A new petition which seeks supports to change Link into a black female for the next Wii U release in the Zelda series. The campaign only recently launched on Change.org and doesn’t seem to be getting too much support at this time, but it does raise some interesting thoughts. I mean, would a games developer ever bow to pressure to make such a big change to a gaming icon? After all, the gaming community did manage to make EA re-do the end of one of their games, and it really can’t be too difficult to include a race selection, even in many iconic franchises.
“For too many years have the black community been underrespresented [sic] in the video game industry,” Watabe wrote on Change.org. “Nintendo went too far this time when they chose to make the new Link white and white only. We need to end this injustice, equality has sadly still not been truly achieved.”
Gaming is a medium that can change and can give users more options, more so than any other kind of media. Personally I wouldn’t mind if Link had a gender and race swap or not, but having this kind of option in more games couldn’t do any harm.
Thank you Stevivor for providing us with this information.
I wouldn’t care about what gender or race I play as just as long as the games is good, it’s not as though I play Zelda games anyway..
in my opinion, on a series that is has been around for a long time, with characters and places that are well documented, you can’t change characters about like that.
if it was a new series, sure. you should have some basic character creation options.
I see the facebook posts boarding on or getting a bit racist. Personally I think a gender swap and race would be a bit strange. I mean if you wanted to make another character in the zelda universe, go for it. I am not offended by that. However the only way I would really be ok with changing the original lore would be if it were a fionna and cake situation. I don’t follow what users think of adventure time with finn and jake, but I never had an issue with it sort of being an opposite universe with finn becoming fionna and jake becoming cake. Which cake has a black female voice actor and a black female sort of tv personality. Only complaint I had there was for the most part the ice king is loveable and redeemable in some way. However the ice queen is just portrayed as a total bitch with no redeeming features. Just over the top bitchiness and evil. That I thought seemed a bit off. I know a bit off topic, but back to zelda; I can’t imagine what else would have to change in the continuity of the story line. Zelda being a male or female? Any other characters who flirted with link along the way being changed or just go with a lesbian situation? Still it’s a memorable series that I wish I had a nintendo wii U to play and 3ds. Either go full on parallel universe or just make a new character if anything and involve link somehow and zelda.