My Latest Games-Related Essays

In May, over on the frequencies of feminism, I published Children of the Earth: The Limits of Link and the Promise of Aloy. 

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I spend hours roaming Hyrule, roaming the outer edges of its deserts and climbing its cloud-shrouded mountain peaks. So solid and substantial is this realm that I feel the earth under Link’s feet, and a connection to his pilgrimage to remember what he’s living for. Breath of the Wild’s gameplay seems to say that even if we’re alone, our lives, our actions can have meaning, as long as there is love in us, as long as we’re looking for, or fighting for, something larger than ourselves. In Breath I feel as if it is Hyrule that comes first, not Link, not the player. I make offerings to the world, leaving apples for the statues of spirits whose significance I’ve never known, and when dragons soar through the air above me in all their majestic grace, I regard with respect and awe how they have no regard for me whatsoever.

Read the full piece here, and also find my two short, personal pieces about Breath of the Wild here on this blog: 

the pilgrimage 

and

Breath of the Wild and the Magic of the Temple of Time

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Yesterday, I published my latest piece, Contained in Our Moments: Ignorance and Love in Nier: Automata and The Witcher 3.

[The Witcher 3] isn’t the sort of fantasy epic that’s concerned only with the doings of kings and nobles. Geralt’s work constantly brings him into contact with poor folk and other people living on the fringes of society. They give voice to their hardships. Their faces tell the stories of lives spent laboring in the fields or at the forge. Their homes lean askew, poorly built atop shoddy foundations. These people lead hardscrabble, often miserable lives, but by acknowledging their presence and listening to them, the game lifts them up. It knows that their lives matter as much as those of the powerful and wealthy, even if the world they live in doesn’t know that, and it knows that it’s only through the experiences of the downtrodden and marginalized that we can truly understand the forces that shape the world.

Read the full piece here

Thank you for reading!

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