I'll just leave this here -
Video Games' Blackness problem (Written by Evan Narcisse, Austin Walker, me, Catt Small, and Tronmaximum)
This is basically my bag, what I write a bunch, and talk a lot about, so I won't go too far into it here. But I think this article is pretty good.
This is a great read and I'll link this in the OP. I'll also put a short bit at the start explaining that even though I mostly use female protagonists / sexism as examples, many other representation issues are prevalent in the industry across race / sexuality / nationality / cultures / etc. and their intersections.
I also see some fair discussion around the article I linked in the OP that was partly about The Witcher 3, so I'll add a note to tell people to check that discussion out.
Since the Aonuma statements seem to attract the most discussion I'll try and explain in more detail why I included that under that section ( and put a link to this post in OP ) through some points that were brought up.
My point still stands. I feel this is one of those cases where it's forced for no reason.
Do we need a Metroid game with a male protagonist for a change? I don't get it. There's plenty of other Nintendo games with female leads but since it's not into that one...
The interest in a female Link / female protagonist in Zelda did not appear out of nowhere and is not ‘just because'.
Father hacks Zelda for his daughter, makes Link a girl.
She hacked The Legend of Zelda so now it stars Zelda, saving Link. Part of it is statements like these that have reinforced the idea that Link was in many ways designed as an avatar for the player rather than a fully formed character;
When a player is playing a Zelda game, my desire is for the player to truly become Link — that's why we named him Link, so the player is linked to the game and to the experience. Of course, the player can always change Link's name to their own name to further that notion should they want.
The most important thing about the Zelda series is that the player becomes Link. One of the challenges with full voice is that if we're trying to convey the player's emotion through Link, but you hear Link talking in somebody else's voice, that creates a disconnect between you and the role that you're taking on.
So when
Aonuma did an interview with Kotaku in 2014 and said;
The main character isn't actually Link—it's the player. Of course we have to have a main character in the story, so Link is that main character. But I don't want him to be like a superhero. I want him to represent any player, have that possibility. So that's why I don't really know if we need or want to define it so clearly.
So there are actually many female characters you can play as in Hyrule Warriors. We've introduced Midna, we've introduced Princess Zelda, and Impa as well. So if that connection needs to be there—I'm not saying that it does—let's see what happens with Hyrule Warriors, if as a result of there being more female protagonists, more women pick up the game, I'm all for it, so I've decided to see what happens with this title.
It reinforced the idea of Link of an avatar and indicated that Aonuma was genuinely open to the idea. The wish for a female Link option / female player character was born out of this genuine interest and excitement at the possibility of options being added that would allow the games to be more representative of the people who play it. It's not ‘just because' or ‘because Link being a man is bad / sexist'. This interview - regardless of whether you may think it was misinterpreted or not - is also why the statements from Aonuma on why he didn't do it faced harsher scrutiny.
This genuine interest in a female protagonist for Zelda is also part of why these ‘well, then why shouldn't we make the next Tomb Raider star Lars Croft instead?'-type attacks are just...
dumb. These other characters and games do not have the same history as the Link and the Zelda series. There is no actual interest for a Lars Croft or a Sam Aran or Super Maria, and there is no real reason for it to exist. Lara Croft has clearly been a character from the start - not an avatar -, I see no evidence for men playing Metroid Prime 3 and thinking ‘I wish I could play as a male version of Samus instead', and Mario very rapidly became a mascot, not an avatar. There are no meaningful parallels to be drawn here.
It also brings up the point that these things are not equal; changing a white character into a black one promotes diversity, while changing a black character to a white one stifles diversity. Expressing interest for a female character ( option ) when the character is male is not the same as expressing interest for a male character ( option ) when the character is female, because at this time female characters are vastly underrepresented and male characters are vastly overrepresented. The same goes for all other minorities. Straight vs. non-straight, white vs. non-white, cisgender vs. transgender, etc. Lars Croft and Sam Aran are blatant false equivalencies.
The interest is genuine and not ‘forced for no reason', and by suggesting otherwise you create an inaccurate portrait of the people you are discussing with.
Two side notes for this bit;
Comments such as ‘just play Hyrule Warriors' or ‘they should make a spin-off Zelda game' completely miss the point. While Hyrule Warriors and a possible Zelda-led spin-off are absolutely positive things, the interest the discussion is based on is for a playable female character ( option ) in a main-line Zelda. A spin-off with significantly different gameplay does not replace that.
There are also comments out there by Aonuma that point more towards him seeing Link as a character, and it can be argued that they are moving away from Link as an avatar and towards presenting Link more as a character. Those are fair points to bring up and I believe a discussion can be had one where they are headed with this. However, this does not take away that they have in the past released statements expressing a belief that Link should be an avatar. It does not take away that those statements informed many people's perception of Link. That context should not be dismissed as it is essential to the discussion at hand.
Right, I think your post is very good in painting the situation.
At the same time, I felt that Aonuma said exactly what you wrote. Actually, I thought he went a step further because if it has to be a female protagonist, it'd make more sense to be Zelda probably instead of forcing a new female link.
So, even if he answered with your last sentence, then people would have said "it's fine that Link is male but this doesn't explain why you can't put a female protagonist".
It might not be "hard" to think about story reasons to enable a female protagonist but you would still get the "lore problem" about the Triforce, the hero and so on. And the Hero is Link. And if you're not playing as the Hero, then it's not really "The Legend of Zelda" anymore, is it? Hence the "what would Link do".
But the point is that he did
not say ‘We see Link as a male character, and we do not intend to change this in the future.'. There is a difference between that hypothetical statement and the statements he actually made. He did
not say ‘We wanted to make a story about a boy.', he said ‘The lore prevents us from making a story not about a boy.'. Those are two entirely different things.
Using fictitious lore to argue that something is not possible ( like you and the statements by Aonuma are doing ) is not a compelling basis for discussion. It implies that that fictional lore is unchangeable and eternal, when that is simply not true. See also
The Thermian Argument ( thanks Nepenthe for bringing this up ). Every new game in the Zelda series inherently adds to the lore and changes the context of previously existing lore. The creators have full control over what is and isn't part of the lore as they created every aspect of that lore. They can say that some things are excluded from it ( Disney dumping the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Nintendo ignoring CDi Zelda games / spin-offs ), add lore to expand on or reframe previously existing lore, or retcon certain elements if they feel the need to do so. Staying with Zelda, a great example is the official timeline. Miyamoto gave a general order after the first few games, but then after that there was not really an official timeline. Aonuma indicated a split timeline with comments on Twilight Princess, but made no commitment to a complete interlinked timeline. While certain games were clearly linked, there was still not an overarching official timeline spanning all games and Nintendo denied one existed. In 2011, the Hyrule Historia was released with an overarching official timeline in it linking all games together ( and adding lore in places to make this work ), but it was inconsistent with the Miyamoto order and introduced an up to then unknown third timeline to the timeline split ( Fallen Hero ). This indicates that even outside from just adding to the lore with new games, the lore and the context of that lore can be manipulated by its creators.
The idea that existing lore makes the inclusion of something impossible is simply false, as new lore can always be added / old lore can always be amended to make an exception. Maybe the Triforce made an exception due to the presence of an exceptionally courageous individual. Maybe the original hero failed ( an element already present in existing lore! ) and the bad guy is ordering all new-born boys to be killed or exiled, spurring into action a girl who through her courage earns the Triforce of Courage. Maybe you are a younger Zelda, who has not yet obtained the Triforce of Wisdom, trained by an older and wiser former hero Link in swordfighting and adventuring after showing interest for it. Then the bad guy rolls in, everything goes haywire as the old wise Link inherits the Triforce of Wisdom due to his wisdom and age, loses the Triforce of Courage and gets kidnapped by the big bad. Then the young Zelda must go out and prove herself to earn the Triforce and save wise Link and the Hyrule. Maybe the protagonist is just a girl because of ‘a quirk in the Triforce'; that's actually really all the lore justification you need. Etc. Etc. Etc. there are so many ways they could add to or ammend lore to make a female lead a possibility, and some of them would be genuinely interesting ideas that play upon past elements of the series. The possibilities are pretty much literally endless, and that is why existing lore is just not the basis of a compelling argument against something, at the very least in this specific case where the lore is entirely and completely built from the ground up by the creators.
Aside from that general issue with the Aonuma statements and arguments that revolve around existing lore, I would also like to point out that the ideas of ‘the hero
must be a boy ( without providing any further compelling lore reasons for that )' and ‘the balance of the Triforce' are both in their basis completely arbitrary and that the inclusion of such ideas in the lore is itself something that provides a point of criticism and discussion as well.
I also disagree with your assertion that there would have been just as much controversy if he had simply said he believed Link to be a male and that that is what they were going with. Link being male isn't a problem. The creator wanting Link to be male isn't a problem. The creator not wanting a female option isn't a problem. The problem is that he claims that this is because he can't do these things because the lore prohibits it, when that is clearly not the case as he has full creative control over it. Instead of saying that he wants Link to be male, he cites in-lore justification to claim that he must be male. Instead of taking the responsibility for a creative decision he had part in, he shifts that responsibility onto something inanimate.
The statements were seen as problematic by some for the reasons explained above. The point isn't and was never that a male Link is supposedly sexist or should go away, or that not having a female player character option is ‘wrong', or that Nintendo should be forced to add something they don't want to; the point is that the arguments Aonuma made are flawed and that they do not actually address the wishes of many people interested in a female player character. People should be able to see how his statements are flawed regardless of whether they personally think Link should stay male or not. This is why the statements are included in the OP; they do not present a compelling argument in themselves. These statements can and should be criticized, and that can not and should not be dismissed by people calling upon ‘artistic integrity' for the reasons explained in the OP.