Is Link a character?

[Zenja]

At the end in most cases, you don't inherently win anything by just changing the character's gender. Giving Link or Chell a different skin and a different voice (Link screams while attacking and Chell sometimes grunts when she gets hurt) while keeping everything else the same, doesn't bring anything new. It just makes the characters more generic (just like the Chosen Undead, the Last Dragonborn, the Lone Wanderer, the Courier, the Hero of Kvatch, etc...)

I agree completely with you. However, making Link more generic isn't exactly a large step backwards in character development. Personally, I would rather see a female counterpart (not Zelda) come in and both of them undergo character development as I would like to see the world of Hyrule get personality through character development. However, Nintendo likes the blank slate approach and is very resistant to character development. Which is fine, but if they plan to keep everything rather simplistic I see no reason to not allow the player's 'link' to be more generic in the name of inclusion for girls. The game may not gain anything but little girls actually do gain something.

There are multiple ways they could approach this and I think Shiek is a good option. Possibly bring in a female counterpart to link named 'star' or 'hope' or something and have her use different tactics than link as well as offering a different variant on the story in the game as the world would react differently. As well, you could have the player be able to swap between the two to create different puzzles. There are many ways to handle this for inclusion that actually offer something to the game in some. Simply making Link exclusively a girl the worst way to approach this, and feels vindictive. Making Link's gender optional is is the easy/tacky approach to this but a demographic would benefit from it and isn't distasteful. Using this to actually add to the game is my preferred route I would like to see them take, but I am really only opposed to making Link not have a male gender option as that just seems very distasteful.

 

[sXeth]

Link is a series of characters. Who have had varying levels of backstory and subtle characterization. In OOT he is very definately a young orphan boy raised by the forest people. In LttP he was a nephew of a knight (?It's been awhile). He has a grandmother and family defined in Wind Waker. He generally displays reactions and emotions to events, and while we never see his side of conversations, it does often imply a certain personality.

As to the other point, nothing really prevents Link XV (or whatever they're on now) from being a girl in the next game. Unless its a direct sequel a la Majoras Mask to Ocarina, in which case it would be changing an existing character,

Granted, I haven't read the whole deeper lore. If Link and Zelda are reincarnations of originals, instead of new versions chosen to serve the purpose, a la DC's Hawkman/Hawkgirl, then gender-flipping them would essentially be making trans characters.

 

[Ryallen]

Why can't he be a goron? Not in the Majora's Mask way, but a real goron. The only thing that really makes Link a character is his spirit of courage. That is extremely ambiguous. The only other real defining part of his personality is also relative to the Triforce - he doesn't have the personality of the bearer of the Triforce of Wisdom and he doesn't have the personality of the bearer of the Triforce of Power. Really his entire character is relative to the Triforce and a few specific character traits, none of which are tied to gender, race, appearance, etc.

Actually, just to nitpick, the original Link, I mean the ORIGINAL original, was a Hylian fighting in service to Hylia the goddess. If he was a Goron, it wouldn't really make much sense in the context of what he represented when he originally fought Demise before he died and Demise was sealed within the sword gifted by the goddess. I don't think that the Gorons necessarily worship Hylia so much as they work with her disciples. They seem to have a kind of ancestral reverence akin to that of the dwarves in Dragon Age, for lack of a better example. It would be like if Zelda was resurrected as a man. Hylia is a goddess in the series and while Link is not a set in stone male so much as a role to be played, Zelda is required by ingame lore to be female, as all the Zeldas in question are all avatars of Hylia, with Link, male or female, being the chosen hero of her preferred race the Hylians.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

He can't be compared to Gordon Freeman since gordon truly has no reaction to anything, not even falling 3 stories and breaking his leg. The damn robot-lady voice in his suit shooting him full of morphine is more characterized than him.

Gordon receives some measure of characterization, mostly by the way other characters (scientists, guards) talk about him.

 

[remnant_phoenix]

It depends on the game.

In Wind Waker (and by extension Phantom Hourglass) and Skyward Sword, he's a distinct character.

In the rest, I'd say he's more of a blank-slate player surrogate.

So... It depends on what they're going for with this next game. If it's more of an open-world RPG type game (which is what it seems to be going for), I'm fine with them injecting elements of character creation and player-choice-based narrative (a la Mass Effect). If they're trying to tell a specific story, (a la Skyward Sword or a traditional JRPG) than Link's gender should probably be decided by the game creators.

 

[sageoftruth]

I really don't think he is. Either he isn't a character, or he's a bunch of characters who share a set of common traits, like the Ryus from the Breath of Fire games. Still, as I've heard some people mention, even though the Links all have a number of things in common, there are also things that distinguish them, based on their gestures and how they go about doing things.
So, yeah. He's a character. Just not the same character as the Links in the other games.