There’s been a lot of unpacking of the trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild since last week’s Nintendo Switch presentation, with many theories swirling around the internet about the story, the characters, and notably…about that one scene where Princess Zelda breaks down in tears. Fans are divided on whether to see this clip as good or bad, and whether it should have been included at all. But without context, it’s impossible to make an informed theory!
Yesterday, gaming site Eurogamer had a chance to speak with Eiji Aonuma about this upcoming title, and we wanted to highlight a few key points from his interview for you, though we do encourage you to click through the site’s name above and read the entire piece.
According to Aonuma, all that debate should be shelved for the time being—it was only one moment of a short trailer of a very large game, and like any person, the character of Zelda is complicated:
“Regarding how Princess Zelda is portrayed in the trailer, obviously everyone has their own ideas of exactly how they would expect a female character to act or behave. What I would particularly like to emphasise is that the scene of her crying in the trailer is just one scene from the game – within the trailer itself it forms a dramatic high point, but that shouldn’t be taken too much out of context.
Princess Zelda as she appears in the game as a whole is very complex and multi-faceted, and it’s not as if she’s crying all the time in the game [laughs], so I would ask fans not to read too much into just that one scene from the trailer, and to please play the game and appreciate Zelda as she is in all her aspects.”
It’s a fair point that reminds us of the danger of making assumptions about art before experiencing it for yourself. As to whether the game has a playable female character, well, that’s another story entirely. Aonuma mentioned that his comments from E3 a few years ago, the now-famous “I never said that Link would necessarily be male” got taken out of context and blown out of proportion… so while there may not be a playable Zelda or a female Link in this particular game, we would do well to remember that:
“…there’s already Hyrule Warriors where Princess Zelda is a playable character, and there’s actually quite an assortment of characters including several female ones. And that title is already available of course. So looking to the future, talking about the possibility of having a playable female protagonist, I’d say yes, it’s a possibility.”
So, possibly in the future, but for now, we have a fully-rounded out Princess Zelda, which tells us—along with the already-released trailer shots—that Breath of the Wild will have a powerful and detailed narrative to experience and enjoy.
