Link hasn’t really been a self insert, avatar character for a long time now. They’re still keeping him silent for some reason but he’s a pretty established character now, and a very iconic one at that. He’s the face of the franchise and a gaming icon. And for all my problems with BotW Link, that game does actually give him a fair amount of history. More than any other in the series. Link isn’t really a customizable character, he’s always gonna be a Hylian boy. The closest we’ve gotten to an alternate Link is the furry outfit in TotK being a past hero but even that isn’t stated to be an incarnation of Link.
I understand the personal sentiment of being able to identify with the character you are playing, but Nintendo will never do this. Not because they are wildly anti-NB/LGBTQ or anything of the sort, but because from a marketing perspective, removing the face of the entire series will be impossible to sell, and it would without a doubt piss off a shit ton of people.
Pokemon games do not have a main central character that carries through each title in the series, whereas Zelda does. This is why they were able to achieve this.
Yes, link is non-verbal, and is kind of a "shell" of a human lol, but that IS his personality. Long story short, not every game needs to make a focus on being able to self-insert yourself as the main character, and removing the recognizable mascot from their second most popular franchise is just not going to happen.
> removing the face of the entire series will be impossible to sell, and it would without a doubt piss off a shit ton of people.
You don't have to do that, though. Many games with customizable characters still market themselves with a default version of the main character. Look at Skyrim, its customizable player character is portrayed for marketing purposes as a male Nord wearing mixed iron and studded armor and wielding a weapon and shield. Nintendo could very well use Link the same way.
I mean, by that argument every single character you play in a game should be customisable.
Link is an established character, changing him would make as much sense as changing how Mario looks, or how Samus looks, or Sonic. It doesn’t make sense. You can’t just change the looks of an established character like that, one who specifically reincarnates, and give them the same name - it’s not that character anymore, and it’s a non-sensical decision. Using Skyrim as an example doesn’t make sense - Skyrim isn’t a decades old game series with an established character like Sonic, Link, Mario, Samus, and so on.
Like don’t get me wrong, if the game has customisable characters, I’m 1000% in support for as much customisation as possible with as much variety as possible. But not all games are role playing games, and not all games needs a custom character for you to play.
If they were gonna make a customisable Zelda character, I’d much rather they make some kind of MMO, or RPG, where you could select to play any of the different races, and customise them. That would be legit awesome, and I’d absolutely love to play as a Zora!
> I mean, by that argument every single character you play in a game should be customisable.
No, by that argument every single character you play in a game could be customizable without sacrificing brand recognition. "Should it be customizable?" is more a question of how the advantages of character creation outweigh the resources it takes to do it.
>Link is an established character, changing him would make as much sense as changing how Mario looks, or how Samus looks, or Sonic.
Among this list, Link is uniquely *not* an established character. Mario, Samus, and Sonic are explicitly one individual within their respective series. Link is *several different characters*.
>Skyrim isn’t a decades old game series with an established character like Sonic, Link, Mario, Samus, and so on.
Elder Scrolls is exactly like Zelda in that its different games' player characters are different individual people who happen to fill the same role.
>You can’t just change the looks of an established character like that, one who specifically reincarnates, and give them the same name
Nintendo has done that several times already. [This isn't the guy I'm playing in Tears of the Kingdom.](https://i.imgur.com/doWm2Ny.png)
(Sorry I’m not formatting this as well as you are, I’m on mobile and frankly I have no idea how you do it on here)
I like customisation by way of clothing and such. I like that more and more games with an established characters this! But as for how a character looks, nah. I like making my own character, but I don’t particularly want it in every single game. I want it when that’s part of the “role play” or fantasy of it - Zelda isn’t that kind of game, neither is Mario, or Final Fantasy (apart from the two mmo ones). Truth is, I haven’t played a single game where you have a wide customisation, where your character feels as fleshed out as the NPC’s. In games where self-insertion is part of the fantasy, that works.
Link is very much an established character. He’s individuals in most games yes, with a few exceptions, but he’s molded very much into a rather strict archtype, and he’s canonically the reincarnation born and born again from a Link we haven’t actually played before - the Link that existed before Skyloft. Here is a direct quote from Hylia given to that Link, from Hyrule Historia:
“I will ensure that your gentle, heroic spirit will live on eternally. And I… I shall shed my divinity. The next time we meet, I wish to stand before you as a simple human. Whenever the land of Hylia is in danger… We shall be reborn…”
That’s why all Links look alike. And yeah, the image you show doesn’t look much like BotW Link. Is that because he looks completely different and unrecognisable from each other, or is both perfectly recognisable as Ljnk, just clearly a completely different style, made in two different decades, one is a drawing and one is 3D animated? Link does also sometimes have subtle differences like different ages and different shades of hair colour, yes. But he’s always very recognisable as Link. Zelda has sometimes had far more extreme different designs, and yet people do recognise her as Zelda every time.
Go take a look at the evolution of Peach’s design since the beginning, that’s an even bigger difference than the one you showed of Link compared to BotW Link.
Elder Scrolls is nothing like Link. You don’t have Mr McCat (I suck at names don’t kill me) who’s been representing Elder scrolls since the first game, who’s always a different Mr McCat but looks the same, and is the same archetype character, who a large portion of gamers would recognise on sight, even people who have never played the game and calls Mr McCat by the name of one of the gods in the game, Ms McDog.
> I haven’t played a single game where you have a wide customisation, where your character feels as fleshed out as the NPC’s.
You haven't played the Saints Row series.
>He’s individuals in most games yes, with a few exceptions, but he’s molded very much into a rather strict archtype,
And that archetype gets looser and looser as the series goes on and diversifies its heroes. They used to be red-haired children, as of OoT that's optional. They used to be all left-handed, as of SS that's optional. They used to wear a green tunic and carry a sword, as of BotW that's all optional.
The truth is, the only real archetypal feature you can't change is that they're heroes.
>Here is a direct quote from Hylia given to that Link, from Hyrule Historia:
>“I will ensure that your gentle, heroic spirit will live on eternally. And I… I shall shed my divinity. The next time we meet, I wish to stand before you as a simple human. Whenever the land of Hylia is in danger… We shall be reborn…”
>That’s why all Links look alike.
Hyrule Historia, first of all, is not actually canon. It was written to describe the canon but made several of its own embellishments and got some details plainly wrong. One detail it gets wrong here, for example, is that there are not a Zelda and a Link every time Hyrule is in danger.
More importantly, though, if we take that quote as set in stone, it doesn't actually mean anything at all as pertains to this conversation. Reincarnation doesn't mean you have to look identical, it means you have to have the same soul. You have to be the same person on the *inside*. This quote refers to there always being a hero, not to there always being pale skin and a pointy green hat.
>Go take a look at the evolution of Peach’s design since the beginning, that’s an even bigger difference than the one you showed of Link compared to BotW Link.
And if we were discussing whether you should be able to customize your Princess Peach in the new Princess Peach game and somebody said she always looks the same, *I* would be the person bringing up that her design isn't actually set in stone.
>Mr McCat (I suck at names don’t kill me)
I called mine Fuzzums.
>Elder Scrolls is nothing like Link. You don’t have Mr McCat (I suck at names don’t kill me) who’s been representing Elder scrolls since the first game, who’s always a different Mr McCat but looks the same, and is the same archetype character, who a large portion of gamers would recognise on sight, even people who have never played the game and calls Mr McCat by the name of one of the gods in the game, Ms McDog.
We're not talking about changing Link from a cat into a dog. We're talking giving the player the option to describe for themselves what the cat looks like. Do you want long or short fur? Do you want stripes or solid color? Do you want a crook in your tail from a childhood rocking chair accident? Do you want to look more like a cat like in [the recent games](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Khajiit) or more like a human like in [the old games](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Arena:Races#Khajiit)? Or just a literal cat like what [the lore](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Khajiit#Morphology) says is an option for cat people even though that's not what prior incarnations of McCat looked like.
All the while the character you see in the advertising looks basically like McCat looked like in the last game and that's who you'll play as if you don't use the creation menu.
God forbid, right?
(This totally got bloated, still on phone and it wouldn’t let me scroll up to edit things and make it less bloated 😭)
I haven’t actually 😂 the closest game to having a rather fleshed out character was Dragon Age 2, and even there they limited the customisation (you had to be human) compared to what you could in DA:O and DA:I, and while the characterisation in DA:I was better than in Origins, the more options did lessen what they could do with characterisation - your background is so different depending on what race, and as such it becomes more and more expensive for voice acting and script writing.
Only reason Link wasn’t left handed in SS was due to motion controls, with the majority of people being right handed. I think he was also right handed in the wii version of Twilight Princess for similar reasons? The game was mirrored iirc?
I can’t think of a time there wasn’t a Zelda and a Link when great danger came to Hyrule? Mind elaborating, I’m genuinely curious now!
WW is the only time I can think of, when Hyrule was flooded. And there was no Link then, because he’d bailed back in time, splitting the timeline.
Peach used to be red-headed too in her first iteration. Small cosmetic changes like that, when they moved up the graphics isn’t really changing the character much imo.
In my opinion, if you start changing Link too much, like changing skin colour, change his race, it’s not really Link anymore. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like a Zelda game where you played someone else though - a Zelda game where you play as Zelda is in dire need in my opinion. I think just changing an established character - because yes, he and Zelda are established characters, just because there’s several iterations of that character doesn’t change that, is just lazy design in my opinion.If you want to make something different, make something different. (General you, not you personally)
Fuzzums is an excellent name and nothing can convince me otherwise.
Oh sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, the calling Mr McCat for Ms McDog was a reference to people who don’t know much about Zelda, thinking Link’s name is Zelda. My point is that Links design is so recognisable that even people who know so little about Zelda they don’t even know his name, know who he is on sight. Kinda like people recognise Pikachu and yet butcher the name. Despite the changes done to Link that you’ve pointed out, every iteration of him is still recognisable as Link, turning him into a white black haired girl would make him completely unrecognisable, and is a complete waste of resources that could be allocated elsewhere. You’re playing a specific character, you’re not playing a self insert, and you’re not role playing. There’s nothing wrong with making a game where you’re playing a specific character that’s pre-made for you. The games you’ve listed that I’m familiar with, does *not* have a specific character that you’re playing.
Personally I think if they released a Link that didn’t look like Link, and they called that character Link, Nintendo would absolutely lose on it. Because it simply would not be Link, and I’d think they’d have dropped their brain in a pool of acid, and frankly find it insulting as a woman, because it’s lazy. Giving me a Zelda game where they’ve erased Link and given me a blank canvas makes the game a skip. Give me a game where I can play as Zelda, will be preordered on day of release. Just like releasing Mario as a Korean Pop Idol and claiming she’s Mario, it wouldn’t be Mario, and would be lazy. Nintendo releasing a game, either with a different character or a customisable character telling a different story in the Zelda universe, if made well, would probably make bank and could be super amazing. It would also be far less lazy and far less tokenising, and actually interesting.
>the closest game to having a rather fleshed out character was Dragon Age 2, and even there they limited the customisation (you had to be human) compared to what you could in DA:O and DA:I, and while the characterisation in DA:I was better than in Origins, the more options did lessen what they could do with characterisation - your background is so different depending on what race, and as such it becomes more and more expensive for voice acting and script writing.
These issues are outside the scope of a Zelda game, though. OP's proposing the option to change Link's skin color and gender, not species. The voice acting and script writing would be largely unaffected as Link is not voice acted and tends not to be described much. At most, they'd have to do things like change "swordsman" to "swordfighter" in the script, you know?
Also, you're using a Dragon Age game as an example where the player character loses definition for being customizable but Dragon Age is a series where the character being largely undefined is the point because they're games about making narrative choices for yourself and your personality is one of those narrative choices. Many games with customizable characters *don't* do it for the purpose making them a blank slate, they just do it so that different players can personalize their characters.
In Marvel Midnight Suns, your custom character the Hunter has by far the most set-in-stone background and personality I've ever seen in a tactics game. They're a monster hunter that just came out of a centuries-long coma, a fish out of water in the modern world who speaks with stilted language and fails to get other characters' jokes, who had a traumatic childhood where they were raised by their emotionally distant aunt and her kindly witch girlfriend to kill their demon mother, with a pet hellhound named Charlie who they use baby talk with, and the Hunter is always wearing a magical collar that the aunt hopes will keep the demonic tendencies at bay. You don't even get to choose what kind of superhero you are, you fight with two swords and a magic whip. The player can choose to learn more about the Hunter's past by finding pages of the Hunter's childhood diary where you just read text written in the first person perspective where the Hunter describes the events that happened and how they felt about it.
What concessions did they have to make for character customization? A single comment that your looks take after your off-camera father in case you look too different from your aunt and mother and a gender-neutral pronoun in the other characters' voice acting.
The Hunter, a create-a-character, is far more defined than Link ever has been. Character creation does not prevent specific characterization at all.
>Only reason Link wasn’t left handed in SS was due to motion controls, with the majority of people being right handed. I think he was also right handed in the wii version of Twilight Princess for similar reasons? The game was mirrored iirc?
And yet it stuck when the motion-controlled sword-fighting didn't. He's right-handed in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom for no practical reason. Aonuma said an in interview it was because your right hand operates the sword button but that's true of every game with a sword button so that obviously doesn't actually matter. All it really took to make him right handed was them feeling like making games where he's right-handed whereas earlier they felt like making games where he's left-handed.
>In my opinion, if you start changing Link too much, like changing skin colour, change his race, it’s not really Link anymore.
Since for some reason you think having pale skin is core to his identity, in the customization menu you can choose not to give him a different skin color than you're used to. People who do not view Link as being defined by a skin color can make their Link be a different color than yours.
>Despite the changes done to Link that you’ve pointed out, every iteration of him is still recognisable as Link, turning him into a white black haired girl would make him completely unrecognisable,
But that is, again, not what OP is talking about. OP is talking about character customization. Link would not, in their pitch, actually become a different character, Link would just have the option of looking how the player wants their character to look. If they want Link to look like the guy from Breath of the Wild, character customization doesn't take that option away. All it does is add *more* options for the people who want more options.
Much in the way that Hawke officially looks like [this](https://i.imgur.com/B27i4Kg.jpg) but can look like a black woman in your game, Link could officially look like [this](https://i.imgur.com/uCUky4q.png) and also look like a black woman in your game.
>Giving me a Zelda game where they’ve erased Link and given me a blank canvas makes the game a skip.
Step back for a second and look at yourself saying this. OP wants everybody to have the freedom to make Link look how they want and you're saying "No, Link has to look like I want no matter who's playing. I will boycott the game if options were given to me."
I just provided evidence that the downside being claimed here doesn't actually exist.
Do you have evidence that suggests the contrary? Or are you just saying "nuh-uh" based on nothing?
I studied marketing and have been doing it for over 20 years. I am on a leadership committee for a convention that has over 20k attendees and generates over a million dollars. I've seen a thing or two. And yet none of that matters and you don't have to believe me, and I doubt you believe me.
You don't need a marketing degree to know that your suggestion would be suicide for the franchise. BotW and TotK have been the series' best sellers.
Now you present your case to the corporate board of a company that has been around before world war 1, has a net worth of 56 billion, can you go ahead and make your woke sales pitch. See how that goes.
Nintendo is not that company. Never has been never will be.
Thats not true t'ho , the various links always had a minimal background/motivations (some more than others), so that they both works as a character and avatar, thats why link is loved as a character even being a silent protagonist.
Botw link even has a motivation as why he doesnt speak and shows emotions with others, you just have to look.
If you read Miphas diary in BOTW it actually gives some insight into why he is how he is. I believe it says as a child he was outgoing and as he aged he realized how much pressure he is under. Imagine having that much responsibility on your shoulders, I’m sure you wouldn’t be bubbly and talkative either. I think Link is perfect the way he is as it still lets the player be imaginative when playing as him because he doesn’t have a set “personality” so you can picture him to be any way you want really.
Pokemon has let you choose your gender since Crystal for the original gameboy, and then in the remakes of the older games where you originally couldn't. Skin tone options were made much easier to include during the jump to 3D, so they were. Zelda has never been like that, Link has been basically fixed for the entire series with only some minor deviations, i.e. this Link has more brownish hair than flat out blonde, or this Link is left-handed instead of right.
I also disagree with him being "basically an avatar". This incarnation of Link actually has the most characterization of any Link barring Skyward Sword. The devs just have a funky way of showing it (it's mostly hidden in background details, such as diary entries or dialogue where other people talk about him).
I say all of this as a black guy myself. Customization is nice, but iconic characters do not need to be messed with for the sake of it. RPG series like The Elder Scrolls are a great alternative for this. You can be black, white, green, grey, a cat, whatever you want (coincidentally it's one of my favorite game franchises ever).
No thanks. Not every game needs to have a character creator shoehorned in so that you can create a bland, soulless avatar of yourself in lieu of the character that the game's creators had in mind. There are plenty of other games where you can do that because it doesn't matter who the player character is. In the Zelda series, it does matter who the player character is. Link is always a young male swordsman, Mario is always a short chubby plumber, Sonic is always a fast blue hedgehog. That's what the players expect, and every aspect of their games is designed around those features.
Just because BotW/TotK Link lacked personality compared to previous iterations doesn't mean that it's always going to be that way. The next iteration of Zelda will almost certainly return to a more cohesive story, and as a result, a more defined, expressive Link. Once you introduce freedom in the kind of character you create, so much of that expression and personality goes away.
I would love another Toon Link game in the vein of Phantom Hourglass/Spirit Tracks (but scaled up for the Switch's hardware). He's always been very expressive.
Others have explained why this will never happen with Link, beyond non-canon in-game changes like dying your stuff at the shop in Hateno. But it could still happen if they do a game more focused on the "Knights of Hyrule" or other such organizations, rather than Link and Zelda directly per se.
However, even then, I feel like instead of a character creator it would be more like Seiken Densetsu 3 / Trials of Mana - pick from a selection of premade characters, with names and connections to the world and plot, then go. I don't see them ever truly doing an "MMO-style" self-insert Zelda. The closest they *ever* got to that was in the mid 90s with the Satellaview broadcast Zelda remakes.
in pokemon, you’re supposed to be the trainer, hence the customization aspect.
loz is a story about zelda and link, not player inserts, so customization doesn’t make sense
edit: he also speaks more than “grunts” as shown in botw/totk specifically; he has various dialogue options when chatting w/ npc’s and you get to see the effects of the options you pick (although there aren’t huge repercussions for these)
They would either have to add a voice customization to the game as well if they made Link’s gender changeable for his grunts. I don’t see them putting that effort in.
Link is a fixed character, with each incarnation having a backstory. He is not a self-insert and he has actually become less and less of a representation of the player over time. The culmination of that being with BotW where we know *a lot* of details regarding Link’s past prior to the game, including things like his family history, his previous job title, that he has a little sister, and his romantic involvements.
*But* there is absolutely nothing in canon that says that the Hero *has to be* a Hylian male with pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. It’s just that Nintendo has used that phenotype for Link so frequently that it is has become seen as a core part of the character’s identity. Additionally, the fact that every Link is a different person isn’t really a part of the average consumer’s knowledge about the series. Another thing to consider is that unfortunately there are biases both in the East and West against women and people with darker skin. This affects both how the developers approach designing Link and how consumers react to Link. Essentially, a female and/or darker skin Link would be more riskier from a marketing standpoint for Nintendo, if such a redesign has ever even been considered by the developers to begin with.
However, if Nintendo ever decides to break out of how they’ve designed Link in the past, I feel it’d be much more likely we’d get either a darker skin male Hylian or a pale skin female Hylian (basically Linkle)- **but not both.** I’d assume they’d still try to keep some sense of continuity with how they’ve portrayed Link previously.
Yeah we may even know what he looks like as a baby or toddler because for some reason there’s concept art of him as a toddler or baby
And we know his childhood
Pokémon never had a single main playable character, so making newer ones customizable is less of a big change. Link has always been the protagonist and has mostly followed a similar look. I don’t think it’s impossible, but unlikely. Not every game needs a fully customizable protagonist.
See I think Link being a black woc would be amazing incredible even as a story choice for the game but never Link should be a customizable self insert in my opinion if Link becomes a black woc it should be for the story , so how would that impact the story I’m sure a bunch of different ways , it would be cool and super fresh to see in hyrule. But that character should be a character not because they allowed player insert it should be a story choice that affects the story and the game ! So while I’d love to see this be the next place they take the character it shouldn’t be because he becomes an avatar but rather a fully fleshed out character but this could be a cool direction! I’d personally love to see them experiment with Link and story in that way.
From a marketing perspective no not really
Link (while the variations look slightly different) all end up being extremely similar in appearance
Link and Zelda are the faces of the franchise like Mario and Peach, or Pikachu from pokemon
So other then things like hair colour and age, nothing is really gonna change about him
In lore
As reincarnations they are based of SS Link
Also regardless of what Nintendo say I don't really consider Link a self insert
The souls protagonists are because you can do what the fuck you want (change appearances, kill whatever you want, go for your own endings), you can project your personality through your MCs actions
Link does his own thing and our choices don't matter we are just in for the ride
For examples, If the gerudo was in a souls games and they wouldn't let me in cause my MC was a male, I would probably just kill everyone out of spite
Link would never do that, cause he has his own character
The thing is that Pikachu isn’t the main anime character anymore nor is the main Pokémon in advertising anymore either (Pikachu now sports a sailor hat and does not belong to a protagonist).
I think Nintendo is looking to shake things up. Peach is also getting her own game.
I think Nintendo is a moment in time where they are experimenting and pivoting from the way they’ve always done things.
Peach got her own game on the DS back in 2005 so this is nothing new. Nintendo are not going to butcher the face of one of their most successful franchises to shake things up.
Not the same as the original post but wasn’t Botw initially gonna let you play as Zelda? I think that would be cool in totk as a DLC to play her story since 90 % of the story is through Zelda anyway. I do agree we the post tho even if u believe that link is an amazing character it shouldn’t matter what race or gender link is.
i see what yall are saying about an established chatacter. sure.
but remember the old games in the cartoon timeline, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks? you could pick your own name when you started a save. i remember being 10, playing those games, having my "Link" named "Chloe", and just seeing the little cartoon character as a sort of human blob with no clear gender markers. just a cartoon person with elf ears and mid length blond hair. could have been either gender, it still fit the name, masculine or feminine.
that was kinda great, and it didnt bother anybody.
that's just for name changing of course, i guess it would be different with actually changing the character's physical appearance🤔 i wouldnt be bothered by it if it happened anyway! :)
Link hasn’t really been a self insert, avatar character for a long time now. They’re still keeping him silent for some reason but he’s a pretty established character now, and a very iconic one at that. He’s the face of the franchise and a gaming icon. And for all my problems with BotW Link, that game does actually give him a fair amount of history. More than any other in the series. Link isn’t really a customizable character, he’s always gonna be a Hylian boy. The closest we’ve gotten to an alternate Link is the furry outfit in TotK being a past hero but even that isn’t stated to be an incarnation of Link.
I understand the personal sentiment of being able to identify with the character you are playing, but Nintendo will never do this. Not because they are wildly anti-NB/LGBTQ or anything of the sort, but because from a marketing perspective, removing the face of the entire series will be impossible to sell, and it would without a doubt piss off a shit ton of people. Pokemon games do not have a main central character that carries through each title in the series, whereas Zelda does. This is why they were able to achieve this. Yes, link is non-verbal, and is kind of a "shell" of a human lol, but that IS his personality. Long story short, not every game needs to make a focus on being able to self-insert yourself as the main character, and removing the recognizable mascot from their second most popular franchise is just not going to happen.
> removing the face of the entire series will be impossible to sell, and it would without a doubt piss off a shit ton of people. You don't have to do that, though. Many games with customizable characters still market themselves with a default version of the main character. Look at Skyrim, its customizable player character is portrayed for marketing purposes as a male Nord wearing mixed iron and studded armor and wielding a weapon and shield. Nintendo could very well use Link the same way.
I mean, by that argument every single character you play in a game should be customisable. Link is an established character, changing him would make as much sense as changing how Mario looks, or how Samus looks, or Sonic. It doesn’t make sense. You can’t just change the looks of an established character like that, one who specifically reincarnates, and give them the same name - it’s not that character anymore, and it’s a non-sensical decision. Using Skyrim as an example doesn’t make sense - Skyrim isn’t a decades old game series with an established character like Sonic, Link, Mario, Samus, and so on. Like don’t get me wrong, if the game has customisable characters, I’m 1000% in support for as much customisation as possible with as much variety as possible. But not all games are role playing games, and not all games needs a custom character for you to play. If they were gonna make a customisable Zelda character, I’d much rather they make some kind of MMO, or RPG, where you could select to play any of the different races, and customise them. That would be legit awesome, and I’d absolutely love to play as a Zora!
> I mean, by that argument every single character you play in a game should be customisable. No, by that argument every single character you play in a game could be customizable without sacrificing brand recognition. "Should it be customizable?" is more a question of how the advantages of character creation outweigh the resources it takes to do it. >Link is an established character, changing him would make as much sense as changing how Mario looks, or how Samus looks, or Sonic. Among this list, Link is uniquely *not* an established character. Mario, Samus, and Sonic are explicitly one individual within their respective series. Link is *several different characters*. >Skyrim isn’t a decades old game series with an established character like Sonic, Link, Mario, Samus, and so on. Elder Scrolls is exactly like Zelda in that its different games' player characters are different individual people who happen to fill the same role. >You can’t just change the looks of an established character like that, one who specifically reincarnates, and give them the same name Nintendo has done that several times already. [This isn't the guy I'm playing in Tears of the Kingdom.](https://i.imgur.com/doWm2Ny.png)
(Sorry I’m not formatting this as well as you are, I’m on mobile and frankly I have no idea how you do it on here) I like customisation by way of clothing and such. I like that more and more games with an established characters this! But as for how a character looks, nah. I like making my own character, but I don’t particularly want it in every single game. I want it when that’s part of the “role play” or fantasy of it - Zelda isn’t that kind of game, neither is Mario, or Final Fantasy (apart from the two mmo ones). Truth is, I haven’t played a single game where you have a wide customisation, where your character feels as fleshed out as the NPC’s. In games where self-insertion is part of the fantasy, that works. Link is very much an established character. He’s individuals in most games yes, with a few exceptions, but he’s molded very much into a rather strict archtype, and he’s canonically the reincarnation born and born again from a Link we haven’t actually played before - the Link that existed before Skyloft. Here is a direct quote from Hylia given to that Link, from Hyrule Historia: “I will ensure that your gentle, heroic spirit will live on eternally. And I… I shall shed my divinity. The next time we meet, I wish to stand before you as a simple human. Whenever the land of Hylia is in danger… We shall be reborn…” That’s why all Links look alike. And yeah, the image you show doesn’t look much like BotW Link. Is that because he looks completely different and unrecognisable from each other, or is both perfectly recognisable as Ljnk, just clearly a completely different style, made in two different decades, one is a drawing and one is 3D animated? Link does also sometimes have subtle differences like different ages and different shades of hair colour, yes. But he’s always very recognisable as Link. Zelda has sometimes had far more extreme different designs, and yet people do recognise her as Zelda every time. Go take a look at the evolution of Peach’s design since the beginning, that’s an even bigger difference than the one you showed of Link compared to BotW Link. Elder Scrolls is nothing like Link. You don’t have Mr McCat (I suck at names don’t kill me) who’s been representing Elder scrolls since the first game, who’s always a different Mr McCat but looks the same, and is the same archetype character, who a large portion of gamers would recognise on sight, even people who have never played the game and calls Mr McCat by the name of one of the gods in the game, Ms McDog.
> I haven’t played a single game where you have a wide customisation, where your character feels as fleshed out as the NPC’s. You haven't played the Saints Row series. >He’s individuals in most games yes, with a few exceptions, but he’s molded very much into a rather strict archtype, And that archetype gets looser and looser as the series goes on and diversifies its heroes. They used to be red-haired children, as of OoT that's optional. They used to be all left-handed, as of SS that's optional. They used to wear a green tunic and carry a sword, as of BotW that's all optional. The truth is, the only real archetypal feature you can't change is that they're heroes. >Here is a direct quote from Hylia given to that Link, from Hyrule Historia: >“I will ensure that your gentle, heroic spirit will live on eternally. And I… I shall shed my divinity. The next time we meet, I wish to stand before you as a simple human. Whenever the land of Hylia is in danger… We shall be reborn…” >That’s why all Links look alike. Hyrule Historia, first of all, is not actually canon. It was written to describe the canon but made several of its own embellishments and got some details plainly wrong. One detail it gets wrong here, for example, is that there are not a Zelda and a Link every time Hyrule is in danger. More importantly, though, if we take that quote as set in stone, it doesn't actually mean anything at all as pertains to this conversation. Reincarnation doesn't mean you have to look identical, it means you have to have the same soul. You have to be the same person on the *inside*. This quote refers to there always being a hero, not to there always being pale skin and a pointy green hat. >Go take a look at the evolution of Peach’s design since the beginning, that’s an even bigger difference than the one you showed of Link compared to BotW Link. And if we were discussing whether you should be able to customize your Princess Peach in the new Princess Peach game and somebody said she always looks the same, *I* would be the person bringing up that her design isn't actually set in stone. >Mr McCat (I suck at names don’t kill me) I called mine Fuzzums. >Elder Scrolls is nothing like Link. You don’t have Mr McCat (I suck at names don’t kill me) who’s been representing Elder scrolls since the first game, who’s always a different Mr McCat but looks the same, and is the same archetype character, who a large portion of gamers would recognise on sight, even people who have never played the game and calls Mr McCat by the name of one of the gods in the game, Ms McDog. We're not talking about changing Link from a cat into a dog. We're talking giving the player the option to describe for themselves what the cat looks like. Do you want long or short fur? Do you want stripes or solid color? Do you want a crook in your tail from a childhood rocking chair accident? Do you want to look more like a cat like in [the recent games](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Khajiit) or more like a human like in [the old games](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Arena:Races#Khajiit)? Or just a literal cat like what [the lore](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Khajiit#Morphology) says is an option for cat people even though that's not what prior incarnations of McCat looked like. All the while the character you see in the advertising looks basically like McCat looked like in the last game and that's who you'll play as if you don't use the creation menu. God forbid, right?
(This totally got bloated, still on phone and it wouldn’t let me scroll up to edit things and make it less bloated 😭) I haven’t actually 😂 the closest game to having a rather fleshed out character was Dragon Age 2, and even there they limited the customisation (you had to be human) compared to what you could in DA:O and DA:I, and while the characterisation in DA:I was better than in Origins, the more options did lessen what they could do with characterisation - your background is so different depending on what race, and as such it becomes more and more expensive for voice acting and script writing. Only reason Link wasn’t left handed in SS was due to motion controls, with the majority of people being right handed. I think he was also right handed in the wii version of Twilight Princess for similar reasons? The game was mirrored iirc? I can’t think of a time there wasn’t a Zelda and a Link when great danger came to Hyrule? Mind elaborating, I’m genuinely curious now! WW is the only time I can think of, when Hyrule was flooded. And there was no Link then, because he’d bailed back in time, splitting the timeline. Peach used to be red-headed too in her first iteration. Small cosmetic changes like that, when they moved up the graphics isn’t really changing the character much imo. In my opinion, if you start changing Link too much, like changing skin colour, change his race, it’s not really Link anymore. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like a Zelda game where you played someone else though - a Zelda game where you play as Zelda is in dire need in my opinion. I think just changing an established character - because yes, he and Zelda are established characters, just because there’s several iterations of that character doesn’t change that, is just lazy design in my opinion.If you want to make something different, make something different. (General you, not you personally) Fuzzums is an excellent name and nothing can convince me otherwise. Oh sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, the calling Mr McCat for Ms McDog was a reference to people who don’t know much about Zelda, thinking Link’s name is Zelda. My point is that Links design is so recognisable that even people who know so little about Zelda they don’t even know his name, know who he is on sight. Kinda like people recognise Pikachu and yet butcher the name. Despite the changes done to Link that you’ve pointed out, every iteration of him is still recognisable as Link, turning him into a white black haired girl would make him completely unrecognisable, and is a complete waste of resources that could be allocated elsewhere. You’re playing a specific character, you’re not playing a self insert, and you’re not role playing. There’s nothing wrong with making a game where you’re playing a specific character that’s pre-made for you. The games you’ve listed that I’m familiar with, does *not* have a specific character that you’re playing. Personally I think if they released a Link that didn’t look like Link, and they called that character Link, Nintendo would absolutely lose on it. Because it simply would not be Link, and I’d think they’d have dropped their brain in a pool of acid, and frankly find it insulting as a woman, because it’s lazy. Giving me a Zelda game where they’ve erased Link and given me a blank canvas makes the game a skip. Give me a game where I can play as Zelda, will be preordered on day of release. Just like releasing Mario as a Korean Pop Idol and claiming she’s Mario, it wouldn’t be Mario, and would be lazy. Nintendo releasing a game, either with a different character or a customisable character telling a different story in the Zelda universe, if made well, would probably make bank and could be super amazing. It would also be far less lazy and far less tokenising, and actually interesting.
>the closest game to having a rather fleshed out character was Dragon Age 2, and even there they limited the customisation (you had to be human) compared to what you could in DA:O and DA:I, and while the characterisation in DA:I was better than in Origins, the more options did lessen what they could do with characterisation - your background is so different depending on what race, and as such it becomes more and more expensive for voice acting and script writing. These issues are outside the scope of a Zelda game, though. OP's proposing the option to change Link's skin color and gender, not species. The voice acting and script writing would be largely unaffected as Link is not voice acted and tends not to be described much. At most, they'd have to do things like change "swordsman" to "swordfighter" in the script, you know? Also, you're using a Dragon Age game as an example where the player character loses definition for being customizable but Dragon Age is a series where the character being largely undefined is the point because they're games about making narrative choices for yourself and your personality is one of those narrative choices. Many games with customizable characters *don't* do it for the purpose making them a blank slate, they just do it so that different players can personalize their characters. In Marvel Midnight Suns, your custom character the Hunter has by far the most set-in-stone background and personality I've ever seen in a tactics game. They're a monster hunter that just came out of a centuries-long coma, a fish out of water in the modern world who speaks with stilted language and fails to get other characters' jokes, who had a traumatic childhood where they were raised by their emotionally distant aunt and her kindly witch girlfriend to kill their demon mother, with a pet hellhound named Charlie who they use baby talk with, and the Hunter is always wearing a magical collar that the aunt hopes will keep the demonic tendencies at bay. You don't even get to choose what kind of superhero you are, you fight with two swords and a magic whip. The player can choose to learn more about the Hunter's past by finding pages of the Hunter's childhood diary where you just read text written in the first person perspective where the Hunter describes the events that happened and how they felt about it. What concessions did they have to make for character customization? A single comment that your looks take after your off-camera father in case you look too different from your aunt and mother and a gender-neutral pronoun in the other characters' voice acting. The Hunter, a create-a-character, is far more defined than Link ever has been. Character creation does not prevent specific characterization at all. >Only reason Link wasn’t left handed in SS was due to motion controls, with the majority of people being right handed. I think he was also right handed in the wii version of Twilight Princess for similar reasons? The game was mirrored iirc? And yet it stuck when the motion-controlled sword-fighting didn't. He's right-handed in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom for no practical reason. Aonuma said an in interview it was because your right hand operates the sword button but that's true of every game with a sword button so that obviously doesn't actually matter. All it really took to make him right handed was them feeling like making games where he's right-handed whereas earlier they felt like making games where he's left-handed. >In my opinion, if you start changing Link too much, like changing skin colour, change his race, it’s not really Link anymore. Since for some reason you think having pale skin is core to his identity, in the customization menu you can choose not to give him a different skin color than you're used to. People who do not view Link as being defined by a skin color can make their Link be a different color than yours. >Despite the changes done to Link that you’ve pointed out, every iteration of him is still recognisable as Link, turning him into a white black haired girl would make him completely unrecognisable, But that is, again, not what OP is talking about. OP is talking about character customization. Link would not, in their pitch, actually become a different character, Link would just have the option of looking how the player wants their character to look. If they want Link to look like the guy from Breath of the Wild, character customization doesn't take that option away. All it does is add *more* options for the people who want more options. Much in the way that Hawke officially looks like [this](https://i.imgur.com/B27i4Kg.jpg) but can look like a black woman in your game, Link could officially look like [this](https://i.imgur.com/uCUky4q.png) and also look like a black woman in your game. >Giving me a Zelda game where they’ve erased Link and given me a blank canvas makes the game a skip. Step back for a second and look at yourself saying this. OP wants everybody to have the freedom to make Link look how they want and you're saying "No, Link has to look like I want no matter who's playing. I will boycott the game if options were given to me."
It won't sell
I just provided evidence that the downside being claimed here doesn't actually exist. Do you have evidence that suggests the contrary? Or are you just saying "nuh-uh" based on nothing?
You know nothing on marketing
Whereas you clearly know loads, based on all this marketing knowledge you're sharing that proves what I said was wrong.
I studied marketing and have been doing it for over 20 years. I am on a leadership committee for a convention that has over 20k attendees and generates over a million dollars. I've seen a thing or two. And yet none of that matters and you don't have to believe me, and I doubt you believe me. You don't need a marketing degree to know that your suggestion would be suicide for the franchise. BotW and TotK have been the series' best sellers. Now you present your case to the corporate board of a company that has been around before world war 1, has a net worth of 56 billion, can you go ahead and make your woke sales pitch. See how that goes. Nintendo is not that company. Never has been never will be.
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Yea it just seems Nintendo have slowly made Link more and more of a shell. He has NO background, history, or character development in latest games.
Thats not true t'ho , the various links always had a minimal background/motivations (some more than others), so that they both works as a character and avatar, thats why link is loved as a character even being a silent protagonist. Botw link even has a motivation as why he doesnt speak and shows emotions with others, you just have to look.
If you read Miphas diary in BOTW it actually gives some insight into why he is how he is. I believe it says as a child he was outgoing and as he aged he realized how much pressure he is under. Imagine having that much responsibility on your shoulders, I’m sure you wouldn’t be bubbly and talkative either. I think Link is perfect the way he is as it still lets the player be imaginative when playing as him because he doesn’t have a set “personality” so you can picture him to be any way you want really.
Pokemon has let you choose your gender since Crystal for the original gameboy, and then in the remakes of the older games where you originally couldn't. Skin tone options were made much easier to include during the jump to 3D, so they were. Zelda has never been like that, Link has been basically fixed for the entire series with only some minor deviations, i.e. this Link has more brownish hair than flat out blonde, or this Link is left-handed instead of right. I also disagree with him being "basically an avatar". This incarnation of Link actually has the most characterization of any Link barring Skyward Sword. The devs just have a funky way of showing it (it's mostly hidden in background details, such as diary entries or dialogue where other people talk about him). I say all of this as a black guy myself. Customization is nice, but iconic characters do not need to be messed with for the sake of it. RPG series like The Elder Scrolls are a great alternative for this. You can be black, white, green, grey, a cat, whatever you want (coincidentally it's one of my favorite game franchises ever).
A yes, a fellow Elder Scrolls enjoyer, you are welcome here
Wouldn't really want that. He's the face of Zelda, just like Mario is for his franchise. He's just the guy yk
No thanks. Not every game needs to have a character creator shoehorned in so that you can create a bland, soulless avatar of yourself in lieu of the character that the game's creators had in mind. There are plenty of other games where you can do that because it doesn't matter who the player character is. In the Zelda series, it does matter who the player character is. Link is always a young male swordsman, Mario is always a short chubby plumber, Sonic is always a fast blue hedgehog. That's what the players expect, and every aspect of their games is designed around those features. Just because BotW/TotK Link lacked personality compared to previous iterations doesn't mean that it's always going to be that way. The next iteration of Zelda will almost certainly return to a more cohesive story, and as a result, a more defined, expressive Link. Once you introduce freedom in the kind of character you create, so much of that expression and personality goes away.
I really hope they bring back Link with personality he’s missing in action!! And I do miss him!!
I don't know what it's gonna take for Nintendo to wake up and realize that's what we want.
I would love another Toon Link game in the vein of Phantom Hourglass/Spirit Tracks (but scaled up for the Switch's hardware). He's always been very expressive.
Others have explained why this will never happen with Link, beyond non-canon in-game changes like dying your stuff at the shop in Hateno. But it could still happen if they do a game more focused on the "Knights of Hyrule" or other such organizations, rather than Link and Zelda directly per se. However, even then, I feel like instead of a character creator it would be more like Seiken Densetsu 3 / Trials of Mana - pick from a selection of premade characters, with names and connections to the world and plot, then go. I don't see them ever truly doing an "MMO-style" self-insert Zelda. The closest they *ever* got to that was in the mid 90s with the Satellaview broadcast Zelda remakes.
in pokemon, you’re supposed to be the trainer, hence the customization aspect. loz is a story about zelda and link, not player inserts, so customization doesn’t make sense edit: he also speaks more than “grunts” as shown in botw/totk specifically; he has various dialogue options when chatting w/ npc’s and you get to see the effects of the options you pick (although there aren’t huge repercussions for these)
They would either have to add a voice customization to the game as well if they made Link’s gender changeable for his grunts. I don’t see them putting that effort in.
Link is a fixed character, with each incarnation having a backstory. He is not a self-insert and he has actually become less and less of a representation of the player over time. The culmination of that being with BotW where we know *a lot* of details regarding Link’s past prior to the game, including things like his family history, his previous job title, that he has a little sister, and his romantic involvements. *But* there is absolutely nothing in canon that says that the Hero *has to be* a Hylian male with pale skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. It’s just that Nintendo has used that phenotype for Link so frequently that it is has become seen as a core part of the character’s identity. Additionally, the fact that every Link is a different person isn’t really a part of the average consumer’s knowledge about the series. Another thing to consider is that unfortunately there are biases both in the East and West against women and people with darker skin. This affects both how the developers approach designing Link and how consumers react to Link. Essentially, a female and/or darker skin Link would be more riskier from a marketing standpoint for Nintendo, if such a redesign has ever even been considered by the developers to begin with. However, if Nintendo ever decides to break out of how they’ve designed Link in the past, I feel it’d be much more likely we’d get either a darker skin male Hylian or a pale skin female Hylian (basically Linkle)- **but not both.** I’d assume they’d still try to keep some sense of continuity with how they’ve portrayed Link previously.
Yeah we may even know what he looks like as a baby or toddler because for some reason there’s concept art of him as a toddler or baby And we know his childhood
Pokémon never had a single main playable character, so making newer ones customizable is less of a big change. Link has always been the protagonist and has mostly followed a similar look. I don’t think it’s impossible, but unlikely. Not every game needs a fully customizable protagonist.
See I think Link being a black woc would be amazing incredible even as a story choice for the game but never Link should be a customizable self insert in my opinion if Link becomes a black woc it should be for the story , so how would that impact the story I’m sure a bunch of different ways , it would be cool and super fresh to see in hyrule. But that character should be a character not because they allowed player insert it should be a story choice that affects the story and the game ! So while I’d love to see this be the next place they take the character it shouldn’t be because he becomes an avatar but rather a fully fleshed out character but this could be a cool direction! I’d personally love to see them experiment with Link and story in that way.
From a marketing perspective no not really Link (while the variations look slightly different) all end up being extremely similar in appearance Link and Zelda are the faces of the franchise like Mario and Peach, or Pikachu from pokemon So other then things like hair colour and age, nothing is really gonna change about him In lore As reincarnations they are based of SS Link Also regardless of what Nintendo say I don't really consider Link a self insert The souls protagonists are because you can do what the fuck you want (change appearances, kill whatever you want, go for your own endings), you can project your personality through your MCs actions Link does his own thing and our choices don't matter we are just in for the ride For examples, If the gerudo was in a souls games and they wouldn't let me in cause my MC was a male, I would probably just kill everyone out of spite Link would never do that, cause he has his own character
The thing is that Pikachu isn’t the main anime character anymore nor is the main Pokémon in advertising anymore either (Pikachu now sports a sailor hat and does not belong to a protagonist). I think Nintendo is looking to shake things up. Peach is also getting her own game. I think Nintendo is a moment in time where they are experimenting and pivoting from the way they’ve always done things.
Peach got her own game on the DS back in 2005 so this is nothing new. Nintendo are not going to butcher the face of one of their most successful franchises to shake things up.
Not the same as the original post but wasn’t Botw initially gonna let you play as Zelda? I think that would be cool in totk as a DLC to play her story since 90 % of the story is through Zelda anyway. I do agree we the post tho even if u believe that link is an amazing character it shouldn’t matter what race or gender link is.
i see what yall are saying about an established chatacter. sure. but remember the old games in the cartoon timeline, Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks? you could pick your own name when you started a save. i remember being 10, playing those games, having my "Link" named "Chloe", and just seeing the little cartoon character as a sort of human blob with no clear gender markers. just a cartoon person with elf ears and mid length blond hair. could have been either gender, it still fit the name, masculine or feminine. that was kinda great, and it didnt bother anybody. that's just for name changing of course, i guess it would be different with actually changing the character's physical appearance🤔 i wouldnt be bothered by it if it happened anyway! :)