studios that can get away with a lot more. They can be much more daring and experimental.
JAY: Well, two games that have risen to huge popularity heights in the last couple of months was Among Us and Fall Guys.
ANGEL: Yeah! I mean Hades has reached massive success even though Supergiant Games is an independent studio. It is also a beautifully polished game that costs, on average, $20. That’s ridiculous when you compare it to a triple A game that can commonly cost $60 if not more when it’s released.
JAY: Aye, that’s just a drop in the ocean compared to some titles and consoles.
ANGEL: It really is.
JAY: Apart from your own, which is your favorite essay in the collection?
ANGEL: Oh, I’m not gonna answer that question. I’m sorry about that, but I think that every essay in there makes a very special contribution to different fields. We really had the opportunity to think rigorously about this work with all of the people that collaborated for this volume and it’s hard to single out a favorite because every one of us put so much into these essays. It was quite a process as well. I started working on this book when I was working at San Diego State University back in 2017 and it was only published this year because there was a lot of back-and-forth between us, we had three co-editors that were going through everything, we were also corresponding with the editors at Duke University Press. So, what you’re seeing here is actually the product of a lot of thinking and a lot of collaboration. But that’s really the beautiful thing about edited collections and you don’t quite get that same sense of community with things like academic journals necessarily. You really work with these people. A lot of people put a lot of work, at times scrapping entire sections of their chapter just to make sure everything was clear and cohesive. I think every chapter offers an opportunity to recontextualize your understanding of a text, focusing on the understanding of bodies and space.
JAY: This is my last question although it is just as dangerous as my previous one; Do you have a favorite Zelda game?
ANGEL: I will say there’s two. I really enjoy Breath of the Wild a lot, I think it’s a game that’s so easy to lose yourself in and it’s one that constantly surprises you no matter how many hours you pour into it. I also think it’s one of the queerest games of the franchise as well. It’s a game that’s so spatially orientated, I’ve been replaying it here and there and what I did was turn off the graphical user interface and mini map. Now, I just roam wherever it is I’m looking at. It’s completely changed how I’ve experienced the game for the better. It’s also just ridiculous fun! But one game I really love was Majora’s Mask. I think one of the reasons why is because it was so different and so experimental given the time constraints the developers were dealing with. They made it within the span of a year which is
JAY: Wild!
ANGEL: It’s wild, especially when you consider the fact that on average a Zelda game takes about five years to be developed and released. So yeah, I’d say both of those are up there. I’ve rarely played a Zelda game I haven’t enjoyed. I’d say actually the one that I least enjoyed was the first that was ever released but that’s because I find it to be unintuitive.
JAY: It’s the play experience now that’s most important. Personally, Majora’s Mask is actually one of my least favorites.
ANGEL: It is a very contentious one for sure.
JAY: Everyone defends it! “This is dark, this is gritty.” Fine. That’s ok. It’s the three-day cycle that pisses me off.
ANGEL: Oh, it’s so stressful. Especially when you’re in a dungeon and time is trickling away and you’re like “Shit! I have to do everything all over again now.”
JAY: That was my biggest issue with it. My favorite one I’d have to say is the one I started with, which is Twilight Princess.
ANGEL: That one is fantastic as well! Those are top tier.
JAY: That was the one where the composer fought for the symphony orchestra for it and that was just gorgeous to listen to.
ANGEL: It really is and that has a dark and compelling story in its own right. That ending as well? With Midna turning around and destroying the mirror as she goes back to the Twilight Realm. I’m still haunted by that. I love a lot of the series, there’s some I don’t feel quite as excited about such as the one that’s coming out this summer, just because there was a lot of missed opportunities with Skyward Sword.
JAY: It was so on-rails, it was the safest approach to a Zelda game and I’d be pleased forever if we stopped with motion controls. They aren’t fun, they aren’t intuitive, just put them in the bin.
ANGEL: There’s accessibility issues with them as well in terms of those who don’t have the mobility to use them. They were just this gimmick of innovation, right? We’re in the future sure but sometimes people just want to have fun and engage with the game. And Skyward Sword’s motion controls were just so clunky.
JAY: It definitely carried over to Breath of the Wild for that one shrine puzzle, the stupid maze with the boulder. You’d get it to the end of the maze to flick it into hole. It’d be lined up perfectly and then just completely fall off the map.
ANGEL: I hated that. There’s this YouTube reviewer, Arlo, who said something along the lines of Nintendo has to Nintendo, don’t they? No matter how good the game is there’s just that one annoying thing that tarnishes the whole experience.
JAY: Skyward Sword has plenty of those, not least Fi.
ANGEL: How about when we had to fight that beast form of Demise three times and you have to slash his toes?
JAY: The toes yeah! And then he gets the same weird worm fingers. That was ridiculous.
ANGEL: It’s such a ridiculous game!
JAY: But compared to Twilight Princess. They made it as a reaction to Wind Waker’s criticisms.
ANGEL: That it was too kiddy.
JAY: Exactly. And then they continued a different series with Toon Link and it was fantastically popular, even if Spirit Tracks is shit.
ANGEL: I actually never beat Spirit Tracks.
JAY: You fight a train Ganon.
ANGEL: I know, I’ve seen videos about what happens. There was just a point in that game where I got tired of it. I’d just had enough. I enjoyed Phantom Hourglass. I enjoyed it a lot with the exception of that damn Temple of the Ocean King.
JAY: Yeah, you had to keep returning to it over and over.
ANGEL: But many players feel the same about that so I feel justified in my indignation towards it.
JAY: Did you play Hyrule Warriors at all?
ANGEL: I’m actually playing it at the minute, whenever I get a moment of free time.
JAY: I was just thinking about earlier on when we were talking about Link’s androgyny, a lot of players thought that Linkle was just a female Link. But like, we have a female Link her name is Zelda. Just make Zelda playable and everyone will be happy. I have seen a lot of fans excited for that in Breath of the Wild 2.
ANGEL: That’s where it seems like it’s going too! These are things that should obviously change, that are going to take time to do so but what do I hope to see from the Zelda series in the future? I would like to be given the option to change how the protagonist looks for sure. Like Skyrim-style where you can adjust the features because that’s what makes navigating a game-world so special. You could create someone that resembles you a lot or you could create someone completely removed from your own identity and experiences. It would be really cool if we had the option to engage in that fabulously fun, puzzle orientated, action orientated gameplay but with a lot more flexibility in terms of how we navigate and embody those spaces. I’m hoping to see a lot more of that in the future, I’m also hoping that Breath of the Wild 2 brings back the massive, intricate, headache-inducing dungeons.
JAY: That would be great. I’ve been playing The Witcher 3 for the first time recently and have really fallen for little environmental game factors. I think they could be worked into Breath of the Wild 2 very well. For instance, Geralt over time grows facial hair.
ANGEL: So cool, right?
JAY: Yeah! And I’ve seen discussion online about those kind of ideas, like say the longer Link spends in Gerudo Desert he will over time develop a tan. I think that would be incredibly cool.
ANGEL: I have a hunch that Breath of the Wild 2 is going to go here too but I just read an article that said “Design Link so he has different possibilities of navigating the space.” I’d like to spend more time in the air in game or I want to go underwater which you get to do in other 3D Zelda games but we didn’t really get the chance to do that in Breath of the Wild. So I’m hoping that the reason the sequel is taking so long, despite the fact they’re recycling assets is that they’re really revamping this world in exciting ways.
JAY: I know they initially considered introducing a race similar to the Minish in the original Breath of the Wild but they were worried that the player would be so focused on the little world that you wouldn’t notice the huge landscape. I do hope they change it in the style of Link Between Worlds in so much as you can shrink down and be stuck in a massive environment like that.
ANGEL: That would be amazing and just think how you could extend those possibilities. Imagine in later areas you could also shrink and access things you couldn’t have otherwise. I love that and thinking through those possibilities like what can we do with the avatar’s body that expands gameplay opportunities rather than shutting them down. That gives you a lot of freedom in terms of what you can do. I think that’s why I like Breath of the Wild so much because it gives you that freedom. You can go rescue Princess Zelda immediately if you want to, or you can just destroy monsters, burn Hyrule to the ground, whatever you want!
Thank you Angel once again for talking with us. You can read more of his scholarly work on his website https://angelmatos.net/ and follow him on Twitter @ProfAngelMatos. You can also get your own copy of Media Crossroads: Intersections of Space and Identity in Screen Cultures right here: https://www.dukeupress.edu/media-crossroads.
Jay Rafferty is the poetry editor of Sage Cigarettes Magazine.
Stef Nunez is the editor-in-chief of Sage Cigarettes Magazine.
