Technology and nature have a strange relationship in Zelda: Breath of the Wild
I bounced off the latest Zelda, Breath of the Wild, quite quickly when it first came out, but over the last few weeks a very specific element of the game has been bringing me back. It's an animation that plays at certain moments, most commonly when you climb a new tower and unlock a new part of the game's gigantic map of Hyrule.
I'm sure the thrill of achievement has something to do with it, but the animation itself works a strange magic on me regardless. It seems to hint at deep mysteries, or perhaps yet deeper revelations that lie just beyond my reach.
Here's what happens. Link's big gadget in the game is the Sheikah Slate, a kind of ancient iPad that does various useful things over the course of an adventure that I am still nowhere near completing. To unlock a tower, Link must first work out a way to climb it, and then, once at the top, must essentially download the tower's information, by putting the slate into a raised platform that sits below a stalactite. The slate always makes the sound of rock on rock when it is docked, which is weird enough in itself because it has a glossy screen and all that Apple jazz. Then this strange and fascinating animation kicks off. Music starts to build and the stalactite starts to flicker with what is unmistakably code, racing down over its surface. Because this is a stalactite, a drop of glowing dew starts to form at the very tip, and there is an overwhelming sense that this dew is made of the scrolling code, and is filled with it, in fact. Eventually, the dew falls from the stalactite and splashes onto the face of the slate. Packages have been delivered, or whatever the technical term is. It's a wonderful moment in its very refusal to become a metaphor. Instead, in this world, and quite plainly stated, digital technology is also the stuff of geology, of elements, of nature itself.
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