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Nintendo Explains Why Zelda: Triforce Heroes Won’t Let You Play As a Female

Nintendo Explains Why Zelda: Triforce Heroes Won’t Let You Play As a Female

While Zelda: Triforce Heroes was an interesting little diversion at this year’s E3, some fans were wondering, “why no female Link?” I mean, the heroes of this story are pretty generic and are specifically NOT the Link we know and love, and Nintendo has a female Link design stored away from Hyrule Warriors . Heck, half of the clothes that Link wears in this game are girl’s clothes anyway (he can even wear Zelda’s dress.) So why can’t you play as a girl in Triforce Heroes ?

Well, according to director Hiromasa Shikata:

There’s this kingdom, an event happens, and the king needs heroes. So, he puts out a call for heroes to gather and one of those is this guy Link. He sees this audition, basically, ‘Heroes needed; apply here.’ And, that’s the start of his adventure.

The story calls for this sort of legend/prophecy where heroes will come together to help solve a problem. And in that, they are male characters. So, because the game is set with that as the story background, you cannot choose a gender; you are a male character.

So, in short, Link can’t be female because Hiromasa Shikata wrote the story that way? That seems kinda lame. But wait, it gets lamer! Listen to Shikata as he tries to justify himself to fans that are upset that Link can’t be a girl:

We do have a lot of female staff members who are playing this game and enjoying it. It doesn’t seem to be a big issue to them. They still are getting emotional investment in this game. And to be honest, Link isn’t the most masculine of guys in the world, depending on how you want to project yourself into the character.

Shikata just “some of my best friends are girls”ed us. He also goes on to say that Link is feminine enough on his own, which makes us wonder why a female Link couldn’t similarly be mistaken for this hero everyone is all hyped about.

Man, Shikata. We didn’t really expect you to let us play as a female Link, but you could have had a better reason for it. At least make your reason hilariously funny like when Ubisoft said that girls are hard to animate.

Source: IGN

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