Hero of Time, Vegan of Hyrule
I was surprised by how easy The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild made it to roleplay with my ethics intact — and it gave me hope
As I first awoke and made my way out of the Shrine of Resurrection and into the gorgeous land of Hyrule, veganism was the last thing on my mind. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild had just been released in 2017. Its unstructured and emergent gameplay, set in a beautifully realized open world, had earned it universal praise. Excited to explore the world of the game for myself, I was unprepared for the moral exploration that it would inspire.
I was accustomed to a lifetime of video games in which my interactions with the world were destructive and violent. Along with many other tropes, the idea that health and sustenance should come from meat had been normalized. Sometimes it could be a potion, or a fruit, but more often than not I was consuming meat to power up.
Maybe it’s because these games exist in a world where meat eating is the cultural norm, maybe it’s an extension of the domination and consumption that are a byproduct of providing the player with a…
