Boyhood: The Tutorial

Can Hyrule’s destiny really depend on such a lazy boy?!

Every adventure ever told started in the same place, at home. Childhood is a sandbox to try things and a time to explore. The Ocarina of Time starts you off in much a similar way. You wake up one day in a safe community where you wear pretty much the same things as everyone else, (it just so happens everyone else loves green too in Kokiri Village) but you know that you are different, unique in some way. There’s not much to do in the village except talk to people who say the same things over and over. The C-buttons, the B-button, the R-Button…you can tell they are meant to do something, but right now they have no meaning. No parents though, which means no bedtime…

After poking around the village you are told that you need to see the village elder, who happens to be a tree. Armed with measly 40 rupees made from mowing lawns and house cleaning, you purchase the apparel necessary to be accepted by the village bully so you can get on with life. Having only seen this much of the world, your ambitions can only expand so much. The first challenge arc in life is to save the elder and prove yourself the village hero.

Your inaugural test as a kid, the Great Deku Tree is the framework and foundation from which you use to build intuition for the rest of the journey. Get your bearings first, find the map and compass. Solve puzzles, slay enemies and get your quest item, this one being the classic boyhood trouble-making slingshot. Beat the boss and be rewarded.

Is this it? Quests as a kid almost seem too simple. When I was younger, I kept asking myself that question. By any measure of the Chinese-American community I grew up in, I was speedrunning. I memorized Für Elise when I was 9, aced the math portion of the SAT at 12, and was studying physics at Harvard when I was 15. Under the safety of parents and familiar territory, confidence swells and nothing seems impossible. Childhood ambition turns into a constant force telling you to leave. After the first taste of danger, and consequently, success, the Great Deku Tree compels you to take the fresh dirt road to the big city, Hyrule.

To move forward means leaving what you know behind. Childhood friends, your home, they seem insignificant compared to what is ahead. They will always be there, frozen in time, whenever we want to come back and visit. But when it comes time to leave, only one person is there to see you off. She gives you the first taste of what music is truly capable of, invoking friendship in just six simple notes. Saria’s Song.

Your first steps outside of the safety of the forest are in a great open field. It takes a full day of rolling to get to the big city, and when you get there you are greeted with a closed gate and skeletons. But for a boy just coming off his first dungeon, spending a night outside is nothing. You’ve got a girl to see. Those pesky skeletons are easily taken care of and you finally make it into town the next morning as the cucco’s sound off. Time to go to school on how princesses work:

Girls don’t make it easy for you to see them. (Highest towers, dragons, pissed-off guards) Girls take their dreams super seriously. Girls are incredibly persuasive and you literally cannot proceed if you say no.

You quickly learn that girls are difficult, but they serve a very, very important part in your story. They provide the main quest. Princess Zelda, the beautiful daughter and only child of the king, tells you about the secret history of the land and leads you to your destiny door. You, are going to save the world.