Alright, confession time folks. I never finished Twilight Princess. *dodges thrown vegetables and a shoe* I know, I know. To be fair, it wasn’t because it was a bad game or anything. In fact, I rather enjoyed it gameplay wise. The story wasn’t bad either. I really liked Midna. Still, there was something. Something that drove me nuts every time I played that game. For the longest time I couldn’t put my finger on it, but then one day it came to me. I hate Link.
Oh yes, Link. The legendary fantasy hero of the Nintendo that has defended the land of Hyrule for like 20 years now. Why do I hate him? Does it have anything to do with my burning hate of generic faceless and voiceless protagonists like Gordon Freeman (who only taunts you with it by somehow managing to get every female he comes in contact with to develop amorous feelings toward him without saying a single bloody word! Despite the fact that he is obviously out of shape. Go ahead. Look down in Half Life. Fat old Freeman can’t even see his toes.) No, it wasn’t that. Because this problem is centralized only on Twilight Princess. So what is it that this mute fairy boy have in that game that he doesn’t in any other Zelda game?
Well how about a complete lack of any and all emotion?! Annoying little brat doesn’t show the slightest bit of empathy for the majority of the game. In fact he has three emotions: Default Link (Grimace), Happy Link (slightly upturned scowl), and Surprised Link (Open mouth gaping grimace). That’s the entire emotional range of this kid. Heck, he shows more emotion in his wolf form than his human form. This is what I couldn’t stand in Twilight Princess more than anything! Even in the worse of circumstances, our “Hero” comes off as a unemotional sadist like so:
It’s that stupid face that drove me from this game! That moronic vacant stare that is present in almost every cut scene in the game, regardless of the context in which that scene takes place. I know that they never want to give Link a voice because that would clash with everyone’s perception of how Link thinks and speaks (Which is NOT a bad idea, considering the utterly painful experience that was Metroid: Other M) but would it kill you to give the kid some personality? Hannibal Lecter showed more empathy for people than this twerp.
I suppose it could be worse though. This is a basic summary of Link’s epic journey on my sister’s play-through of the game:
Yeesh.
Vrykerion 
Your post is funny, but so true. I just started playing Twilight Princess, & I never really thought about it that way. Link does react more when he’s in wolf form. I admit, I’m a bit spoiled by Mass Effect letting my character have a voice. I guess developers think it’s better to have the protagonist not have a voice (or even a face) because it’s easier for the player to project themselves into the game. And I guess in some ways that’s true. It’s fine if they don’t have a voice, but they at least need some way to show their personality.
It probably wouldn’t have been so annoying if it wasn’t such a drastic reduction in facial expressiveness than his previous versions, which while exaggerated, at least didn’t make Link look like insensitive jerk.
On the upside, Nintendo’s intent of not projecting a pre-determined voice/personality onto Link means we’ll probably never have to endure a painful Zelda movie.
I cant believe you didn’t finish the game! I finished it ages ago, and the end bit was really hard. Okay, so i did cheat a bit using a few walkthroughs,*confession face* but i still love the game. The graphics are AMAZING.He may be expressionless, but it really doesn’t matter all the time as you don’t get to see his face a lot. You can only see his face when he opens a treasure chest, or if some other character is talking. Link is awesome. Full stop.