Over the past eight years, Nintendo has commented a handful of times on what it would take for the company to release a Zelda game where the titular princess got to be Hyrule’s playable hero. 

Back at E3 2016 rumours initially began to circulate that either Zelda or a female version of Link might be a playable character in Breath of the Wild due to an E3 lanyard featuring two images of Link printed onto them, of which one appeared to have longer hair and perhaps be more feminine. This was ultimately incorrect, but it did lead to Nintendo’s first batch of modern day interview quotes about the potential of creating a Zelda game with a playable female lead.

Speaking to Gamespot, Eiji Aonuma stated “if we have Princess Zelda as the main character who fights, then what is Link going to do?”, ignoring the very obvious possibility that perhaps he might be in peril in Zelda’s place.

A man in peril needing saving by a woman? Preposterous.

When asked by Kotaku if we could maybe see a female Link in the series, given the Triforce bearers are reincarnations spread across time, Aonuma’s reasoning was a little different.

“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.”

Okay, cool. The triforce I guess always needs to go to two men and one woman, and we couldn’t possibly have a Prince Zelda to keep things balanced. That would mean the Triforce of wisdom going to a man, and that doesn’t make sense etc.

There were other scattered quotes from Aonuma that came out of E3 2016, but I think a quote he gave to Vanity Fair in 2023 in the lead up to the release of Tears of the Kingdom perhaps said most succinctly what a lot of his 2016 interview quotes seemed to be trying to imply.

“We feel like what takes most priority is this idea of gameplay. If it turns out that the particular gameplay we’re trying to bring to fruition would be best served by having Zelda take that role, then it’s possible that that could be a direction we could take”.

To paraphrase a sentiment that has felt core to Nintendo’s quotes on the subject for the past eight years, there needs to be a reason for the girl to be the hero.

2024 is, in some ways, a really exciting time to be a female Nintendo game fan, who has spent decades wishing for Nintendo’s cast of princesses to get a chance to get their turn in the spotlight. Discounting the Phillips CD-I games, and acknowledging in passing 2005’s DS title Super Princess Peach where the titular hero got to wield the power of extreme emotional mood swings to save the day, Nintendo hasn’t really given fans of their princesses much in the way of playable starring roles to latch onto, something that did undeniably shift a little this year.

Princess Peach Showtime released in March, and offered a creative and varied platforming adventure that, while short and simple, was pretty charming. The number of parents sharing that their young girls really latched onto it was heartwarming to see, and something long overdue.

And later this month we’ll be seeing the release of The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, a top down perspective adventure with Zelda taking the starring role, rescuing Link from a mysterious otherworldly realm using the power of item duplication summoning to find creative puzzle solutions.

And I want to say up front, with no ambiguity, I am incredibly excited for the release of Echoes of Wisdom. Its release cannot come soon enough, and I am confident it’s going to be a fantastic game. The idea of a Zelda game with proper dungeons, and a new mechanic that looks set to bring Breath of the Wild style creativity to 2D, sounds incredible.

The problem is, I can’t unhear Aonuma’s statements about what it would take for us to get a playable Zelda, and as a result view the reveals we’ve seen for Echoes of Wisdom through that lens.

It’s hard not to see examples of how that game, from pre-release marketing, seems to have been built to give a reason, a justification, for a woman to be the hero rather than defaulting to a man.

When Echoes of Wisdom was first revealed during a Nintendo Direct back in June, one of the key things implied to set the game apart from other entries in the Zelda series was that the princess would not be taking part in combat directly. Her core gameplay mechanic, summoning echoes of objects and enemies encountered in the world, would be a replacement for traditional Zelda combat. 

(I know she’s since been revealed to have access to a “Sword Fighter Form”. Trust me, we’ll get to that in due time),

Many people online had arguments for why Zelda not having direct combat tools made sense to them. I didn’t really agree with any of them.

“Why would you want Zelda to be playable if she plays the exact same as Link?”

“Well Zelda’s got the triforce of Wisdom, not Courage, so it wouldn’t make sense for her to fight, she has to be puzzle solving focused”

“If you let her fight directly like Link, you’d have to explain in future games why Zelda doesn’t just save herself from Ganon”

To answer these briefly, in order:

1. I’m not asking for Zelda to play the exact same as Link. Having unique echo summoning mechanics would make her play differently, whether or not she has a way to directly fight.
2. Link has the Triforce of courage, but he gets to solve puzzles in his games despite not having the triforce of Wisdom. It’s usually a plot point that he ends up embodying all three by the end of the adventure. Couldn’t that work for Zelda?
3. Link’s going to need saving in this game despite usually doing the saving. It’s not that hard to justify the reverse.

Lastly, I got a lot of people saying the following to me:

“Zelda’s never been a fighter in the series past, it would be a bit out of nowhere”

This perhaps frustrated me the most of all the arguments made. There’s ample examples to draw from across the series history of Zelda engaging in combat, even if not directly using a sword and shield combo.

As Tetra in Wind Waker, Zelda wielded a sword. In Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess, she wields a bow and light arrows. In Twilight Princess she wields a rapier. In Breath of the Wild she controls magic strong enough to hold Calamity Ganon in place for a hundred years. In the canonically dubious but officially licensed Hyrule Warriors games, Zelda has multiple different direct combat styles. In Smash Bros she wields offensive elemental magic at short range. As Sheik in Smash and Ocarina she engages in close range ninja melee combat. 

And look, I want to be clear, I was okay with Nintendo’s choice for Echoes of Wisdom to potentially be a Zelda game with no direct combat options. I was kind of into the idea of a royal family member having a combat style more centred on summoning monsters like army members to fight on her command, it’s kind of fitting tonally.

The thing is, having Zelda not wield a weapon or have some way to directly deal damage to enemies is not a neutral design choice. Somewhere, a group of game designers sat around a table and agreed that Zelda should not, generally speaking, have access to ways of dealing direct damage. It’s hard not to see her being a woman as the reason that choice was made.

I understand wanting this game to have its own identity and mechanics, but I can’t ignore the fact that if it were Link wielding the Tri Rod, it would be a new additional tool in his arsenal alongside his sword, not as a replacement for it. 

Not giving Zelda a weapon to directly attack with is a conscious choice, and I can’t mentally untangle that design choice from Aonuma’s comments.

“If it turns out that the particular gameplay we’re trying to bring to fruition would be best served by having Zelda take that role, then it’s possible that that could be a direction we could take”.

For Zelda to be playable, there had to be a “reason”, mechanically, for the girl to be the hero. 

The gameplay would need to be “girl gameplay”.

To circle back to something addressed earlier, yes, I am aware Nintendo have since announced that Zelda will be able to wield a sword to deal direct damage in Echoes of Wisdom via “Sword Fighter Mode”, a limited time activated ability where Zelda uses up rare energy found in another dimension to briefly wield a sword herself. 

Why does this require energy? Because to wield a sword, she has to wear Link’s ghost like a costume. 

Zelda can wield a sword, but only if she saves up enough magical energy to get a man to help her swing it for her.

Look, maybe this is an uncharitable reading of Sword Fighter Mode on my part, but dressing Zelda up as ghost Link anytime she wants to wield a sword really doesn’t help my reading of Aonuma’s attitude toward playable Zelda. If she’s going to do a man thing, like swinging a sword, she’s going to need help because as a girl it just wouldn’t make sense for her to be able to do it unassisted. Aonuma needing a mechanical justification for a woman to save the day, and the Zelda design team deciding a woman needs male ghost magic to wield a sword, just feel inextricably linked.

I said earlier in this essay that 2024 is looking like a good year for playable Nintendo princesses. I listed Princess Peach Showtime and Echoes of Wisdom as examples of that, but I actually left out a game that to me deserves to be a part of this conversation. Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore.

A spiritual sequel to the Phillips CD-i Zelda games, with names changed just enough for legal distinction, Arzette sees its titular character, modelled after Princess Zelda, go out on a quest to save her kingdom from the evil “definitely not Ganondorf” villain. She doesn’t do this because fake Link is incapacitated, he’s just really not into the idea of having to do yet another quest involving big scary monsters.

Arzette not only wields a sword and projectile magic, saving her kingdom directly from evil, she also ends up abolishing the monarchy and creating a democracy in her land, after using a magic infused chainsaw sword as her blade of evil’s bane.

Now, I’m obviously not suggesting I want Echoes of Wisdom to be quite that tongue in cheek, but it was really nice this year to get to play essentially a Zelda game where at no point did it feel like any of the design choices involved were trying to justify having made space for a woman to be the one saving the day. It’s a low bar to clear, but one that I keep thinking about during this essay. It helps to remind me that it’s okay for me to have these critiques, even if they’re small. It is possible to make a game that doesn’t feel like the spectre of “designing to fit a female hero” is hanging over it.

Having read through a number of press previews of Echos of Wisdom, which were published the same day as I wrote this essay, it sounds like Nintendo themselves aren’t even truly committed to mechanically separating Zelda from swordplay. An early boss fight near the start of the game is apparently incredibly generous in helping to power up your Sword Fighter energy meter, making using traditional sword combat in the boss fight an easy thing to default to. While not in sword fighter mode, Zelda’s cape can be swung around in a swinging motion to cut grass the way that Link would with his sword. Unless there’s some plot reveal that Zelda’s cape is secretly made of stainless steel, it sounds like not giving her a sword is in many ways an arbitrary distinction more than a mechanical change commited to.

Again, it’s hard not to feel like, perhaps, Aonuma’s quotes are in some way tied to Zelda not being allowed a sword, even in moments where the devs had to make a cape into a grass cutting blade to keep their desired mechanics intact. When push comes to shove, Nintendo do want Zelda to be able to do things best served by swinging a sword, but don’t want her associated with use of a sword. That’s not a neutral decision.

Those previews are otherwise glowing. I’m sure the game will be amazing and I’ll love playing it. But I can’t get Aonuma’s quotes out of my head regardless.

Looking back at those initial E3 2016 quotes, something that stands out is that, as Aonuma confidently states, Link can’t be a girl because the triforce always goes to two men and one woman and the balance would be upset. To that I ask, says who? Because the games never establish this as canon, it’s only canon because Aonuma decided so in that 2016 interview. And you know who could change that fact? Aonuma could. The Zelda series has been retconned before. The official Zelda timeline by Nintendo has had games moved around between timeline split branches more than once. You create the universe, it’s cowardice to suggest there’s some unwritten rule of your world that dictates the gender of courage’s champion.

If you want swinging a sword to remain Link specific, connected to the Triforce of Courage, there’s no reason a female Link couldn’t be born and swing a sword, unless swinging that sword is something you’ve decided isn’t Link specific, but male character specific.

There are little things about both Princess Peach: Showtime and Echoes of Wisdom that because of Aonuma’s statements, I can’t help but think about more than I otherwise might. Princess Peach: Showtime for example may no longer make Peach’s unique super power exaggeratedly emotional mood swings, but it does make her powers centre on twirling ribbons and playing dress up. Zelda gets a new magical ability, and it’s initially showcased as the magical power to summon household furniture in a pinch. I might not have thought about these too closely in a vacuum, but in a world where Nintendo has repeatedly implied that there needs to be a reason for their princesses to be the hero, I can’t help but see these as not being neutral design choices.

I’m not opposed to games with female protagonists being tailored toward those characters’ unique traits, and I’m not opposed to them being deliberately designed to be “a bit girly”. As much as on paper I might question some of the reasoning behind these design choices, I really did love collecting unique dresses and ice skating around in ball gowns in Princess Peach Showtime. One of my favourite Game Boy games as a kid was Barbie: Game Girl, where you explore a shopping centre in platforming levels to get a cute outfit before a date with Ken. From time to time I enjoy a good stereotypically girly gaming experience.

I’m glad that little girls growing up can have that sparkly colourful princess adventure from Nintendo that feels almost like it’s designed explicitly to slap a pink glittery “no boys allowed” sticker on the box art.

I just wish that Zelda and Peach got enough games in starring roles that there was room for a variety of experiences centring the characters.

I wish there was room for Nintendo’s princesses to occasionally get the Samus Aran treatment, going on an adventure that doesn’t need to justify that the hero is a woman.

I wish I could unhear Aonuma’s comments about needing a reason to make a game where the woman gets to be the hero, because knowing that quote exists makes it hard for me not to see lines drawn in the sand about what a woman can be, and how much help she needs from a man to be able to wield a sword in an emergency situation.

Also, now we’re getting a playable Zelda, give us playable Linkle too. Her time has come. She won’t upset the balance of the triforce as she doesn’t wield it, and you can’t argue against giving her cool dual wielding crossbows. Make it happen Nintendo.