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Frogger on 29 May 2015
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SuperNova said:
spemanig said:


I honestly don't think she should be battling behemoths at all, sans final fight supporting Link against Ganon. Instead, it would be neat if she instead had to solve a final, complex puzzle under dangerous odds or something. Maybe there is a "boss" but the object is not to defeat it, but to remain undetected while you solve the "boss" puzzle. Or maybe evade it while you solve the puzzle. Or maybe stall it while you solve the puzzle. But not beat it, because that's what Link does. Same with thinks like arrows and magic. She shouldn't be able to kill most enemies. Just stun them, or tempererily incapacitate them. Maybe make them fall asleep for a short while. It isn't meant as "ranged combat," but as ranged stealth. It takes time and patience. If she messes up, she's dead.

What exactly would gender switching do that couldn't be done with the characters as their real genders? What possible themes could it explore that couldn't be explored when the characters have their real genders? What gameplay would Link gain by transitioning to a girl that he couldn't do as a boy? I'm sorry, but that point is empty. Bloodborne has undertones of motherhood whether you play as a man or a woman. MM would have still been about loss if Link was a girl or Skull Kid was a... girl. Changing genders doesn't add anything. It's just pandering.

hmm...to each their own I guess. Like I said I'd like something in the vein of Chell in Portal, where she's able to defeat her enemies through smarts and by using her environnement. There could be enemies she has to sneak by because they are too dangerous for her to approach, I just don't think it should be most. I very much agree with bolded though.

True. In those games it didn't matter, well off the top off my head the thing that comes to mind is not a game, but think of Aliens. The primary theme explored is rape. Not that that is something that exclusevely happens to women, but the numer of raped females exceeds the number of raped males by far. Usually when a man walks down the street at night by himself the first thing he thinks of isn't 'I hope I don't get raped'. He might be scared of getting mugged or knifed, but for a woman the thing that sits at the front of her mind will more often than not be related to rape in such a situation. Alien knows that. Alien knows the audiences subconscious mindset about rape and uses it to scare the shit out of them and make them fear for Ripley. It's one of the reasons the movie is so effective. I wouldn't have worked as well if Ripley had been cast as a man. So I don't agree that all change would necessarily be pandering in all cases. There are legitemate reasons why some things work better with a specific gendered protagonist (Can you imagine the Duke being female? I can't.). That being said, I'm not actually saying they should change it. In fact, like I said, I don't mind either way.


If Zelda defeated enemies in a Chell-like way, that would be fine, as long as she isn't clearing like dungeons of 30 or so monsters that way. And again, if she just incapacitates them, I think that would be more in line with her character. I definitely think it should be most that she has to stealth around, though. She's not a powerhouse. If she could just waltz in and take out an entire dungeon, even if it was all by using her mind, Link would have no reason to exist.

But it would have worked fine if Ripley wasn't the main character. The rape undertones come from the alien, not Ellen, and Alien is a movie about making male viewers specifically feel uncomfortable because it's about a woman (the alien) raping all the men of the ship, so that's not even really a great example.

I'm not trying to argue that there aren't examples where gender roles can impact a story, but I am arguing that there's no story that could be told in Zelda that would benefit from a female Link.