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We arrived late; the conference was already half-over, and the crowd had spilled to standing-room-in-the-hall-outside-the-conference-room-only. An Asian woman with a nervous smile asked us if we wanted headphones -- sort of like what people wear during international debates. "Channel two is English" she said. I had no trouble setting my radio to channel two, or turning it on, or even adjusing the volume. Somehow, though, it still refused to work. Being the tall one, Brandon suggested I wedge myself just inside the door. I could see over everyone's head. Eiji Aonuma stood on-stage, pontificating in such a manner as he might on a PBS special. To his left (and my right) was a large screen, showing a clip of Link, from The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, running through the first few scenes of that game.
I turned to Brandon. I pointed toward my radio. Brandon pressed the power button. He adjusted the volume. He fiddled with the antenna. Then he shrugged and began to turn away. A moment later, he grabbed the end of my headphones and plugged them into the radio. My ears began to melt with Hell's very own translation. I seized the radio and spun the volume dial to half of what it was.
When my senses recovered, Aonuma was talking about all of the little, insignificant details in the Zelda series, and how they bring reality to the game. He spoke of the difference between reality and realism. "To Miyamoto, reality is far more important," Aonuma explained. This seemed fair enough, if a bit obvious. He then took the time to give several examples of just what reality means in the context of a game like Wind Waker. Aonuma showed Link enter a bomb shop in the middle of the night, and order a bomb. "The problem here," he said, "is that Link is only a boy." Link's wandering around and buying bombs in the middle of the night stretched the player's belief. It made no sense. "This is not Miyamoto-correct," Aonuma said. It breaks the illusion of the game universe. What Miyamoto would do, is he would find a solution to that discrepancy. Aonuma's idea of a Miyamoto-solution is a change of script: at night, the bomb merchant is to comment that Link is a mere boy, and ask why he is up so late. "Then the player remembers -- oh! Link is a little boy!" Aonuma said. And the game feels right again. The audience laughed. Aonuma showed a diagram, that illustrated the change.
I furrowed my brow a bit. Was that all? Just change the dialogue, and the game-world makes sense again? For that matter, why is it really such a stretch that a boy like Link would be out at night? The world of Wind Waker is an artificial world; it works by whatever rules you put into it. Would not such a recontextualizing comment be more distracting than helpful to the inner sanctity of the world? It seems to serve no end purpose but to remind the player that he is playing a videogame, through a cute allusion to player's own familiar world. It seems more a simple ironic jab at the nature of videogames (of which there are many within Wind Waker), than an attempt to make the world more believable -- somewhat the opposite of what Aonuma insists. If, however, Aonuma is being straightforward; if all he says now is all he intended then, then just changing the reaction of an NPC sure seems a cheap solution to a deeper conceptual problem. Never mind, though. The presentation continues.
Next, Aonuma showed a scene from The Ocarina of Time, where Link blasts open the entrance to Dodongo's Cavern with a fresh bomb flower. The familiar 8-bit "you've found a secret!" music chimes out. Aonuma again followed with a needlessly-complex chart, illustrating the sequence of actions. Bomb explodes; chime sounds. The chime allows the player to know that he has found a secret. Yes, yes. I get it. Aonuma then compared this with a similar sequence in Wind Waker: Bomb; explosion; music. It seemed the same, except for a delayed reaction of the "secret" chime. That, Aonuma explained, was the point; in the first example, the chime played toward the beginning of the explosion -- before the player knew that he had found anything special; in the second, the chime played toward the end of the explosion, after the player could see the results of his recent action. This, Aonuma said, increased the reality of the world. To delay the effect until the player already understood his actions made the explosion feel like less of a mere game element. To do so was more Miyamoto-correct, Aonuma observed. A big "X" was laid over the old diagram.
I began to grit my teeth. Something was wrong. First, does Aonuma expect the player not to know what he is doing, when he sets off a bomb? From my experience, the player does so, expecting to blow open a passage. There is little other reason to put a bomb there, of all the actions one might take. When the passage blows open, it makes no difference if the sound is delayed; all it adds is a moment of confusion. Since the player is generally unable to see through the dust and smoke anyway, the delay serves no purpose but to make the player think, for a second, that he has somehow failed in his action. Then -- whoops! -- the game reveals that the bomb worked after all. This seems a needless frustration to me. Second, I fail to understand how such a delay helps increase the realism of the game world. It is hardly natural for me to expect a chime when I blow a hole in a rock, one way or the other. Were it to happen, however, would it not be more likely to happen as a direct reaction of the explosion? The delay feels more artificial and distracting, in that the music is now called up from nowhere, after the fact. It does nothing but delay understanding, and make the player feel a bit more led by the game; a bit less in control over the natural sequence of cause-and-effect. Further, there is a certain satisfaction, as a player, in blasting the music right out of the rock. You get an immediate result to your action. Third, is this not an awfully minor point? And a point which, even more than the previous one, serves to illustrate just what contrivance goes into the game world? Although it is certainly a detail, it hardly seems either an organic or an important one. If Aonuma wanted to make a point, he could have chosen better material.
Then -- well. Here we are with the Miyamoto again. Aonuma, man, who cares if your game is Miyamoto-correct? Eiji Aonuma is not Shigeru Miyamoto. Is it not a fallacy to hold to the doctrine of your superiors, rather than to speak with your own voice? I really, really enjoyed everything new that you brought to Wind Waker. Between Majora's Mask and this game, I think you have introduced more of a fresh perspective to Zelda than we have seen since the original NES bible. Where Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time did little but rehash the original game with most of the mystery and charm removed in favor of gloss and complex definition, You have put a whole new spin on the series. Where Aonuma fails is where he falls back on Miyamoto's established rulebook rather than finding his own path. While Miyamoto has a lot to teach, you can't just take a person's principles and apply them; Miyamoto's principles are his own, which exist for Miyamoto's own reasons, within their own context. You are never, can never be, anyone but yourself. It is false to pretend otherwise, and it will always result in false results.
On his way out, Aonuma took a more metaphorical route: he compared the Zelda series to a stew. He spoke of the Japanese principle where, once the flavors of a stew have coalesced together, one must scrape the unwanted melange -- known as aku -- off the top. You put together so many delicious ingredients, and yet in the end there are flavors which just don't match and so you need to scoop them away for the good of the greater work. This principle can be applied to any creative process, of course. It is, however, an ironic comparison for Aonuma to make. If anything is to be aku -- which can be translated as evil -- within a creative process, untruth to one's own self has to be the greatest of sins.
Brandon and I shuffled away, less than content.
Eric-Jon Rössel Waugh
isn't Miyamoto either.
[Next: Hitchcock would be proud.]
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