Playing Zelda on vacation made the vacation better.
Hyrule vs. the beach
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For 355 days of the year, the closest I am to an ocean is the Red Lobster two miles from my house. In Kansas City, we have lakes, sure, and a river, yes, and even fountains, many, but practically speaking the only way to relax into a beach wave’s ebb and flow is from within a bathtub amid some Lobsterfest tail fins and a few soggy hush puppies bobbing in the soap suds.
But for the remaining ten days each year, the ocean is reachable. It’s real. My family takes a vacation each year to a beach on Florida's Atlantic side, and within that week and a half, I acclimate to the ocean lifestyle quickly. Obnoxiously quickly.
I become a snob. After the first day, I'm sunburnt, speaking of my former life on the plains like time spent in prison. I made some mistakes, sure, but I'm better now. I know about sea turtle mating habits. I can debunk myths about peeing on jellyfish stings. And "red lobster" had better be a description of the native Caribbean spiny lobster, because I swear to God if you think seafood has any right to exist in a chain restaurant, I'll punch you right back to your landlocked home you saltless bastard! That’s me: from a happily landlocked citizen to a snobby seaside ex-pat in mere days.
Ten days on the beach is magical. The destination’s romance alone carries me for the months leading up until I can reunite my toes with the beach sand. During those months, I dream of my temporary life devoid of day job obligations. I dream of ignoring my diet, of ignoring a gym routine, of ignoring the self I had been forced into for the entire year otherwise. But even in this disconnected utopia, a vacation is still a great way to catch up on video games.
The ocean can't pull me away from the screen. And, honestly, I ask myself: should I even put such a burden on the ocean? Is the Atlantic Ocean any more real than the newest Zelda game's Hyrulean beach that I’ve been running along for the last few weeks? According to Theory of Mind, fictional universes (ie, video game worlds) and real universes have the capacity to appease the human brain in similar ways. But not everyone trades plane tickets for a Nintendo Switch. People still visit beaches.1 But, considering the experiences are similar, the sandy beach must be different enough to justify risking one’s life for it, right, like my seatmate Martha did?
Martha (which probably isn’t her real name; I didn’t ask her real name, because small talk scares me) had never been on an airplane before this trip. I’d estimate her to be about 40 years old, with her mother, riding next to her, about 60. Her mother was a veteran flier, compared to Martha. She ruminated on her flying experiences with intent toward comforting her daughter (“that shaking is normal, honey”), but I—already in the headspace of my snobby seaside ex-pat future self—interpreted a bit of common braggadocio. Flying 35,000 feet above ground in a sold metal tube is nothing to us pros. I liked Martha’s mom, so felt a cosmic empathy for Martha’s plight.
I studied Martha. Every move she made was in response to her first-timer awe. Pressurizing the cabin prior to takeoff scared her. Vibrations panicked her. Once airborne, she gripped the seat in front of her despite the absolute futility of it (that seat is going just as fast as you are, Martha). Upon landing, she clenched through the initial touchdown, but quickly relaxed (I didn’t have the heart to tell her that upon touchdown the plane is still going 130 - 160 mph; if the plane breaks upon touching the ground, you’re still going to die, Martha). But that rush, from her height of terror upon touchdown to her immediate calm, that’s a powerful transition. That’s the rush that kickstarts the glad-to-be-alive self-reflection that vacations are so good at revealing.
Martha risked her life to see the beach. To her mind, death was not just possible, but was likely enough to justify grasping for any stability to avoid imminent death (even the illogical stability of an airplane seat moving at 130+ mph). Shouldn’t I, then, be willing to at least give the real beach proper respect over my video game beach? Matha shouldn’t accept her likely death in vain, right?
So, I tried. For the first few days, I wandered Zelda’s Hyrulean beach only when the Florida beach rejected me: when the sun was down, when the weather was bad, or when it was simply far too crowded for my introverted self to comfortably navigate. And things were going well. Until a couple—I'll call them The Robertsons—brought their chaos to my world.
Chaos is a world without rules, and though The Robertsons didn't bring the debaucherous, destructive energy that chaos implies in many contexts (including that of the Zelda big-bad Ganondorf, of which I was very familiar), they brought lawless confusion, nonetheless.
From my balcony perch overlooking the condo swimming pool below, I watched as the Robertsons approached every single one of the pool deck’s 20+ lounge chairs, one by one, methodically inspecting them, repositioning them into a unified grid… shifting by only inches, by centimeters, even. They inspected each chair’s placement for full seconds before adjusting, like they were staging a brochure photo shoot of a place no human being has ever touched. Come to Uncanny Precision, where a Perfect Vacation is Possible if Only We Move This…Just a Bit More…There!
I attempted to tease out the Robertsons’ logic. OCD? Maybe. But then why come to a beach, where endless stowaway sand grains in every skin fold and pants pocket keep even healthy brains on edge. Maybe this chair-organizing ritual was a sort of adorable quirk the couple shared, which allowed their relationship to bloom from awkward first date to old, married couple. No matter the true case, attempting to tease out their logic was all I could do. I was left swimming in assumptions, tangled amongst loose threads.
Once the final chair had been positioned just so, the Robertsons gave each other a high five. Now these assholes are celebrating this chaos!?
Nothing made sense. I had no language to articulate what I was seeing. My jaw clenched. My vision blurred. My blood boiled.
Why? There had to be a reason for the Robertsons actions. I don’t want to believe in chaos. To me, chaos is just unfulfilled order. There had to be guiding rules somewhere. What ruleset were the Robertson’s operating under? Did they preplan the final chair layout? Is a high five a common celebration in their daily lives? Folded the laundry together: high five. Emptied the dishwasher together: high five. High-fived together: high five?
But then, a young woman walks out of the building. She’s holding a baby. She hands the baby to Mrs. Robertson, whom I now assume is her mother. She gives Mr. Robertson, her father, a hug. The baby is young, easily less than a year. This is probably the baby’s first vacation. Maybe the baby’s first time away from home. The parents, it seems, wanted only to make the mother’s world as perfect as possible, right down to the placement of poolside lounge chairs.
With this puzzle solved, the rules revealed themselves. My blood cooled. My anger dissipated.
My apologies to Martha, but the comfort I felt with this solved puzzle drew me back to Zelda. A video game is curated beauty, with rules and logic. For a brain, like mine, that cannot rest, this type of intentionality is like a warm blanket. Video games on a beach don’t detract from the beach. They help the beach stay manageable. When the real world is full of so many unanswerable whys, video games grant me the absolute bliss of an answerable why.
More of my thoughts about gaming on vacation:
Does playing video games during a vacation ruin the experience?
Shit. Even saying just “beach” here instead of qualifying the type of beach (ie, sandy beach vs pixel beach) reveals the bias for IRL experiences. When I say “beach” you assume I mean an I-can-feel-the-sand beach, right, not a pixelated video game beach, which is exactly the distinction I aim to blur in this Games Are Real newsletter… Drats. I suppose we’re all prisoners to language until we create a new language.