The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of the greatest video games ever created. It builds upon so many conventions, while also innovating in new and unique ways. The innovation that has stuck out to me the most, even after playing countless hours, is the quest Destroy Ganon.
Immediately after the tutorial, an NPC tells you the story of how the world is in chaos. 100 years ago, Calamity Ganon gained control of this land, killing thousands. You, the player, tried to stop him but were not powerful enough. You have been put to sleep for 100 years, and it is time for you to destroy him for good.
Honestly, this is pretty generic video game logic. “Only you can defeat this great evil!!” What makes this different than other games is you have the freedom to face Ganon immediately.
Most games would say “Oh, you are powerful enough yet” and not give you the option to fight Ganon. But Breath of the Wild gives you that freedom. Yes, they encourage you to visit villages, gain powerups, do sidequests, etc. But at any time you get to decide when you are powerful enough to face Ganon.
This means that everything you do is an active choice to prepare to fight Ganon. He is always on your mind, and you get to decide how to become more powerful.
When I play Breath of the Wild, the quest Destroy Ganon gives me the same feeling as when I think about the climate crisis.
Created by Pyrogas-Artworks on DeviantArt
Roaming Storms
Our climate is rapidly changing due to raising global temperatures. This temperature increase is caused by humans emitting gases, like CO2, into the atmosphere at alarming rates. The warming of our globe is chaotic, and what exactly will happen is unknown. But JP Morgan seems to have some ideas
The leaked document from JP Morgan states that with raising global temperatures, most of civilization will be unstable due to natural disasters. If we do not significantly change what we are doing, the report says it cannot rule out complete human extinction.
Again, we do not know what will exactly happen, but with the icecaps melting and sea levels raising, many ecosystems will be thrown out of balance. The climate has already significantly changed here in Pittsburgh. When I talk to my grandfather, who grew up in the area, he states how big the snows used to be. We still get snow, but nothing near the levels of what we used to get. While the lack of snow is not a huge impact in Appalachia, it will have huge impacts in areas with permafrost. Those areas may begin to thaw out for the first time in thousands of years, further raising global temperatures.
We know we will also see increased storms, hurricane seasons, and more deadly monsoons. In Breath of the Wild, Ganon is causing chaos around the world by making giant robots cause ‘natural’ disasters. For example, there is a giant camel which is creating a perpetual, roaming desert storm.
Denying that climate change is happening is like looking at a giant robot camel and saying “there is no camel.”
Without hope, we are lost.
The climate crisis is terrifying. So many things are going wrong. I remember vividly when a friend frantically called me when he realized that bees are dying at an alarming rate.
Breath of the Wild sets the player as the main character. All the challenges are hand crafted to be overcome. Some may be too difficult at first, but all can be overcome with determination.
If we approach the climate crisis without any hope, without the determination to succeed, we have already lost. You can call it childhood innocence, you can call it unrealistic, but we need to believe that we can do something. Yes, most of the global pollution is caused by a few corporations. But we can do something about that.
When teaching about the climate crisis to students, there are three main steps; love, action, then change.
First and foremost students need to love the land they live in. Yes, the Amazon Rainforest is a fantastic ecosystem, but most students will never get a chance to see it. Show students local parks, rivers, forests, whatever is around them. If they know it, they will start to see themselves as part of it, and love it.
Second they need to see that their actions have consequences in their local ecosystem. Often this is shown by how litter stays in an environment for decades. So by picking up litter, students can see how their direct action can help their local ecosystem. But they also see that without any care, they can also harm it.
In late middle school, early highschool, students are finally ready to learn how their local ecosystem is connected to others. In Pittsburgh, we talk about how the ecosystems upstream change our environment, and how we are changing the environment downstream. Slowly students add more and more ecosystems to their thought process, until eventually they are thinking on a global scale. Now they are ready to fully see what the climate crisis is doing.
Calamity Ganon. Retrieved from the Zelda Wiki.
It’s dangerous to go alone
Even if people know their direct action can alter their ecosystem, many folks still feel overwhelmed. The climate crisis is far too complex for one person to handle. Luckily, you are not alone.
Throughout your time playing Breath of the Wild, many characters aid you on your quest. Maybe they give you a powerup, or tell you the location of a sacred weapon. Either way, you are not able to Destroy Ganon by yourself.
With a global population, we will be able to solve this crisis by working together. I would be terrible defending the environment in court, but I can teach students about it. Some folks are great at marching, while others can work from within giant corporations to slowly steer them in the right direction. Every little bit helps.
You may not feel like the main character, but together we can overcome this crisis and build a stable world for us all.
Retrieved from the Zelda Wiki.