At the risk of going off topic, your comment begs the question... where is this secret library of games with strong female leads who kick ass? I mean, other than Beyond Good & Evil and Portal. Every game I know of with a female lead fits one of those three highly gendered roles we were discussing earlier. She's either a means to fill a bikini, a traditional ultraviolent male action hero (usually also with bikini syndrome, e.g. Bayonetta, or someone posing as a man, e.g. Sheik), or a "damsel in distress".LinkIsMyHomeboy wrote:I don't get all feminist on the series and say Zelda's role was "oppressed." She's the damsel in distress...she always has been. There are plenty of other games out there with strong female leads who kick ass...Zelda has her place and I prefer her to stay in it.
In no way does the LoZ series hinge on the denigration of a female character. Like most games and movies, it simply denigrates them as a matter of course. That's why Twilight Princess struck me so deeply. Neither Midna nor Zelda are strongly gendered. Their roles would have worked with male, female, or sex-neutral characters. Further, many games in the series don't need a "damsel in distress" at all - Link's Awakening is my favorite, but even the cursed Ocarina of Time doesn't have Zelda locked in a tower or hiding from the bad guys; she's out doing powerful stuff - stuff that Link can't do. Frankly, if there's a saving grace to OoT, it's that you play Link as a single piece to a major plan being run by Zelda. Wind Waker fell through for me when Tetra became Zelda and fell into Ganon's hands. The game didn't need it, and it jarred with Tetra's character. It just seemed that someone at Nintendo felt that Zelda had her place and preferred her to stay in it.
"Damsel in distress" scenarios were one consideration I factored into my rankings, because I feel that this series has already shown in many of its titles that there is no "place" where female characters "belong". I, for one, prefer to see characters - male and female alike - break out of where they belong and go exploring.
As for this thread, suffice to say that I won't give a bye to a series that has shown it can portray its female characters as actual human beings, but generally chooses not to simply because it's more easy and comfortable to use anti-woman stereotypes instead.
