Does it matter if Link is a boy or a girl?

Linkle: The new Samus or a next Waluigi?

Linkle’s debut as a playable character in Hyrule Warriors Legends seems to mean something big to a lot of people, but I guess that’s par for course. Regardless of how long it’s been since you actually played a Legend of Zelda game, chances are that if you’re an adult who’s been into games for a while, the series probably means something to you. 

Not surprisingly, reaction to the character has been pretty mixed. Some who’ve long wanted for there to be more women protagonists in games in general see Linkle as a faux-attempt at progression, while other see her as something of a step forward. Others who loathe the idea of gaming becoming more “feminized” have been quick to condemn Linkle as “just more pandering to the SJW crowd,” while for others the new character is yet another piece of “sexy waifu” fodder for their fantasy fun folders.  

Part of all the discontent and emotional investment around the prospect of a woman Link comes from the ambiguity that lies at the core of the character. Is Link an individual, or is he (or she) a blank slate avatar meant to represent the player? For years, Nintendo has managed to have its cake and eat it too when answering this question. It may not be able to get away with that for much longer. 

_{[Art by  Kuvshinov-Ilya]}

To its credit, Nintendo has done an admirable job of concocting a way to help fans to imagine Link as both a specific person and an abstract concept at the same time. He’s actually not always named Link. You, the player, choose his name before starting each of his games. He also never speaks, further solidifying him as non-character who’s only purpose is to act as doorway for the player into the game world. Yet, by leaning hard on both the reincarnation myth and the use of multiple timelines, Nintendo has managed to shape Link into a series of individual characters in the minds of many. In doing so, it has squelched most of complaints the character/non-character used to attract, though it took them a little while to get there.

Many fans were outraged when the Wind Waker radically changed who Link was and how he was drawn. A lot of these fans had become extremely attached to a singular idea of who Link was and how he should look. This new Link broke from those ideas, causing their suspension of disbelief to break along with it. It’s no surprise then that it was fans who originally came up with the theory that the Zelda series takes place over multiple timelines. They were clearly more invested in believing that Link was real than Nintendo was.

Strangely enough, it looks like a lot of those diehard fans are also against the idea of Link ever being a woman. Their devotion to their head canon feels similar to how some Catholics hold tight to their traditional gender divisions. Just a few days ago, a diehard Zelda fan was telling me that making Link a woman would be “pointless,” and if someone wants to play a game starring a woman, that there are plenty of other choices out there. I pushed back with the idea that what’s pointless to them may mean a lot to someone else.

To counter that obvious point, they put on their best empathy-face and said that the Zelda series should not have to bend to the preferences of fans. It’s the exactly line of thinking I’ve heard from well meaning but overly dogmatic Catholics over the years, who advise folks who want to bear confession to a female priest to simply abandon Catholicism in favor of Unitarian Universalism or some other wacky new faith. 

_{[Art by Liart]}

Nintendo itself has been relatively inconsistent in explaining if Link has to be a man or not. The director of the recently released Triforce Heroes said for that game’s story, it wouldn’t fit the mythology for the leads to be women. So that’s one answer. On the other hand, Eiji Aonuma, producer of the Zelda series as a whole, has never ruled out that we’d get a woman iteration of Link someday, stating that he was going to wait and see how the playable women characters in Hyrule Warriors were received before making that decision. I’m guessing the fact that Hyrule Warriors sold pretty darn well is one of the reasons Linkle went from being a rejected concept sketch to a full-blown character (who may or may not be a reincarnation of Link).

In the absence of official word from Nintendo, fans have created their own schema around the question of Link’s inherent maleness, just as they they created the split-timeline long before it was adopted as canon. The one I hear the most is that Zelda must always be a woman (because it’s the Legend of Zelda, not the Legend of Zeldo) and therefore Link must be a man, as the potential for heterosexual romance between the two leads is a key part of the Zelda’s legend. Of course, Nintendo has never explicitly stated any of that. Why would it? As a company that wants to appeal to as many potential customers as possible, it’d have little reason to insult its queer fans or cut itself off from the option of a female Link someday.

Linkle is clearly a move towards testing those waters, though it won’t likely jump all the way in until it is sure it will be profitable. It’s a direction it has been publicly headed in for a while, driven in no small part by the stats showing how women are becoming a larger and larger part of Nintendo’s customer base.  It’s arguable that the company has been moving towards giving players the option to chose the gender of the green clad Hylian hero for years now. 

It wouldn’t even be the first time, technically. Some of the Satellaview Legand of Zelda games allowed for players to chose the gender of their character. So does every modern Fire Emblem, Pokémon, and Animal Crossing game, as will Xenoblade Chronicles X when it’s released outside of Japan next month. It’s not just in the RPGs either. Nintendo’s latest hit character, the Inkling, also comes in boy or girl shapes. In fact, the vast majority of Nintendo’s Wii U titles allow you to play as a woman some or all of the time. It could be that the publisher finally noticed that Monster Hunter, Mass Effect, Fallout 4 (the potentially biggest entertainment release of the year) and countless other modern Action-RPGs have let the player decide the gender of their “link” to the game world without suffering any loss in sales. Maybe they are on the cusp of allowing today’s Legend of Zelda players to do the same. 

That said, it’s clear that many people would be upset if Nintendo began providing players with that level of choice. Ironically, a lot of these players are also harshly critical of Nintendo for not keeping up with the times when it comes to cross-buy purchases across consoles games and other consumer friendly practices. What we demand out of our game publishers says a lot about us, and will eventually determine what those publishers end up producing. My guess is that like everything with business, the question of how much Link’s gender matters will be answered not in some political debate, but in dollar signs.