(A random prompt on Reddit gave me some motivation to write. Here’s a link to the original post.)
I grew up in a high control religion. Video games were already kind of taboo, but games like Zelda were disallowed for having magic. One time a childhood friend brought Link to the Past to my house to play and this made my parents go through my video games with a fine tooth comb to make sure there was no magic. The one that really hurt was having Pokemon Red taken from me. Even so, video games were my solace. At school I had no friends as I wasn’t allowed to be friends with non-believers. At church I had no friends because my dad thought the other members weren’t righteous enough, and at home my dad took out his emotional languish on his kids.
In 2017, I was now a true believer of the religion myself and barely played video games at all. I had spent three years working full time at the church’s HQ and one of the things that could get you in big trouble was playing certain video games, such as Halo or Zelda. I didn’t tell my friend this because he had gotten into Zelda games after moving out of his parents’ house. I went with him on launch night to pick up his Switch pre-order and I watched him play BotW until 2 in the morning that first night. My conscience kind of bothered me about it, but I didn’t say anything for a few months because he clearly was having fun. I contented myself with Mario Odyssey and a handful of indie games, still skirting as much outright magic as I could. One night my friend asked me outright if I thought God was okay with him playing Zelda and I admitted to him that I knew a few guys at the HQ who had gotten in trouble playing Wind Waker. Sure enough he sold his copy the next day.
In November of the same year, I started to question my faith, and within six months I had made the decision to formally leave. (This particular religion, leaving means all of your friends and family must shun you, for fear that you might corrupt them as well and lead them away from the faith.) All of the time I had spent working for the church had freed up, and suddenly I found myself enraptured with gaming once more. I bought BotW on the first night in my new apartment after my parents disowned me. The next day my childhood best friend had asked to take me to coffee. He told me that he would be shunning me per the rules of the religion, and while we were walking away I said, “Hey, at least I can play BotW now.”
But life was kind of hectic those first few months. I wound up homeless at one point, living out of my car for six weeks. I had a friend I asked to take care of some personal items (which I would never see again) but something told me to hold on to the switch. After I got resettled into a new apartment, I finally got started on a bachelor’s degree in 2019 at the ripe old age of 27. I didn’t have any time to do anything other than work and school. So when lockdowns happened in March of 2020 and I suddenly had a ton of free time, I finally revisited BotW and beat it. It was the last time I felt like I was a kid again, playing a game I could not put down with my best friend alongside me the whole time.
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