Rather than complain about how tired and sad I am, or about how rough work has been this week, I figured I might as well turn my attention toward my favorite gaming franchise and not only avoid my blog becoming a dour place full of only my sourest feelings but also maybe even lift my own spirits. After all, there’s a new Legend of Zelda game coming out soon (Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom) and you get to play as Zelda in this one! Which is a pretty big deal, considering the only other protagonist we’ve even seen in a Legend of Zelda game is Link. Link’s been our only player character this whole time. Sure, the Hyrule Warriors games muddied the waters a bit, but those aren’t really the same thing since they’re even further from “canon” than even the handful of Capcom handheld games. Even if you moved to include them in this accounting of Legend of Zelda protagonists, Link is still the primary protagonist and all the other characters show up to support and fight alongside him, so that argument is iffy at best. All of which is to say that this is a pretty big deal. I know a lot of people are nervous about what looks like a departure from the norm (dungeons and puzzles and relatively clear progression) as the game touts its world being as open to exploration as your imagination allows and shows Zelda committing mostly indirect violence rather than ever truly dirtying her hands like Link does, but I think it’s almost always worth taking a relatively wild swing. Wild swings got us Breath of the Wild and, sure, they also got us Tears of the Kingdom (which was an enjoyable foul ball, but a foul ball all the same and I could probably make a good argument it for being less of a wild swing and more of an attempt to hit a home run again, which doesn’t really make sense in this metaphor but feels like an accurate description of what the game did), but I’m all for trying new things and desperate to play as Zelda, especially after they took the very gender-neutral Link of Breath of the Wild and solidly masculinized him in Tears of the Kingdom. Let’s move the men aside for a bit and let someone else have a turn at the game, you know?