Daily Debate: Do We Need An Explanation For Hammerspace?

We are all familiar with the notion of hammerspace, even if we haven’t heard the term before. It’s that mystical, never-mentioned area from which our favorite video game characters withdraw their myriad weapons and items. Sure Link has a sheath for his sword and a space on his back for his shield, but where does he keep his bow? His bombs? His multitude of other swords and shields which he doesn’t have equipped at the time? I don’t even want to know what he’s doing with the Fire Rod, but I hope he wears asbestos pants.

Hammerspace pops up all over the place, from comics to cartoons to movies. A mainstay of media which require suspension of disbelief, hammerspace is a convenient way to keep action moving, enabling characters to possess bizarre amounts of gadgetry without requiring the means to carry around such resources. Though hammerspace appears everywhere in fiction, we’ll limit this discussion to Zelda games.

See, when players have already suspended their disbelief in a game, and are still able to be engaged in the universe they’re participating in, there’s no reason not to have hammerspace. When you accept a young Hylian going around pushing stone blocks more than double his height and girth, why would you need an explanation for the fact that he just pulled a raft out of his back? When he has a Hookshot with seemingly infinite retraction strength, why nitpick over the fact that he has nowhere to store it?

The thing with hammerspace is, it’s among the more difficult things to believe in the Zelda universe (or any universe for that matter). I can believe in Wizzrobes casting flame spells at me. I have no trouble with that. I can even believe in a potion that cures all ailments. But where in the name of Hylia does Link put that Megaton Hammer? Doesn’t that bother anybody? It’s one thing to believe in magic, enchanted items, and super strength, but it’s quite a stretch to accept the disappearance of a long bug-catching net into a short elven kid.

The difference between magic and hammerspace is that magic is inherently mysterious, and people tend to accept that about it. How does the Cane of Pacci work, with its amazing telekinetic flipping ability? Simple; it’s magic. It’s easy to render magic as an explanation for such an item because we already accept that magic transcends explanation. But hammerspace doesn’t elicit that same kind of passive acceptance. Why? Because the game presents no explanation for it. It’s not an inborn magical ability which Link has. He doesn’t have a magic satchel which can carry anything. He hasn’t been gifted an ancient ring by a wise old wizard which can access inter-dimensional storage spaces. He didn’t happen upon a futuristic spacetime distortion chamber. When iron boots which Link struggles immensely to get around in become suddenly weightless with the press of a button, it’s never explained why, and it kills the believability of the game.

There are at least a few ways to make Link’s impressive carrying capacity seem plausible, as I described above with inter-dimensional rings and spacetime distortion chambers. But it can also be done wrong—remember how annoying it was in Twilight Princess to be informed that you’ve just picked up a blue rupee once a game session? Or in Skyward Sword how item descriptions appeared literally every time you picked up a treasure? Imagine that the Zelda team’s answer to hammerspace was that every time you wish to put an item away, a Fi/Midna/Navi-like character has to inform you that they will now take your Hookshot to another dimension for safekeeping.

So do we need an in-game explanation for hammerspace? Is it OK for a flimsy fishing rod taller than Link to disappear into his back in a few frames of animation? Are players content to suspend disbelief enough to shrug at this silliness? Or should Link have some ridiculous magic backpack with infinite storage capacity in Zelda U? Basically, which is more insulting to the player: to see Link effortlessly carry tons of equipment, or to have a laughable, time-consuming explanation for it?