Updated October 02, 2024 at 22:02 PM ET
The Zelda series has been around for nearly four decades, and until now, the protagonist of the mainline series has always been Link – the master sword wielding, green hat-wearing boy or man (depending on the game) who saves the world from the forces of evil and usually rescues Princess Zelda in the process.
But in the newest addition to the series, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, Princess Zelda is the protagonist in a main Zelda game. Link gets trapped in a rift, so Zelda takes the lead and goes on her own adventure to save him. She uses a wand that duplicates objects instead of Link’s sword and shield.
Morning Edition host Leila Fadel talked to Amanda Cote, Director of the Serious Games Certificate in the Department of Media and Information at Michigan State University and author of Gaming Sexism: Gender and Identity in the Era of Casual Video Games about the significance of Zelda being the main character for the first time.
Becoming a first-time protagonist
Cote said in the earliest games, Zelda represents a classic damsel in distress. Link is usually the one taking action within the games, protecting Zelda from the villain Ganon/Ganondorf. In past games she had times where she had agency, but Echoes of Wisdom brings it to a new level.
“But there are some moments where Zelda has taken action in the past. In Ocarina of Time, she also has her alter ego of Sheik. Where she shows up and helps Link progress through the story, helps teach him new songs and abilities, and then of course turns out to be the princess at the end,” Cote said.
She adds that in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, you meet Zelda first as the Pirate Queen, Tetra, and then later she’s revealed to be Princess Zelda.
“Even though Zelda has been somewhat active in previous Zelda titles, in the end she always returns to this more passive princess damsel in distress entity. So she takes action, but then goes back to being the goal rather than the agent,” said Cote. “And so having a game where she is an active agent throughout the whole game is really amping up those moments of promise that we saw in earlier titles.”
“I’m optimistic to see what this does for her… does she get to be a whole person? I hope we get to learn things about her that aren’t just her role in this story, but also those little quirky bits that make characters feel like people,” said Carly Kocurek, director of the Game Design and Experiential Media program at Illinois Institute of Technology and author of Coin-Operated Americans: Rebooting Boyhood at the Video Game Arcade.
While Cote doesn’t think we’ll ever get rid of the damsel in distress entirely because they’re the table of some very long running series, like The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Brothers, she thinks games are starting to be more ironic about the trope.
For example, she said, at the end of Super Mario Odyssey, Princess Peach was rescued by Mario, but decides she’s over the fight between Mario and Bowser and wants to be her own woman for a while.
“So the damsel in distress trope is still there, but I think we’re about to see more interesting takes on it,” Cote said.
Is this part of a shift in the gaming industry?
Cote says Zelda being the main character is a continuation of a trend that Nintendo kicked off in the early 2000s.
“Nintendo was not competing particularly well against the PlayStation or against the Microsoft Xbox, and so they instituted what they call their blue ocean strategy. So rather than fighting over the traditional gamer market, what they called the Red Ocean, they deliberately decided to try and reach less targeted audiences… and so they started targeting women, older players, and even younger children,”
Cote said that strategy was really successful, and that Nintendo has said about half of its audience is female so they’re continuing to capitalize on that.
And there has been a shift in the video game industry over the past 20 years, Kocurek said, in there being more games with female protagonists. She said the percentage of women in the industry has more than doubled in the past couple of decades, and there’s a lot more women in senior roles in the gaming industry who have decision making authority.
“I think companies would be foolish at this point to think you can ignore more than half of the marketplace. Women spend more money on entertainment. Teen girls tend to spend more money on entertainment,” said Kocurek.
Even though Nintendo instituted its “blue ocean” strategy so long ago, Cote said, we’re only seeing Zelda as the main character now because The Legend of Zelda is a long running, extremely successful series.
“So there’s always the thought of if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” said Cote. “Video games are a very risk averse industry… and so the thought of changing a long running successful series is a difficult one. Because what if you kill the goose that lays the golden egg?”
While we have been seeing a long term trend of more female protagonists in video games, Cote says what is changing is that we’re seeing female characters introduced in a lot more genres of games.
“One of the things that women gamers have to push against is the stereotype that they are only interested in casual games - puzzle games like Candy Crush or things that have cute characters like Animal Crossing. So seeing female characters added across more genres, like GTA 6, moves us away from that stereotype and shows that diverse game audiences matter across genres and not just in these casual games,” said Cote.
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