Nintendo Explains Why Link Is Not Female In ‘Breath Of The Wild’

Last year Nintendo officially introduced Linkle, the female version of Link who made her way into the Hyrule Warriors Legends title. It was later rumored that gamers will be able to play as female Link in the upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, but given that we just saw the official announcement, Linkle is clearly nowhere in sight.

So what was with the rumors? Were they dead wrong? Turns out that Nintendo was partially to blame for them being around in the first place. Speaking to Kotaku, Zelda series producer Eiji Aonuma said that the plan for the game was always to have the male version of Link, although he also thinks that because he had always been so vague about Link during past interviews that it could have led to speculation that a female Link could be a possibility for Breath of the Wild.

As to why didn’t they just add the option, or swap male Link out for Linkle, Aonuma explained that this had to do with the philosophy behind the Triforce. “You know there’s the idea of the Triforce in the Zelda games we make. The Triforce is made up of Princess Zelda, Ganon and Link. Princess Zelda is obviously female. If we made Link a female we thought that would mess with the balance of the Triforce. That’s why we decided not to do it.”

Aonuma also told GameSpot that they had toyed with the idea of Princess Zelda herself taking the lead, but this means that Link would effectively be useless/out of the picture. “If we have princess Zelda as the main character who fights, then what is Link going to do? Taking into account that, and also the idea of the balance of the Triforce, we thought it best to come back to this [original] makeup.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: E3, E3 2016, Nintendo, zelda