A Virtual Escape

During the pandemic, I was either getting yelled at by Karens at my job or I was home. You could say I am a homebody so the quarantine aspect of being in isolation during the pandemic was not something that I necessarily disliked – it was pretty normal for me to make that transition and I kind of appreciated it because I had a hobby to keep my sanity, so to speak. Everybody has their own hobbies. Some people read books, watch movies, go to the gym, take pictures, play sports, make music, and so on and so forth.

I played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for 180 hours.

Now it’s up to your interpretation whether that was an efficient use of my time (I did have a friend who played Animal Crossing for 300 hours), but I can’t say I felt depressed or distressed during the pandemic because I had this fake game that gave me real enjoyment. There’s something to be said for being able to lose yourself in these digital worlds constructed by code and how they can be a lot more relieving, entertaining, and alluring than what’s going on in the “real” world. I spent 180 hours in Zelda, but I spent even more playing so many other games. I did the math; during the pandemic in 2020, I played games for close to 800 hours.

But what was so addicting about Breath of the Wild to play it for 180 hours? It’s a game that takes place in a vast, open world. There are lush green forests, sweltering deserts, chilling snowy tundras, volcanoes where the air is burning, mountains to climb for stunning vistas, hidden villages flung far and few between, islands, caves, lakes, dungeons, and secrets scattered all over the land waiting to be uncovered. You can hunt wild animals, cook them over a fire, and eat it as a meal or make your own with the scraps of food you’ve collected on your journey. You can sneak up on a horse, tame it (if you’re lucky it doesn’t throw you off), and explore the land admiring the scenery at your leisure - or use your motorcycle! You can buy a house, help a construction worker with a dream of building a town, and buy or sell equipment and valuables from merchants on your travels. You can also take selfies, pictures of wildlife and plant life. There is so much to see and do with so many parallels to things you can see and do in real life.

In Breath of the Wild, you can explore a vast world, discovering more new things the more you play. There’s something awe-inspiring about this larger-than-life sighting of a rare blue dragon. It possesses a beauty and majesty, and it’s something worth seeking out and experiencing. You can’t see something like this in real life.

I play video games to have great experiences and aside from all the wonderful things you can do in this game, in terms of sound it is very easy on the ears. You will hear many lovely piano keys contributing to a relaxing atmosphere. The ambience of tall grass rustling in the strong winds comes to mind. There is also the soft noise rain drops make when they touch the ground contrasted with the dangerous boom of thunder. I especially love the different sounds you hear when your footsteps walk over grass, water, sand, snow, and rock.

This is a screenshot I took of a double rainbow I encountered while playing the game. The low angle immerses you in the tall grass and world of Breath of the Wild. I get the same feeling from looking at these rainbows as I do rainbows in real life.

That being said, I didn’t play Breath of the Wild necessarily because I was in lockdown. It just so happened that when the world was turning upside down, this was one of the games I was playing at the time. So it is not as though Breath of the Wild was my response to the pandemic. But if I didn’t have a hobby to keep me busy like Breath of the Wild did during the pandemic, I imagine quarantine would have been a lot less fun.

Playing a video game is as enriching as an experience as reading a novel, watching a film, viewing a painting, listening to music. What separates video games from these other art forms is that games offer interactivity between you and the game. That interactivity is why someone can spend 180 hours and still feel compelled to get in those hours. 180 hours might sound like a ridiculous amount of time, but how many hours do you spend reading books, watching movies, playing sports, going to the gym?

The experiences and memories I have playing Breath of the Wild are experiences and memories I would wish upon my friends, family, classmates, professors, and even strangers. In the context of this pandemic, it is not over yet, but video games do make the pandemic a lot more bearable and fun. Who knows? If you dedicate some time to playing games, you might find a game that speaks to you the way this game spoke to me. And if you’re not sure where to start, you could do much worse than Zelda.

This is the title screen you see when you play Breath of the Wild for the first time. It looks just like a painting and helps show you the vast scope of this world. You can reach those far mountains all the way in the back if you walk far enough. I hope the next time you see this picture will be on your TV.