Perilous and Peril-Less Gaming: Representations of Death with Nintendo's Wolf Link Amiibo

Abstract

This article examines the motif of death in popular electronic games and its imaginative applications when employing the Wolf Link Amiibo in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017). As I demonstrate, the Wolf Link Amiibo engages digital quietus as a meaningful event in three ways: as in-game perk, as ritualized object, and as narrative device. In the first place, the toy-to-life figurine mitigates against recursive elimination by generating an NPC (non-player character) to hunt for food, search out hidden shrines, and attack nearby enemies. Second, it affords a unique awareness of death according to a temporal pattern, one that requires ritual performance outside the virtual world of Hyrule. Third, the small statue conceptually narrativizes the repeated loss of life through an aesthetic of resurrection, namely by representing the Amiibo as efficacious technology found within the game-world of Breath of the Wild.