Tearing Down the Dam

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Hauntii does not allow you to even consider such a question before you’re thrust into the thick of things, though. You, a little black ghost, pop into place within a sporadically lit void, and find yourself meandering aimlessly until the darkness swallows you whole. Shortly, you’re accompanied by an angel (or Eternian, as Hauntii calls them) to a city, a spot in which you can presumably ascend past your ghosthood. But before you’re able to flee the vacuum you find yourself within, you’re yanked away from the Eternian by an unseen hand, and plopped into a forest. It’s a fairly brisk opening, but despite its succinctness, the events are hazy. There’s a vague sense of obligation, of course. You see a city, you’re torn away from it, you want to get back. But there’s nothing in this world that exists for you. Death has offered you nothing but the unfortunate reality of a lost past, and the foggiest glimpse of a vague future.

That past, though, isn’t lost for long. And this is Hauntii’s gambit: Memories are your collectables. At the outset, they’re all that really drive you forward. To explain a little further, progression in Hauntii is defined in two ways. Firstly, it is defined by the mechanical growth of finding new stars, which help you unlock memories, which help you unlock stronger abilities and the way forward. Secondly, it is defined by your narrative desire to learn more about yourself as you try to reach the city once again. I found the latter definition to have much more staying power in my mind, ultimately speaking, but only by considering both avenues by which Hauntii approaches memory can you truly understand its perspective on reflection.

Memories are discovered by finding stars littered around the map, and filling out constellations in order to upgrade yourself and play a brief cutscene displaying a snippet of your former life. Extrinsically, the upgrades are nice bonuses. After all, who doesn’t want to be rewarded for their scavenging? Furthermore, these memories are necessary stones in the path to the city you so desperately want to reach again, and progression is only possible through them. You must complete a certain amount of constellations in order to move from area to area, so you are incentivized to find as many stars as possible. That being said, I found that the much more valuable reward was intrinsic, lying within the experience of watching each recollection unfold, painting the picture of what I was like before I died. I got to see my childhood, through sickness and health, and watch as I grew older, found love, and partied. It was soothing, and impactful. I pushed forward not for the upgrades, as nice as they were, but for the promise of more insight. I wanted to know who I was inhabiting, and become more in tune with them as I grew familiar with the new world I found myself in. In every respect, memory is the driving force behind Hauntii, the only means by which a player can continue to progress, and it is this ludonarrative harmony that gives the game structure. After all, without their past, what does a ghost have?

Hauntii first poses this question when its careful foundation is shaken by the winds of change. You see, as I’ve hopefully made clear, for a decent portion of the campaign, progression is achieved by collecting stars which unlock memories. Gaining memories is ostensibly the only way forward. But there is one more collectible I’ve neglected to mention, one that irreversibly alters the player’s relationship with said memories. That collectible is known as a Key Crystal, and it is obtained by completing a certain amount of recollections within several areas. These Key Crystals must be spent at certain moments within the narrative in order to play any further, and on its face, this sounds no different from any other of the game’s progress-enabling goodies, but where it stands apart from the rest is in its narrative framing. Key Crystals are described as the physical manifestations of the memories you’ve experienced thus far. They are your life, your personality, your psyche given shape. To relent them would be to relent the core of your very being, would it not? As such, you fight to keep them, resistant to the notion of giving them away so freely, even in order to return to a city you so desperately want to inhabit. Once again: Without their past, what does a ghost have?

After some time, Hauntii answers. When you are finally forced to let go of your first Key Crystal, it’s presented as a sacrifice. After all, you’ve let go of your past, everything that you are as a citizen of the afterlife, with nothing but hazy hope urging you onward. But once that Key Crystal is gone, it’s worth noting that… Nothing changes. You don’t lose your upgrades. The constellations remain filled out. And, in what I found to be most affecting, you, the player, don’t forget a thing. This is Hauntii’s gambit. It does not argue for the erasure of memory, the emptiness of a clean slate. Life is messy, and gross. In step with this, not all of the game’s memory cutscenes are wholly comforting. They’re tinged with a melancholy regret, like peering at a raindrop soon to be wiped off a window pane, leaving little but a trail behind. And this is key. Instead of advocating for this devouring nostalgia, Hauntii asks you, the player, to let go, and continue your upward trajectory with the Eternian’s hand clasped within yours.

As you accrue more Key Crystals, letting each one slip away as you push towards a new and exciting future, a stark denial of consumptive recollection becomes evident within Hauntii. When taken into consideration with the game’s other aesthetics (Hauntii takes place in what is ostensibly purgatory, with NPCs constantly commenting on how much they love their unwavering existences, until a climax where you finally free yourself and ascend to heaven(?) in the warm embrace of the Eternian you’ve come to love), its message is crystal clear. Live in the moment, and look forward to the moments to come. Let the past teach you, comfort you, and push you forward, but do not let it pull you back, or consume you. When our world is seemingly set on playing the hits, reminding us of how good our lives once were, it is a message falling not upon deaf ears, but desperate ones. Ears searching for a reason to keep going, and being graced with perhaps the strongest ones possible: Love. Connection. Hope for the future. Hauntii uses not only its progression mechanics but the player’s mind itself to hit this message home, and reveal that, just maybe, life is more than our flesh and blood.

***

This emphasis on mentality rather than physicality is taken to its logical conclusion in Ghost Trick. In it you play as Sissel, a recently departed soul who has been granted the ability to take control of and manipulate objects. What’s key, though, is that Sissel has no body, and can only move around by hopping from object to object, or by travelling through phone lines. He is truly and utterly left to the whims of the environment around him, and this is made all the more infuriating by his recollective predicament. You see, as I alluded to at the beginning of this piece, Sissel is a wholly blank slate. He dies and wakes up completely at a loss, not a single memory to be found within his head. So, given his body-less state, his sole aim before disappearing at dawn the next day is to figure out who he was, if only for some much-needed closure. Memory, much like in Hauntii, is your only driving force in Ghost Trick’s opening, and takes you from a place of stasis to one of action in the blink of an eye. 

Unfortunately, this mission is not without its roadblocks. The path to Sissel’s safe retrieval of his memory is paved unevenly, and he consistently finds himself tangled in the web of a seemingly unrelated criminal case while he pursues his past. This puts him squarely between well-intentioned detectives, shifty superiors, and malicious outside actors who will stop at nothing to keep the case closed. This, of course, includes killing, and this is where Ghost Trick’s mechanics begin to blend with its premise quite masterfully. Not only can Sissel manipulate the common objects around him, but upon the discovery of a freshly-killed body, he can go back in time to four minutes before their death and perform his Ghost Tricks upon the surroundings in order to stop the death before it ever happens. Changing these fates is quite often the only way that Sissel is able to manifest sweeping change in the world around him, and once he has completed his prevention, gains the ability to speak to the would-be victim inside their mind. This is key for two reasons: Firstly, Sissel is able to gain information about who he once was, and how he fits into this now-alien world. But secondly, he builds connections. The people he saves become his only tether to a world that has no room for him, and upon repeated conversations, some genuinely meaningful bonds are built. Through his exploration of the moments before one’s passing, the past becomes not only a tool for Sissel to more deeply understand himself, but a gateway to a more meaningful present, one that may not last but nonetheless matters.

And this present soon takes priority over the maligned ghost’s shaky yesterdays. Throughout his travels, Sissel meets a variety of people: A fiery detective named Lynne, a loyal pomeranian named Missile, and a resigned inspector named Jowd. While at first, all of these interactions seem like brief steps taken in service of regaining Sissel’s memory, he begins to run into these people more and more often. They become familiar to him, and as he becomes increasingly intertwined with their mission to solve a longstanding case, his past begins to take a backseat. He goes from a lone wolf to a member of a pack, and while he often claims to be singular in his focus, he eventually caves and admits that his interest now lies primarily in helping his newfound friends and allies. After all, there is little intimacy as strong as entering the mind of one’s life you just saved. Robbed of his body, Sissel is afforded the opportunity to see the people around him as not just a means to an end, but individuals with their own pasts, and more pressingly, their own presents and futures. This newfound focus is only further exacerbated by the existence of a manipulator, another ghost who acts against the investigators and their mission by way of invading the minds of crucial figureheads and taking control of their bodies and mouths, if only for a brief moment. When this force is made known, the once-solid past becomes hard to trust. Sissel’s is no longer the only memory that has been compromised, as the manipulator’s fog clouds not only one’s actions, but their recollections. As such, the present becomes all the more important, as none can undo or even truly comprehend the moments that lay behind them. 

Though that’s not for a lack of trying. Missile, Lynne, Jowd, and even the manipulator Yomiel, each find themselves trapped in cages of their past’s creation (sometimes literally), fruitlessly swiping at keys just out of reach. Missile, whose best friend Kamila was killed long before Ghost Trick takes place, spends years waiting for Sissel to die, all in order to help him save Kamila in a new timeline. Lynne, who was taken hostage as a young girl by a pressured Yomiel and forced to stand by as he was shot at by a young Jowd, fights against the justice system to free him. Jowd, convicted and imprisoned for the alleged murder of his wife, awaits his impending capital punishment with a grim resignation and long-standing guilt from his encounter with Yomiel. Yomiel, wrongly accused of a crime he never committed and then killed in his encounter with Jowd, seeks revenge on him, Lynne, and everyone else who put him in that position. Each of these people find themselves unable to fight off the skeletons in their closets, and bury themselves in their memories as a result, struggling to claw their way out but only digging the hole deeper still. That is, until Sissel, someone initially unburdened by his past (much to his own chagrin), helps pull them out. He helps them tie up their loose ends, turn their heads forward, and see the world for what it is, not what it was. Much of Ghost Trick is spent wading through the swamp of an unresolved yesterday, but as the game persists, the present takes precedence, yanking each character out of their stupor and into a much more hopeful existence than the one they’d inhabited prior. 

When taking into account its mechanics, it’s certainly true that Ghost Trick seems, on its surface, unconcerned with the weight of the past. After all, Sissel spends much of the game toying with it, tearing it apart and rebuilding it. But throughout all his changes, what never goes away is his memory. He is forced to live with the pasts he left behind, and ultimately lets them motivate him to make each new future better. Beyond just Sissel, while this memory is less solid amongst his peers, the impact that the past has is undeniable. Each tweak Sissel makes is in service of a brighter future, and unbeknownst to much of the cast, the ripples created by these changes are more like waves. Ultimately, Ghost Trick is a game of cause and effect, both mechanically and narratively. Ghost Trick is not interested in erasing the past’s impact on our present, but rather easing our oft-consuming obsessions with it. 

Much like his newfound family, Sissel’s life is itself altered as well, not only as a result of his ghost tricks, but also of his lived (or rather, unlived?) experiences. By the time the curtains close on Ghost Trick, Sissel has found a new family, and made new memories. The past is firmly behind him and those he loves, and though it has helped him find his place, he can shed its weight and live in his present, one in which he is safe and comfortable. And in this, Ghost Trick says its piece, much like Hauntii did its. We are inextricably linked to our history, and motivated by it. Unlike Sissel, we cannot go back and change it, but the impact he has when he does is only further evidence of its cruciality. That being said, their impact can only go so far as motivating us. To remain transfixed on a past long gone is dangerous, and keeps us from truly living, free of the shackles our amygdala often imposes upon us. Our memories are the cause for many things, but we cannot let them bear down upon us, and keep us locked in place. Though Sissel’s journey began as a quest to regain his past, it ended as an admission of the joys of his present. Even despite his limited tangibility, he found meaning in his new life and satisfaction in his old one, letting his memory guide him but never control him.

***

***

On Earth, there are a wide variety of unspoken truths that humans, no matter how hard they may try, cannot overcome. We cannot touch fire without being burned. We fall when we enter the air. We cannot travel through time. Of course, we can make approximations. We can develop lighters and harness fire’s elusive heat, build planes and helicopters to soar above the Earth, create art that harkens back to a bygone era. But ultimately, if you pit a human being against Mother Nature, the human isn’t winning. 

Video games, however, allow us to bend or even snap these rules in two entirely. Mario throws fire from his hand as if it were a baseball. Madeline dashes throughout the air in whichever way we wish. Tracer can dip back to moments prior, cleansing all traces of the present she’s leaving behind. The characters within the games we play are beholden to a different set of rules, typically alien from our own, defined by code and data. It’s why games are such an effective method of escapism. Our playable avatars do not struggle with the unstoppable forces we come up against, our problems are trifles to them, and the inevitabilities of their lives are not the same as ours. 

Within Ocarina of Time, though, you play as a character who is, generally speaking, nailed to the same ground as us. Despite living in a world of living rocks, fish people, and fairies, he is utterly human in his vulnerabilities. The rapids of Hyrule’s rivers sweep him away. His lungs are small, forcing his underwater excursions to remain brief. The heat of a volcano beats down upon him, until he is forced to either leave or succumb to its pressure. Despite all his strengths, Link is weak. He cannot defeat the ground he steps upon, or the wind that beats down upon him, or the time that withers his body. In the idealistic world of Hyrule, these are still obstacles to be overcome.

And it is due in large part to this humanity that Link serves as such a strong surrogate for the player. We can see our burdens placed upon him, and watch as he fails to fully bear them. We know this struggle, and we empathize. After all, our inherent flaws are a unifying force; none are born without them, and none grow to surpass them. Link’s similar inability to overcome nature is almost comforting as a result, a reassurance that not all heroes are superhuman. Though his silence is an asset, it is when Link cries out in pain that we see ourselves most in him, and see our world in his. This deep, thorny attachment to Hyrule that Link finds himself developing parallels humanity’s own relationship with our Earth, a constant cycle of trial and error in a hopeless effort to conquer an impenetrable land. This ouroboros of earthly callousness is implicitly understood and well-documented throughout human history, and Link’s submission to the elements around him is steeped in this history, bringing us deeper into his world by acting in lockstep with our own.

***

Of course, Ocarina of Time is a family-friendly game, made in the infancy of 3D technology. In no way could it convey the societal upheaval presented by the earthquakes of Japan, or the fires of Pompeii. But, in the game’s persistent presentation of nature as an insurmountable obstacle, one that only bends and never breaks, the ethos of subservience to a higher natural power is embedded within it. Like all art, Ocarina of Time is a mirror of the world that produced it, and this world is cruel. All one can do is support their own microcosm of it, and protect what lies ahead of them. In line with this, Link exists not as the focal point of Hyrule, but as a small piece of it, beholden to its whims just as everybody else is.

And just as we have been forced to adapt, so too were the citizens of Hyrule. They’ve devised ways to play with the rules of nature, tug at life’s invisible strings. Throughout the game, you can purchase or find tunics. A red tunic protects Link from overbearing heat, allowing him to exist within volcanoes and other high-heat areas without a time limit. A blue one lets him breathe underwater indefinitely. Elsewhere, a pair of Hover Boots can be found, allowing for a brief release from the shackles of gravity. And of course, the game’s central axis, the Ocarina of Time, is another attempt to break free from natural cages. It lets Link warp around the kingdom, summon objects from nowhere, alter the weather, and most importantly, play with time itself. He can change the time of day, but more notably, he himself can skip through time with the Ocarina and the Master Sword. Link gets the unprecedented opportunity to skip past, and return to, his childhood. It’s by far the largest rule-bending in the game, the closest Link gets to cheating nature.

But you’ll notice I never said ‘breaking,’ and this ties back to that initial confusion and sorrow I felt when Link, after saving Hyrule, returned to his childhood. I couldn’t discern a reason for Ocarina of Time to undo all the growing he did, to rip away the time he spent becoming accustomed to the adult body he’d inhabited. Of course, though, this was my misunderstanding. Link hadn’t done any growing. All he had done was contort time to fit his goals, and once those goals were achieved, nature had to take its course. He had to live his childhood. And this says something grander about the nature of these exceptions to the rules of Hyrule. The tunics, the boots, and the ocarina are all powerful tools, but they have caveats. They’re conditional. Temporary. There is no procedure that can heal the wounds that Hyrule doles out, only bandages to cover them up. Even in the final dungeon, Link needs a red tunic to withstand the heat. The hover boots only give him the smallest of windows to be liberated from gravity within until he’s saying hello to Wile E. Coyote on the way down. Link never defeats his obstacles. He merely sidesteps them. And the effects of the Ocarina and the Master Sword, the powerful, mature form Link is given to slay Ganondorf with? Well, they’re on a timer. One less rigid than the tunics, or the boots, but an omnipresent one nonetheless. It’s an hourglass set by the player, with infinite available sand, but only one true conclusion. You can choose to live forever in Ocarina of Time, but the longer you stay there, the more Hyrule suffers under Ganondorf’s iron fist. To play with time as one is given the ability to is unnatural. One could even argue cruel. Not only does it prolong the devastation of a once-idyllic kingdom, but it robs Link of the experience Ocarina of Time embodies so well: Growing up. To dodge nature for so long is unsustainable, and the game knows it.

***

Throughout my exploration of Hyrule, and my coming to terms with Link’s decision, I came to a realization. Despite all that had changed within the kingdom, and all the damage that littered its cities and villages, there was a consistent undercurrent that lay beneath it, carrying its inhabitants through the dark ages that the game chronicles. A persistent culture and artistic language that, through all its hardship, makes Hyrule a place of hope. Whether unconscious or realized, Hyrule is bound to life by its citizens, and the reverence they place upon their home and its history.

For example, the longstanding culture of the Sheikah, one blending traditional defense with more spiritual customs, is one that has protected the royal lineage for decades. When the kingdom is left empty and barren, all that stands between Ganondorf and ultimate power is Sheikah art, their music and the Ocarina standing as a powerful reminder of peace and what stands to be gained by combating Ganondorf. Their legends and creations help spur not only Link, but Zelda, to action, inspiring action within paralyzing moments of fear. In fact, the ultimate impetus for Link’s journey is a story, art passed down verbally until reaching the ears of one who needed it most. As much as Zelda could tell Link that Ganondorf is bad news, when laid against the backdrop of ancient legend and history, that moment means more. Ganondorf is not only bad news, but he is bad news of long-imparted legend, and this is where Ocarina of Time’s dichotomy between environmental domination and individual subservience becomes so important, where the lines become blurred. 

I bring all this up not to dive into the lore of Hyrule, interesting as I’m sure it is. No, I bring it up because the game’s most fundamental motif, its exploration of music as a driving and essential force within Link’s adventure, speaks to that relationship between humanity and Earth, the divide we can’t seem to shift. By the end of Hyrule’s life, there will be little left, but what will remain is song, poetry, and art. This is Ocarina of Time’s gambit. It shows us this natural trauma, forces us to grapple with our shaky foundations, in order to demonstrate the one way human ideas can live on, long past the death of their progenitors: Creation. Ocarina of Time is filled with creations, both small and large, objects and ideas that lend Hyrule a sense of permanence that is otherwise so thoroughly called into question by Ganondorf’s devastation. After seven long years of turmoil, Skull Kids still perform their music. Goron City's walls are still plastered with paintings. Epona still recognizes the songs of her youth. The Ocarina’s tunes live on, if not in Link’s memory, then in the world he played them into. Despite all the hardship of a life in seemingly constant competition with a harsh world, there is a cold comfort in knowing that somehow, you may live on, the memories and culture you steeped yourself within leaving a mark on the world in your own art, just as the art of Hyrule will persist long after Link has gone. It is the one victory that Hyrulians, and we as humans, have over the passage of the days. 

What left me truly charmed by this revelation, this understanding that Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule is one not of dominant conquest but of subtler creation, was that life had once again imitated art as it is often wont to. It’s been over 25 years since Ocarina of Time was released. Many more Zelda games have been released since then, and many more have built upon its ideas. But despite this, the rivers of time have not washed Ocarina of Time away, nor have they even eroded it. It stands just as strongly today as it did back in 1998, and throughout my time with it, I could hardly believe that it was as old as it was, with hardly an edge dulled. It gives me a strange sense of comfort, of peace. I could go my whole life without touching Ocarina of Time, and its legacy would go unharmed. Within the game exists this microcosm of the minds that birthed it, the fear of the unknown, the unquenchable thirst for adventure, the appreciation for worlds long gone with little but their creations to be remembered by. It’s playable history. 

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