Video games are very much like any other media out there in terms of the characters that you portray or find. There are good guys, bad guys, those who “walk in the gray,” and everything in between. Another thing you see in video games all too often are relationships and romances that bloom over time. Many games pride themselves on that and even give the player the choice of who to be with. For Nintendo fans, one of the most ambiguous relationships in their roster is that of Link and Zelda, which was only compounded when The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom came out.
The ambiguity is because Nintendo has rarely shown full-blown love, marriage, and certain other forms of love in their games. In regard to Link and Zelda, though their destinies are forever intertwined, they don’t always interact as much as fans think, so thus, their relationship is “up in the air.” However, with Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, their relationship has really been called into question, and for voice actress Patricia Summersett, she knows where she stands on this matter.
In a talk with The Gamer, she noted that she understood the ambiguity of it all but also said that there’s something more going on there in the sequel:
“There’s a tension in that, and this defiance of a definition is something really nice. I always come back to that, and I really love it as both an actor and as a human. Those relationships are super important to portray too, and I think they’re the best relationships we have in life, whether it be friendship or something that doesn’t have to fit a definition. I know that [Link and Zelda] are in a relationship with each other, it’s active, there’s a lot of care and a lot of listening, and I just love that about it.”
While that may not be definitively an answer as to whether they’re “a couple,” if you look at how things have progressed between the two recent games, you see the threads. At first, Zelda hated Link because of who he was and how easily he could grasp his destiny. But she would soon come to trust him more than anything and was happy when he remembered her after 100 years.
Then, in the sequel, without going into spoilers, the opening scenes show how much closer the two have grown, with subtle cues and actions to show how much they care for one another.
But perhaps it’s up to you, the viewer, to decide if they’re an “item” or not.
