Field Note #4: What It Means To Be A Knight

Base Stats:

Game: Skyward Sword

Version: Original Wii Version, Physical Copy

System: Nintendo Wii U

Session Play Time: 1 hr 30 min

Total Play Time: 6 hrs 21 mins

Content Covered: Side Quests: Lost Child, Missing Sister, Fledge’s Workout [start], Pumpkin Landing Job #1, 2 Goddess Cubes, Bamboo Island [1st visit].

The Knights of Skyloft, trained by the honored Knight Academy, are essentially Skyloft’s police force. Wearing color-coded uniforms in accordance with what year they graduated to knighthood or what job they have, they can be seen patrolling the skies at all hours. If some clumsy fool (Link…) accidentally steps off the edge, they are there to catch them and return them to safety. If you fly on long journeys through the vast cloudscape, a team of them may join you and fly alongside to ensure your safe passage through octorock-crowded stretches of sky. Even the Knights in Training, like Pipit and Link, are put to work on patrols to protect the citizens of Skyloft from dangerous monsters that appear at night.

As a brand-new Knight of Skyloft, Link’s green uniform makes him stand out to people in need. At the beginning of the game, when Link is just a student, people barely talk to him, let alone ask for the sleepy head’s help. Once Link returns from his first trip below the clouds with some adventure under his belt, though, it’s a different story. A man’s sister is missing? Call upon a knight to help find her. Kukiel, young daughter of the town mechanic, is rumored to have been abducted by monsters in the graveyard? Ask the knight to investigate. All of a sudden Link is in demand. He’s flying from island to island investigating the girl’s abduction. He’s bringing medicine to a stranded citizen so her bird can fly them back to Skyloft. The sleepy head has no time to take a breath—and no time to focus on his true mission.

While Link flies here and there around their sky home doing his new job by helping the citizens of Skyloft, Zelda is stranded in a volcanic region running for her life from monsters. While the person tasked with finding her and saving her destroys a chandelier in the Lumpy Pumpkin for a single piece of heart, Zelda is being set upon by fire-breathing lizards and hungry bokoblins. While the new knight runs a bottle of hot soup to the knight commander to pay off his debt, Zelda is being captured by the enemy and clapped in a prisoner’s irons. What in Hylia’s name is Link doing? Living his life as if nothing bigger were at stake in the world? Ignoring the real problem with his head in the clouds? Zelda’s life is at stake. Does he even care?

As I sat in my grand gaming room watching a boy in green run around Skyloft like he has nothing better to do than help Fledge learn how to do a push up, my city was on fire. I live in the Twin Cities area where the George Floyd riots have been raging for a week now. A black man—a real, living breathing human being—was brutally murdered by the very “knights” who were meant to protect him. And when people rose up together to peacefully protest the injustice of this latest death in a long, long list of terrible murders of black people at the hands of police in this country, the anarchists and white supremacists came in to take advantage of the chaos. They broke into stores, started buildings on fire, cut gas lines to the police station to make the police evacuate, drove their cars into the protesters, sent bomb threats to the hospitals…that’s what people who don’t live here don’t understand. The rioters and the protestors are not the same group of people. The protestors just want to breathe. They want justice. They want to be able to live in peace. The rioters? They want to tear this country apart and watch its ashes burn, and a few of them have even turned out to be police themselves.

But I digress. What did I do this past weekend while a building marked “don’t burn, people live upstairs” went up in fire and black smoke? I went for a hike at the local nature reserve and listened to the spring frogs croak. What did I do while police maced a black child in the face? I had a lovely cookout with friends in our backyard and watched the sun go down with my wife while roasting marshmallows over a campfire. What did I do while some of the most peace-loving people I know were being shot with rubber bullets and tear gas? I waved around my wii-mote and took the notes for this very article.

Sure, that’s not all I did. I touched base with my friends of color to make sure they were safe and knew I was praying for them. I went into work at the hospital where my day job is while black smoke billowed all around us and the helicopters never stopped flying overhead and managed an entire office by myself so my coworkers—people of color—could stay home with their families. But I don’t deserve a pat on the back for being a halfway decent human being. Was it helpful? Maybe. Was it enough? No. Not even close.

On Skyloft, the other big knight in training is Pipit. A year ahead of Link, Pipit does the nightly patrols around the Knight Academy campus. He is a model knight and the pride of the academy. He is dutiful and devoted and knowledgeable and selfless. When you approach him during the day after completing your first dungeon, he will say the following:

“Hey, Link! You're looking pretty upbeat lately. That's the spirit! Zelda will be home before you even know it. Just keep on believing that while you wait for her to come back!”

But he’s wrong. If Link doesn’t leave his comfort zone in Skyloft and go where he is needed, then Zelda will never come back. Believing and praying are not enough. He needs to leave. He needs to go. He needs to do the hard thing, the uncomfortable thing, and dive head-first into that volcanic plain after her. Staying in my comfortable home in my nice suburb is not going to help my city or my black brothers and sisters protesting on the I35W bridge today when a tanker drove straight through their bodies. Picking up an extra shift at work isn’t going to get food to the families who are trapped in their homes downtown or whose homes have been burned to the ground. Link and I—we need to fight for what we really care about. We need to really do something. If we don’t, then who will?

Link eventually finds the missing child in a shanty beneath Skyloft. It’s a run-down rickety building that is the very picture of a slum. Inside, a demon named Batreaux can be found. He is frightening to look at with his large, red horns and leathery bat wings. When Link sees him, the knight makes a split-second decision and draws his weapon, ready to attack on sight. Batreaux throws up his hands and pleads “please don’t hurt me!” The irony of this moment was not lost on me this time.

Since this is a game for kids and not real life—real life where that weapon would be a loaded gun pointed at a black human being instead of a sword pointed at a fantasy creature—Link actually stops and hears the man out. It turns out that this demon is one of the nicest, most generous characters in the entire game. He saved the girl’s life when she fell off the edge—something that is supposed to be the knights’ job you remember—and now she comes to visit him. They were playing their favorite game: the “Scream-As-Loud-As-You-Can-Game”. Right now, I think a lot of us would enjoy playing that game. Perhaps if we set aside our racist snap-judgements and hatred for a moment, we might meet a new friend, find a place of peace in our hearts and the world, and be able to join in the fun next time.

So, Knights of HFN, how are you going to leave your comfort zone today and pitch in where it’s really needed in the world? My wife and I are starting by buying and donating supplies that the local relief services are short on. Let me know the comments and subscribe to HFN for more just like this. I upload every Wednesday, and next week will see us finally venture into the volcanic Eldin Region in pursuit of Zelda.