#like. idk. badgerfang is a character who exists to die and show how shit brokenstar is but the reactions of others who know abt him

[waywardsalt]

@whistlingstarlight it’s not necessarily that it’s specifically warriors, but it’s also that it’s specifically warriors because loz is a game series with like 30 years of good storytelling under its belt and warriors is a book series that consistently has baseline fuckups and is bad with it’s female characters but still manages to do this one thing (that other, better media do well) that botw/totk happened to not fucking do. i mentioned warriors because it’s what made me make this realization, but arcane made me realize it too, warrior cats is just the more notable one because of fucking course arcane did this thing well, it’s just a little more interesting to me that warrior cats does this better than botw/totk (and is therefore one of the reasons why i still really enjoy the books)

ok. the biggest point i made in my earlier post (uuhhhhh this one) is that the problem technically isn’t that link has a very limited range of facial expressions in cutscenes, it’s that he has a very limited range of reactions in general.

uhh disclaimer i guess? im not like a professional or whatever im just someone who makes connections abt stuff in media and kind of. knows how writing works because i know how to do it and have been doing it for a while but im still like. learning n all that. ig this disclaimer could apply to all of my other totk criticism posts

anyways the biggest issue i have with botw/totk's lack of any sort of emoting in big scenes (esp in totk) is that he turns into a blank slate when he has no notable reactions that imply much about how he feels about people and his situation.

i will quickly say that this is actually excused for the most part in botw- boy has no memories, he doesnt know shit about these people and what's going on and he does actually have some unique little animation when interacting with the dead champions, so most of the criticism levied here is mostly aimed at totk, because he should have memories with zelda and the new sages and these character this time around bc it's clearly been years since botw.

in totk, link reacts to his friends gaining new power and respect from old sages and discovers what's happened to zelda and gets the master sword and all of this stuff and is animated with less reaction than he has whilst cooking

i mean, sure, a lot of totk is meant to be emotional, and i'll agree that it works in some of the memories (personally i did not care for them but i can understand them evoking emotion for some people) and like... you see zelda and the other memory character be given actual emotion and reactions. zelda and rauru have distinct reactions to sonia's death and the way they act is in reaction to that death, and this is good! at times, it's not enough to present the player with a sad or otherwise impactful event- showing how the other characters react to it further add to the emotions of the scene, making it feel more real within the world and just... showing you what this means to these characters.

it's hard to really explain, and a lot of it might be related to empathy, but i think even without much empathy required it still informs you about these characters' feelings and values, how they react to things and maybe even informs you of the stakes and can again add more emotion to the scene than it just being an emotional moment be handed to you. even if it don't manage to affect you, if it effects the characters then it still gets some kind of emotional impact, if that makes sense.

i bring up warrior cats because, like... i don't particularly care for a lot of warrior cats characters- listen, it's rare for a warrior cats character to be complex on purpose. i've been reading some of the super editions that take place before the first first book, and... i don't necessarily care about moonflower as a character? but the book manages to set up that bluepaw cares for her mother and relies on her, and then her reaction upon her death and afterwards just cements that... her death mattered, and it affected our protagonist.

a bit of this is unfair in comparison to totk, since... bluestar talks in her book, and dialogue is not an option for link to express himself, and there technically isn't any death (related to link) in totk... the light dragon kind of counts (even tho its fine bc this game is allergic to negative consequences for the protags actions).

zelda and snowfur are both characters you're given time to know and care about, who the main character has a deep connection with, and they both witness a (supposedly) irreversible event happen to them; bluefur watches snowfur get hit by a car and die, and link watches the memory where zelda sacrifices herself to become a dragon. for the sake of a somewhat fair comparison, i'm going to ignore all of bluefur's dialogue- while link kind of just. stands around after the last memory, in bluefur's case we watch her try to nudge snowfur awake and then begin to drag her home, in denial and eventually runs into some friends, who have to be the ones to take snowfur's body home while bluefur is too overwhelmed, and actually has to be helped along by white-eye. of course, link has no one around for his revelation, but... there is infinately less reaction on his part, and we can't even see bluefur. (not even considering that it's kind of lame that you see literally no one else learn about the light dragon and you have no option to tell anyone, which kind of kills the emotion around it too, because the only character to react to it... fucking doesnt)

on totk's end, i did not really care for zelda, and the scene failed to get me emotional from the start, and link's total lack of reaction just killed it even more. it looks like he doesn't care- why should i? it's hard to take this seriously as a big event when your fucking protagonist barely reacts to it.

on the end of snowfur's death (and i'm just going to look at her death and the immediate aftermath- bringing in whitekit makes this unfair as there isn't a parallel within totk to match that) we are told that bluefur nudges her (to try and wake her up) and then tries taking her home despite the obvious evidence that snowfur is not waking up, when she sees her friends show up she drops snowfur and just stares at them without response. of course, this book has the advantage of an inner monologue and written description to hammer things home (quick tangent the dry fucking line of 'A thin trail of blood rolled from Snowfur's mouth.' and this contrasted with bluefur's desperate denial as well as being a line on its own is fucking brutal i'll hand it to the erins on that one), totk has the advantages of being a visual medium. they have music and camera angles and a character model that can be very clearly animated, and it still feels flat because link just... has his default expression and looks around.

bringing up warrior cats was done because these books, despite everything, manage to excel at describing characters' reactions to death, even while the rest of the writing and character work is a bit shoddy. we know that link could be animated- he's animated when cooking and in the camera function and when getting his clothes dyed. we know they can animate characters reacting to the loss of a close one, we saw that with zelda and rauru when sonia is killed. just, for some reason, link is just as blankfaced as he was when he literally did not know who zelda was. he doesn't even make any movements to suggest some kind of strong emotion, which is like, fine, it's not really a cutscene and just, like, an in-game thing, but... i don't know. there isn't a whole lot for the master sword scene, either. it think it's more or less the same as when he grabs the sword in botw, just with some situational additions. very little actual emotion besides determination and whatnot.

again, it's just- i'm not asking for a lot. just some sublte movements- it just feels fucking ABSURD when link is shown to be very animated when cooking and when getting his fucking clothes dyed, but just reacts to the information of his closest friend being turned into a dragon and lingering in the sky for fucking millennium in order to help him is just :| and then turning around. i don't know man, have him walk towards her slowly and like. reach out his hand you're making it really hard for me to believe that he gives a shit or that this really matters outside of being a literal plot beat in a piece of media

i just... characters reactions to death or other big events enhances the emotion of that event and gives it more meaning!! not even death- just shit like link fucking smiling in phantom hourglass when he sees that linebeck is alright after the final boss- that's a slight head movement and a change of his facial texture and we've got so much to learn from that, buddy! just... dialogue, inner monologue, facial expressions, movement- any sort of reaction to an event within a story helps to really make it feel more concrete and important, can make it feel more visceral and genuinely important within the world of the story being told. it tells you about the world and the characters and it just enhances the experience, so when i have to watch link react to learning new impactful stuff about this person he's known for actual years with just a blank face and stiff movement, it feels like a joke. in the actual story, he just... feels like the knight who can use the master sword. thats IT. that's what i mean when he just feels like a tool- it feels like the only traits he displays in the story important scenes of the game are just that he's a knight with a special sword.

lmfao warrior cats made me realize one of my biggest problems with botw/totk link's lack of reaction to stuff