Defining Moment: Walking out into Hyrule Field. Do you remember the first time you played Zelda: Ocarina of Time? Even the title screen was epic. You heard those chords of music, saw Epona trot out onto Hyrule Field and you just knew you had a masterpiece of gaming in your hands. The camera pans over a gloriously rendered 3D landscape, bigger than anything wed ever seen before. The castle, the valley, farm and river are all beautifully realised in front of you, even before the hero appears. Start up a new game, and youre in Kokiri Village. You wander around, marvelling at the living, breathing world, until you finally start paying attention to some elves rambling about a tree. You grab the sword and shield, and complete the games first dungeon. The tree dies, you say goodbye to your childhood sweetheart, and head out into the waiting world. Walking out into Hyrule Field was arguably the first time console gamers had seen a huge, living, fictional 3 dimensional world in a video game. It was the biggest game room built at that time, and remains pretty damn impressive. Honourable Mention: Mario 64 Mario 64 was a pretty awesome game, and many gamers first experience of a truly 3d world. However, the level based format meant that you never got the sense of a massive, cohesive world that you did with Ocarina of Time. OOT was like Skyrim for our generation a world you could lose yourself in. I think for a lot of people, that first walk in Hyrule Field was the moment we realised the potential of video games.
Laurence Gardner was born in Canterbury, England. After moving around various cities during his childhood, and spending some time travelling in Europe and America, he studied English Literature at Oxford University. Since then, he’s been living abroad, teaching English, learning a range of languages, and writing in his free time. He can currently be found in Heidelberg, working as an English Tutor and Translator and studying at the University. If you liked this article, follow him on Twitter to get automatic updates on his work.
