While I throw myself down the apparent black hole that is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. (Or were you expecting this?)

I won’t go into too much detail, but I’m so busy lately that I feel like sheer momentum is what is propelling me forward. Between being back at the office, managing childcare logistics, making real progress in the Black and Brown Chicago Collective, being more civically engaged, and a lot of upcoming travel plans (not to mention martial arts and yoga), I needed something completely removed from reality.

Enter Breath of the Wild. I’m not a huge gamer, and I’m certainly no game critic, but this is a huge shift in gameplay for the franchise. And it’s a shift that makes it fit into my life a whole lot better. Its world is expansive, so there’s always more to explore. It truly is open world play, so I’m not being nagged by the game to make progress on the main story missions (there are organic elements that encourage this). Between taming wild horses, solving puzzles, learning lore, foraging and cooking, and combat, there are so many different types of things to do in the game that I’m never bored. I can always switch my focus and take advantage of the mental refresh of changing contexts. And, ultimately, like a good book, it is both easy and difficult to put down at a moment’s notice. I’d almost always prefer to keep playing, but it’s not a big deal to pause and set down or even quit. Because it’s easy to pick back up again later.

I bring all this up for a couple reasons. One: I wanted to explain my relative absence from this space. Playing Zelda definitely takes up time that could be spent reading or writing. BUT, I can’t say with confidence that I would choose to spend the time I play Zelda doing those things. Largely because, two: things like good video games (Overwatch also comes to mind) and fantasy (of any kind, including books, movies, TV shows, tabletop games, etc) are really important in tumultuous or stressful times. It’s really good to be able to escape from reality. Naturally, there’s a balance, and it’s very important to me that I stay active and busy most of the time. But at the end of the day (or other times when I have the luxury of choosing how I spend my time), I don’t necessarily want to engage my brain in thinking (through reading or writing). So it’s nice to be able to spend a couple hours in Hyrule and get lost in a world entirely unconnected to the one we live in. Where my successes and failures don’t have real consequences. Where I can come and go as I please and do as I please. Where I can pretend that it’s easy and straightforward to save the world. And, importantly, at the end of the game, the world will be saved.

 Until the next game comes out, of course.