Their vision is too narrow with the idea. Link doesn't have to be the knight. I would argue that "Prince Link" would need courage to effectively rule Hyrule.
I just find it somewhat amusing that in 50 years nobody will remember 'the girl who fights' but everybody will still remember and care for 'the boy who fights' (i.e. the hero, Link). Same sort of issue we're now seeing with Hollywood. Nobody cares about Snow White Who Fights. Everybody cares about Frodo or Jason (as in, Greek poem). These stories remain for thousands, likely tens of thousands, of years. You cannot just rewrite and break and deconstruct them. The current moment won't change or mean anything. History will have forgotten all about this very soon. If this is the hill Nintendo wants to die on, that's their choice. My only suggestion is they be careful not to become like Disney over the next 10 years and ultimately cast themselves into the fire. Note: A clear example of the largely unchanged 'hero story' can be seen with Native Americans, given they have an unbroken culture and storytelling of ten thousand years. Another possible option would be pre-Sumerian Near East and Europe (circa 20,000 BC or so), though evidence is incomplete, there is much in cave paintings, tablets, architecture, scripts, burial grounds, hunting, warfare, and various rituals. 'The man who hunts and wins is the hero' is likely the oldest defined strictly human (non-divine) story ever told (evidenced by cave paintings and otherwise circa 30,000 BC), though some believe the earliest human story is actually Cain and Abel/the hostile brothers (which is a more negative story of man). Another old one is the 'wicked stepmother' as popularised by Disney, and seen throughout folklore, some of which span thousands of years in Europe. Data and studies do suggest that stepmothers are 100 times more likely to abuse and real mothers: we can assume this is a timeless pattern. There is evidence of wicked stepmothers also in Greece, prehistoric stories, and even chimpanzees (females will disfigure/claw at the faces of high-status newborn female chimps as to ensure their own status is kept/furtherest). Humans are very chimp-like in many social situations, both in the negative and positive (or, you could say, chimps are human-like to a certain degree -- whichever you prefer). I cannot prove this, but my guess is that some of the most foundational stories and archetypes are millions of years old. That's why they're universal, timeless, and powerful, and in almost every religion and creation myth in history, and are shockingly popular across general fiction (e.g. novels, movies, and video games), as well. There is also the matter of sexual selection, which also favours such a vision (i.e. the man as the hero), and implies that the female being the hero has no Darwinian weight, if we assume that women are the primary sexual selectors of humans, and follow Darwinian sexual selection and everything we know about human biology, genetics, psychology, narrative, and statistics. Richard Dawkins actually just shared an 'out there' (his words, not mine) theory with Jordan Peterson the other day (at least, the video was uploaded the other day), that the fact humans stand upright was sexual selection. Jordan naturally thought this was a reasonable theory, though the other popular theory is that we stand upright strictly for hunting and otherwise purposes. Of course: one may lead into the other. 'The man who can stand up, can hunt better, is chosen by the female; thus, many generations later, all offspring can stand up perfectly by default.' Well, babies cannot stand up instantly, of course -- but it doesn't take too long. In fact, one of the great markers of a baby's IQ and development is how quickly they can walk. Walking is literally a measure of one's 'humanness', in this sense. That's why many parents care so much about it today -- comparing babies, mothers, etc. I'm inclined to agree with the sexual selection theory, as opposed to some strict mechanical idea. Sexual selection must be implicit -- otherwise, how does it pass to every generation? Only genes can do this, which means sex. It's not strictly a Dawkins' meme, where you can teach somebody to walk -- it's an innate ability. Anyway, just one random, insightful digression. I'll end it here for now.
i think it would be perfect to totk to play in the present with link and in the past with zelda made so you cant advance in some parts with link before advancing with zelda.
Not the point of the video because they still don't feature playable Zelda, but I do think you undersell Zelda's role in Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword a little bit. One of my main issues with SS was that Zelda seemed to be doing way more interesting stuff than Link off-screen.
That's how I felt while playing Skyward Sword too! It would have been really cool if they'd done like Paper Mario & Paper Mario TTYD, and had segments where you got to play a little bit as Zelda to experience her story first hand.
The credits scene of Skyward Sword shows Zelda going through her own journey to awaken her godly self, so she definetly had the potential of been playable as it was originally intended by Aonuma.
@javiervasquez625 imagine if they'd brought back the 'second quest' thing by pulling a Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and you play through Zelda's perspective after clearing the game... That would've been so cool.
After realizing that the the end credit cutscene of Skyward Sword cutscenes we’re originally meant to be in the “Second Quest” and it was unfinished, I find it criminal that we never get to see Zelda’s journey of reawakening her memories of Hylia herself.
...Now I can't stop thinking about a potential game playing as Ganondorf. Like we've been able to play as the wielders of the Triforce of courage and wisdom, why not add power? (This will probably happen 20 years from now. c:)
Bowser got to be playable in Super Mario Oddyssey (32 years after his introduction), so it might take lesser than you think when considering the release of the original The Legend of Zelda in 1986.
A game from Ganondorf's perspective could do so much to humanize this character - not the demon that is Ganon, but the man that demon possessed in its quest for power.
@@javiervasquez625 counting spinoffs Bowser got to be playable way earlier than odyssey. you can play as bowser in 'super paper mario' (2007), and playing as bowser is a huge part of 'Bowser's inside story' (2009), bowser is even playable in 'super mario RPG' (1996). [he might be more of a companion in the rpg games, I've never played them myself, but he is very much a standalone playable character in inside story. that's the whole point of that game] if you count the sport/kart games hes actually playable very regularly as far back as 91, a mere 6 years after his first ever video game appearance (super mario bros., 1985) i dont think playable bowser is very good comparison for playable ganondorf
@@Magnetised_ Yeah, but i'm talking about a mainline title involving 3D platforming ala Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine which neither of the spinoffs you listed belong to. Oddyssey is the first mainline Mario title with a fully playable Bowser.
A playable Princess Zelda would’ve helped better the Tears of the Kingdom story since it has been divided into two separate time periods with multiple perspectives (Link + Zelda). And this is the strongest version of Zelda according to Zelda director Hidemaro Fujibayashi. If we ever get to experienced more of her journey in the Era of Hyrule’s founding and the Imprisoning War, imagined how OP she is with both her Light + Time powers.
Zelda in that storyline doesnt seem to have any interesting mechanics so playing as her would be dull. And not sure what else we could get out of the story if we play as her.
@@lampad4549 We get to see more of her journey and lore expansion when playing as her. And her gameplay mechanics would be far different than Link’s like using the Purah Pad for puzzle solving (and maybe her Recall ability), her main weapon is the Bow of Light, and engaging the enemy with her light and time powers. Plain and simple! This ain’t no f*cking rocket science.
@@infebris I am fully aware. But storywise, they have to… or at least give a small amount space for players to experience of Hryule when playing as Zelda. Not like the cutscenes we have seen in the Dragon Tears. It would be like how Geralt of Rivia as he travels to Toussaint in Witcher 3.
My only complain is Zelda's misrepresentation in Wind Waker. She's a "damsel in distress" for a minute. After it she's active player during the ending, fighting alongside you against Ganondolf.
I think Spirit Tracks deserves some more respect here, Zelda is a full-fledged character in that and *is* playable, I doubt you'd have waffled like that if she was controlled with a stick or d-pad instead of the touch screen
@@lampad4549 WHy do you think it's feminism rather than just wanting a different perspective to experience the land of Hyrule that we've been exploring as the same character for decades? Zelda could be a mage or more pacifist or more tactics based character, why does her being a woman discredit that?
This game take a lot of notes from the philosophies presented in BotW/TotK game design. Pretty early on you can get echoes that allow you to "break the game" by climbing over walls meant to divide areas that are intended to be traversed linearly. It doesn't play like a Zelda game at all. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever played a game that feels quite like this. The closest I can think of is playing a summoner in Terraria. Combat is a frenetic combination of summoning echoes to fight for you and avoiding enemy attacks, and you get around by placing blocks everywhere.
i’m glad you mentioned age of calamity because i ADORE that game and it’s SO zelda-centric at least to me. the whole story really revolves around her and i feel her moveset(s) have a lot of love built into them. when i replay AOC, i always end up playing as her for every single mission that i can
Although it has some cheesy tropes at times, story-wise it feels a lot more like a follow-up to BotW than TotK did. And Zelda really is the main character of it.
I think the video could have considered Zelda's characterization in Spirit Tracks with a little more care. Of course, she's still not a fully playable character, but I think saying she's just a tool in the game is minimizing how central and present she is throughout the campaign. Sheik is cool, and I think the whole debate around transsexuality shows the depth of the character. But badass ninja is playing it safe, while Zelda from Spirit Tracks is funny, annoying, insecure, intelligent, broadly speaking, a more complex character. Not to mention that Link would not be able to survive in any dungeon, or even in the final battle, without Zelda, who owns the entire central gimmick of the game.
@@lampad4549 I agree, and I don't want to undermine the feminist critique. On the contrary, I think critics can simultaneously consider the advances and setbacks in the franchise. Echoes of Wisdom is excellent, and in a next game I would like to play as Zelda again, but with a more complex characterization, like in Spirit Tracks.
@@matheusvitorinomachado4642 lol, I love how you misinterpreted that troll’s reply as a good faith response with the exact opposite meaning to the one they were trying to communicate
If you'd like to read Cristopher Bautista blog, here's the link (or should I say, the 'Zelda'...) cristophermarc.blogspot.com/2012/02/legend-of-zelda-and-transgender.html
@lampad4549 literally the top comment on this video is someone saying that they thought what SS Zelda was doing seemed more interesting than what Link was doing.
@@tinyetoile5503obviously not everyone has the same opinion and theirs or anyone else's opinion is not fact. all zelda did was basically get trapped in some amber for like 100 years and use the triforce
I think something very important about the Zelda series is that it is patterned like a haiku or a cultural music genre. The enjoyment is in how they meet the same things when also keeping it different. Zelda's personality isn't really damsel since ocarina but link has to be the sword guy and he has to fulfill his role otherwise it wouldn't be a Zelda game. You can deviate from the genre creatively but you must focus on the core parts that keep it Zelda. It would be appalling to apply the common storytelling goodness into Zelda because then it would take away what is special about it. I've just started playing echoes and it fits these patterns so well so far.
Read the first line of this comment before the video started and thought for sure this would be a video featuring Simone. I love that it's Clayton, though ☺️
The characterisation of all Breath of the Wild's characters is more interesting and fleshed out in Age of Calamity. You actually get to feel like the super powerful magic user Zelda can be, and the chapter where the goddess power is unlocked is mechanically and narratively extremely satisfying!
Echoes of Wisdom is the first Zelda game I have played on actual Nintendo Hardware that I own, so that already adds infinite bonus points for sure, but it's such a great game as well, there is so much potential everywhere for the franchise. The mechanics being so different from what Link moveset is usually alike but also still feeling familiar and fitting in with the series! The entire game is a bliss, over engineering how to traverse places with echoes of objects is about half my time spent playing the game (even when using a creature can be more efficient faster and simpler) the amount of options that you have are crazy! My only complaint so far as someone who is still a dungeon before the final dungeon is that I wish the game was longer and bigger, doing the sidequests is sure a lotta fun but it feels like the game can just End at any plot point. The Lore possibilities that it brings is also incredible, there's a very quick note that in this reality Link Actually Speaks and got mute from a side effect of the rifts, and Zelda being able to speak but being silent in the player's perspective is definitely a creative choice / something that they put a little mark for people to see. This really brings so much stuff to the franchise... It also immediately sets the precedent to have a possible Ganon as the MC game / spin off, imagine what story it could have with a great point of view of what Ganon's thoughts of this whole timeline mess are. It's definitely something that will happen in like 5 to 7 years for sure! There is so much potential for the future stories, I really really hope Echoes of Wisdom does well and more people really love it, it's an amazing game!
I hope next time they make Zelda the protagonist they have enough confidence in the differences between her character and Link's to let her use a sword if people want to, limiting the amount of sword play is the only think I think holds back the game
So strange that Nintendo has only recently started fleshing out side characters-Luigi, Peach, Zelda, Toad-these characters are perfect for experimenting with the franchise while also giving them an identity of their own. Even though they are shallow, I think most people don’t want Mario or Link to change- so I hope Nintendo keeps experimenting like this.
@@mmzero406 Luigi's been fleshed out as early as 1992 with Mario is Missing and later in 2001 with Luigi's Mansion, so i wouldn't say Nintendo has only _recently_ started "experimenting" on their side characters. That said, it's clear Nintendo has no plans of removing their major mascots from their respective spotlights when they're the largest source of income within their respective franchises.
Nintendo has always had a thing for fleshing out side characters, though. Consider how Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Diddy Kong, and Wario all got multiple games and became their own franchises after spinning off from inclusion in Mario games as villains or sidekicks Hell, in the case of Diddy Kong Racing, we have a spin off character from a spin off game getting his own game
My favorite Zelda is Sheik from Ocarina. But they do her dirty at the end. She goes from hardened world traveled tom boy to prissy helpless princess in an instant.
17:10 Intriguing interpretation of the initial teases for Tears of the Kingdom and what could have been. Certainly would've been a fantastic shocker of a surprise had Zelda actually become the main protagonist for that adventure. Hopefully if Echoes of Wisdom sells well, Nintendo will finally get the message that fans truly want to play as Zelda for once. (I have not played Echoes of Wisdom yet and am holding out hope that Zelda will acquire some kind of Sheik form like she does for her "swordfighter" Link form...but I'm getting the feeling that that doesn't happen...)
Whenever this discussion comes up I always ponder the timeline where we get a game set in Lorule from A Link Between Worlds, where the fan theory is that the triforce roles in that world are shuffled slightly and Lorule's version of Link is sneaky and charismatic (Wisdom) and Lorule's version of Zelda is a stone cold badass who WILL stab you (Strength). Getting to play as either of them would be a really interesting mirror on their regular counterparts but I think getting to be Murder Zelda would be insanely fun and would remove that "but that's Link's role" problem entirely lol
The thing with "readings" of a narrative is there's a million ways you can interpret them in order to have them fit your desired worldview. If you had a "trad" view, you could read Zelda's actions in Ocarina of Time, as not trans-coded, but as trad-coded. She does after all, only use her Shiek disguise while Link is absent and when he's underpowered. When he's at full strength and able to "protect" her, she immediately drops the Shiek disguise and reverts back to her traditionally feminine appearance and she stays that way for the rest of the game.
zelda becoming shiek in ocarina of time was purely to disguise herself from ganon and appearing male would make him less suspicious of her, shiek is female, and it is not that deep
As far as I'm concerned, the Hyrule Warriors games are canon. The crossover shenanigans of the OG make it a quick & easy explanation for how the timelines merged back together and everything that was previously timeline-exclusive can all exist in BotW's distant future. That also makes it a convenient separation point between the older games and the current era games in that context, which when considering what a wonderful celebration of what the series had been to that point, just feels right. And just letting Age of Calamity exist in official canon as its own little pocket branch of the modern timeline doesn't hurt actually anything. It never has to be anything more than a fun side story where everything turned out okay for once, but it also puts another option on the board to play with if someone comes up with a killer story to spin out of it.
Absolutely, BoTW and ToTK should Take place In the Failed timeline Of the hyrule Warriors games. (If you Beat hyrule Warriors, everything Goes back To normal, So no More crossover Events.) So, botw And totk Would have To take Place in A fail-state Of hyrule Warriors 1.
hyrule warriors is a spinoff thats why it snot in the official timeline, how do you not understand that? its not canon because nothing in it COULD be canon, it contradicts events in botw and totk
cute wig! but yea if someone asked me to wear a spirit halloween quality dress under stage lights for any amount of time i would shred costume on the spot. those things do not breathe at all.
I disagree I think not having a sword would show that they're afraid her character isn't enough to stand up to comparisons to Link and this shows they think she's different enough to withstand that
Well i think the point made about the triforce is important here, like not saying they wouldn't have done it regardless, and i do agree it's a bit limiting for zelda, but as clayton pointed out the sword is Link's whole thing. Just in terms of having distinguishable characters and not totally eliminating Link's whole purpose, and keeping in line was the canon of the triforce, you kinda have to give him a shout out
Oh my god so many of you were complaining about her not getting a sword as lame and "sexist" now you're mad she DID get one and that's sexist somehow too?
@@kit76149 What are you going on about? I didn't say it was sexist, I said it was a lack of confidence in her as a main character and in her own powers.
WOW! A TALKING FISH! For real, this cartoon is wonderful -- it was made by an Armenian animation studio and features some truly wonderful visual gags and a bizarre, excellent plot. Highly recommend watching it if you can find a version with subtitles!
Clayton's delivery is everything to me. I've been watching for years and I'm so glad he has come out from behind the camera to star in more videos. Thumbs up for some Clayton love
I don't feel it's fair to say zelda doesn't have "agency" in TOTK. insofar as she is a fictional character not being controlled by the player, she does a lot of important stuff of her own choice, including that one VERY important choice. I just don't think "agency" is the right word.
Why not have a story that tells how link zelda and Gannon all got their triforce pieces and you get to play as all 3 of them and depending on how you played them you get different endings
I mean if we’re talking character art that doesn’t match the sprite’s hair color, Link in the same game is the number one archetype. Pink haired legend
"Link is the hero and that won't change" (Echoes of Wisdom stuff below) ... I haven't quite finished it yet, but it annoys me that even in the game where Zelda is the primary protagonist, they feel the need to hammer this in: Zelda is "The Priestess", and she needs to find and help Link so he can be "The Hero".
I hate that. I remember watching the trailer and being so excited that they were finally doing a mainline LoZ game where Zelda is the Protagonist, and then being IMMEDIATELY disappointed when I saw the very opening of the game still had her needing to be saved before you even get to play as her. I'm still thinking of playing, but man, that's disappointing...
@@keppakappa5033 Ideally, Link would have had his own adventure mostly off-screen, similar to Zelda's in Skyward Sword, but I'm actually pretty fine with how the intro set things up: basically, the game starts at the end of a "typical" Zelda game. Link has all his upgraded weapons and 20 heart containers and goes to fight Ganon. But then it all goes wrong, and after Zelda escapes alone it's made clear that she has no idea who either Ganon ("the blue beast") or Link ("the boy in the green tunic") even are. The game actually sets up some really cute parallels between Zelda's and Link's journeys, and like 98% of the game treats Zelda like the hero. It just seems like someone with authority at Nintendo forced in a handful of lines about the Priestess and the Hero into the second half of the story. Along with the Funko Pop art style and the fact that Zelda mostly fights with gimmicky, borrowed powers (Tri's echoes and Link's sword form), those few of lines of dialogue are my main issue with the game. I just finished the story today and had a really good time through most of it.
@@lampad4549 Of course I played it. I loved Wind Waker. And I disliked how she doesn't get to be a pirate anymore after her royal princess status is revealed. Her joining you in the final fight is cool, but doesn't redeem that.
(Nitpicking) I wish they did a better job creating an identity for what a “game where Zelda is the main character” is. I’ve heard countless reviews of the game say it’s “like ToTK, but in the top-down style of Zelda,” which doesn’t offer a reason for this game to be a game about Zelda and not about Link. Being the triforce of wisdom, and also someone who can talk (unlike our stoic Link), I would’ve preferred to see this new game carve out a more mystery/“dialogue choices matter” sort of gameplay. Still have the magic, still have many of the elements this new Zelda has, but it now creates an identity that she can claim that Link’s design could never touch. This game is better than nothing and looks fun, but it could’ve been something so much more for the future of how we view Zelda (imo).
I see what you mean... I'm guessing that given the previous missteps, the team was under constant pressure to answer the question "why does this feature have to be in a Zelda game", lest they fall back into gimmicks like FMV or poorly-received motion controls. I am a little frustrated that reviews are so reductive to just call it top-down ToTK. Even though its transformation of the formula is just as refreshing and some moments call back to the earlier installments, its tone and themes are distinct from previous entries in some really interesting ways. While (probably) meant as a compliment, I think the comparison does EoW a disservice.
Tears of the Kingdom should have been Zelda's game. I would have much rather stuck with her and had adventures in the past then have her be fridged again just for Link to have to save her again. Plus ToTK taking place in the past could have justified the sky islands, the underground, and the temples as stuff that existed back then. And all of the Zonai part manipulation and contraption making fits Triforce of Wisdom more than courage.
man i so want a game where we can play as sheikh now.......... ive been wanting a ganondorf centric game for a while now but that alternate oot game with sheikh sounds so fucking rad 😭
Not to rain on your parade, but honestly it's more like "there are two distinct blonde characters in this series, what are the odds they introduced a third one that's never in the room at the same time as one of them"
@@rachelrachel9152 "not to rain on your parade but this formative experience you joked about influencing your gender identity was an easy twist that any idiot 8 year old could've solved." maybe next time keep it to yourself
@@rachelrachel9152like i really don't know what would compel someone to be like "actually the twist was obvious and retroactively finding meaning in it is stupid." what are you hoping to achieve??? none of my siblings or friends caught it. because we were like, y'know, 8 years old.
calm down bruh the shiek thing is not that deep, it didnt inform anything, you were literally 8 😭 most kids at 8 dont even know what a trans person is let alone if they are trans. maybe looking back on it you could assume that, but in the moment thats definitely not what happened because no one that young thinks like that
@@infebrisI think op was making a joke rather than trying to prove a point about every child's experience on gender. I think youre the one reading too much into it
Saying that Links identity is "being the hero" as a reponse, really means "Zelda's identity is being a damiselle in distress, and we see nothing wrong or repetitive with it".
Agreed. And it is really a matter of saying if Link is the hero, then Zelda the one being saved, and if that is the case then she is something like a reward. Not to say that every case of the trope is bad, and the franchise could be said to have better than most strong characters that happen to be female. But if Link is a multi-version character that can change elements, then Zelda as a similarly reoccurring character could also change. Her having a different role, like say as partner, wouldn't mean Link is no longer a hero.
i dont think you understand, demise's curse basically made hyrule into a giant semi-time-loop. every event in most of the games are basically the same in premise, link gets a sword or a triforce piece and defeats the current incarnation of demise's hatred because thats what he did in skyward sword, its a loop
@infebris That's just the in-lore explanation for a real-world choice. Nintendo could easily mess around with it if they wanted to. for example they could easily make a game where you play as a heroic warrior who gets affected by the Curse partway through the game, turning into/being possessed by that generation's version of Demise's Wrath. Forcing another character (Link or Linkle or Zelda) to go and put them down. Or one, like Echoes of Wisdom, where Link fails (don't forget that that's how we got the Downfall timeline) and Zelda has to go and get him. Or one, as someone else stated, in Lorule, where there isn't a Triforce anymore. Or, they could just let players choose whether to play as Link or Linkle. There's a lot of possible in-lore explanations that could be devised to justify a playable Zelda (or Ganondorf or literally anybody else)
I want to love everything about Echoes SO BADLY but the combat is just so damn tedious to me. I'm usually pretty aggressive with the melee combat in BotW/TotK, though, so it's frustrating for me to have to have other things not only fight FOR me, but fight much more slowly to boot. I find myself avoiding combat as much as possible so I can get to the traversal echo puzzles faster, because that's the part of the game that I thoroughly enjoy.
There were about 350 times during Echoes of Wisdom that made me grumble at the game "just let me play" because I was stuck in slow, overly drawn out dialog. So you could say that game often doesn't let me play as Zelda either.
It could work, but it would feel like changing for the sake of it. And it wouldn't really be playing as Zelda but rather She-Link going to save He-Zelda. Imo, the issue is that Link's archetype is more rigid than Zelda's. She can be the main character without issues, but can Link work as easily as a supporting character in all kinds of games?
@@Narlaw1199 Sure there's an archtype for both of the characters but at the end of the day, they are just characters. They can be whatever you want them to be
@@xelspeth Indeed, but it seemed that Nintendo as of now is very attached to their current archetypes, hence why they made Zelda the main character *after* realising the echo mechanics made much more sense for her. Though they could totally do an adventurous Mage Zelda rescuing an imprisoned Knight Prince Link, which is essentially what EoW is.
I mean, Zelda is pretty good in ultimate. Not top tier by far, but unplayably bad is a pretty big oversimplification. But yeah, sheik is usually better, and zelda definitely WAS pretty unplayably bad in the older games
PLEASE give us a four swords/triforce heroes style game but two players where one person plays as link with traditional abilities and Zelda has these echoes, and you have to work together to solve the puzzles (in single player you can swap between them with a button)
I don't understand why so many people who played in the 90s liked the Link and Zelda CD-I games. By modern standards, the game isn't that good. I've seen people who play Retro games like The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the past, Link's awakening and so on. Modern gamers playing old games have liked these, but while some have had positive reviews of the CD-I games, others didn't bother playing all the way. In contrast, when talking to people born in the 80s who played the Legend of Zelda games, I've heard people like the classic games _and_ the CD-I games (for the few who could play it, it wasn't a popular platform). "Yeah Link: The Faces of Evil was actually pretty fun in those days. The animation doesn't hold up now, but imagine you were a kid back then and it was fine." is a sentiment I get which puzzles me. Maybe this is like the scene in Yugioh. Nowadays, a scene where two guys threaten Seto Kaiba with their invisible guns (a lot of guns were edited out in the English version like in this scene although some got changed to laser), looks absolutly silly, but when I was a kid the VAs of those nameless goons sold it so well they sounded menacing.
Wasn’t the “Ex-CUSE ME, Princess” from a Friday-afternoon cartoon, not a Saturday-morning cartoon? I seem to recall it airing only on Fridays as part of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show (while Monday through Thursday would show Mario cartoons instead). Am I fully misremembering this?
imo there is no reason to not have a game where Link and Zelda adventure together with quirky friends and why the holder of the triforce of courage has to be male or why Not Link can't use the Master Sword. Or you could have a female lead adventure with no Ganon. Or a side story in Hyrule with out a world threat.
only someone with the spirit of the hero can hold the master sword or use the triforce of courage, besides the triforce got retconned into a power that zelda can use in BOTW anyway so that doesnt matter, also there was never anything saying that the wielder of any particular triforce has to be a certain gender. they just have to be an incarnation of zelda, demise's hatred, or the spirit of the hero.
Why is the bar for Nintendo/Miyamoto/Aonuma to be "pro-women" set at "playable character is woman"/"main playable character is woman." Zelda's inclusion in spirit tracks is indeed token-ish since she IS effectively a magic wand to control spooky darknuts, but that claim is reductive. It's not a stretch to say that, but it IS reductive. At least Echoes of Wisdom seems to not only be great but at least it came out at all. I understand the frustration and we shouldn't "be happy with scraps," but the frustration with Spirit Tracks is best used if directed at her regulation to a Navi/Fi character. She nags. A lot. Also if riding trains and using women as tools/being nagged by women isn't some weirdo at big N's fantasy I won't be surprised.
The Legend of Link: Echoes of Wisdom. What an incredible game. What? That's not it's name? Well, that is the canon name. Do we not name the game after the one character we rescue?
Sheik being Zelda "in a different outfit" was backpeddaling from the company. Sheik was supposed to be another entity. An elter-ego, in the most absolute sens: another being, living in the ocarina, meant to protect the royal family in vague and mysterious way that game in the 90s were not super keen to describe. But sheik was another sentient and living being, sharing existence with Zelda. I came over this "no sheil is just a costume " so often over the years, and I had a ahrder and harder time finding the sources back. As old forums dies so does information I guess. I wish I could find those old japanese interviews.
I sound like a broken record defending the first hyrule warriors game but i don't care I honestly loved that game in highschool, I was excited to come home and play as my franchise favourites and just hack and slash to my heart's content
Okay, but I think you are severely underselling some of Zelda's roles in the other games. She was not a "tool" in Spirit Tracks, she was a fully fleshed out character with an arc. It was her journey just as much as Link's. In Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, she is 100% the main character, you play as the support. The story is about her and her growth, the sacrifices she makes to save Hyrule.
I do think this video kinda downplays Zeldas importance in some of the games. In most of the 3D games she is the deuteragonist going on her own journeys and having much more of a focus on her own self sacrifice and battles, which just because she needs saving doesn't mean she lacks agency.
Yeah but, why don't we get to see those journeys... I would've MUCH rather played through the story Zelda got to have in Tears of the Kingdom, but instead I was stuck as Link wandering around collecting random cutscenes of a much cooler story that happened thousands of years in the past.
@@keppakappa5033 i understand and even kinda agree, though not with the specific example bc there putting together what happened is part of the story I agree there could obviously be more shown of her stories, but I'm more just saying it does her a disservice to just say she's a damsel in distress in like skyward sword or twilight princess
I should also add that a few of the things mentioned in the video are just "Nintendo posts a teaser, fans speculate something, Nintendo reveals the far more expected outcome, fans get upset over something not promised to them in the first place". Obviously not all of those things but there were at least two points in there of this nature
I think the point is, people want to play as Zelda. It's not really about whether or not her character is reasonably developed already or how much of an influence she has on the plot in any given game. People want to play with her as the protagonist and it was annoying that Nintendo put it off for so long
"Hyrule Warriors lets you play as fan-requested characters, like Tingle! Oh, and also Zelda, Tetra and Sheik." Weirdly, out of all those characters I would probably call Tingle the best character in that lineup. He's very good at wide-area cleanup in a way that none of the rest are. (I know tier lists generally disagree with me there, but those are wrong.)
Well that was sorta Clayton's point, that Tingle recieved more attention (or was a more viable character) than the character thats literally the name of the darn game
@@rachelrachel9152 Having played it, Zelda gets a pretty big presence as far as storyline and weapon selection/character slot count is. Hell, counting personas like Sheik Zelda's the most represented character in the roster--there's four Zeldas to three Links. But the appeal of a Warriors game is basically raw scale, and that extends to the roster, which does do her a disservice. Yeah Zelda's playable, but that's a little boring when the roster includes Darunia, the boat from Wind Waker, and 'Midna but specifically from the final cutscene in Twilight Princess' ending'.
The dress was too warm because the fabric was synthetic. Polygon should budget to get Clayton a nice Zelda cosplay made of like. Linen.
I'd love to see a game where the two of them go adventuring together, and you can switch which you play for different abilities.
yeah that would be awesome, link with his normal physical attacks and zelda maybe with magic?
Not a traditional zelda, but like Cadence of Hyrule?
Anonuma: If we have a Zelda who fights, what is Link going to do?
Link: Take a goddamn vacation, that's what!
idc who fights aslong as its interesting and fun combat
Link *Beating around the bush with a club*
Their vision is too narrow with the idea. Link doesn't have to be the knight. I would argue that "Prince Link" would need courage to effectively rule Hyrule.
I just find it somewhat amusing that in 50 years nobody will remember 'the girl who fights' but everybody will still remember and care for 'the boy who fights' (i.e. the hero, Link). Same sort of issue we're now seeing with Hollywood. Nobody cares about Snow White Who Fights. Everybody cares about Frodo or Jason (as in, Greek poem). These stories remain for thousands, likely tens of thousands, of years. You cannot just rewrite and break and deconstruct them. The current moment won't change or mean anything. History will have forgotten all about this very soon. If this is the hill Nintendo wants to die on, that's their choice. My only suggestion is they be careful not to become like Disney over the next 10 years and ultimately cast themselves into the fire.
Note: A clear example of the largely unchanged 'hero story' can be seen with Native Americans, given they have an unbroken culture and storytelling of ten thousand years. Another possible option would be pre-Sumerian Near East and Europe (circa 20,000 BC or so), though evidence is incomplete, there is much in cave paintings, tablets, architecture, scripts, burial grounds, hunting, warfare, and various rituals.
'The man who hunts and wins is the hero' is likely the oldest defined strictly human (non-divine) story ever told (evidenced by cave paintings and otherwise circa 30,000 BC), though some believe the earliest human story is actually Cain and Abel/the hostile brothers (which is a more negative story of man). Another old one is the 'wicked stepmother' as popularised by Disney, and seen throughout folklore, some of which span thousands of years in Europe. Data and studies do suggest that stepmothers are 100 times more likely to abuse and real mothers: we can assume this is a timeless pattern. There is evidence of wicked stepmothers also in Greece, prehistoric stories, and even chimpanzees (females will disfigure/claw at the faces of high-status newborn female chimps as to ensure their own status is kept/furtherest). Humans are very chimp-like in many social situations, both in the negative and positive (or, you could say, chimps are human-like to a certain degree -- whichever you prefer). I cannot prove this, but my guess is that some of the most foundational stories and archetypes are millions of years old. That's why they're universal, timeless, and powerful, and in almost every religion and creation myth in history, and are shockingly popular across general fiction (e.g. novels, movies, and video games), as well.
There is also the matter of sexual selection, which also favours such a vision (i.e. the man as the hero), and implies that the female being the hero has no Darwinian weight, if we assume that women are the primary sexual selectors of humans, and follow Darwinian sexual selection and everything we know about human biology, genetics, psychology, narrative, and statistics. Richard Dawkins actually just shared an 'out there' (his words, not mine) theory with Jordan Peterson the other day (at least, the video was uploaded the other day), that the fact humans stand upright was sexual selection. Jordan naturally thought this was a reasonable theory, though the other popular theory is that we stand upright strictly for hunting and otherwise purposes. Of course: one may lead into the other.
'The man who can stand up, can hunt better, is chosen by the female; thus, many generations later, all offspring can stand up perfectly by default.' Well, babies cannot stand up instantly, of course -- but it doesn't take too long. In fact, one of the great markers of a baby's IQ and development is how quickly they can walk. Walking is literally a measure of one's 'humanness', in this sense. That's why many parents care so much about it today -- comparing babies, mothers, etc. I'm inclined to agree with the sexual selection theory, as opposed to some strict mechanical idea. Sexual selection must be implicit -- otherwise, how does it pass to every generation? Only genes can do this, which means sex. It's not strictly a Dawkins' meme, where you can teach somebody to walk -- it's an innate ability. Anyway, just one random, insightful digression. I'll end it here for now.
i think it would be perfect to totk to play in the present with link and in the past with zelda made so you cant advance in some parts with link before advancing with zelda.
agreed can't believe they didn't do this.
Not the point of the video because they still don't feature playable Zelda, but I do think you undersell Zelda's role in Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword a little bit. One of my main issues with SS was that Zelda seemed to be doing way more interesting stuff than Link off-screen.
That's how I felt while playing Skyward Sword too! It would have been really cool if they'd done like Paper Mario & Paper Mario TTYD, and had segments where you got to play a little bit as Zelda to experience her story first hand.
The credits scene of Skyward Sword shows Zelda going through her own journey to awaken her godly self, so she definetly had the potential of been playable as it was originally intended by Aonuma.
I've always loved Skyward sword because of that, she's has her own story going on and that's the legend of Zelda lol
@javiervasquez625 imagine if they'd brought back the 'second quest' thing by pulling a Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and you play through Zelda's perspective after clearing the game...
That would've been so cool.
There was originally gonna be a second story where you play as zelda
Im just mad they didn't call it The Legend of Link, Zelda's Awakening.
The legend of Link
After realizing that the the end credit cutscene of Skyward Sword cutscenes we’re originally meant to be in the “Second Quest” and it was unfinished, I find it criminal that we never get to see Zelda’s journey of reawakening her memories of Hylia herself.
Not really criminal just different creative decision that doesnt centre around women
@@lampad4549 It is very criminal
...Now I can't stop thinking about a potential game playing as Ganondorf. Like we've been able to play as the wielders of the Triforce of courage and wisdom, why not add power?
(This will probably happen 20 years from now. c:)
Bowser got to be playable in Super Mario Oddyssey (32 years after his introduction), so it might take lesser than you think when considering the release of the original The Legend of Zelda in 1986.
A game from Ganondorf's perspective could do so much to humanize this character - not the demon that is Ganon, but the man that demon possessed in its quest for power.
@@javiervasquez625 counting spinoffs Bowser got to be playable way earlier than odyssey. you can play as bowser in 'super paper mario' (2007), and playing as bowser is a huge part of 'Bowser's inside story' (2009), bowser is even playable in 'super mario RPG' (1996).
[he might be more of a companion in the rpg games, I've never played them myself, but he is very much a standalone playable character in inside story. that's the whole point of that game]
if you count the sport/kart games hes actually playable very regularly as far back as 91, a mere 6 years after his first ever video game appearance (super mario bros., 1985)
i dont think playable bowser is very good comparison for playable ganondorf
@@Magnetised_ Yeah, but i'm talking about a mainline title involving 3D platforming ala Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Sunshine which neither of the spinoffs you listed belong to. Oddyssey is the first mainline Mario title with a fully playable Bowser.
Lame. Nintendo does not exist to appease annoying straight people
In Metroid Dread you finally play as Metroid.
Metroid Fusion did it first (literally, Dread’s the direct sequel to Fusion)
I hate that this is technically accurate. ;)
You do in Fusion as well, technically
Can't play as Zelda?
Nintendo: Well, excuuuuuuse me, Princess!
A playable Princess Zelda would’ve helped better the Tears of the Kingdom story since it has been divided into two separate time periods with multiple perspectives (Link + Zelda). And this is the strongest version of Zelda according to Zelda director Hidemaro Fujibayashi. If we ever get to experienced more of her journey in the Era of Hyrule’s founding and the Imprisoning War, imagined how OP she is with both her Light + Time powers.
Zelda in that storyline doesnt seem to have any interesting mechanics so playing as her would be dull. And not sure what else we could get out of the story if we play as her.
@@lampad4549 We get to see more of her journey and lore expansion when playing as her. And her gameplay mechanics would be far different than Link’s like using the Purah Pad for puzzle solving (and maybe her Recall ability), her main weapon is the Bow of Light, and engaging the enemy with her light and time powers. Plain and simple! This ain’t no f*cking rocket science.
the problem with that is they would have to create another entire hyrule. do you not understand that?
@@infebris I am fully aware. But storywise, they have to… or at least give a small amount space for players to experience of Hryule when playing as Zelda. Not like the cutscenes we have seen in the Dragon Tears. It would be like how Geralt of Rivia as he travels to Toussaint in Witcher 3.
My only complain is Zelda's misrepresentation in Wind Waker.
She's a "damsel in distress" for a minute. After it she's active player during the ending, fighting alongside you against Ganondolf.
I think Spirit Tracks deserves some more respect here, Zelda is a full-fledged character in that and *is* playable, I doubt you'd have waffled like that if she was controlled with a stick or d-pad instead of the touch screen
I agree, it felt more like a team up than just her as a tool. But I can understand it not quite scratching the itch like Echoes does!
@@Yesnomunah this is feminism wallowing nobody actually cares about playing side characters just cause its a women is why have that itch.
@@lampad4549 WHy do you think it's feminism rather than just wanting a different perspective to experience the land of Hyrule that we've been exploring as the same character for decades? Zelda could be a mage or more pacifist or more tactics based character, why does her being a woman discredit that?
Legend of Zelda tactics, just saying. Link gets to be the hero, and you play as the master tactician, Zelda.
absolutely
Might as well release a Fire Emblem DLC literally revolving around Zelda strategizing armies against Ganondorf's, with Link as the lead Hero unit.
Pretty sure Retro Studios already tried this for the DS
@@javiervasquez625oh my, the shippings...
You wonder why you dont work at nintendo?
This game take a lot of notes from the philosophies presented in BotW/TotK game design. Pretty early on you can get echoes that allow you to "break the game" by climbing over walls meant to divide areas that are intended to be traversed linearly.
It doesn't play like a Zelda game at all. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever played a game that feels quite like this. The closest I can think of is playing a summoner in Terraria. Combat is a frenetic combination of summoning echoes to fight for you and avoiding enemy attacks, and you get around by placing blocks everywhere.
i’m glad you mentioned age of calamity because i ADORE that game and it’s SO zelda-centric at least to me. the whole story really revolves around her and i feel her moveset(s) have a lot of love built into them. when i replay AOC, i always end up playing as her for every single mission that i can
Although it has some cheesy tropes at times, story-wise it feels a lot more like a follow-up to BotW than TotK did. And Zelda really is the main character of it.
Also, shout out to Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, a vibrant and wonderfully fun homage to the 2 side scrolling CDI Zelda games
Great, now give me a game where Ganondorf is a chill dude
Ganondorf farming sim
I think the video could have considered Zelda's characterization in Spirit Tracks with a little more care. Of course, she's still not a fully playable character, but I think saying she's just a tool in the game is minimizing how central and present she is throughout the campaign. Sheik is cool, and I think the whole debate around transsexuality shows the depth of the character. But badass ninja is playing it safe, while Zelda from Spirit Tracks is funny, annoying, insecure, intelligent, broadly speaking, a more complex character. Not to mention that Link would not be able to survive in any dungeon, or even in the final battle, without Zelda, who owns the entire central gimmick of the game.
Plus, the way the inputs work in the DS 3D Zeldas mean the player isn't really playing Link ~or~ Zelda, but directing the pair of them.
Dont undermine feminist narrative, the franchise needs to be criticized more for its representation of women so we can demand more.
@@lampad4549 I agree, and I don't want to undermine the feminist critique. On the contrary, I think critics can simultaneously consider the advances and setbacks in the franchise. Echoes of Wisdom is excellent, and in a next game I would like to play as Zelda again, but with a more complex characterization, like in Spirit Tracks.
@@matheusvitorinomachado4642 lol, I love how you misinterpreted that troll’s reply as a good faith response with the exact opposite meaning to the one they were trying to communicate
Zelda assumes the alter ego of Sheik, a masced, masked ninja
If you'd like to read Cristopher Bautista blog, here's the link (or should I say, the 'Zelda'...) cristophermarc.blogspot.com/2012/02/legend-of-zelda-and-transgender.html
Still mad that they ended up cutting the Zelda second quest from SS. That would've been SO COOL.
I get it, it does nothing besides giving people that have the itch for zelda girl power. That quest doenst sound interesting at all.
maybe if you suck and hate zelda lore lmao @@lampad4549
@lampad4549 literally the top comment on this video is someone saying that they thought what SS Zelda was doing seemed more interesting than what Link was doing.
@@tinyetoile5503obviously not everyone has the same opinion and theirs or anyone else's opinion is not fact. all zelda did was basically get trapped in some amber for like 100 years and use the triforce
I think something very important about the Zelda series is that it is patterned like a haiku or a cultural music genre. The enjoyment is in how they meet the same things when also keeping it different. Zelda's personality isn't really damsel since ocarina but link has to be the sword guy and he has to fulfill his role otherwise it wouldn't be a Zelda game. You can deviate from the genre creatively but you must focus on the core parts that keep it Zelda. It would be appalling to apply the common storytelling goodness into Zelda because then it would take away what is special about it.
I've just started playing echoes and it fits these patterns so well so far.
The costume changes are fantastic, now you just need to wear them to the next Garage Simulator conversation event
Read the first line of this comment before the video started and thought for sure this would be a video featuring Simone. I love that it's Clayton, though ☺️
The characterisation of all Breath of the Wild's characters is more interesting and fleshed out in Age of Calamity.
You actually get to feel like the super powerful magic user Zelda can be, and the chapter where the goddess power is unlocked is mechanically and narratively extremely satisfying!
"Not by a slingshot"
There's literally a Zelda item called a Longshot.
Or a hookshoot
Echoes of Wisdom is the first Zelda game I have played on actual Nintendo Hardware that I own, so that already adds infinite bonus points for sure, but it's such a great game as well, there is so much potential everywhere for the franchise. The mechanics being so different from what Link moveset is usually alike but also still feeling familiar and fitting in with the series!
The entire game is a bliss, over engineering how to traverse places with echoes of objects is about half my time spent playing the game (even when using a creature can be more efficient faster and simpler) the amount of options that you have are crazy! My only complaint so far as someone who is still a dungeon before the final dungeon is that I wish the game was longer and bigger, doing the sidequests is sure a lotta fun but it feels like the game can just End at any plot point.
The Lore possibilities that it brings is also incredible, there's a very quick note that in this reality Link Actually Speaks and got mute from a side effect of the rifts, and Zelda being able to speak but being silent in the player's perspective is definitely a creative choice / something that they put a little mark for people to see. This really brings so much stuff to the franchise...
It also immediately sets the precedent to have a possible Ganon as the MC game / spin off, imagine what story it could have with a great point of view of what Ganon's thoughts of this whole timeline mess are. It's definitely something that will happen in like 5 to 7 years for sure! There is so much potential for the future stories, I really really hope Echoes of Wisdom does well and more people really love it, it's an amazing game!
I hope next time they make Zelda the protagonist they have enough confidence in the differences between her character and Link's to let her use a sword if people want to, limiting the amount of sword play is the only think I think holds back the game
So strange that Nintendo has only recently started fleshing out side characters-Luigi, Peach, Zelda, Toad-these characters are perfect for experimenting with the franchise while also giving them an identity of their own. Even though they are shallow, I think most people don’t want Mario or Link to change- so I hope Nintendo keeps experimenting like this.
@@mmzero406 Luigi's been fleshed out as early as 1992 with Mario is Missing and later in 2001 with Luigi's Mansion, so i wouldn't say Nintendo has only _recently_ started "experimenting" on their side characters. That said, it's clear Nintendo has no plans of removing their major mascots from their respective spotlights when they're the largest source of income within their respective franchises.
Luigi’s had games for a min now
Metroid: Ridley’s Big Adventure would go so hard
yoshis island was released in 1995
Nintendo has always had a thing for fleshing out side characters, though. Consider how Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Diddy Kong, and Wario all got multiple games and became their own franchises after spinning off from inclusion in Mario games as villains or sidekicks
Hell, in the case of Diddy Kong Racing, we have a spin off character from a spin off game getting his own game
My favorite Zelda is Sheik from Ocarina. But they do her dirty at the end. She goes from hardened world traveled tom boy to prissy helpless princess in an instant.
They were going to make Zelda's journey playable as a DLC for Skyward Sword, but it got cut.
Polygon: uploads a video
My terminally-online ass 4 minutes later: LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Never knew polygon had such a strong fanbase
17:10 Intriguing interpretation of the initial teases for Tears of the Kingdom and what could have been.
Certainly would've been a fantastic shocker of a surprise had Zelda actually become the main protagonist for that adventure.
Hopefully if Echoes of Wisdom sells well, Nintendo will finally get the message that fans truly want to play as Zelda for once.
(I have not played Echoes of Wisdom yet and am holding out hope that Zelda will acquire some kind of Sheik form like she does for her "swordfighter" Link form...but I'm getting the feeling that that doesn't happen...)
Can’t believe Nintendo’s new game where Zelda is finally THE main character… has her bedding her way to the top as her superpower
echoes of wisdom spoilers: i love the different outfits you can get, but im a little disappointed they didnt include a sheik costume :p
Whenever this discussion comes up I always ponder the timeline where we get a game set in Lorule from A Link Between Worlds, where the fan theory is that the triforce roles in that world are shuffled slightly and Lorule's version of Link is sneaky and charismatic (Wisdom) and Lorule's version of Zelda is a stone cold badass who WILL stab you (Strength). Getting to play as either of them would be a really interesting mirror on their regular counterparts but I think getting to be Murder Zelda would be insanely fun and would remove that "but that's Link's role" problem entirely lol
The thing with "readings" of a narrative is there's a million ways you can interpret them in order to have them fit your desired worldview. If you had a "trad" view, you could read Zelda's actions in Ocarina of Time, as not trans-coded, but as trad-coded. She does after all, only use her Shiek disguise while Link is absent and when he's underpowered. When he's at full strength and able to "protect" her, she immediately drops the Shiek disguise and reverts back to her traditionally feminine appearance and she stays that way for the rest of the game.
zelda becoming shiek in ocarina of time was purely to disguise herself from ganon and appearing male would make him less suspicious of her, shiek is female, and it is not that deep
As far as I'm concerned, the Hyrule Warriors games are canon. The crossover shenanigans of the OG make it a quick & easy explanation for how the timelines merged back together and everything that was previously timeline-exclusive can all exist in BotW's distant future. That also makes it a convenient separation point between the older games and the current era games in that context, which when considering what a wonderful celebration of what the series had been to that point, just feels right.
And just letting Age of Calamity exist in official canon as its own little pocket branch of the modern timeline doesn't hurt actually anything. It never has to be anything more than a fun side story where everything turned out okay for once, but it also puts another option on the board to play with if someone comes up with a killer story to spin out of it.
Absolutely, BoTW and ToTK should Take place In the Failed timeline Of the hyrule Warriors games.
(If you Beat hyrule Warriors, everything Goes back To normal, So no More crossover Events.)
So, botw And totk Would have To take Place in A fail-state Of hyrule Warriors 1.
hyrule warriors is a spinoff thats why it snot in the official timeline, how do you not understand that? its not canon because nothing in it COULD be canon, it contradicts events in botw and totk
cute wig! but yea if someone asked me to wear a spirit halloween quality dress under stage lights for any amount of time i would shred costume on the spot. those things do not breathe at all.
Philip Seedy-Eye should be remembered for his philanthropy
I just wish the sword fighter mode was not there along with so many references to Link. I feel like they didn't have enough confidence in Zelda.
Link will always be the star of the show for the series
I disagree I think not having a sword would show that they're afraid her character isn't enough to stand up to comparisons to Link and this shows they think she's different enough to withstand that
Well i think the point made about the triforce is important here, like not saying they wouldn't have done it regardless, and i do agree it's a bit limiting for zelda, but as clayton pointed out the sword is Link's whole thing. Just in terms of having distinguishable characters and not totally eliminating Link's whole purpose, and keeping in line was the canon of the triforce, you kinda have to give him a shout out
Oh my god so many of you were complaining about her not getting a sword as lame and "sexist" now you're mad she DID get one and that's sexist somehow too?
@@kit76149 What are you going on about? I didn't say it was sexist, I said it was a lack of confidence in her as a main character and in her own powers.
I want a game where Zelda steals Link's identity and won't give it back.
slingshot joke was choice
nintelda....
Nintelda...
10:52 - Wait - WHAT?!?
Retro Studios was working on a game where you could play as Zelda as Sheik?!?
WOW! A TALKING FISH!
For real, this cartoon is wonderful -- it was made by an Armenian animation studio and features some truly wonderful visual gags and a bizarre, excellent plot. Highly recommend watching it if you can find a version with subtitles!
0:23 Whaddaya mean "bad joke"? I barked out a single laugh at it!
It's pnly bad because "not by a longshot" was right there
@@marche800not by a hookshot though
Animation Magic also worked on King's Quest 7. If anyone was wondering if they worked on anything other than the CDi games and Soviet family films.
Clayton's delivery is everything to me. I've been watching for years and I'm so glad he has come out from behind the camera to star in more videos. Thumbs up for some Clayton love
I don't feel it's fair to say zelda doesn't have "agency" in TOTK. insofar as she is a fictional character not being controlled by the player, she does a lot of important stuff of her own choice, including that one VERY important choice. I just don't think "agency" is the right word.
Why not have a story that tells how link zelda and Gannon all got their triforce pieces and you get to play as all 3 of them and depending on how you played them you get different endings
You're right and you should say it Ash Ketchup
0:43 every final fantasy fan knows that the concept art characters are always blonder than their iconic sprite colour. we're following, don't worry.
I mean if we’re talking character art that doesn’t match the sprite’s hair color, Link in the same game is the number one archetype. Pink haired legend
I can't believe how not ready for this experience this made me feel just 5 seconds into the video.
While she's not playable, I love that, ultimately, ToTK is very much Zelda's story, even if you're playing as Link and he's the one saving the day.
"Link is the hero and that won't change"
(Echoes of Wisdom stuff below)
...
I haven't quite finished it yet, but it annoys me that even in the game where Zelda is the primary protagonist, they feel the need to hammer this in:
Zelda is "The Priestess", and she needs to find and help Link so he can be "The Hero".
I hate that. I remember watching the trailer and being so excited that they were finally doing a mainline LoZ game where Zelda is the Protagonist, and then being IMMEDIATELY disappointed when I saw the very opening of the game still had her needing to be saved before you even get to play as her. I'm still thinking of playing, but man, that's disappointing...
@@keppakappa5033 Ideally, Link would have had his own adventure mostly off-screen, similar to Zelda's in Skyward Sword, but I'm actually pretty fine with how the intro set things up: basically, the game starts at the end of a "typical" Zelda game. Link has all his upgraded weapons and 20 heart containers and goes to fight Ganon.
But then it all goes wrong, and after Zelda escapes alone it's made clear that she has no idea who either Ganon ("the blue beast") or Link ("the boy in the green tunic") even are.
The game actually sets up some really cute parallels between Zelda's and Link's journeys, and like 98% of the game treats Zelda like the hero. It just seems like someone with authority at Nintendo forced in a handful of lines about the Priestess and the Hero into the second half of the story.
Along with the Funko Pop art style and the fact that Zelda mostly fights with gimmicky, borrowed powers (Tri's echoes and Link's sword form), those few of lines of dialogue are my main issue with the game. I just finished the story today and had a really good time through most of it.
@@keppakappa5033its like a 30 second thing at most calm down, its not that deep
Nintendo did Zelda the dirtiest in Wind Waker. Going from pirate captain everyone respects to princess locked in a royal tomb? Absolute disgrace.
For real, even changing her skin tone and making her suddenly so helpless… who’s idea was that 😔
You obviously havent played the game and just watched this polygon video
Did you forget she literally teams up with Link against Ganon in the final battle? She even gets her signature bow in that fight.
@@Lynk56 She doesn't stay helpless.
@@lampad4549 Of course I played it. I loved Wind Waker. And I disliked how she doesn't get to be a pirate anymore after her royal princess status is revealed. Her joining you in the final fight is cool, but doesn't redeem that.
Ooh, another video of Claytoon recommending written essays about videogames and trans experience. Nice.
(Nitpicking) I wish they did a better job creating an identity for what a “game where Zelda is the main character” is. I’ve heard countless reviews of the game say it’s “like ToTK, but in the top-down style of Zelda,” which doesn’t offer a reason for this game to be a game about Zelda and not about Link. Being the triforce of wisdom, and also someone who can talk (unlike our stoic Link), I would’ve preferred to see this new game carve out a more mystery/“dialogue choices matter” sort of gameplay. Still have the magic, still have many of the elements this new Zelda has, but it now creates an identity that she can claim that Link’s design could never touch. This game is better than nothing and looks fun, but it could’ve been something so much more for the future of how we view Zelda (imo).
I see what you mean... I'm guessing that given the previous missteps, the team was under constant pressure to answer the question "why does this feature have to be in a Zelda game", lest they fall back into gimmicks like FMV or poorly-received motion controls. I am a little frustrated that reviews are so reductive to just call it top-down ToTK. Even though its transformation of the formula is just as refreshing and some moments call back to the earlier installments, its tone and themes are distinct from previous entries in some really interesting ways. While (probably) meant as a compliment, I think the comparison does EoW a disservice.
Tears of the Kingdom should have been Zelda's game. I would have much rather stuck with her and had adventures in the past then have her be fridged again just for Link to have to save her again.
Plus ToTK taking place in the past could have justified the sky islands, the underground, and the temples as stuff that existed back then. And all of the Zonai part manipulation and contraption making fits Triforce of Wisdom more than courage.
man i so want a game where we can play as sheikh now.......... ive been wanting a ganondorf centric game for a while now but that alternate oot game with sheikh sounds so fucking rad 😭
me predicting the shiek is zelda twist at like age 8 probably has nothing to do w me figuring out i was trans masc like 15 years later
Not to rain on your parade, but honestly it's more like "there are two distinct blonde characters in this series, what are the odds they introduced a third one that's never in the room at the same time as one of them"
@@rachelrachel9152 "not to rain on your parade but this formative experience you joked about influencing your gender identity was an easy twist that any idiot 8 year old could've solved." maybe next time keep it to yourself
@@rachelrachel9152like i really don't know what would compel someone to be like "actually the twist was obvious and retroactively finding meaning in it is stupid." what are you hoping to achieve??? none of my siblings or friends caught it. because we were like, y'know, 8 years old.
calm down bruh the shiek thing is not that deep, it didnt inform anything, you were literally 8 😭 most kids at 8 dont even know what a trans person is let alone if they are trans. maybe looking back on it you could assume that, but in the moment thats definitely not what happened because no one that young thinks like that
@@infebrisI think op was making a joke rather than trying to prove a point about every child's experience on gender. I think youre the one reading too much into it
Heck, even Tingle got his own fully fledged game that was meh
It’s great that Zelda’s getting her first official game where you play as her!
This should've perfectly been released as: "The Legend of Link" 😂
@@arguellocarlos3202 Yeah but Legend of Link doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
@@suburbantimewaster9620 Yes you are right, though it would've been hilarious.
yes... the *first*
definitely not forgetting anything rancid and awful
@@sybiliminalSyntax The rancid and awful game is not considered official.
Saying that Links identity is "being the hero" as a reponse, really means "Zelda's identity is being a damiselle in distress, and we see nothing wrong or repetitive with it".
Agreed. And it is really a matter of saying if Link is the hero, then Zelda the one being saved, and if that is the case then she is something like a reward. Not to say that every case of the trope is bad, and the franchise could be said to have better than most strong characters that happen to be female.
But if Link is a multi-version character that can change elements, then Zelda as a similarly reoccurring character could also change. Her having a different role, like say as partner, wouldn't mean Link is no longer a hero.
i dont think you understand, demise's curse basically made hyrule into a giant semi-time-loop. every event in most of the games are basically the same in premise, link gets a sword or a triforce piece and defeats the current incarnation of demise's hatred because thats what he did in skyward sword, its a loop
@infebris That's just the in-lore explanation for a real-world choice. Nintendo could easily mess around with it if they wanted to.
for example they could easily make a game where you play as a heroic warrior who gets affected by the Curse partway through the game, turning into/being possessed by that generation's version of Demise's Wrath. Forcing another character (Link or Linkle or Zelda) to go and put them down.
Or one, like Echoes of Wisdom, where Link fails (don't forget that that's how we got the Downfall timeline) and Zelda has to go and get him.
Or one, as someone else stated, in Lorule, where there isn't a Triforce anymore.
Or, they could just let players choose whether to play as Link or Linkle.
There's a lot of possible in-lore explanations that could be devised to justify a playable Zelda (or Ganondorf or literally anybody else)
I want to love everything about Echoes SO BADLY but the combat is just so damn tedious to me. I'm usually pretty aggressive with the melee combat in BotW/TotK, though, so it's frustrating for me to have to have other things not only fight FOR me, but fight much more slowly to boot. I find myself avoiding combat as much as possible so I can get to the traversal echo puzzles faster, because that's the part of the game that I thoroughly enjoy.
There were about 350 times during Echoes of Wisdom that made me grumble at the game "just let me play" because I was stuck in slow, overly drawn out dialog. So you could say that game often doesn't let me play as Zelda either.
Polygon, please give Clayton more budget for dresses
Solution: Just have Zelda be sword wielding hero and Link the prince in distress 🤷♀
It could work, but it would feel like changing for the sake of it. And it wouldn't really be playing as Zelda but rather She-Link going to save He-Zelda.
Imo, the issue is that Link's archetype is more rigid than Zelda's. She can be the main character without issues, but can Link work as easily as a supporting character in all kinds of games?
@@Narlaw1199 Sure there's an archtype for both of the characters but at the end of the day, they are just characters. They can be whatever you want them to be
@@xelspeth Indeed, but it seemed that Nintendo as of now is very attached to their current archetypes, hence why they made Zelda the main character *after* realising the echo mechanics made much more sense for her. Though they could totally do an adventurous Mage Zelda rescuing an imprisoned Knight Prince Link, which is essentially what EoW is.
@@xelspethespecially with how zelda lore works, every few games theres an entirely new link and zelda that are different people
@@infebris I know that. What's your point?
Please link to the blog you recommend at 6:57 it would be just a line in the description.
Edit: also the one mentioned at 15:29
I find it funny how according to some of the devs Link's gender identity essentially boils down to "sword boi"
? bizarre
I mean, Zelda is pretty good in ultimate. Not top tier by far, but unplayably bad is a pretty big oversimplification. But yeah, sheik is usually better, and zelda definitely WAS pretty unplayably bad in the older games
Zelda should be playable more, but to give BoTW credit, it’s canon that she fought Ganon for 100 years straight! Absolute badass
THIS VIDEO GOT APPROVED ASAP BY MANAGEMENT
PLEASE give us a four swords/triforce heroes style game but two players where one person plays as link with traditional abilities and Zelda has these echoes, and you have to work together to solve the puzzles (in single player you can swap between them with a button)
I recoiled at hearing that botw was that long ago
Nothing messed with my brain and perception of time more than learning that BoTW was originally developed for AND RELEASED on the WiiU
I don't understand why so many people who played in the 90s liked the Link and Zelda CD-I games. By modern standards, the game isn't that good. I've seen people who play Retro games like The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the past, Link's awakening and so on. Modern gamers playing old games have liked these, but while some have had positive reviews of the CD-I games, others didn't bother playing all the way. In contrast, when talking to people born in the 80s who played the Legend of Zelda games, I've heard people like the classic games _and_ the CD-I games (for the few who could play it, it wasn't a popular platform). "Yeah Link: The Faces of Evil was actually pretty fun in those days. The animation doesn't hold up now, but imagine you were a kid back then and it was fine." is a sentiment I get which puzzles me. Maybe this is like the scene in Yugioh. Nowadays, a scene where two guys threaten Seto Kaiba with their invisible guns (a lot of guns were edited out in the English version like in this scene although some got changed to laser), looks absolutly silly, but when I was a kid the VAs of those nameless goons sold it so well they sounded menacing.
It would be kind of funny if Echoes of Wisdom had Link on the title.
the games just calle dlegend of link and its a recreation of the first game but you play as zelda instead
I mean, since Nintendo seems to be open to other developers making zelda games again, maybe let Team Ninja have a crack at that Shiek game?
Wasn’t the “Ex-CUSE ME, Princess” from a Friday-afternoon cartoon, not a Saturday-morning cartoon? I seem to recall it airing only on Fridays as part of the Super Mario Bros. Super Show (while Monday through Thursday would show Mario cartoons instead).
Am I fully misremembering this?
…Yes, I know I’m showing my age here. 🤫
I don't know the answer to this but i love this "um actually" nitpick
imo there is no reason to not have a game where Link and Zelda adventure together with quirky friends and why the holder of the triforce of courage has to be male or why Not Link can't use the Master Sword. Or you could have a female lead adventure with no Ganon. Or a side story in Hyrule with out a world threat.
only someone with the spirit of the hero can hold the master sword or use the triforce of courage, besides the triforce got retconned into a power that zelda can use in BOTW anyway so that doesnt matter, also there was never anything saying that the wielder of any particular triforce has to be a certain gender. they just have to be an incarnation of zelda, demise's hatred, or the spirit of the hero.
“The Philips CD-i has the best console startup jingle of all time”
GameCube: “Am I a joke to you?”
Not by a Long Shot still could have worked.
8:17 feels like a meme 💀 I don’t remember that in game, it feels like it was made to exist without context
Great video ^^
Funny edits and I loved the costumes
I'm loving how Echoes of Wisdom is so much more a puzzle game than it is an action game. Wisdom for the win!
really love the sheik discussion
Why is the bar for Nintendo/Miyamoto/Aonuma to be "pro-women" set at "playable character is woman"/"main playable character is woman."
Zelda's inclusion in spirit tracks is indeed token-ish since she IS effectively a magic wand to control spooky darknuts, but that claim is reductive. It's not a stretch to say that, but it IS reductive.
At least Echoes of Wisdom seems to not only be great but at least it came out at all. I understand the frustration and we shouldn't "be happy with scraps," but the frustration with Spirit Tracks is best used if directed at her regulation to a Navi/Fi character. She nags. A lot.
Also if riding trains and using women as tools/being nagged by women isn't some weirdo at big N's fantasy I won't be surprised.
The Legend of Link: Echoes of Wisdom. What an incredible game.
What? That's not it's name? Well, that is the canon name. Do we not name the game after the one character we rescue?
Imagine if they actually did that, and then there was a game called The Legend of Ganon.
the game series is called legend of zelda because the first zelda was hylia
"not by a slingshot"! !!! thats a very good joke Clayton!! stand by your bits!
Sheik being Zelda "in a different outfit" was backpeddaling from the company. Sheik was supposed to be another entity. An elter-ego, in the most absolute sens: another being, living in the ocarina, meant to protect the royal family in vague and mysterious way that game in the 90s were not super keen to describe. But sheik was another sentient and living being, sharing existence with Zelda.
I came over this "no sheil is just a costume " so often over the years, and I had a ahrder and harder time finding the sources back. As old forums dies so does information I guess. I wish I could find those old japanese interviews.
They probably dont exist. Just stuff people say on the internet
my brother in christ we are discussing 'retroactive lore: the game'
I prefer her being zelda than people's ironic terminally online headcanons that say to be tough you have to be a man
This is great, it’s so rare to play as Zelda and not Zelda’s Monster.
The best part of that joke is that there is literally an item called a "longshot" in Zelda.
I sound like a broken record defending the first hyrule warriors game but i don't care I honestly loved that game in highschool, I was excited to come home and play as my franchise favourites and just hack and slash to my heart's content
THERE'S LITERALLY AN ITEM CALLED A LONGSHOT
I WANTED a Zelda where she was basically Link but Zelda. I didnt buy Echoes of Wisdom because it wasn't that.
Okay, but I think you are severely underselling some of Zelda's roles in the other games. She was not a "tool" in Spirit Tracks, she was a fully fleshed out character with an arc. It was her journey just as much as Link's. In Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, she is 100% the main character, you play as the support. The story is about her and her growth, the sacrifices she makes to save Hyrule.
I do think this video kinda downplays Zeldas importance in some of the games. In most of the 3D games she is the deuteragonist going on her own journeys and having much more of a focus on her own self sacrifice and battles, which just because she needs saving doesn't mean she lacks agency.
Yeah but, why don't we get to see those journeys... I would've MUCH rather played through the story Zelda got to have in Tears of the Kingdom, but instead I was stuck as Link wandering around collecting random cutscenes of a much cooler story that happened thousands of years in the past.
@@keppakappa5033 i understand and even kinda agree, though not with the specific example bc there putting together what happened is part of the story
I agree there could obviously be more shown of her stories, but I'm more just saying it does her a disservice to just say she's a damsel in distress in like skyward sword or twilight princess
I should also add that a few of the things mentioned in the video are just "Nintendo posts a teaser, fans speculate something, Nintendo reveals the far more expected outcome, fans get upset over something not promised to them in the first place".
Obviously not all of those things but there were at least two points in there of this nature
I think the point is, people want to play as Zelda. It's not really about whether or not her character is reasonably developed already or how much of an influence she has on the plot in any given game. People want to play with her as the protagonist and it was annoying that Nintendo put it off for so long
Hyrule Warriors also introduced Linkle, the female Link. She was unnecessary to say the least.
"Hyrule Warriors lets you play as fan-requested characters, like Tingle! Oh, and also Zelda, Tetra and Sheik."
Weirdly, out of all those characters I would probably call Tingle the best character in that lineup. He's very good at wide-area cleanup in a way that none of the rest are. (I know tier lists generally disagree with me there, but those are wrong.)
Well that was sorta Clayton's point, that Tingle recieved more attention (or was a more viable character) than the character thats literally the name of the darn game
@@rachelrachel9152 Having played it, Zelda gets a pretty big presence as far as storyline and weapon selection/character slot count is. Hell, counting personas like Sheik Zelda's the most represented character in the roster--there's four Zeldas to three Links.
But the appeal of a Warriors game is basically raw scale, and that extends to the roster, which does do her a disservice. Yeah Zelda's playable, but that's a little boring when the roster includes Darunia, the boat from Wind Waker, and 'Midna but specifically from the final cutscene in Twilight Princess' ending'.
didnt go for the "not by a longshot" joke from ocarina of time? fake gamer
That's the actual phrase, it wouldn't come off as a pun if he'd said that
Slingshot, hookshot, clawshot are all options though
Yeah but put some emphasis on it and toss up a pic and it's pretty clear
I would say the b plot of this video was Clayton missing references, puns, and pronouncing things wrong