Video Games and Human Values Initiative

As its name might suggest, mythology has always served as the foundation for The Legend of Zelda. Throughout its history, its songs of champions found many forms across the Hyrulean ages, from the sunken legacy of Wind Waker to the existential hum of a slumbering Wind Fish in Link’s Awakening.

With Breath of the Wild, Nintendo challenges the player to rebuild the mythology of the series through play and, in doing so, finds a new retelling of the song that enraptured so many players when the original Legend of Zelda was released over thirty years ago. Does the latest Zelda truly reveal new territory for open-world designs to explore? Or does it incorporate newfound traditions of contemporary design to redefine its own place in gaming history?

We’ll meet to explore the mountainous horizons of this venerable series on Thursday, September 7th at 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT on voice chat over Skype.

Supplemental material:

• “‘Breath of the Wild’ is the Zelda Adventure I’ve Always Wanted” by Austin Walker (Waypoint).
• “How will The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild change the open-world paradigm?” by Oliver Milne (gamesindustry.biz)
• “‘The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’ Review” by Jed Pressgrove (Slant Magazine)

The game What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) presents a series of interconnected moments revolving around a premise posed as an implicit question: in the end, are we simply stories other people tell about us?

This Thursday, at 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT, let’s discuss how What Remains of Edith Finch (2017) is itself a connection among a number of trends this year.

• Games as part of and as themselves anthologies “gathered” together around a theme;
• What the shift of “missing fathers” (The Unfinished Swan, 2014; BioShock Infinite, 2013) to “missing mothers” (What Remains of Edith Finch, 2017; Mass Effect: Andromeda, 2017; Persona 5, 2017) might mean; and
• The rise of “walking simulators,” and the complications of genre conventions and labels

For this month’s Symposium, we’ll be discussing Portal and Portal 2.  The question that I’m most interested in exploring is how the two games relate to each other: in what ways does Portal 2 behave as a traditional sequel to Portal, and in what ways should we analyze the two games differently, as two different ways to use the same tools?

We’re meeting on Thursday, June 8th at 8:30pm EDT / 5:30pm PDT.