All of you are missing the point I've been trying to make. It's not just Zelda. It's not the responisibility of Nintendo to solve all of this by making Zelda an alll-encompassing game. That's not the point. The point is that Brown representation in gaming is basic, stereotypical, and appropriated. Zelda is just another game that can be used as an example of exotization and bastarding Brown cultures in its game. There aren't many games that don't do this. It's just strikingly perplexing to me how almost every time a Brown person or culture is shown in a game they gotta immediately be from the magical desert.
It boils down to a catch-22 I commented on when the discussion was about Dishonored 2, and Feminist Frequency making a suggestion that perhaps it'd be interesting if the game was
just about Emily - so a similar discussion but here framed around gender representation:
I think the catch-22, for me, is the point where the question shifts from the general case to a specific case. I completely agree that we need more female perspectives in gaming, and more games with exclusively female lead characters; those lead to storylines that are somewhat underrepresented.
But when it switches to a specific example, I disagree; It'll ultimately depend on the story they're looking to tell, so it's hard to make too many assumptions right now, but in principle I don't have a problem with Bethesda making this choice in the best interests of the game they wish to develop.
That's the problem, and I'm struggling to reconcile it satisfactorily. There are more stories out there that should be told that are being neglected, and that's bad. But it doesn't necessarily mean that you should force a story into that mould. In Bethesda's case, it's rather dependent on how well they make Emily a plausible and individual character, rather than Corvo-sans-Blink.
The solution I'd like to say is that companies should continue to make the stories they wish to make, and new developers should spring up to fill those gaps. But that's its own problem when money comes into the fray; can such titles get the funding they need to be viable projects when commercialism becomes a necessary consideration?
It's a tough one. I agree with FF in the general sense, disagree in the specific sense, but in doing so also have to concede that unless there are some specific pushes in that direction, the general sense won't change.
My point being that FF's views on Dishonored 2 and this piece's points about Zelda are valid, but I don't think either game is doing the
wrong thing, as such - the problem is that they're treading what
would be a pretty reasonable middle ground
if representation was truly balanced across the industry as a whole - but because it's not they're singled out as not going far enough.
Hence the catch-22: It's absolutely right to point these out as examples of not going far enough, but people get defensive because they're still doing representation
better than many other games, which can hugely muddy the conversation. Representation as a whole still isn't really enough, by any means; in isolation, these titles would probably be fine, but viewed as part of a whole, it's still got an awfully long way to go - but the issue gets bogged down by the fact that the
individual titles that make up the examples are heading in the right direction.
(As an aside, how
was Emily - as a character - in the end? I haven't yet played Dishonored 2)
