Myths in Video Games: Finding the Triforce in Ocarina of Time
Are we always interpreting? Even when we see something familiar or unfamiliar?
To what extent does our subjective-ness come into play when we are interpreting something?
How does technology affect the way we interpret things today?
What happens to the object when we interpret it?
Ocarina of Time sold over 7.6 million copies worldwide (ign.com). It was Grand Prize in the Interactive Art division at the Japan Media Arts Festival (web.archive.org), and won six honors at the 2nd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards (interactive.org). Needless to say, the game received an overwhelmingly positive critical reception. Although it was first released over 15 years ago, Ocarina of Time is one of the highest-ranking games of all time, scoring a Metascore of 99 out of 100 (metacritic.com). Since 1998 the game has had four major re-releases. It was originally ported to the Nintendo GameCube. In 2003 the game was ported to the iQue Player, and the Wii console in 2007. In 2011 the 3DS remastering was released. This version contained and rearranged dungeons (which were absent from the Wii and iQue versions, and also included updated graphics and 3D effects.
iQue Player
An on-screen display. The B (green) button control’s Links sword attack, the A (blue) button sheaths Link’s sword. The C (yellow) button controls set specific items when playing.
As one learns when playing the game, the objective is to achieve the Triforce in order to save Hyrule (the land where the game takes place). The one problem with this objective is that the game, itself, doesn’t give the player the ability to achieve the Triforce. It is impossible to obtain this item. However, ever since an early trailer for Ocarina of Time actually showed Link finding the Triforce, players have been convinced that it has been hidden in the game somewhere.
As mentioned in the video, even though Nintendo has admitted that this part of the game (Link being able to achieve the Triforce) was completely removed from the program, there was still speculation that finding the Triforce in the game was possible. Some even went so far as to photoshop images of them obtaining the Triforce while playing the game. At one point Ariana Almandoz had many online readers convinced that she had actually achieved the Triforce and gave the readers a template in order to achieve the Triforce from themselves (see link below).
Ariana’s rumor went all the way back to the creator and writer of the game who responded to make clear to all that Link finding the Triforce was not written in the game and therefore could not be achieved. Why is it that nobody believed what Nintendo had publically stated regarding the removal of the Triforce from the game’s programming? Why did the above gaming website believe Ariana when she said she had found the Triforce?
Another rumor that surfaced was that the creator of the game wrote a poem depicting how to achieve the Triforce. Here is the poem:
If you seek the open Gate
The key you seek is shadowed fate.
the secrets that lie beneath the ground.
Is where the wisdom required is found.
To find the third force of power,
First you must seek the sacred flower.
When the three gather all in one place.
Then you shall see the sacred ones face.
On to the realm through the gates you pass.
Before you will stand a magnificent mass.
The three stone structures with names familiar to you.
The names of the godesses, Din… Farore… and Nayru… (IGN boards).
Up until 6 years after the game was released, these rumors were still showing up everywhere. Is it simply that the interpretations coming from the ad posted for the early promotional footage for Zelda 64 created the belief that this was achievable in the game? Does interpretation lead us to meaning and truth? What happens to interpretation when other technologies get involved (the internet, and promotions to the game)?
Jonathan Sterne’s article “Rearranging the Files: On Interpretation in Media History” may offer some reasoning to why and how these myths occurred:
In the act of interpretation, we think transversally. We cut across categories that appear firm and well insulated in our source materials. We force conversations where there were none. We combine what was supposed to be separate and we separate what was supposed to be combined. We reclassify the classifications we encounter. In the process, we are likely to make connections that did not (or do not) exist in the minds of our sources. We impose rules, regularities, and order according to our interpretive protocols, predilections and styles. However, this does not mean that we do turn history into fiction. All we can do with traces is turn them into history (86).
What may have appeared firm to the gaming community was that the Triforce existed and could be achieved based on the ad that came out be fore the game came out. However, it was an assumption that, since it was in the ad, it would then also be in the game (even though the ad was for Zelda 64, and not Ocarina of Time). This assumption was a misinterpretation that came from the “cutting across” of the categories, as Sterne put it, that “appear[ed] firm and well insulated in [the] source materials”. From this misinterpretation, there were “forced conversations” (very detailed myths on how to achieve the Triforce) “where there were none”. This is essentially the same as “mak[ing] connections that did not (or do not) exist in the minds of our sources”. In order to achieve the Triforce that doesn’t actually exist in the game, individuals “impose rules, regularities, and order to our interpretive protocols, predilections and styles.” This is exactly what Ariana did when she told everyone that she had found the Triforce and gave a detailed and lengthy list (as well as images to prove what she had done) to find the Triforce. Ariana was attempting to create history, to be the first who had found the Triforce, and wanted the recognition for it, yet it was all fiction.
As Sterne mentions, “To refuse the act of interpretation is to become an instrument of an inchoate world we project back onto our sources; to refuse interpretation is a double impensé because it requires an imaginary positivism, or perhaps an equally fantastic transcendental idealism” (86). By imaging that the Triforce exists, we are looking back at the existing precondition of the Triforce and the effect it has on the game, as the objective story behind the game’s history is to achieve the Triforce before Ganandorf does. What happens in the interpretation is that we project the history of the game onto the future objectives of the game. The fact that the Triforce once existed in the game is what Sterne refers to as the “trace”. He states, “The trace is in fact the absolute origin of sense in general. Which amounts to saying once again that there is no absolute origin of sense in general. The trace is the difference which opens appearance and signification” (81). He furthers his explanation by stating, “A text, a trace, makes possible the writing of the imagined past (after all no history can be written where there are no traces), but that past is only an imagined past” (81). The extent of this imagined past is apparent in the gamer’s inability to accept the fact that the Triforce doesn’t exist, however, must exist to the gamer since the trace was planted in the advertisement. As mentioned in Sterne’s article, this is what Derrida called “metaphysics of presence”. This is “the idea that the [historical] signifier, whether a text, artifact, or some other trace of the past, ultimately refers back to a signified which is fully present in itself” (81). These myths have been created because of their metaphysical presence in history (whether it be the original Zelda, or Zelda 64, or the ad for the game, or even the story behind the Ocarina of Time itself). The fact that it did exist in the past leads to an interpretation that it can exist in the future, leading to myths and creations that it could exist in the present.
For Gumbrecht the focus on materiality of communication entails a shift of interest from meaning of signifiers to their physical qualities and to the human body, which eventually results in a “farewell to interpretation”. With this in mind, how can electronics be governed? How will the power relations on the Internet combine and influence power relations that emerge from face-to-face relations, print relations and broadcast relations? These are interesting questions as video games have a script and are coded, yet present the viewer with a scene that only exists online. When playing a video game we may feel as though we are in control, however, ultimately it is the game that controls you. The power of authority in video games is not one where the player has the upper hand. The individual is actually governed by the code set forth by the program. Whereas the creator of Ocarina of Time put Ariana’s lies to rest as a human creator of the game, the Internet, on the other hand, encourages the gamer’s sense of inflated status through their ability to lose their self-reference. To Gumbrecht the degree of abstraction is powerful and dangerous. He warns his audiences of the risk implied in the boundless abstractions of losing contact with the concrete and sensual dimensions of our experience. When playing video games, or being online, we do lose tract of what is occurring in real life, as we are so intertwined in a virtual word (in the case of video games, a virtual world that doesn’t exist). The fact that someone went through all different ways one could potentially find the Triforce, to Gumbrecht, may be a bit unnerving. This obsession with a lack of reality calls into question where our society is moving in terms of material awareness and sense of context.
Works Cited:
Gumbrecht, Hans Ulrich, and Karl Ludwig Pfeiffer, eds. “A Farewell to Interpretation.” Materialities of Communication. Writing Science. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994. 389-402. Print.
Sterne, Jonathan. “Rearranging the Files: On Interpretation in Media History.” The communications Review 13:1 (2010): 75-87.
“1998 Japan Media Arts Festival Grand Prize Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.” Wed.archive.org. Internet Archive Wayback Machine, n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2013
IGN Staff. “GDC 2004: The History of Zelda.” IGN. N.p., 25 Mar. 2004. Web. 16 Sept. 2013.
“1999 Interactive Achievement Awards.” 1999 2nd Annual Interactive Achievement Awards. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2013.
“The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64 Reviews – Metacritic.” The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 64 Reviews – Metacritic. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2013.
“Triforce in Ocarina of Time, and Other Rumors–true or False?” IGN Boards. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Sept. 2013.
