The Big Picture: Link Be A Lady

[Falterfire]

I must be the only one in the entire world who did not think Link looked like a girl... or at least, not any more effeminate then the previous incarnation of Link (or Hell, even Marth for that matter).

I dunno. I thought the Marth that appeared in FE:Awakening was incredibly feminine. Could have sworn it was actually a woman under that mask.

 

[Gizen]

This argument is flawed. It implies that any desire to take a previously male character and turn them female is 'for the feminists' instead of being 'because we feel like it' or 'because why not?' In fact, the latter reasoning is by far and away the most common one people are citing.

Moviebob make it specifically clear that the reason he wants a female Link is because of the outcry of females not being present during this year's E3.

No, he made it pretty clear that, it'd be especially awesome in spite of the outcry over this year's E3, but that'd it'd just be greate even if the Assassin's Creed nonsense had never happened.

 

[JCAll]

Male? Female? Elf, what's the difference?

 

[Robot Number V]

Or, you know, somebody could just make a sequel to Okami.

Seriously, why has no one done that? I know about that DS spin-off thing, I'm not talking about that. I mean like a real, full-fledged sequel.

Anyway...not to derail the topic or anything.

PS: So if it was Link the whole time, what was with that "Nobody said it Link" crap?

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I'd much rather Zelda get center stage this time as the series is named after her. (CDI never happened, lalallala) I wouldn't be mad if they made Link female, not at all but it seems a bit of a stretch when you already have a female in a possible protagonist role ready to go. I mean, seriously...

 

[lord.jeff]

I thought Ganon was always the same guy, just constantly sealed inside of the sacred realm and thus that stalled the aging process.

According to the official timeline it's always the same Ganon.

I still don't see how any of you people thought Link was a woman. Maybe some of you think even the slightest bit of femininity means "OMG WOMAN"?

I agree with you between the flat chest and sideburns he seems pretty male to me, maybe it was the pony tail.

 

[Swarles]

I saw the Overthinker characters at the beginning of the video and my heart skipped a beat, I thought it was going to be a repeat of the last episode and I almost died in pure horror.

Anyway, to sum up my opinion on what he said, while I think changing Link would be somewhat of a step in the right direction I also think that there needs to be more actual complex and interesting female characters. From what small amount of Zelda I've actually played, Link doesn't really have a complex personality and is more of an audience avatar than anything else. What's really needed in the mainstream games market are female characters who actually have depth, I mean in the indie games scene there are complex female characters and even complex non-heterosexual characters but you don't really get that when you see AAA titles. Sure there are a few, Heather Mason from Silent Hill is a good example, but there does need to be some diversity in protagonists.

Woman Link? Works for me.

I guess what bugs me about this whole discussion is that unless you're a popular franchise or part of the gaming establishment, people (unintentionally) overlook developers who do make great strides in this area. Developers like Bioware and Bethesda don't get as much recognition for doing something that comes naturally but when Ubisoft omits something, they go all over that.

Then again, I am the biggest Biodrone I know and all I focused on E3 was Dragon Age: Inquisition.

I think that, while yes people do overlook the fact that Bethesda and Bioware do allow for female choices in their games, they don't really have female characters. The characters are really just unisex characters that can be either male or female. It's like how Bioware gets lauded for how their games can have homosexual relationships, when in reality it's less of a choose your own adventure and more a different character you can have a relationship with and being heterosexual or homosexual has no impact on your character, same with being male or female in the same game. Now I'm not saying it's inherently a bad thing, in fact if more games had unisex characters that allowed users to choose what gender they'd rather play as it would totally be fine with me. I'm also not saying that it would have any impact on the latest Zelda game if Link were female, because let's be honest it would be the exact same game except Zelda would probably be a prince instead of a princess. What I am saying is that more games need to actually have female characters. Just like more games need to have non-heterosexual characters.


I think I was rambling a bit so I'm sorry if it didn't make a whole lot of sense.

 

[Diddy_Mao]

To be sure I think that it would be a welcome change, but I think that it needs to come with a certain degree of additional work if it's going to be anything other than a gender flip "stunt."
In other words, the first time Link shows up as a lady, the game needs to be one of the few times within the series that Link is given more personality than the gawping "Let's save Hyrule because...reasons" protagonist that he usually is.

No, I'd disagree. Making a big deal about the character's gender and choosing then to define their personality is what Other M did, and we don't want a repeat of that.

Just make the game like Nintendo would if it were Link as usual, then flip the pronouns. Nothing about it calls for anything more than that.

It's a valid point. I'd argue that where Other M failed was less in trying to flesh out Samus' personality and more in their insistence that all of her fleshed out personality traits be linked, rather negatively, to her gender.

Apropos of nothing we were presented with a Samus who is overly concerned with motherhood, and abandonment issues and impressing a boy she likes and is frail and cowering in the face of big scary monsters...it was all ham handed and more than a little offensive.
Any one, or all of these things could have worked in a different game or better script, but with Other M we're just meant to assume all of these things make sense for Samus because she's a lady.


Where I think a female Link would need to stand out is really something I think the LoZ series should have been doing for a long time. All too often Link just stumbles ass backwards into an adventure and then lets the momentum carry him through. If a game were to present itself with a female Link it's going to get a lot of knee jerk hostility that I think can be deflected by having a stronger narrative foundation.

 

[MrMan999]

To be sure I think that it would be a welcome change, but I think that it needs to come with a certain degree of additional work if it's going to be anything other than a gender flip "stunt."
In other words, the first time Link shows up as a lady, the game needs to be one of the few times within the series that Link is given more personality than the gawping "Let's save Hyrule because...reasons" protagonist that he usually is.

No, I'd disagree. Making a big deal about the character's gender and choosing then to define their personality is what Other M did, and we don't want a repeat of that.

Just make the game like Nintendo would if it were Link as usual, then flip the pronouns. Nothing about it calls for anything more than that.

It's a valid point. I'd argue that where Other M failed was less in trying to flesh out Samus' personality and more in their insistence that all of her fleshed out personality traits be linked, rather negatively, to her gender.

Apropos of nothing we were presented with a Samus who is overly concerned with motherhood, and abandonment issues and impressing a boy she likes and is frail and cowering in the face of big scary monsters...it was all ham handed and more than a little offensive.
Any one, or all of these things could have worked in a different game or better script, but with Other M we're just meant to assume all of these things make sense for Samus because she's a lady.


Where I think a female Link would need to stand out is really something I think the LoZ series should have been doing for a long time. All too often Link just stumbles ass backwards into an adventure and then lets the momentum carry him through. If a game were to present itself with a female Link it's going to get a lot of knee jerk hostility that I think can be deflected by having a stronger narrative foundation.

Skyward Sword did try to give Link some actual character development and some motivations. Whether it worked or not is up to the player.

 

[lastjustice]

Link being made into a woman meant to me... (Shrug...whatever I'm still not buying a Nintendo Pronoun...I mean Wii U.)


I personally would rather they would with the same option Castlevania did, and simply change the lead character. Castlevania originally had the Belmont clan as the leads for many of the games. At some point they wanted do more and not be limited to same trademark moves and arsenal they are known for. They brought in various other vampire hunters of different breeds. One of my favorite is Shanoa, which yes we got a female lead, but her character was amazingly fun play as. Due to her own new mythos, she wasn't stuck in the typical whip, holy water, cross, axe, dagger line up. Her being fun and cool to play as was what made the game great...her being a female was fine but I didn't buy the game because of some social justice. If that happens to be a positive side effect of the game, great..but it shouldn't be anyone's focus or you're here for wrong reason.

The Megaman series introduced more characters in a similar manner with the X series. Megaman basic gameplay got kinda stiff over the years, and the X series allowed it to evolve greatly. We got Axel and Zero allowing for more gameplay options. In X 8 we got basically gender swapped versions of the cast, as they let you play as all 3 girl navigators, Alia, Pallete, and Layer. (Capcom had girl Megaman for a long time though with Roll.)It didn't shatter the world but it happened already. Command Mission added 2 more playable females with Cinnamon(Nurse bot) and Marino(ninja thief girl).

They continued spice it up with the ZX series, and made two playable characters for each of the games, making one male, and one female. (give minor bonuses for each.)They were unique characters in their own rights, as Ashe has a very different backstory as she is a human raider than Grey who is a reploid who wakes up in a lab. They took the idea of Axel's copy abilities to next level, which they turn into the enemy bosses, down to their gender. At which point whatever character you are playing as copies the hero of the previous games form, which will be the opposite sex. (Grey copies Aile's form and Ashe copies Vent) Again all kinda of weird gender swapper happening here, but the world didn't seem to notice. (granted Capcom been doing the whole gender swap stuff since Dark Stalkers, as Demitri, who uses a special that turns male characters into girls before he ravages them with Midnight Pleasure. And then the whole Poison final fight deal...)

Adding additional characters to Zelda series might be a healthy choice, as Link has used mostly same core weapons for many many games now. Granted they try and spice it up with oddities like Majora's mask and Twilight princess where Link becomes a wolf. Going and making a game focusing on Zelda/Sheik could be a nice change of pace. I think that would be a bigger step in the right direction and having the series evolve than simply putting a minor reskin on Link. Zelda's move set could go in directions link's never could. I think that would be a bigger deal than making link a girl for this version of Ocarina of Time.

 

[Phlakes]

The majority of soldiers and adventures are male, so it makes sense for male to be the default. For roles such as nurse or teacher it would make more sense to have the default be female as most of the nurses and teacher are female.

majority

Key word. Majority =/= all of them. No one's saying every protagonist should be female, or even most of them, just more than there are now.

You only make things you want people to enjoy when working for free. Any professional will make something that will sell as many copies as possible

Nope. Not even a little bit. Marketability is a consideration but I guarantee there's not a single person in the industry who only works toward sales figures. If you don't believe me, ask someone instead of making assumptions.

as long as male characters sell better than female ones male will remain the default.

And finally, this isn't a reason to not make female characters, this is the reason to make them. The entire point of all this is that people are trying to change that.

 

[Aitamen]

People *are* picking up Wii Us, to be fair... I'll be getting mine before the holiday season, for damn sure.

I do have to say I'm thrilled with the idea of a female link (or, better still, I'd love to see a female Ganon/male Zelda)... I don't know if it'll happen from N, but it'll certainly happen.

Developers like Bioware and Bethesda don't get as much recognition for doing something that comes naturally but when Ubisoft omits something, they go all over that,

Sorry, WRPGs already have gender equality, and have since forever (Citing early Wizardry, and prior). Player-avatars generally match the player, either implicitly (Avatar creation) or explicitly (games that you play *as you*, such as Zork). Bioware follows in the footsteps of Origin Systems and their ilk. They got full props, as I recall, for using the fantasy "Ser" as gender-neutral instead of "Sir", and claimed it just made sense to benefit ease of coding/recording (i.e. the reason we're all pissed at Ubi is because they claimed it harder to do).

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

That is a legitimate point, in which case, I wish Bob wouldn't just generalise things.

I feel that once The Witcher Trilogy is done, (and Cyberpunk 2077), they can easily revisit that game, perhaps from the perspective of Ciri, because of how much potential her abilities allow(in terms of prospective stories).

A story from Ciri's perspective may be difficult. After leaving Yenniver spends a lot of time with criminals (Rats), is the prisoner of Bonhart, then travels across time and space using her superpowers. Let's not forget that the elves from another dimension want to impregnate her to gain access to her power, and there's a prophesy that her son will rule half the world. If you don't have a good story for Ciri she may simply end up as a Mary Sue.

Ciri was only a suggestion, The Witcher universe certainly isn't lacking in interesting female characters from which entire sagas can spawn.

 

[KazeAizen]

Wait, Link actually being a woman would be a big difference? No, Link has always looked like a woman. Sorry. Unless there's actual nudity then it won't make any difference as far as I can tell.

And you sir missed the entire point of the video.

 

[Magmarock]

There has been lot of talk about diversity in games lately and it kind of just seems out of nowhere.

Before I talk about Link I'd just like to say this. I am in agreement as more female character as well as multi racial characters in games would decently bee a great thing. However, I don't really like the way it's being pressured. I can't help but shake the feeling that artists and developers are being bullied for lack of a batter for to shoe horn in female characters for the sake of it. It's also worth taking into account that black and Asian people are probably less common protagonists then female characters.



On to a female Link: I agree this would be great but I don't agree that it would be a major game change, at least not for me. Mostly because I always though of Link as being very feminine to begin with. Making him female won't really change that much will it. I mean in terms of game design and pacing I don't see how changing his character would really shape things up.

Finally to end this on a somewhat strange note but I can't be the only one who thinks this. But does anyone else think the idea of a female Link would be hot?

 

[KazeAizen]

Almost closed the video at that start.

I think it would be cool and fit in fine if Link was a female in some Zelda games. Though I don't get why Bob thought Link looked female in the trailer, just looked like regular old Link to me.

To a majority of people of people it didn't. Link's face, the body structure, and that ponytail. At the very least we all agreed Link looked a lot more feminine than he normally did. Also with a lack of grunting sounds there was no dead give away.

 

[blackrave]

Actually I would like to play as Zelda herself
But not as action adventure game
Shiek happened under extreme circumstances (and as we all know those require extreme measures)
I don't care that Zelda can defend herself with a sword in her hand, it isn't her main value
Any idiot can swing sword, and any 10th idiot can survive long enough to become skillful at swinging sword
But it takes exceptional person to make those idiots swing their swords at the same time at the same place with the same goal
That is real value of Zelda
So
Zelda RTS
Something close to X-Com, but set in Hyrule and you play Zelda herself ordering around troops and other willing fools brave heroes (like Link for example)
That would be real Zelda game