It's not very often that I do this, especially not these days, but sometimes, sometimes, I forget and dare to hope, even if for the briefest of moments, and then, then, reality slaps me in the face with a ten ton hammer.
There'll be more, and sooner rather than later. I've been feeling somewhat depleted since returning from Switzerland, and though I tried to write a couple of different posts, those'll be for later.
For now, Terry Pratchett said it best, and I'll leave his words here.
Venus shone brightly in the very early hours of the morning as I made my way to the airport. I'd soon be boarding a flight to Geneva, and I'd decided to walk to the airport, some forty minutes away from where I live. As I wended my way there, I got lost in thought, thinking about the last time I'd gone to Switzerland, back in 2012, and the never realized promise of that planned trip, and then the outcome of my time spent there. All the while, images flashed through my mind of times I'd been there before as well. In no time, I was near the airport, and the first wisps of dawn began to appear; soon the day would break, though I'd not be there to witness it. Maybe it was the nerves getting the better of me, maybe it was everything that had been in my mind the weeks before, but I caught no shut-eye that night, and not very long after I sat down in the plane, I fell asleep, sleeping through most of the flight.
It was rather unenventful, though on the odd occasion I woke up, I ended up thinking about the plane crashing, and wondering about whether or not it would be a quick thing, and if I'd suffer a lot before dying. Nice, happy thoughts.
So, only carry on luggage meant that I left the airport fairly quickly after landing, and soon I'd find myself on the bus that would leave me in central Geneva, Cornavin to be more precise. The bus stop was in front of a record store, and it took all I had not to walk in. Must fight temptation. (I actually managed not to go in any of the record stores I went by, a small win for me.)
When I'd previously stayed in Geneva, I always stayed at Le Grand-Saconnex, a municipality located to the west of the city centre, and I'd always make my way down either by bus or by walking there, so in due time my feet started to get a feel for the city. Time did not erode this feel, and as soon as I stepped into Cornavin I knew exactly where to go, and how to get there. I was only going to stay in Geneva for a few hours, though, before I left for Nyon, so I had to make time count. I crossed the river Rhône, walking around the city, taking in the view, before I sat down for a wee while. It was really hot, and me being me, I forgot to bring those Swiss Francs I still had from my last visit, and I didn't want to pay steep exchange fees, not right then, anyway, so I didn't even buy a bottle of water.
Eventually, there I was, making my way to the Parc des Bastions, littered with people exercising - which made me feel very aware of my non-ideal shape - and with people lazing in the shade, the tranquil trill of birds filling the air with song. A breeze blew gently, abating the heat that made its presence felt. I sat down for a while, resting my weary feet and taking in the scenery.
Reformation Wall
Not very far from there would be my next stop - Plainpalais. A somewhat momentous place for me, once upon a time. It is, after all, the location of that fateful last goodbye, but not only sad memories came to mind, I was also filled with memories of wintry days gone by, drinking warm mint tea and wolfing down slices of quiche. I stood there, now on a summer's day, then in a winter's day. For a small while I coexisted in both the days, then and now, winter and summer. I shook my head, and moved on. Time to head back to Cornavin and catch the train to Nyon. As I was leaving Plainpalais, I went by a street that I'd been by any number of times in the past, and to which I never payed enough attention. However, this time something seemed to pull at me, and my gaze turned towards it. I crossed the street, and realized that a door, semi askew, on a walled area was actually the entrance to a graveyard. Now me, I am not the biggest fan of graveyards, and yet into this one I went. And how I never ever noticed this place before is beyond me. I ventured inside, partly expecting to enter one of those graveyards that's chock full of graves and mausoleums, and yet what I found inside was the opposite of that. To be sure, there were maybe hundreds of graves and monuments to the departed, but rather than the sombre and musty fixtures one would normally find, I was greeted, so to speak, by a wide green area with the graves strewn thereby. A pleasant place to be, you'd find people engaged in menial conversation, sitting in benches, or lounging by the shade of the trees. I stayed there for a small measure of time, so my feet and legs could catch a much needed rest, and afterwards I'd be on my way to Nyon proper.
The graveyard by daylight
Arriving in Nyon, a smaller city than Geneva, a city that I don't know quite as well but of which I know enough to make my way around, I walked around the area for a bit, before making my way to H + Z's place. Last time I'd been here was in 2012, and since then they'd moved to a different place, though not very far from where they lived. Z welcomed me heartily, and after a spot of freshening up - it was very hot and I'd been walking for hours - I excused myself and slept for a bit until H arrived.
Nyon is a quiet place, or mostly so, with people living a fairly content village sort of life. It has a peace unto itself that I find endearing, and by lake Geneva you can dip your feet in the water, or even go for a swim. Me, I prefer to listen to the gentle lapping of the waves on the shore. This was a peace I needed, a peace I could not find back home. And if only temporarily, my soul feels lighter, my souls feels cleansed.
It's almost time to head one, one last day of tranquility before the maelstrom that awaits me back home annihilates these few days of peace. I haven't left yet, but I already miss it here.
This is how things go - one moment I'm feeling completely at a loss about what to write here, then the next my mind can't stop buzzing from all the thoughts I want to write down here. And today, I'll be writing about a particular subject matter that I guess I never really wrote much about, or wrote about at all. To be fair, I have written a bit about videogames here and there - but I don't think I ever wrote about 'The Legend of Zelda'.
Ah, but before that, let's begin at the, well, beginning and work from there, shall we? We first have to go back to 1991. We could have gone a bit earlier than that, but when it comes to what really matters here, '91 is the year to go to. So in '91 a number of important things happened, chief among them my parents finally separating. It had been in the coming for a while now, but early '91 - I'd say either January or February - was the moment when it all fell apart, when we all started falling apart, and we had to leave the life we had behind us. We moved back to Lisbon - to the place where I still live to this day - and though the gates of hell would be opening some eighteen months hence, I can't help but think of that year's summer as a very pleasant, almost idyllic one. We'd moved from having that terrible presence in our lives - my father - to being in a place where we were mostly happy, and a spring that led to a summer that led to a christmas where things held much promise. That summer, in particular, was a summer where for reasons I can no longer remember now, we actually had two working VCRs, which meant very regular visits to our local video store so we could copy those movies we rented into other tapes. It was also the summer where my grandmother got my mother a car for her birthday, a Citroen Dyane - this teeny tiny car where somehow five people snuggly fit in. I have memories of being inside that car, and you could even pull a bit of the top down so that the warm summer breeze became almost like a gentle, refreshing gale as we drove around. These memorable summer days would extend their sense of well-being and of a better future into christmas that year, and that was also the year when the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) finally arrived in these shores. There was nothing else I wanted for christmas other than this, but man - was this thing expensive. I can't remember just how much it was going for, but I don't think it was cheaper than a current gen console, and if you adjust for inflation, then it does become even more expensive. And yet... somehow I convinced both my mother and grandmother to get it - I might even suggested that because it came with three games - 'Super Mario Bros.', Tetris' and 'Nintendo World Cup', it could be a christmas gift for all the family because it had a game for all of us. Not sure if my siblings loved that idea, though. Be that as it may, my life long love for all things Nintendo began that day. These three games that came bundled with the system, though, provided a number of hour of fun out of the box - 'SMB' was a delightful, innovative platformer romp, 'Tetris' is still my favourite puzzle game of all time, and 'NWC' was... well, it was something, all right. I've never played a 'football' game quite like that one.
As with everything, I eventually came to want more games but a) new games were also very, very expensive, and b) I didn't actually know anyone else who also had a NES so I could borrow games off. And because things still weren't as bad as they'd start to get, from late summer of '92 onwards, I somehow managed to save up to buy a game, and there were no shortage of games I wanted to get - 'Super Mario Bros. 2', 'Faxanadu', 'Burai Fighter', or 'Nemesis' being some of those that I wanted desperately, and would eventually get. And then, on the fateful day I was to make a purchase of a brand new game for me, as I stood looking at the display where all the games were, something catches my eye. I knew the name, of course. But there was something different here. Something... special. So before I go into that, let me tell you that NES game boxes were usually rather simple affairs - there are the famous original black boxes, which include an image of real in-game action, so you actually see what you get, there are the absolutely horrid covers - 'MegaMan 1', for example, is infamous for being a nightmarish mess - and then there were those covers that commanded your attention - 'Castlevania' or the aforementioned 'Faxanadu' being some of the very best.
And yet... yet nothing compared to the cover of 'The Legend of Zelda'. A square, silver shield, against a golden backdrop. The shield, quartered : A key, on the upper right side. On the lower left, a lion, rampant, facing a heart on the lower right. And in the upper left, the shield reveals a flash of gold, that of the cartridge itself. I'd made up my mind then and there that this would be coming home with me. Naturally, as soon as I got home, I flipped open the lid of my NES, shoved my new game inside it, and turned the power on. It took all of two seconds for me to fall in love with it, with the classic Zelda tune playing in 8-bit glory. I then press start, and enter my hero's name - it will always be Link, though it's completely up to you what name you decide to give to your champion - and as soon as my character appears in that very first screen I'm faced with my very first interaction with a non-playable character (NPC) who gives me some life altering advice : 'It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.', thus giving me my first sword. So began my first trek into Hyrule, its premise a simple, yet utterly classic one : in a world consumed by chaos, an unassuming hero rises up to the challenge and drives the darkness away, rescuing the princess in the process. Oh, do not for a single moment think that Princess Zelda is your typical damsel in distress. Far from it, she's a fully realized character in her own right, often providing the hero of its age with much needed assistance, because neither of them would not be able to do it alone. So off I go and... well, I clearly had no idea what to do next, so I started exploring, something that the game actively encouraged. Very early on I found myself facing far stronger enemies than me - I want to say they might have been the dreaded 'Lynels' but I might be wrong. So : if you wander around without the proper items, without being somewhat levelled up, without any kind of recovery medicine, unless you know the game inside out and have some serious skill, then things are going to get tough... so you somehow have to start making sense of where to go and what to do. And let me tell you one thing about this game - at the time I played it, it seemed absolutely massive. Not only were there tons of zones to explore, there were secret areas littered throughout the whole overworld. Fortunately, the game's instruction booklet did provide you with enough info to get you going and it also gave you a map to the game, minus some secret areas that you'll have to figure out for yourself. In time, I came to complete this game, and I've returned it very often indeed - I've actually replayed it a few months back. With this, my introductory plunge into Zelda games, I'd come to follow somewhat closely this saga throughout the years. I never played the second game - 'The Adventure of Link' - but the third entry into the saga is only of my all-time favourite games - 'The Legend of Zelda : a Link to the past'. It takes everything the first entry did that was awesome to begin with, and dialled them up to a thousand. Again, this was a game whose overworld was absolutely gigantic, itself spanning not one, but two whole worlds : the light world and the dark world.
My next Zelda game would only come a number of years later, when I was first living in London. The people who I lived with had a Nintendo 64 and one of the games they had was 'The Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time', which, again, elevated everything done in the previous entries to an absurd degree, and that game - yes, Water Temple and all - is still as close to perfection as I can imagine. Everything there is just so right, it's just such an overall amazing experience, and every few years I return to it. And then... then I didn't play a single Zelda game until a couple of years ago. Oh, it's not like I didn't want to, it's just that I didn't actually have any of the then current consoles Nintendo had. What with 'Final Fantasy VII' on the original Playstation, I actually became a Sony consumer, though I kept pace with what Nintendo were doing.
And what they were doing with Zelda looked absolutely amazing to me, in their myriad platforms - both handheld and at home. I confess that there were a couple of games along the way where I nearly buckled and bought a GameCube or a Wii, but I ended up not getting any of those systems.
But during summer 2018, I gave in. For the past few months before that, I'd been immersing myself into a lot of Zelda lore, mainly through Dark Horse's wonderful series of artbooks that provided an in-depth look on the history of the games - all of them -, on the art of the series, on all the artifacts and characters throughout all games, and on the history of the multiple timelines of this wonderfully realized world called Hyrule. I decided to get the Nintendo Switch so I could a) get a current gen console that would allow me to play the most recent entry - 'Breath of The Wild' and b) play all those games I'd missed out on, a few standing out in particular : 'Skyward Sword', 'The Wind Waker' and 'Twilight Princess'. But what do you know? None of these games could be played on the new console. What a strange thing. So I was stumped for a while there. But I did find out that you could play all these games in the previous gen console, the Wii U. And so I went and bought one, and a copy of the HD remaster of 'Twilight Princess' to go with it. It was something I had to do, I felt antsy, I felt like the time had finally arrived.
My experience with 'Twilight Princess' - the only title I'd actually buy - was an amazing one. It's closer to 'Ocarina of Time in terms of playability and feel, again touching upon a theme that's common to pretty much all Zelda games - a duality between worlds, timelines, seasons, light and dark, man and animal. I loved playing the hell out of it, though some bits I found excruciatingly hard. And shortly after that, I shelved the console, and didn't play it again. Sometime last year - or was it this year? - I finally played 'The Wind Waker', a highly divisive entry when released because of its art direction - instead of moving to the realism that began with 'Ocarina of Time', the art was far more cartoony, and the game was derided even before it was out. And guess what? It turned out to be one of the very best in the series. It's a gorgeous game, with simple, yet refined mechanics, a sprawling storyline that requires you to sail all over the worldmap, and a memorable final fight with Ganon, the main baddie of the series. Though I actually had to play this game on my PC via an emulator, it still played beautifully. Another entry I played was the handheld exclusive title 'The Minish Cap', a game I knew next to nothing about, but I ended up loving it a lot. It's a far smaller title, to be sure, but it's still a very good Zelda game.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago and I suddenly had a hankering for some Zelda again. So out comes the ol' Wii U, and what with me searching the web for walkthroughs and tips, and all the searches I did when I was trying to know more about the RG350 I wrote about some time back, I ended up finding videos on how to mod the Wii U, via the Homebrew app. I did me some research, downloaded all I needed, and as soon as I tried to see if things had gone as planned I get an instant fail. Welp, back to the drawing board. I watch the tutorials again and again, make sure that I'm following all the steps, and then I try again. 'What do you mean it's not working?? Sigh. Let's try this again. Ah, I see. I have to unzip the file to this file here, and not to that one there. Sure. Sure'.
And what do you know? Modded Wii U with all the *ahem* free games I could want, all them Zeldas I'd yet to play. So I start with 'Twilight Princess' again - loved it immensely, and all the things I found super hard the first time were now perfectly doable. The same for the HD remaster of 'The Wind Waker', playing it again with my original playthrough still so fresh in my mind helped me enjoy it all over again. And then? Then I wanted to play 'Skyward Sword', but that'll have to wait. I need to actually get some special motion controllers in order to play the game. So what did I do? I moved on to 'Breath of the Wild'.
Ah.
Man, man, man... one thing about all the Zelda games that I've previously played is that the learning curve is rather forgiving. It's actually a fairly easy process to just get from place to place and adapt to it and its surrounding threats. Obviously, some paths can lead you to secret danger, but that's not a common thing that can happen. This one right here... damn. That learning curve is a rather steep one. I got killed a number of times early on in the game because everywhere I went I was being tested, and rather than choosing subterfuge I opted for the heads on confrontation. That didn't, as expected, go down really well. So I eventually decided to go for the sneaky route, sometimes going the long way around an enemy encampment, or some roaming monster, to get to where the map showed my destination was. All the while I was taking in the world around me, finding it to be larger than any other game, everywhere I went seemed to just go on and on and on - and then I realized I was still in the first area, the game itself having a number of other areas, some even larger than this first one. On I plodded, making my way across the lands, levelling up and tackling the shrines, finally moving on to the Divine Beasts, getting the Master Sword, and I'm now taking care of the sidequests before confronting Calamity Ganon.
However, let me tell you something about this game : I don't think I've ever played a game that so sparked this sense of wonder in me as much as this one does. I'm about a week into the game, and though much of the main quest is done, there's still so much to do and to explore, and so much of what I am seeing - from the northern lights to severe thunderstorms, to life-threatening bogs and quagmires to far away islands that you can only glimpse from the shore, to massive statues and razed battlefields, to deep, yawning chasms to deserts where the garb you have equipped can make the difference - has left me completely dropping my jaw. I am almost always in awe of something on screen, be it either some new plateau I discover, or even when I'm, well, running away from those pesky Guardians - I'm not yet a believer in my ability to destroy a single one of them - this game has so much beauty in it, it's so carefully and lovingly constructed that sometimes I just climb up a mountain and let (in-game) days pass just so I can see the sun setting and rising.
And the physics of this game are insane! One of the things you're able to do is slowing down time if you pull out your bow and shoot an arrow if you're jumping or gliding from a great height, but if you want to pull off the same move from the ground, you can shoot a bomb arrow into the ground, quickly deploy the paraglider and then ride the updraft so you can achieve that vantage point on the higher ground. All this in quick succession, in a couple of seconds, makes for a graceful dance of death, raining down righteous hellfire on them bastard Hinoxes. On the gliding I just spoke of, it's such a thrilling thing, to jump off the highest cliff, and to paraglide down to the ground; or alternatively, you can jump on your shield, and literally sled down a mountain.
I'm already hopelessly in love with this entry... I foresee dozens of hours yet to be poured into this game, and somewhere in the near future a sequel to Breath of the Wild will be coming out. At that time, though, I'll have to really go for a new console in order to play it. I'm eagerly awaiting that day, though.
