ABSTRACT
The Ocarina of Time is fundamentally an environment-driven text down to its core mechanics, as the game’s camera focuses not simply on the individual “hero” of the story but always points beyond him into the surrounding world. Ocarina of Time does not simply focus on the player’s immediate surroundings within the game; it also foregrounds ecological relationships as a part of its narrative, especially issues related to ecological catastrophe. Mythopoeic videogames suit this notion in particular because players subvert and overwhelm their subjectivity until it is melded into a space of forgetfulness between the hand, eye, and screen. Environmental catastrophe in Ocarina of Time creates a shock or rupture within the player’s own comfortable experience of the secondary gameworld, providing occasion for a mythopoeic reflection on our place within the environment in the primary (real) world.
